These first applications range from serious programs for doctors and pilots to silly parlor tricks that take advantage of the iPhone’s motion sensors. One, called PhoneSaber, merely displays an image of a Star Wars-like light saber and makes varying light saber noises as you wave the phone in the air.

Here are ten apps I think you might enjoy checking out, in no particular order. These aren’t meant as full reviews, just pointers to interesting items. There may be ten others, or 200 others, you think worthier of attention. Feel free to add comments with your own suggestions.

1. AIM. Finally, a native iPhone program for accessing one of the world’s most widely used instant-messaging networks. It lacks some of the more rarified features of the PC or Mac versions, but does the basic text-chat thing quite well. One downside: because Apple isn’t allowing third-party programs to run constantly in the background, you can’t receive new messages in AIM while doing other things. This will supposedly be remedied by new Apple server technology due later this year.

   

• MotionX-Poker. This is a simple poker game played with dice instead of cards. But it can be mesmerizing, because it makes full use of the iPhone’s graphics engine and motion sensors. You play each hand by shaking the phone to roll gorgeously rendered 3D dice, which even sound like dice. The $5 game comes from Fullpower, a company developing many motion-based programs that was founded by software industry pioneer Philippe Kahn.

  

• TruPhone. This is an Internet phone-calling program that works over the iPhone’s Wi-Fi radio, potentially saving you big money over using the device’s regular cell phone capability, especially when calling internationally. Biggest downside in my initial tests: it sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

  

• FileMagnet. One of the frustrating things about the iPhone is that it has no easy way for users to transfer files from their computers and store them on the phone, even though it is capable of viewing many types of files. FileMagnet, which costs $5, places a small program on your computer, and then wirelessly transfers any files you drag into it to the FileMagnet program on the phone. It works with Microsoft Word files, PDF files, images and more. Biggest downsides: it only works on Macs, but I’d bet a similar Windows program will come along soon.

  

• SpeechCloud Voice Dialer. This free program allows you to dial anyone in your contact list by simply saying his or her name.

  

• Movies. This is a free service that lets you find movies in your area, watch the trailers, buy tickets to them, and view a map to the theater.

  

• Remote. This free program, written by Apple itself, allows you to control any copy of iTunes, on any Windows or Mac computer, over a local wireless network. It also works on Apple TV boxes.

  

• Where. One of many new IPhone apps that attempt to provide information based on your location, Where, which is free, aggregates local content from services like Yelp and Eventful, which also have their own iPhone apps.

  

• Pandora. The new iPhone version of the wildly popular Pandora music-streaming program, is also free. It creates personalized radio stations based on artists you like.

  

• MLB.com At Bat. This $5 program lets you track games in progress, which is no big deal. The big deal is that you can actually watch video clips of key plays before the games are over.

  

Walt also posted a Mossblog on his first impressions of the updated device here.

The Biggest Pluses

Speed: Because the biggest problem with the original iPhone was the slow AT&T (T) network, moving the device to the much faster 3G network, while no surprise, will have a huge impact. This is especially true since data already show that it is by far the most heavily used smart phone for Web surfing. It means that you won’t have to search for a Wi-Fi network to do decent Web surfing.

Price: Less than one year after it was introduced at a hefty $599 price, the 8 GB model of the iPhone will now be two-thirds cheaper, at just $199.

Third-party programs: Until now, in order to get third-party programs on an iPhone, you had to hack it. Now, there will be hundreds of them coming soon, and the handful that were demonstrated by Apple looked impressive, from blogging-on-the-go, to news and sports, to games and even medical software.

The Biggest Minuses

Still locked to one carrier: Even though the greater speed is a huge deal, it only matters if you have good AT&T reception. If AT&T’s coverage in your area is poor, the iPhone is still a bad choice, because Apple, unlike its competitors, doesn’t sell it through multiple carriers in one market.

Still missing some features: They haven’t added a real way to cut and paste, or to save files, other than emailed photos. And there still isn’t any MMS capability–the ability to instantly send or receive media files over the phone network without resorting to email. There’s also no instant-messaging program, though third-party developers are likely to offer these.

Still has a wimpy camera: The original iPhone camera was OK, but, given the phone’s brilliant screen and tight integration with computer photo software, it could stand to be better. It isn’t in this new model.

Only a month or so after Apple announced its MacBook Air laptop, which it calls the world’s thinnest laptop, Lenovo is about to spring its own super-skinny machine: the ThinkPad X300. Here’s a sneak peek. My full review will appear after I have fully tested this unusual new laptop, which I expect to be of great interest to road warriors.

Like the MacBook Air, this is a rare small laptop that is built around a full 13-inch-wide screen display and a full keyboard, rather than the little screens and cramped keyboards common in subnotebooks. And, like the Air, it offers a fast, rugged solid-state drive instead of a hard disk.

But, unlike the Apple, Lenovo’s new skinny ThinkPad comes with a hefty complement of ports and features, some of the very things critics complained Apple left out. It has a built-in DVD drive, removable battery, three USB ports, and a wired Ethernet networking jack. Inside, in addition to Wi-Fi, it can be ordered with a built-in cellphone modem and even GPS. It comes with either Windows Vista or Windows XP.

Sporting the traditional ThinkPad black slab design, the X300 isn’t as skinny or sexy as the Apple, but it’s still very slender and attractive, at under an inch thick. Also, unlike the Apple, most of the ThinkPad’s configurations are a bit heavier than the 3-pound weight that traditionally denotes a subnotebook. But it still feels very light to carry around, at 3.12 pounds with the standard battery and DVD drive.

The biggest downsides to the new ThinkPad X300 are price and limited storage capacity. Unlike the Apple, which can be ordered with a higher-capacity, lower-priced hard disk, the new ThinkPad will only be available with the expensive, limited capacity solid-state drive. So it will start at between $2,500 and $2,800–up to $1,000 more than the Apple’s base price–and will be limited to a paltry 64 gigabytes of storage.