Dear Steve,
My name is Scott Kleinberg and I’m the editor of iPTIB, a popular iPhone blog with readers in 55 countries. I won’t get into the usual stuff that I say when I write you … I’ll get right to the point. There’s a thread on the Apple discussion boards that’s about 200 replies deep about a very serious problem that’s been occurring with all iphones — 3G and first gen — since the 2.0 software was released where the phone doesn’t finish rebooting and gets stuck at the Apple logo.

The ONLY way to fix this problem is to put the phone into recovery mode and hope that a viable backup exists that allows for a restore. I’m working with someone right now who has been through multiple trips into recovery mode, and all he’s done is sync. There’s no jailbreaking … nothing sinister here. For some people, they’ve been forced to reboot for whatever reason and were greeted with this increasingly major problem.

I have gone through the steps with at least 100 people on how to successfully put the iPhone into recovery mode. Many of those people have reported success, only to be writing me again or posting to this thread over at Apple support telling me that they are back in the same situation and are at a loss for words. Steve, it might be application related. We just can’t tell. But the overall theme in the thread is that all of these people write and write and seek some sort of help and get no reply whatsoever from Apple.

I have never owned ANY Apple product even though I have been repairing them for years (I have my reasons). Yesterday, I broke down and bought an iPod Touch officially aligning me with the Axis of Steevil. The first time I plugged it in to my computer, it FORCED me to buy a firmware update for $10.00! No grace period, just screw you, pay Steve. I like the device and so far no problems. For now, I’m holding my breath.