Some people were left a little underwhelmed by the keynote announcements on Monday.

Safari for Windows? Sorry if we don’t jump up and down. We’ve been using Safari for years (on our Macs). Safari with draggable tabs and session restoration? Let’s be honest, if Safari didn’t get these features in the near future, the market share would start actively declining from that whopping 3%.

Games on a Mac? Come on. What with the Wii/360/PS3 out there, are we really going to start turning to our Macs for hardcore gaming? Apparently, the EA announcement was full of air, as their games may be running through a technology called Cider.

As far as users are concerned, the “Top Secret” features that Steve Jobs alluded to at the previous WWDC seemed to be:

• reflections in the dock (ftw!)
• Cover Flow in the Finder
• Quick Look
• Spaces
• Time Machine
and
• a slightly heavier drop shadow on the active window

But just like completing a jigsaw puzzle, the more pieces you put down, the clearer the picture of what’s missing. Let’s go back to Cover Flow in the Finder, the item that everyone seems to be making the biggest fuss about being non-news (Eye candy? Sure. Useful? Not so much.)

When Cover Flow was first released as a standalone app by an independent developer, it had that air of “I don’t know what it’s for, but it’s awesome!” vibe to it. Apple shortly rolled that into iTunes as a return to visually browsing your cd/record collection.

It wasn’t until the iPhone demo in January that the usefulness of Cover Flow really became apparent.

When your input mechanism is no longer 1×1 pixels (ie. a mouse pointer), accuracy becomes an issue. The traditional list/column interface of iTunes/iPod is not suitable for a (roughly) 40×40px finger to manipulate. As such, the list items on iPhone are significantly enlarged. But in Cover Flow mode, you get the best of both worlds: an attractive interface that does not require pinpoint accuracy, along with the ability to visualize a ton of information.

Hence Cover Flow in the Finder. Multi Touch on the desktop is coming.