If Steve Jobs had to worry about each Apple went through, that surely explains its frail appearance. Obviously, this makes no sense, because if we look back at all those complaints filed by Apple or against it, Jobs would have disappeared until now and, after all, that's why Apple has its own lawyers - to deal with problems... or create them. Now, it's Klausner Technology, a company saying that Apple, eBay and AT&T have an agreement regarding its patents on "visual voicemail" technology, and so we have another legal fight starting up...

The whole deal is rather complicated, because Klausner Technologies filed a patent lawsuit under its visual voicemail patents against Apple and others last year, claiming that Apple’s iPhone Visual Voicemail infringes Klausner Technologies’ U.S. Patents 5,572,576 and 5,283,818. The tricky part is that these patents were already licensed to other companies providing visual voicemail, including AOL, Vonage Holdings, and many others.

Even better(or worse, depends how you look at it), Klausner Technologies claimed that Apple's Newton was covered under an OEM patent license granted by Judah Klausner, the company's founder, over 20 years ago, under his landmark US Patent 4,117,542.

So...what next? I have no idea, to be honest, but I guess they will settle things off-court. What do you think?

The iPhone 3G price is a very interesting topic, because simply saying "the iPhone 3G is priced at $199" doesn't say much. Obviously, a part of the real cost of the device is being supported by Apple's chosen mobile carriers, but the question is "how much is the iPhone 3G worth to Apple," but we only have rumors for now. Anyway, rumors coming from specialists are always better than nothing, so let's see...

According to a teardown specialist from Austin, Texas, via MacsimumNews, the iPhone 3G could be priced as low as $100, so even if Apple would sell it for $199 without being subsidized, they would still get a very low profit...or not, if we consider additional costs, which have not been taken into account by the specialist mentioned here, I am sure.

The iPhone 3G we're talking about is the 8GB model, and if we look back at the iPhone 8GB, Apple made a remarkable advance, because that phone was estimated to have a value of about $170. Going up to the 16GB model, which is $100 more expensive than the 8GB one, we have an estimation of about $120.

Pretty interesting, don't you think? I would really like to know exactly how much does Apple take from the carriers' profits, but that's a very good guarded secret, I guess...

Today it's Monday. What can happen on Monday? You know what Garfield says...and I must say I totally agree with that fat and lazy cat - I hate Mondays. No, I don't want to get back to sleep, because I will end up dreaming about the iPhone, or even worse, about the iPhone 3G rivals. Since I don't want that to happen, I will stay awake and tell you about the news and rumors we missed last week, and my personal opinion about each of them.

<-125x125 Button - left->First subject I overlooked last week was Steve Jobs. What about him? Well, if you have seen pictures and video footage from its WWDC keynote, you surely noted he's thinner than last year. Much thinner, in my opinion. Various people expressed their concern over his health, especially since Jobs had pancreatic cancer some years ago, which was cured at that time.

According to Philip Elmer-DeWitt from Fortune, Jobs has received a special treatment - a "Whipple," consisting of cutting off the tumor from the pancreas and reattach the remaining part, while repositioning the bile duct and stomach, too. A side effect of this treatment is the tendency to lose up to 10 percent of body mass, but since nothing was ever officially disclosed on how Jobs was treated, this will remain a mistery. Anyway, I hope next year we'll see a Steve Jobs in best possible shape!

Next, we have Greenpeace vs the iPhone 3G. A new match? Oooh, yeah! The back of the device is made of plastic, and parts of the cabling is containing toxic chemicals, although only in small amounts. I love nature and I try to protect the environment as much as I can, but I think these Greenpeace activists go too far. If you want to stay clean, don't use electricity, don't use mobiles at all, don't...come on!

As a side note, I am sure the plastic back was introduced to cut production prices a little, so maybe Apple could think this over. In the end, it's their decision, and I am sure Greenpeace should see about the heavy industry, strategical bombers, and other sources of pollution that are far more dangerous than a few iPhones with toxic wires and a plastic back!

At last, a very short "issue" - 5 percent. What about it? My friends, Apple's worldwide notebook market share is almost 5 percent. This is happening in a market that has fallen down 6 percent during the first quarter! Do I have to say more?

Apple has a lot to do with religion, although some may say this is not true. If you are one of those, then you should remember about The Church of Mac and its reverend, Bobby Newton, but that's only the top of the iceberg. Today, I want to destroy some myths. I love Apple, but I don't take everything for granted - while I consider Mac OS X to be the best OS in the world, I see a lot of reasons for not liking it, especially if you have a strong Windows background, and I think iPods are more about being cool, than having the best music and video player on the market, or the one that provides you the best bang for the buck. Don't jump on me yet - all the above will be left behind now, because what I want to talk about today is the new iPhone. To be more precise, we'll see how the iPhone 3G stacks up against its competition!

<-120x240 Vertical Banner - left->If it wasn't for the Apple brand and the marketing machine, the iPhone 3G could really be in trouble. Why? Although the image above is nothing but a joke, the sad truth is that the iPhone 3G doesn't have any videoconferencing capabilities, as most people were expecting. Before we move on, feel free to check this article about the iPhone 3G videoconferencing kit on Gizmodo, just to have some fun before we move to more serious things. OK, once you are done with that, I am sure we can move on and talk about the iPhone 3G rivals in the wild, because these are really powerful enemies for Apple's smartphone, as we're going to see right away...

First of the iPhone 3G rivals we'll have here today is the Samsung Instinct, a handset that can easily beat the "iPhone 333" in a lot of areas, but has two big problems - first, it was specifically designed for Sprint Nextel clients, so it won't work with other carriers, and second, as a direct consequence of the above, the worldwide market presence of the Samsung Instinct will be greatly diminished.

The videos on the product page should say it all, but the problem is that those videos compare the Samsung Instinct with the old iPhone, so the truth is not that bad for Apple, after all. I'll leave the features aside, since those are not secrets for any of the rivals here, and get to the pricing issue...

Apple made a very smart move by announcing the 8GB iPhone 3G to be priced at $199, although this is because of being carrier-subsidized, but it seems the Instict follows the same pattern. On Friday, June 20, the Samsung Instinct will go on sale, and after a few days we'll probably have the first sales reports. Unfortunately, the $199 price tag hasn't been confirmed by Sprint just yet, but the Instinct can become a real "iPhone 3G killer" in the US.

Moving on, we have another phone from Samsung, the Samsung i900 Omnia, codenamed SGH-i900, if that's of any importance to you. Good, so why would you grab the i900 instead of the iPhone 3G?

Wide 3.2-inch WQVGA LCD screen, a five-megapixel CMOS camera "with the latest value-added features, which include auto-focus (AF), face and smile detection and auto-panorama shot"(I really want to see that "smile detection" feature - if you don't smile, the shutter is not released anymore?), 8GB or 16GB internal memory, MultiCodec support for DivX, Xvid and other video formats, Samsung's TouchWiz interface, and this is only the beginning, but the i900 Omnia surely looks much better than the iPhone in theory. If pricing will be decent, and all features work as promised, the iPhone 3G may be pushed in a corner by these two Samsung phones alone, but this is not all!

Third - and last of the iPhone 3G rivals we had here today comes from HTC, and features a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, 2.8-inch VGA display, eGPS and FM tuner, while using Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro, pushed forward by the 528MHz CPU and 192 MB DDR SDRAM & 256 MB ROM memory, supported by 4GB internal flash storage. Unfortunately, being given the OS used, this phone's great TouchFLO™ 3D interface and plethora of features are shadowed by its slowness, and the price of over $700, possible even $800, depending on the retailer, doesn't help much either...

What do you think - the iPhone 3G looks less scary now? Despite the fact Apple got an impressive piece of the smartphone market in only a few months, and its market share continues to rise, the battle gets tougher with each new model released by the competition - and the result is better phones for about the same money or even less, of course.

If you want to get busy with the iPhone 3G, then I think you should wait at least two months from this moment to see the market settle down, and the new "touchphones" arriving everywhere and starting to receive valuable user feedback. The iPhone always had rivals, but only Apple's excellent marketing efforts and brand saved it from being overrun. Now, we should wait and see if the iPhone 3G rivals manage to pass by, of they'll keep drafting the Apple smartphone, waiting for the first occasion allowing an overtake...

Maybe Apple should have called the new iPhone "333," because there may be a few reasons to do that, especially after I heard the latest iPhone news. What do you think? I know - it doesn't make sense, but I can clear things out in an instant! We have the 3G thing, right? Now, it seems there's also a third sensor inside the 3G iPhone! Also, since this new iPhone is practically the third update to the smartphone from Apple...here you have it - "333!"

<-234x60 Half Banner - left->According to a recent report by iLounge, when compared to the previous "2.5G" iPhone, the iPhone 3G has an extra sensor. The purpose of this sensor is not officially confirmed, and some say this is not what it seems to be. How can that be possible?

Well, the original iPhone had two front-mounted sensors - one proximity sensor and one ambient light sensor, to be more specific. Why would the 3G iPhone need an additional proximity sensor?

According to iLounge, the iPhone 3G will have better face proximity detection with the help of this additional sensor. Obviously, better face detection would make me think about an additional camera, so video conferencing can finally arrive on the iPhone. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs didn't say anything about a front-facing camera design at the WWDC, and this makes me wonder...

Do you think the 3G iPhone still has some hidden secrets? Is it possible to see Apple changing its product release strategy so much, that only part of the final features are revealed when announcing a product for release in less than a month? Feel free to drop your comments, because I have no idea, to be honest!