We’ve all heard stories about how draconian the App Store policies can be. There was the whole debacle over political cartoons when Apple realized that satire wasn’t defacing public figures. There’s also the fact that even magazines like Playboy have to remove any hint of nudity from apps in order to get the approved. Now we have Apple pulling an excellent camera app because it put in an extra feature to use the volume buttons as shutter buttons.

Despite the fact that video chat has existed on phones for quite some time, when Apple announced Face Time for the iPhone 4, it was hailed as a revelation. It’s easy enough to start that almost anyone can use it, and Apple does a great job showing the moments where it would come in handy. We might never have an experience like those advertised, but it’s always nice to dream. The downsides? Both parties need an iPhone 4, and it only works on WiFi at the moment. Perhaps the latter could be a bright spot.

If you’ve been on the web or consumed some sort of news in the past two weeks, you probably know about the iPhone 4 “Death Grip,” the reception issue that seems to stem from the phone’s design. Apple said they’d fix the issue with how signal strength is portrayed on the phone in a new update. Shortly after, Consumer Reports said it can no longer recommend the phone because of the issue.

Apple sent out the beta of iOS 4.1 to developers today, and of course the claims that it could fix the problems were going to be tested. Well, it looks like Apple has certainly changed the way the bars are displayed, and has made the first three bars bigger to make them easier to see. However, the issue isn’t going away with the update. Placing your hand on the bottom left corner still causes bars to drop, which isn’t terribly surprising given that the problems always seemed to be more of a hardware issue.

Rumors of the next Apple TV have been running rampant since the iPad was announced. The most recent rumors are that the new version will have a much smaller box, with very little of no local storage to speak of. All the content would likely stream from the Internet or from other computers on the network. We’ve also been hearing that the next Apple TV could run on iOS – the same system as the iPad and iPhone.

The e-book market is certainly heating up quite a bit. We’ve seen prices drop from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Sony, the rise of new mobile apps, new devices, and now another company is joining the fray. The second largest retail book store, Borders, is finally bringing itself into the expanding market.

Borders has been selling e-book readers for a few months now, both the Kobo Reader and the Aluratek Reader which cost $150 and $120, respectively. The chain has also had iOS apps out for a few weeks now, and along with the e-bookstore is launching apps for Android and BlackBerry devices. {Mashable}

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the iPhone 4 has been out for just over a week, and users are having some issues with the smartphone. The biggest problem is with the antenna, the fact that if the phone is held from the left side, covering the small black strip there will cause the phone to lose signal. Some have dubbed it the “iPhone Death Grip,” and it seems to be a problem with just about every device.

Apple initially issued a statement that all phones have spots on them where holding them will cause signal degradation. The newest response from Apple reads almost like a parody of the issues.

Competition for e-reading consumers’ affection sizzled on Monday as Barnes and Noble dropped the price of its Nook e-book reader 23 percent to $199 and introduced the Nook WiFi at an even bigger bargain $149, though the latter device can only be used in a WiFi environment. Amazon, whose $259 price tag for its Kindle e-reader previously matched the Nook’s cost exactly, responded by dropping the price of the Kindle to $189.

For all of the complaints levied against Apple for the iPhone, ask most users, and you’ll likely only hear about on problem. Their problems have nothing to do with the App Store or lack of multitasking until recently (well, for the most part). The biggest problem is with the US exclusive carrier, AT&T, and how dismal the coverage can be in many places.

Last December AT&T decided to start doing something about that issue with it’s new iPhone app, “Mark the Spot.” Mark the Spot is an app that allows users to tell AT&T exactly where their phone had a problem with the network such as dropping a call, slow connection speed, no coverage, and other issues you’d typically have with a 3G phone. Now it looks like AT&T is starting to do something about the problems {Electronista}.

On the first day of iPhone 4 pre-orders, there was mayhem online. Not many people were able to actually order the phone, and those who did get a chance to order it weren’t guaranteed to get the iPhone 4 by June 24. By the end of the first day Apple was already saying that new orders of the iPhone 4 were going to be shipped by July 2.

Apple has yet again had to push back new pre-orders, with those who want to pre-order as of this writing having to wait until July 14 to get their phones. Apple said that the first day of pre-orders was the company’s best ever, with 600,000 units being sold the first day. That’s despite AT&T’s system taking a hit and failing for most of the day. That’s also just for the classic black version, the white version is not yet available. {Boy Genius Report}