As I am writing this, Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 just came out for the Mac an It has also been recently announced that the final version will be ready for download on Tuesday, June 17. As a long-time Safari user, this marks the week that I am finally ditching Safari and will be using Firefox 3 as my primary browser.

I have always been a Safari user ever since I got my first Mac. It has an excellent user interface and is blazingly fast. Minor annoyances such as not remembering tabs on exit and the lack of option to open new windows in tabs were fixed by Saft, an excellent Safari plugin. However, I’ve been experiencing lots of lockups lately which will, of course, cause the Spinning Beachball of Death to appear. I don’t really know if the reason for this is the website I am visiting, Safari itself or Saft, all I know is it happens often enough that writing long paragraphs in textareas makes me feel uneasy. That finally made me download the latest Firefox 3 RC.

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Here it is, the moment we have all been waiting for ever since Steve Jobs announced that there will be a 3G iPhone in 2008, and they are calling it iPhone 3G. The rumor sites pretty much got everything on the dot this time by predicting 3G, GPS and a 50% price drop over the previous model.

As previously reported, Globe Telecom will be bringing iPhone 3G over our shores here in the Philippines. Apple’s iPhone Philippines page does not detail anything specific. Availability, pricing and plans are still up in the air. I hope Globe releases this information as soon as they can so we can prepare our wallets.

Speculations abound as to what kind of arrangement Globe has for iPhone 3G. Will it have Visual Voicemail? If you are a Globe subscriber right now, you couldn’t even use the regular voicemail as they shut it down in favor of Voice Txt or whatever they call it. Bigger question is what kind of rate plans will iPhone be offered in. Globe already offers specialized plans for Blackberry users, will we see the same for iPhone? We are very much used to pay-as-you-go and Globe has already confirmed that they will also offer iPhone on prepaid and will most likely be unsubsidized.

Data is another thing as iPhone 3G can take advantage of Globe’s HSDPA network. Unless they are really greedy, there is no possible way that Globe will insist on its current data scheme–P5/15 mins or P0.15/KB, because of all the Push stuff that will be happening. Looking at their Visibility plan, the most expensive at P1499/month only has 100 hours of internet use. With iPhone, you can use up all that in a week! Although not in their official website, some blogs are saying that they are still offering unlimited Visibility plans at P3000/month. I cannot imagine paying that much on top of the regular voice plan. An ideal price for me will be P1000/month on top of regular voice, maybe even up to P1500 if their HSDPA coverage is pretty much everywhere I need to go.

Whatever happens, for sure this Apple zealot is going to get an iPhone 3G. I absolutely love my iPhone and the only time I feel that I want to throw it against a brick wall is when I’m surfing in Safari over EDGE. Luckily, that problem has been solved in this new release and I can only imagine what great (or not-so-great) things we can do with having the internet on our pockets everywhere and actually use it.