Actually, they didn't actually start shipping with 3.0 in June. Only the iPhone 3GS (and 8GB iPhone 3G) came with 3.x pre-installed.

The only iPod touch models that come with the 3.x update pre-installed are the *third-generation* models released in September and the "re-released" second-generation 8GB model that Apple is still selling new.

Even refurbished second-generation models that Apple is selling today still only include v2.2.

Chitika points out that since mid-June, every single iPod touch sold has had 3.x pre-installed on it anyway.

Actually, that statement from Chitka is incorrect. The iPod touch did not include OS 3.0 until after the third-generation models were released at the beginning of September. The old second-generation iPod touch units were still being sold with v2.2 until that point -- and in fact refurbished second-generation units that are still being sold by Apple also only include v2.2 and require the buyers to pay for the v3.1 upgrade.

Capable? Yes, they should be the exact same phones, as with only very few exceptions (ie, China), Apple sells the same physical hardware to every carrier worldwide.

That having been said, however, a Rogers 3GS will be locked to Rogers in the same way that any other Rogers phone is, and quite frankly, I'm expecting that Bell and Telus will be doing likewise in locking the iPhone to their respective networks.

As for network upgrades, Rogers already has a 7.2mbps network, and is in the process of upgrading to the HSPA+ 21mbps speeds. Bell and Telus rolled out the 21mbps network to begin with. All of this is completely irrelevant to the iPhone, however, as the 3G is only a 3.6mbps device, and the 3GS is only 7.2mbps. Only devices like USB/ExpressCard wireless network cards can really take advantage of these increased speeds at this point.

The important thing to keep in mind in all of this as well is that Bell and Telus will only support the newer HSPA/3G cell phones, not older GSM/GPRS phones. This upgrade is HSPA on top of their existing infrastructure, not a migration to GSM infrastructure.

Actually, the iPhone has been sold out at Rogers/Fido stores primarily because they never ordered sufficient stock. It's not a supply-chain problem with Apple, but rather Rogers being conservative on the number of units they want to keep on-hand, since they're not sold on consignment -- Rogers has to pay Apple for each iPhone that's sitting in a warehouse or a store somewhere.

On the other hand, Canadian Apple Stores have had more than ample quantity of every model of iPhone. Ergo, Bell and Telus shouldn't have any problems getting their hands on stock, it only remains to be seen whether they'll make enough of a pre-order to keep up with demand.

Actually, it's important to keep in mind that Rogers never had any kind of exclusive arrangement with Apple like AT&T did. Rogers (and Fido) were simply the only carriers in Canada that could support the iPhone, and therefore had exclusivity by default (in the same way they would have for any other GSM/HSDPA phone).

Now that Bell and Telus can support an HSDPA network, the game changes, of course, and since Apple has no contractual obligation to sell the iPhone solely through Rogers/Fido, Bell and Telus picking it up is pretty much a given.

Also note that Rogers' network is 7.2mbps, at least in most major urban areas. The new Bell/Telus network is 21mbps (HSPA+), but that's well beyond what the iPhone will support. The iPhone 3G is capped at 3.6mbps anyway -- only the 3GS can reach the 7.2mbps speed.

There is a dichotomy here that most people are missing... I work as an IT Consultant for a number of organizations that *do* require high-level security and encryption -- government, health care, law firms, etc. The distinct commonality in all of these organizations is that they simply do not allow any device on their network that was not issued by the IT department. *Period*

This is why the Blackberry is and continues to be such a popular device in these environments. It has always supported tight encryption and security policies for corporate controls. Even those organizations I work with that support ActiveSync devices will not provision ActiveSync on any device that wasn't issued by the company. I have several clients who have had lineups of users requesting iPhone support and even Palm Pre support and in every case the answer has simply been a firm "No."

Of course, that doesn't mean that other organizations aren't installing Exchange 2007 and enforcing encryption just because they can, but in those cases, the encryption requirement generally doesn't have any legal or liability concerns associated with it, and in many cases getting the IT department to disable encryption in these types of organizations may or may not be that difficult.

Of course, none of this excuses Apple from having this bug in the first place (if the policy says to enforce encryption, then it should be properly enforced on the device), but the reality is that a lot of the response to this is alarmist and overly melodramatic. This is not likely to be as big of a problem as you'd expect, since most organizations that truly have regulatory or legal requirements to enforce encryption generally also demand "ownership" of the devices that corporate data resides on. Allowing corporate data to reside on devices that are not owned by the corporation is a bad idea for a whole bunch of other legal and liability-related reasons, regardless of the encryption policies that may or may not be in place.

As others have pointed out, having the option to turn off the voice dialing eliminates that as a security issue for those who are concerned.

Therefore, the only remaining concern would be whether allowing somebody to listen to your iPod content would be a security concern... I guess that depends largely on your musical taste....

It's also worth pointing out that the select/cut/copy/paste and undo features are system-wide on the iPhone 3.0 OS, and not something specific to any particularly Twitter client, or any other app, for that matter -- any app that uses standard text-entry fields (which almost ALL do), can take advantage of the enhanced editing features.

As somebody else pointed out above, the problem is that for Push Notifications to work with a Twitter client, the developer would either need to setup a middleware server, or Twitter itself would need to deploy push notification capabilities on the Twitter side.