The Apple-focused blogosphere has been exploding with activity this week, roiling with the hotly anticipated 3G 
iPhone launch, the opening of the iPhone App Store, MobileMe's debut, and the iFixit team's flight to New Zealand -- all to disassemble one of the first 3G iPhones to hit the market.
Meanwhile, The Fake Steve Jobs -- a.k.a. Dan Lyons, writer of the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs blog -- announced that he's "sailing away." Basically, Lyons is closing up shop, presumably because he's switching jobs from Forbes to Newsweek and won't be able to take the blog with him. Or maybe he's just tired of posing as Steve Jobs. Either way, Lyons did say he'd be starting a new blog under his own name in the near future.
Reader Pat Hawks summed up the general feeling: "It can't end like this!? Not TWO DAYS before the iPhone 3G launch!? This can't be happening!"
Onto the iPhone 3G!
The first reviews of the iPhone 3G hit this week from the Apple-friendly, big-name tech news hounds -- Walt Mossberg, Edward Baig and David Pogue. Surprise, surprise: They mostly had good things to say, noting that this generation is even better than before, partly due to 3G for faster browsing, GPS and brand-new -- but not reviewed -- App Store.
The iPhone 3G tended to run the battery down faster than the first model, Mossberg noted. Other quibbles include the lack of video, the low-res camera, and the absence of ability to send photo messages to other cell phones.
In a roundup post on The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) Bits blog, commenter Shannon noted, "I've heard the enterprise 
email is disappointing, battery life isn't as good as my current smartphone, and that it's not the all encompassing technology everyone wants it to be yet, but it still doesn't change the fact that it's certainly the most promising and exciting gadget on the market! I will most certainly be buying this 3G phone as soon as my AT&T (NYSE: T) contract says I'm able."
Still, others weren't sold on the 3G's new features.
"While the 3G iPhone sounds appealing, I'm going to stick with my first generation iPhone. I get very good battery life on my current iPhone, and having had a phone in the past that required daily charging, I don't really want to go back to that. Plus there will be enough interesting changes with the upgrade to the system that is coming out," noted Steve.
MobileMe Launches, Then Goes Offline
Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) launch of MobileMe saw a lot of early traction in blogs this week, but has also been eclipsed by the drooling over the 3G iPhone. Both .Mac and Me.com were down for maintenance Thursday, and it wasn't clear whether it was due to troubleshooting from Apple or if Apple was simply readying everything for the official launch of the App Store and the iPhone software update to 2.0 that would let many of the MobileMe features work.
"For some the update does not appear until you go into System Preferences -> .Mac -> Account Details. Then you will be prompted to go to Software Update which will show the updater," the MacRumors.com post by Editor Arnold Kim noted. An update to the post highlighted the point that Me.com went offline on Thursday.
Still, the post garnered well over 900 comments. One of the early adopters, DoreanGrae commented, "Sweeeeet. Wow, servers are going REALLY slow. It's cool though. The thing did just launch about 3 minutes ago."
Some commenters were angry at Me.com being available and then not, while others were more patient.
"In a weird, twisted way, it's quite entertaining ... is it up, is it down, will it stay, will it go ... we gotta be understanding though as this, like someone else said, is a major transition for Apple to sort out," noted sassenach74.
iPhone 3G in New Zealand
Due to some fairly strict rules -- like Earth's rotation and internationally agreed-upon time zones -- New Zealand became the first country to offer the coveted 3G iPhone. Surprisingly, a team from iFixit flew down to New Zealand -- where it happens to be winter -- just to get one of the first models so they could painstakingly tear it apart, peer inside and post the results.
Gizmodo posted pics of the disassembly. "Crazy bastards," commented Tylas.
Others expressed near pain at seeing an iPhone 3G getting torn apart, but talkingsandwich asked the most obvious question: "But...can you put it back together and have it work?"
Apple Dominates Touch Screens
While guys in New Zealand wanted to tear apart the touchscreen on the iPhone, Strategy Analytics was looking at the touch screen market as a whole. The company's research indicated that Apple will sell 6.3 million iPhones in the U.S. in 2008, which is about 35 percent of the touchscreen phone market. Samsung will move 4.9 million units for a 27.1 percent share, followed by LG with 3.9 million units for a 21.5 percent share. Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) will snag 1.8 million units; HTC will sell 800,000.
"Pretty amazing to remember that Apple was the newcomer to the mobile phone market just 1 year ago, and now everyone else is basically playing catch-up!" commented 9to5Mac Noob on the 9to5Mac blog post on the subject.
But how will the touchscreen shake out in terms of mobile phones? After all, most phones -- and smartphones for that matter -- don't even have touch screens.
"We estimate that touch screen phones will account for 11 percent of handset shipments in the USA in 2008, rising to 33 percent in 2012. The relatively high cost of a touchscreen means they will not be found in every handset in the mid-term," Neil Mawston, director of the global wireless practice for Strategy Analytics, told MacNewsWorld.
"However, touch screens are certainly a high-growth, high-revenue market that all handset vendors and operators will eventually need to play in. For some segments of the high-tier smartphone and feature phone markets, touch screens are quickly becoming a must-have feature," he added.
The App Store Has iPhone Owners Salivating
On Thursday, Apple announced that the App Store would launch with more than 500 native iPhone applications, and that 125 of them would be offered free. To get the Apps, intrepid iPhone users had to manually download the iPhone 2.0 software from Apple's servers -- it wasn't formally published on Thursday -- and manually install it to get the icon link to the App Store from their iPhone's home screen.
"There's a bazillion ToDo list and shopping list apps," commented aegisdesign on the AppleInsider.com post on the subject.
"Most of the apps available now strike me as being like the majority of widgets -- underpowered and unnecessary utilities that might get downloaded, but not actually used with any regularity," noted aapl-ip.
Others, though, were more tolerant. "C'mon give the developers a bit of a break will ya?!?! 3 months from 'concept' to 'release' is unheard of! You will also see the more polished apps are those who already had reusable code in place from other platform/version of their app," commented DaveGee.
Regardless of early, unofficial App Store traffic, the App Store looks like a significant development for the smartphone world -- mostly because of its ease of use and fostering by Apple.
"I think the App Store is brilliant," Sven Rafferty, director of Internet technology for HyperSven.com, told MacNewsWorld.
"Like iTunes, Apple will bring the ease of finding applications to the iPhone as it did music for the iPod. Even with Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) now offering DRM-free music, people still use iTunes over the Washington-based, once-books-only service because of convenience. App Store will bring this same luxury to iPhone users," he explained.
Talkback: 
