Stop! Before reading on, If you have an iPhone and haven’t upgrade your iTunes to 7.7 yet, do it now! I’ll wait… Ok, now dock your iPhone and check for updates. Download and install 2.0. Trust me, once you do, your iPhone will NEVER be the same!!

I updated my iTunes to version 7.7 on Thursday (July 10) afternoon as soon as I got the system update notice, thinking I might get a sneak peek at the new iPhone 2.0 operating system, or at least get a peek at the new App Store. But apparently Apple had not deployed it yet to my part of the world.

The next morning around 8:30 am EST (Friday, July 11), I tried to update my iPhone to 2.0, especially after all the cool reports coming from time zones ahead of mine. Still nothing. So, I went about my business that day, took a wild ride in the stock market, and read several articles on the iPhone 3G release. A consistent theme started to emerge, among the plethora of reports on activation difficulties, stores selling out before noon, lines longer than a football field, etc., the “Big” story was the App Store.

So, now I have the 2.0 firmware on my iPhone, and I’m ecstatic!! I don’t just have a software upgrade, I have a whole new iPhone! Yes! The first thing I noticed are the new icons on the iPhone. There was the blue App Store icon and a new Contacts icon (click the image at the left for a good look). Saving the best for last, I opened Contacts first. At first, it looked pretty much the same, and I thought, Ok, at least I don’t have to go through the Phone App to get to Contacts. But then I notice a Search widget at the top of the screen. Sweet! No more scrolling endlessly for those with large contact lists like me.

Then I clicked on the App Store icon, and I fell into the rabbit hole! OMG! I was presented with a list of New  iPhone Apps, and a huge number of them are free! Above the list are two featured apps, and above that are two tabs, “New” which was selected, and a “What’s Hot” tab. The featured apps were Facebook and Super Monkey Ball. I scrolled down the list and was amazed at the variety. There were games of course, productivity apps, news, weather, eBay, banking, reference, business, on and on! Each App has a star rating, with 5 stars as the best rating, and partial stars for finer delineation between ratings. The ratings apparently come from customer reviews entered into the App Store on iTunes.

I saw an interesting one called Remote by Apple, Inc. It had over 300 reviews and 4 stars, so I decided to dig deeper and touched the icon. The next screen provided a summary of the Remote. Wait, no way, WOW! it’s a remote control for my iTunes! How cool is that?

I touched the FREE button which turned into an INSTALL button, which I touched. I was prompted for my iTunes password and then sent to the iPhone desktop, where the Remote icon appeared kind of gray with an “Installing…” message. After a few second, the icon was in full color. I clicked it, was prompted with a 4 digit code, and at the same time a form appeared on my iTunes, to enter these 4 digits. I entered the code, and then was able to control my iTunes from my iPhone, iTerrific!

I then became the Mad Hatter and started exploring all the App Store apps. Each App information screen had a full description, a screen shot, reviews, developer info and license agreements. You can also touch the “Tell a Friend” button at the top, which launches Mail so you can send the App Store link of that App to a friend.

Then I checked out the App Store in iTunes. I was amazed at how many applications there are right from the get go! There must be at least 500, perhaps close to 1,000 on the first day! YIKES! And the interface will be very familiar to anyone that uses the iTunes Store, with all the usual navigation on the left, showing high level categories, and on the right with recent favorites. And down the middle with various category features, including staff favorites.

I’m going to be spending a lot of time evaluating some of the free Apps, and purchase the ones that I think are must haves, like Super Monkey Ball. I noticed a free Bloomberg App that seems interesting, I’ll check that out as well and report back with reviews. It will be nice to have a full-featured company financials information application on the iPhone. I’m glad to see AOL Instant Messenger in the free list, my daughters will be too

The only problem I have with the store, is that there’s no way I’ll get to all that yard work this weekend, darn! I wonder if there’s an App for…

We’ll be talking about the new iPhone 3G and the App Store in the Wilderness Investor Group this coming week, as well as how to trade Apple in these turbulent times. You should join our community, it’s FREE, informative, and professional traders are there to help you out.