Everyone knows by now that Apple is working on at least one new iteration of the iPhone, and it will almost certainly land in June or July. Everyone has their own opinion on what it needs: a better camera, a better processor, faster internet access…look, I’ve said many of these things myself. But these are minor details. Here’s the real problem with the iPhone: everyone has one.

I remember walking out of the Apple Store on June 29, 2006, two 8GB models in my hands. I had earned my 25th spot through hours of long waiting. I a few days, all the stores were sold out, and I became a member of an elite club. Onlookers gazed over my shoulder in the elevator, admiring the aluminum and glass masterpiece I held in my hand.

These days, no one even bats an eyelid, because they’re too busy looking at their own iPhone! It’s ridiculous. Something must be done.

There are many options: make it extremely expensive, require some sort of proof of Apple loyalty, have a trivia test as a qualification exam. Whatever path is chosen, we must avoid the fate the current model has fallen into. After all, isn’t elitism one of Apple’s core tenets?

Or so they say. For some reason, the unwritten rules for breakfast seem to more more flexible than for those of later meals. No one would consider doughnuts or pancakes acceptable dinner foods, yet somehow these transgressions are overlooked for the first meal of the day.

In these hard economic times, sometimes small expenditures can allow you to convince yourself your avoiding wasting money while still stimulating the economy. Or at least that’s the complex logic I’ve used to justify the Saturday morning excursions that have become a routine.

A good bakery can be hard to find, but is truly valuable if you are fond of baked goods (and who isn’t). Flour Bakery and Café is my latest favorite. They have all the usual breakfast delicacies, including delicious sticky buns, impressive doughnuts (available early on Sundays only), a wide assortment of muffins and scones, and a variety of other treats. If you’re looking for something a bit more savory than sweet, I highly recommend the egg sandwich.

There’s a bit of a wait (5-10 minutes) as the cooks freshly prepare your eggs with tomatoes, red peppers, greens, cheese, and either thick-cut bacon or fresh ham. Since it’s a bakery, the bread itself is also fresh. At about $6, it’s not cheap, but well worth it when you are ready to treat yourself to a filling breakfast.

It’s been 80 days since Barack Obama was inaugurated as President. He arrived with untold challenges awaiting him. An economy in a downward spiral. Two wars in disarray. A discouraged population. A failing auto industry. A crumbling housing market. Financial dysfunction so complicated, no one really understands it. Despite this landscape, he promised to bring real change to the country. I, as many, was cautiously optimistic that something could be done, but I was doubtful that I would personally feel the impact.

I was wrong. The change is very real, and I have felt its direct impact. The other day I ate an apple for a snack instead of my usual cookie. No big deal, right? Well, it wasn’t just any apple…it was organic! Today was burgers and fries night in my household, but the fries were organic sweet potato fries. The burgers were dry aged, grass fed, naturally raised, 90% beef. How many more buzzwords could you want? Well how about adding local, fresh-baked, all-natural hamburger buns.

Imagine what the next 4 years can bring.

I’m always in search of organization software that should theoretically make me more productive. QuickCal, however, is one that actually does the job rather well. Here’s the basic idea: it’s a dashboard widget for the Mac that accepts something close to natural language and automatically creates entries in iCal for you.

Here’s the scenario: you find out there’s a housing meeting tomorrow at 12:15 PM for 1 hour. You hit the dashboard shortcut on your keyboard and type in “Housing Meeting tomorrow at 12:15 for 1 hour”. As you can see from the image above, QuickCal parses this into an actual meeting, figuring out what “tomorrow” means and setting the start and end times appropriately. Better still, you can set defaults for reminders (e.g. have all events remind you 15 minutes before, or have differing rules depending on how far away the event is).

Best of all, it’s free. Check it out.

I’ve long since made the jump from Apple’s Aperture to Lightroom. For the most part, I think it’s been worth it. Lightroom is considerably faster and I seem to get better results from my editing. However, I still find Aperture had a better system of organizing photos and I preferred the interface. What it really needs is some evidence of ongoing development, which I’m just not seeing. My hope is that 3.0 is dependent on Snow Leopard, which won’t be out until this summer. I’m still interested in giving it another look.

It was the big tech news yesterday: Skype arrives for the iPhone. My question to everyone: who cares? Sure, there is a niche audience for people who want to make inexpensive international calls from their iPhone, but you’ve got to have WiFi access. You can’t really use the iPhone in any practical manner to receive calls via Skype, since it has to be running. While, with some effort, you could try to use Skype to circumvent use of your monthly minutes, unless you’re a big talker this is probably not an issue. Seems like a lot of hassle for little gain. While the potential to run Skype over 3G in OS 3.0 seems enticing, I’m sure this hole will be plugged shortly. Even then, there is a fairly narrow group that would likely benefit from this.