What is interesting about the iPhone 3.0 OS is that while it is free for iPhone users, iPod Touch users like me ( I only bought it because I thought my wife would like it) have to pay US$9.90 for 3.0. Now 3.0 has a host of nifty features which in Apple’s principle justifies charging users for the update.

Of course only Apple gets away with this rubbish, charging users for updates to the operating system of their machine as they have done with Mac OSX for years with fancy Big Cat names to updates. Imagine if Microsoft  charged for Windows Vista Sp1 – the world would probably descend onto pandemomiun. 

But my beef with 3.0 is this – it fixes 46 security holes http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3639 including stuff we only usually see when using Windows and Internet Explorer – opening malicious PDF files, visiting malicious websites, accessing malicious Exchange mail servers. So now we now know that whatever has gone before 3.0 is not exactly secure.

While there are no reported viruses to exploit these vulnerabilities, I don’t see why I should have to pay to fix something which I paid good money for which was broken from the beginning.

At first, the story was about how frenzied crowds queued up for the hyped up wonder gadget. Now, weeks after, people are complaining about how they can’t log in with their MobileMe service. Even Steve Jobs is unhappy with it.

Then there are reports from Engadget and elsewhere that users are finding cracks/stress fractures with 3G iPhones. DailyTech reports that this can happen a day after or about 2 weeks after, according to user reports, and that the problems are usually spotted on the edges and the headphone jack.

The worst rub of all comes from a USA Today report that compared the iPhone teething problems with Microsoft’s Windows Vista.

It quoted an independent analyst Rob Enderle, who said: “Vista wasn’t finished, and that’s what the iPhone feels like,” he says. “It’s been rushed onto market, even though it wasn’t ready.

He added that people queue up for it because “the buzz hasn’t caught up with the news… people line up for it, so it must be good. But that can’t last forever.”

So much for the idea that Apple stuff “just works” eh?

It’s not the kind of news that SingTel or Apple Singapore would like to hear as they prepare to launch the iPhone here, rumoured everywhere in town to be on Aug 22.

There’ll probably be a queue then, but if Apple does not fix some of these early problems, they will also face some unhappy customers later on.