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Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4 yesterday in his WWDC keynote, and it's a gorgeous device with software upgrades that include multitasking, a video chat app called FaceTime, and more. I'm still a happy Android user, but I have to hand it to Apple. They continue to school the industry on aesthetics and marketing. Case in point: the FaceTime demo video.

First, some background. I got a Sprint EVO at Google I/O which has a front-facing video camera, and presumably the ability to do video calls. So far, I haven't tried it. My general feeling about video calling is "Why?" I hate talking on the phone, so giving someone else the ability to see me while I talk on the phone seems like a yawner. I can't imagine walking around holding my phone out in front of my face to do a video call.

Then I watched the FaceTime video from Apple, which features babies, people in love, grandparents seeing their grandkid in a cap and gown on graduation day, girlfriends showing off new boots, deaf people signing to one another, and the one killer scene that sold me. A soldier, presumably in Iraq or Afghanistan, sits on the edge of his bunk, holding out his iPhone, video-chatting with his pregnant wife/girlfriend at the hospital back home, who is getting an ultrasound. His eyes well up when he sees his kid for the first time.

Maybe it's because I'm a woman in my child-bearing years, but that scene--even as contrived as it was--laid me out. That's the thing about Apple marketing. They don't talk about how many gigabytes of memory or how many CPU cycles or how many apps (much). They aim for your heart, and show you how technology can make your life better during its most important moments.

Contrast this with the Droid ads, which actually scare my friend's two-year-old daughter away from the TV when they come on. The dark, rainy background, the spinning globe of glowing apps, the robot hands poking at them, nary a human in sight.

Droid does. Does what? Show, don't tell.

I'm really glad the new iPhone has been officially announced, and that Apple continues to set the bar for beautiful software and clear communication about the intersection of technology and life.

Update: I didn't fully address the "aesthetics" part of my thesis in this post, but in short, it's that the iPhone operating system has a polish and level of design quality that no other mobile OS has. I haven't tried iPhone 4 myself yet, but the crazy-high resolution retina display and the multitasking/folders demo especially left me green with envy. I'd love to be able to switch between running apps so beautifully on Android.

Looking at this you realize 1.) there's no clear winner in the bunch feature-wise and 2.) we all spend a ridiculous amount of money on mobile phones and service. My only nitpick with this chart is that the T-Mobile/Nexus One "Average Usage" plan should be listed at $79.99 a month, not $89.99 (unless they're counting taxes and fees). Update: BillShrink has updated this graphic to correct prices. Head inside and click to enlarge the big picture to check it out.

Nexus One vs iPhone, Droid & Palm Pre - Total Cost of Ownership [BillShrink]

My favorite part about this app is the fact that it comes from a giant in personal computing, who, after 30+ years in the business, is still motivated enough to pick up a book, learn a new platform, and release software. Bricklin explains:

Over the last couple of months I've been working on learning a different medium and a different business environment. In mid-September I purchased a shiny new 24" Apple iMac and an iPhone 3GS. I signed up for the Apple iPhone Developer Program. I bought some books and started doing the tutorials, step by step. I came up with the idea for an app I needed and built a prototype, then plunged in and started creating a full app that would be good for others, too. A few days before Thanksgiving I submitted my completed app for inclusion in the App Store. It's now just been approved and you can try it. 30 years after VisiCalc shipped: Another app from me that starts out on Apple hardware.

If you get the application, be prepared to work through the initial "Try It" mode. The multi-page tutorial may frustrate ADD-types, but it's totally worth it to get a handle on the interface. Here's a screencast of Note Taker in action:

The full version of Note Taker is $1.99 in the iTunes Store and Note Taker Lite is free (with a four-page limit). Bricklin says an Android version is underway.

Note Taker [iTunes Store]
Dan Bricklin's Note Taker for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch [Dan's Log]

Update: Several readers point out that if you email notes from Note Taker to Evernote, the text becomes searchable. Here's what it looked like in Evernote when I sent my cookie ingredients list in, and then searched for the word "Sugar."