It has happened before and is now happening with the iPhone. And it's especially annoying with the iPhone 3G. I'm talking about changes made to an updated product that outdates peripherals you've bought for the preceding model.

Some of these "problems" are just a result of moving to newer and more modern hardware, like AGP to PCI-X to PCI Express, which invalidated a lot of add-on cards in the process, but that's to be expected.

No, I'm talking about things like when the iPod changed from a firewire connector to the dock connector, or when it changed from having the communication as a separate jack next to the stereo plug to having it integrated into the stereo plug.

But with the iPhone 3G the change is even more annoying. While the stereo plug change could be justified with it being a smart solution (prompting a 'So why didn't you do it from the start? Duh!' response as well) the iPhone annoyance takes this to a new level.

So what is it? It's the form. The iPhone and the iPhone 3G are two models of the same phone that are almost identical. It's easy to see the all-black back of the new iPhone, but it's harder to discern the difference in width between the models. The fact is that the difference is so small it's next to impossible to see any difference (other than the 3G model being beveled in another fashion, but even that is hard to see on a cursory examination).

But it's instantly recognizable the second you try to use the iPhone 3G with the dock for the original iPhone. It's not millimeters that differ - it's fractions of millimeters, meaning that in short - you can't use the original dock for the iPhone 3G and you have to buy a new one for it - since it (unlike the original iPhone) doesn't come with one.

Ok, that's how the iPod worked as well - the earlier model came with more extras than following models, in an effort to lower the price of the the product, so it's not like it's unexpected, and my gripe is not about me having to buy a new iPhone dock (or rather, three new, to cover my docking needs). It's that they don't have a new version of the dock that includes a charger for the bluetooth headset!

And this is actually a bigger problem than it may initially sound like. Some may exclaim that the bluetooth headset comes with a special dock connector that enables charing the headset easily. And yes, that is correct - but contrary to the older dual charger and on top of it being a pretty ugly solution, you can't actually charge both at the same time. But wait, it gets worse, with the special dock connector - you can't charge the bluetooth headset if it is connected to a iPhone dock even if there is no iPhone in the dock. So in order to charge the bluetooth headset, I have to first unplug the iPhone dock it is connected to!

Obviously, this means that my bluetooth headset usually isn't charged when I need to use it. Fix this, Apple!