July 11. That's the official drop date of the second generation iPhone, straight from Steve Jobs' mouth at the Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. And yes, as reported, the thing will cost a very reasonable $199. (It went for $599 when it first came out a year ago before Apple slashed the price to $399, infuriating everyone who bought it at the higher price just months earlier.)

In a nice touch of theatricality, Jobs had two guys wearing lanyards and badges take a locked metallic box containing the iPhone into a secure room before they carefully placed the box on a table and removed it. Oh, and about the phone: It's three times faster than the old iteration. It'll have GPS. The battery life is better. It's thinner. The bigger model (16GB) comes in white. It'll work in 70 more countries. (Spain! Japan! Canada! But still not China or Russia.) There will be a whole new slew of ads scored with catchy pop ballads that'll remain lodged in your brain for weeks.

Did we mention it's only $199? Say what you want about the cult of Apple and how obnoxious its acolytes are [The cult of Apple is appalling, and its obnoxious acolytes are trend-sucking whores—Ed.], but it's only going to get bigger.