I have a couple of things to write about this morning regarding Apple products and news...There has been a lot of talk around the internet about what is going on with the new iPhone and its battery problems. I have a few updates on that and a few comments about another iPhone 3G problem that has occurred with the new 3.0 update. Additionally, there was an interesting article this morning that mentions Apples place in China's roll out of a new internet filtering software that is designed to limit access to pornography and to sensitive political websites.

I will start with updates regarding the overheating of iPhone batteries...Apple has placed on its Support Website tips for preventing the iPhone from overheating. For the most part it appears that Apple is advising users to be sure that the environment in which they are using their phone is within the recommended operating temperatures (between 32 and 95 degrees). Apple has provided an example of the screen that will appear, as well as symptoms of the phone overheating on the support website. These symptoms include, the device will stop charging, the display dims, and there will be a weak cellular signal. Generally, Apple is blaming environmental conditions for overheating, for example, leaving the phone in direct sunlight, leaving it in a car on a hot day, and using certain applications in hot conditions. Several people that have placed complaints on Mac forums have mentioned that the phone has overheated as a result of using the phone in conditions not specified in Apple's warnings i.e. overheating in cool conditions. It remains to be seen if this issue will continue to expand, my guess is the new iPhone software package 3.1 that is already in the works will help to alleviate some of these problems.

A second update regarding problems that have been occurring with software updates and the iPhone 3G's ability to recharge. Recently a friend upgraded to the 3.0 operating system and immediately noticed that his battery would not hold a charge for more than 8 hours even with limited phone use. At first we thought that he must have an App that is draining is power perhaps by constantly updating GPS data or weather information. However, after looking more closely at this possibility we determined this was probably not the case. After running out of ideas, my friend called Apple support which guided him through a few diagnostic routines. Apple determined that the new software update has, in only a limited number of cases, caused iPhones 3Gs to have difficulties determining the level of charge that the phone is at, which means the phone does not know when it is fully charged. Essentially the phone tricks it self into thinking that it is charged and then stops the recharge process. What does Apple do about this?? Sent him a brand new phone...Showing again that Apple cares about their customers and that the Apple support service is top notch.

A final bit of Apple news came from an interesting article I read this morning on PC World about China's new Green Dam Youth Escort, which is an internet filtering software designed to limit access to pornographic and other political websites. The article mentions that Apple computers will be exempt from this new software because there is currently not a Mac compatible version. China recently postponed the release of the program, but still insists that in the very near future PCs that are compatible with Windows will be required to have the filtering software. The PC World article also mentioned that developers are testing the Green Dam Youth Escort on other operating systems, but it did not say which ones are being tested. I thought it was sort of funny and ironic that on this 4th of July weekend Apple is (perhaps inadvertently) providing a little freedom to its Chinese users who are having access limited to websites they may want to view.

Have a Happy 4th!!