This post was submitted from an iPhone at the Woodfield Apple store!

This is a tale in progress of a third-generation iPod nearing the end of its life. No, not by my hands. This poor little guy is dying of natural causes: old age.

The iPod is functional currently, but the most worrisome symptom is this very peculiar screen it displayed when trying to sync a few days ago:

I didn’t know what this screen meant, but after a search on Apple’s website, I discovered it is called a Disk Scan Icon. It means that something bad was happening with the hard drive, so the iPod went into a diagnostic mode. The progress bar never moved after 15 minutes, though, so I’m assuming the diagnostics crashed. After a reset, the iPod rebooted normally and worked fine after that.

Before this happened, a few weeks earlier, the iPod started crashing every time it would start a sync. Just a hard freeze. After some fiddling, I figured out that it would work if I plugged it directly into the cable instead of the dock. Once I got it running, I did an iPod restore through iTunes (which wipes out all songs and restores the iPod to its factory condition). Everything has worked fine since then, until the ominous screen above.

Maybe my iPod will die right on time for the release of a multitouch iPod.

I discovered the Easy Envelopes widget over at Apple Gazette This widget makes it really easy to print an envelope without having to open Word or some similar app, and without having to worry about formatting. It’s literally faster than scribbling it out by hand, which is half of the point for me; the other half is satisfying my OCD by having nice, clean print.

It autopopulates the return address by looking up your “Me” record in the OS X address book. You may then fill in the destination address by searching for a contact or by manually typing in an address. Very well thought out.

The widget did a great job at getting over typical problem areas, like printer and paper size. Overall, this widget is definitely Ambrosia calibre. And it’s free!

As the froth and fervor surrounding the iPhone continues, it is no surprise that we see some people making some poor decisions. For instance, we have the lady who spends $800 for the front spot in line because she thought she was going to buy out the whole store, clearly ignorant of the one-per-customer rule at AT&T stores. That’s just incredibly embarrassing and foolish, which is different than what I’m going to talk about next.

Alex King is someone I respect and occasionally read, and he recently canceled his iPhone plan in line with TUAW’s instructions so that he could use his iPhone as the world’s coolest widescreen iPod and internet device–apparently the syncing and WiFi capability continue to function just fine with the phone components disabled.

My first reaction was how awesome that was. And more power to Alex for having the gumption to try it and for buying himself the coolest iPod ever. In the end, though, you’re paying $599 + $49 for first month of service = $650 minimum for an 8GB video iPod. The cool factor may be here now, even if the high price tag doesn’t deter you, but it may feel a bit more foolish when the heat and excitement of the iPhone cools and Apple brilliantly times the release of a 60GB widescreen multitouch iPod 3 months out from now, for a comparable $400-$600 price range because it lacks the complexity, price and hassle of the phone components. The price, the timeframe, the mere existence of said iPod are all pure fabrications to indulge my point (although “sources” do claim these things). It could happen. And it would make business sense.
Yes, there may be some phoneless iPhone owners grumbling in October.