You can bet that there are lots of iPhone fans out there counting down the days until Christmas hoping ol’ St. Nick will be stuffing an iPhone in their stocking. Last year there was a glut of holiday purchases for the original iPhone along with problems finding devices in some areas and crowded stores.

AT&T has announced that it is already gearing up for holiday sales of the iPhone 3G by streamlining the buying process and allowing shoppers to do the glut of the work online. AT&T has started a system that allows customers to pre-qualify for the iPhone online.

The iPhone is certainly one of the most talked about mobile phones among gadget hounds. Many were not happy when the original iPhone launched as an AT&T exclusive. When the iPhone 3G launched and AT&T began subsidizing some of the cost of the iPhone, people began to take a bit more notice of the handset.

According to market research firm NPD Group one in three iPhone 3G buyers have come to AT&T from other service providers. I am sure this is exactly what AT&T was hoping for when it agreed to subsidize the cost of the iPhone.

Apple wants to enhance your audio experience with a good fit, with these Apple In-Ear Headphones. They feature two high-performance drivers, a woofer takes care of all of your bass needs and mid-range sounds, while the tweeter takes care of the high-frequency audio. These drivers translate into accurate and rich audio depending on the quality of your MP3 encoding. Apple priced the pair affordably at $79. Comes with three different sizes of ear tips to cater for all kinds of ears, a carrying case and a cable-control case.

Ask anybody and they’ll tell you Apple invented the iPod. Not entirely correct according to Apple themselves, who has credited a UK man as author of some of the original patents that outlined how today’s PMPs work. Kane Kramer had no idea about iPods back then, but he sketched out a rudimentary media player in 1979. Sadly, financial difficulties in 1988 meant he couldn’t renew the patent and so it entered the public domain. Apple then used the concept as evidence in their legal case against Burst.com, who were accusing the company of patent infringement and looking for a slice of iProfits.

Kramer’s PMP was called the IXI, and stored only 3.5 minutes of audio and oddly enough it even looks just a bit like what eventually became the iPod. The inventor had to endure ten hours being questioned by Burst’s legal team, who had claimed that the intellectual property of four patents they held was being used by Apple without payment or agreement. Obviously now that Apple has fessed up, Kramer is looking at some kind of compensation. Apple did give Kramer a free iPod that apparently broke after several months. Sadly if not for the lawsuit Kramer may have lived in relative obscurity and we would never have known.

According to Research and Markets’ latest report, both Apple and Sony are looking into developing screens that could be worn inside glasses.

“Today’s personal viewers provide video only with limited visibility of the environment. Sony and Apple are developing the next generation personal viewer, the navigation/video sunglasses. These products will offer navigation features in full see-through mode as well as video viewing with a clip-on to block the background,”

With the launch of Apple’s Application Store today came a whole mess of applications newly available for download to use on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Topping the list of the free ones is the Remote application, which allows users to control iTunes and even AppleTV wirelessly with your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The application requires the iPhone 2.0 software update and comes in 16 different languages including English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and Norwegian among others. The remote application lets you control playback of your media and see the songs and album art on the mobile device with the application.

The Apple Application store for the iPhone and for the iPod Touch is finally now live and you can check it out here. The store is loaded with applications for use the the mobile devices that are both for sale and for free.

Topping the list of “Free Apps” early on today include Remote which lets you control iTunes on your computer through Wi-Fi with your iPod Touch or iPhone, an AIM application and applications for use with Facebook, Google Mobile, eBay and Twitter. Some of the top applications in general include Super Monkey Ball (big surprise), MLB, Texas Hold’em and Cro-Mag Rally.

The MacBook Air may be slim, but it’s price is pretty hefty. Thankfully, Apple is now selling the super slim MacBook Air for $2598, that’s down from $3098.

The slashing of the price is due to a cut in price for two of the components. The Intel Core 2 Duo processor upgrade for the Air’s 1.8GHz went from $200 to $100. Also, the cost of the Flash memory based 64GB SDD drive upgrade from $999 to $599. Now, you can configure a 1.6GHz MacBook Air with a SDD Drive starting at $2398. Still pretty expensive, but that’s quite a savings.

Mac heads, professional photographers and amateur image snappers alike have a fond spot for Apple’s Aperture 2.0 application. Apple announced today that it has issued an upgrade for Aperture 2.0 to version 2.1.

With the stink Apple made for itself when it decided to charge iPod touch users for the last software update it issued, Aperture users will be glad to hear that the 2.1 update is available now free of charge. Apple says that the update issued today includes an Apple developed plug-in.

iPhone users and iPhone developers alike jumped for joy yesterday when Apple announced the iPhone SDK. Apple also previewed its iPhone 2.0 software that is scheduled to release this June. Enterprise customers can register for the iPhone 2.0 software beta right now as well.

According to Apple the iPhone 2.0 software adds some significant features for enterprise users including support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync that provides secure over-the-air push email, contacts, and calendars. Several mail features will be added to the iPhone with the 2.0 update including the ability to view PowerPoint attachments along with Word and Excel. One feature that I have longed for is on the feature list as well, the ability to mass delete and move emails. Too bad Apple didn’t add the ability to mark emails as read in mass.

Today Apple announced the release of a new 16GB iPhone giving double the storage capacity in the device. The Apple store was down for a while this morning, just in the U.S., which especially on a Tuesday indicates the company had something new coming. When the site came back up the Apple store now shows two models, one with the original 8GB capacity for $399 and a new 16GB iPhone model for $499. All the specs aside from the increased storage capacity appear to be the same, and no, there was no 3G added into the 16GB model.

In addition to the iPhone getting some more storage, the iPod touch also saw an increase in its capacity to store music, pictures and video with Apple also announcing a 32GB version today as well. The 32GB iPod touch was added to the Apple store this morning retailing for $499, along with the existing 16GB model priced at $399 and the 8GB model going for $299.

This morning the Apple Store was down for a little while which usually means they’re bringing on some new stuff. When it came back up we noticed a new Pink iPod nano as the latest addition in the lineup of the 3rd generation players. The new pink model is an 8GB version (4GB only comes in silver) and retails the same as the other 8GB models for $199. Apple is also offering two lines of free engraving on the back and 24 hours shipping so you can get your pink iPod in plenty of time for Valentines day.

Apple seems intent on bringing the iPhone to Asia yet this year and Advanced Info Service (AIS) in Thailand is the latest to announce that they are in negotiations to bring the popular mobile handset in their direction. Apple has recently been in negotiations with NTT Docomo in Japan with revenue sharing being a pivotal point in negotiations. China Mobile had also been in talks about carrying the iPhone until recently when the issue of revenue sharing with Apple brought the discussions to a halt.

According to AIS chief marketing officer Sanchai Thiewprasertkul, Apple is likely to find difficulty in negotiating a revenue sharing deal in Thailand as well. AIS charges only a Thai baht (about 3 cents) per minute for airtime on their plans, and around 90% of the plans are prepaid. Apple would have trouble making revenue by trying to split 3 cents per minute and is looking to do so with post-paid plans.

In the keynote speech yesterday at MacWorld Jobs brushed over the MacBook Air SuperDrive fairly quickly giving the message that the need for optical drives are becoming less, especially since the new MacBook Air has no internal optical drive. According to Apple it can download what software it needs through the internet and connect wirelessly to the Time Capsule for backing up and storing data. Apple does know that the end of optical drives is still a ways off and created this MacBook Air SuperDrive as an external optical drive accessory to the MacBook Air, and ONLY for the MacBook Air according to the specs.

It connects and is powered through a single standard USB cable that’s built into the drive so the MacBook Air will power the SuperDrive both when plugged in and when on batteries. The slot-loading SuperDrive is not much bigger than a CD case at 5.47 x 5.47 x 0.67 inches, and weighs 1.09 pounds. It also has some decent speeds with writing CD-Rs at 24x and double-layer DVDs at 4x.

Amidst the new product announcements unveiled during the MacWorld 2008 keynote today Jobs slipped in a message about a new feature that will easily get your DVD content into your iTunes or Windows Media Player library called Digital Copy. Partnering with Twentieth Century Fox, Apple is offering the Digital Copy feature on DVDs from the Fox studio starting with “Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest” which releases today.

Anytime someone purchases a DVD from Fox that has the Digital Copy feature they can insert the disc into their computer, enter a unique code and transfer the movie into iTunes or Windows Media Player. The movie will then be available for unlimited viewing on their computer, iPod with video, iPhone, Apple TV or other video media player. There is of course some restriction on your purchased DVD’s Digital Copy feature however. It will transfer the DVD to only one instance of iTunes, limited by the unique code required.