When the original iPhone was released, I was simply stunned. As I saw things back then, it wasn't exactly light years ahead of its competition, and that's what I feel now about the iPhone and the iPhone 3G, too. What made fall in my chair and stare at the monitor in front of me for about 30 minutes, without any idea on what to write about Apple's new phone was the fact they managed to come up with a really revolutionary design for its time. Unfortunately, the iPhone 3G didn't change much, and fell way below some people's expectations, including myself, but Apple's marketing division managed to push it above its predecessor. How?

While the iPhone was a big step forward for all the smartphones manufacturers, giving a lot of them new ideas and the role model to follow, the iPhone 3G came as a small step forward for everyone, and - unfortunately - a lot of problems, when compared to the "2.5G" iPhone. If I say "iPhone 3G problems," I am sure a lot of people would come and scream, cursing Apple, their mobile carrier, the day of birth, and so on, but things aren't that dark, after all.<-180x150 Small Rectangle - right-> You want to know why?

According to a recent report, the number of iPhone 3Gs on the market is almost (or maybe already above) the same as that of the old generation iPhones. So, it took about a year to sell 6 million iPhones, and less than two months to sell as many iPhone 3Gs?? Awesome!

Just two more things - some early estimations say that the Russian market will engulf over 3.5 million iPhone 3Gs, but I guess we should wait and see. What I can tell you is that the Romanian market is already chewing them faster than the local carrier was expecting, but it remains to be seen how far will the iPhone 3G go here in the long run.

Oh, I was just about to go, but here's one more - the French carrier for the iPhone, Orange, just admitted capping 3G speeds! This only happened following an uproar on the part of its iPhone customers, but it's good to notice - before blaming Apple, look at your carrier, and check the user manual a few times...

Do you remember the Psystar saga? The attack of the clones from Open Tech? Well, to make a longer story short, here's the resume: since Apple decided to switch from the PowerPC architecture to Intel's Core Duo processors, building a Mac OS X-compatible computer became something accessible to the average Joe, and some people even thought setting up a company to manufacture and sell Mac clones can bring them some cash into the pockets, while escaping Apple's revenge. Guess what? They were wrong!

Just as a side note - Open Tech, the other clone maker I mentioned above, is completely out. The news came up yesterday, but since this was the expected outcome of the Open Tech vs Apple match, I skipped telling you about it. Well, today is the right time to quote Elijah Samaroo, Open Tech's president of online sales an PR, who wrote in an email that "Open Tech is For sale.<-336x280 Large Rectangle - right-> This includes all trade secrets and brand equity. Thank you for tour [sic] time." Heh, it seems he was in a hurry to write that, don't you agree? Well, if you have $50,000 to throw away, you can go ahead and purchase Open Tech, but now, let's get back to Psystar, shall we?

Getting back to Psystar, I like them because they have a decent website, a well chosen name, since it appears as first result in Google, and let's not forget about Psystar.com vs some-free-hosting-site-you-won't-ever-remember, for Open Tech. Now, Psystar is turning defense into offense, filing a countersuit in which they accuse Apple of unfairly squeezing out its rivals! I hate fakes and clones of various products, but I must admit these guys have guts(anyway, they are not manufacturing "iMoc" or "MocBook Pra" computers)!

Even more, on the 13th of August, they posted the following on their website:"Recently, our sales team has received several inquiries as to whether or not our systems are still available. Psystar is definitely still shipping Open Computing products and we've introduced our restore utilities to enhance the computing experience for our customers at no extra cost. We strive to provide the best computers we possibly can and are actively improving all of our products taking all your valuable feedback into consideration." Their restore utilities also include a Leopard restore disk, just so that you know...

In an interview with CNET, Psystar's chief Rudy Pedraza said "What we want to do is to provide an alternative, an option. It's not that people don't want to use Mac OS, many people are open to the idea, but they're not used to spending an exorbitant amount of money on something that is essentially generic hardware." Sounds fair to me - after all, they are not really selling "Mac clones," but simply "computers capable of running Mac OS X," and nothing more.

Anyway, I am sure Apple doesn't have the same opinion as I do, so I must ask you - what do you think about this whole "Mac cloning" deal? Why would you buy such a computer(or not)?

I guess you're tired hearing me mumbling over and over again about how much I like China for the fact they managed to prove that Communism works, so I won't say anything about that today. After all, I am not blind - world's 20 most polluted cities are from China, and human rights are still stuck somewhere a few ages behind the most Western countries. So...what about China, today? Did they succeed in showing us why is censorship good? The answer is negative, obviously, but Apple is finally getting into this, as we're going to see right away...

Just as a reminder, what happened was that a pro-Tibetan music album featuring various artists, such as Sting, Dave Matthews, Moby, and Alanis Morissette was recorded earlier this year, and released on the 5th of August on the iTunes Store. I know, this is not something out of ordinary, only that Chinese authorities have completely blocked access to the iTunes Store all over China, since it seems that athletes were downloading the album and listening to it in a silent act of support for Tibet.<-180x150 Small Rectangle - right->

An Apple official finally commented on this matter, as Apple China's spokeswoman Huang Yuna said they are aware of the problem, but no further information is available for now. "We've noticed the problem. It's true that users may fail to log in to iTunes store right now," this is all she said. Really? Here's some hot news for all of you...

A few hours ago, the iTunes Store started to work fine in China once again, with a little exception. Did you guess it? If not, here's the problem - the page of the "Songs for Tibet" album is still unavailable!

At last, here's a "bonus" from the Chinese authorities: the "Songs for Tibet" album pages on Amazon or YouTube care also unavailable... Congratulations, guys, you managed to show the entire world that Communism works...but remains the same plague that shackled freedom of speech of entire nations during the Cold War!

Only a few days ago, the iPhone 3G entered a bunch of new countries, and this was a very good opportunity for a new wave of iPhone 3G problems to arise. Anyway, it's still to early to talk about those new problems that could appear, so I think we should take a look back at those problems we already know about, especially since we already know what's causing some of them. As for the new problems, I think we'll have two big ones: user manuals with poor translations leading users into dead ends, as well as users moving to the iPhone from a completely different phone and, sometimes, frustrated by the change.

Since we heard about various iPhone 3G problems over and over again, I think today the time has come to do more than just talk about their source, so here's the detailed list of the most frequent problems encountered by iPhone 3G owners, including those caused by the design of the phone, as well as most popular user-related ones...

1. The price of the iPhone 3G can go really high in some countries, and if you combine lower income than US citizens and more expensive iPhones, you surely can get the picture.<-336x280 Large Rectangle - right-> Also, in countries where the iPhone is expected to sell in smaller quantities, the local carriers are offering pretty expensive service plans, but that depends...

2. The battery is a problem for everyone - you can't replace it, you have to charge the iPhone on a daily basis, but at least it doesn't blow up...yet!

3. The camera in the iPhone 3G is far beyond the ones used in cheaper mobile phones, remaining at 2MP, while other smartphones are already passing by the 8MP barrier!

4. No MMS - I never used MMS, but some people are surely using it, I have no doubt about that. Anyway, since you have a fully featured email client on your iPhone...why send MMS messages? Considering the Internet capabilities of the iPhone, not being able to send MMS messages is no big deal, but this becomes a serious problem when you try to view such messages you received!

5. No 32GB option, and no memory slot - some people may simply need more than 16GB of storage, so what about them?

6. Poor reception - some consider this issue to be related to the quality of the signal provided by the carrier, but according to Richard Windsor, analyst with Nomura Securities, "these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier." Well, at least "almost certain" is a bit different from "absolutely sure," so let's hope this is not a chip-related problem.

7. The plastic back - do I have to say more about it?

8. No cut and paste? Well, this is still missing from the features list, despite the fact users have been asking for it since the early days of the first iPhone generation. While various third parties claim to have solutions, Apple still didn't come with anything to solve this.

At last, I should get back to the two new problems I mentioned in the beginning - poor translations for the user manuals and iPhone owners not really ready for it are two sources of new iPhone 3G problems, but this remains to be seen. If you have anything to add, please do! I am sure I missed something, so feel free to share with the rest of us your problems, or - even better - your iPhone 3G's strong points!

Most of the time, rumors are full of stuff you can't see, or you end up hearing a lot, and seeing some computer generated images. Obviously, I am talking about Apple-related rumors here, and I must confess it's a real relief for me to find out more than just words and faked images. Unfortunately, nothing is certain, but Kevin Rose published a picture on his blog that looks like the new iPod Nano, as you can see in the image below...

...but who can really tell how will the new iPod Nano look? Not me, for sure, but I must confess that, if the image above proves to be the real deal, the iPod Nano will surely get one extra star rating for its design. Hopefully they'll also come up with a black model, but that's not the problem for now. After all, they still have enough time to paint it black until mid-September, when I think the whole whirlwind of Apple updates will start spinning around.<-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->

While a lot of people try to solve their iPhone 3G problems, others simply enjoy their gadgets and claim that most of this is more of a user issue, than something wrong with the Apple smartphone or the service of the carrier. On the other side, most iPod users are happy with their players, as long as they don't blow up in smoke! To be honest, I never saw any blown iPod up close&personal, but I guess I still have time for that; what I don't like with the current iPod line is the design, with the exception of the iPod Touch, of course.

Now, if you're in a hurry and you don't want to visit Kevin Rose's blog page talking about the new iPods and other rumors, here's what you should keep in mind:

- Revamp of entire iPod line.
- Small cosmetic changes to Touch, Nano to see significant redesign (see pic below).
- iPods to see fairly large price drops to distance itself from the $199 iPhone.
- iPod touch 2.1 software, iPhone to get update very soon after.
- iTunes 8.0 ("it's a big update w/new features").
- All of this coming in the next 2-3 weeks.

That's what the man says, and I hardly wait to see them coming true. We talked about these over and over until now, and we also heard people around talking - at least some of my friends are crazy about changing their "old" iPod Nanos with the new ones, no matter how they are going to look and feel, and I am sure they are not the only ones to be like that...