This morning, we saw the first post-release hardware update to the iPhone, and it wasn’t at all what I expected. Actually, I expected to see the MacBook Pro updated this morning, but that’s besides the point. Today’s iPhone update does one thing: allows us to pay an extra US$100 for an additional 8GB of RAM, doubling the capacity to 16GB. But, like all moves that we see from our fruity friends in Cupertino, I think this is simply a pawn moving in the chess game... there’s more to come.

We all know that any significant change to the iPhone’s guts requires a very public vetting period by the FCC. The net of this is that when Apple announces the iPhone with 3G speeds we’ll all know about it months before we can actually purchase one. That will likely cause existing iPhone sales to dry up.

So here’s my prediction: I think Apple’s using this memory boost to try and spike iPhone sales before making the 3G announcement. Then, when they do announce it, they also have the ability to announce a "price drop" on the existing iPhone, lowering the price on the newly-announced 16GB model down to US$399 (or less), and dropping the 8GB model completely.

Also, knowing that Apple typically doesn’t willfully ingest Stupid Pills -- and knowing there will likely be a minimum 3-month gap between announcement and release of any new iPhone -- I’m guessing we’ll see this 3G iPhone announced before the end of April, perhaps a lot before.

Or maybe my crystal ball is being overzealous this morning, trying to make up for its missed prediction on the Pats’ perfect season. Time will tell!

Dave Hamilton is President and CEO of The Mac Observer, Inc and BackBeat Media, and producer and co-host of TMO’s Mac Geek Gab Podcast. He has worked in the computer industry for 20 years, doing time as a consultant, trainer, network engineer, webmaster, and programmer. In his earlier consulting days, he worked on the Mac, all the various Windows flavors, BeOS, a few brands of Unix, and it is rumored he once saw an OS/2 machine in action. Before that he ran some of the earliest Bulletin Board systems, but most of the charges have since been dropped, and not even the FBI requests that he check in more than twice a year.

Dave maintains his blog at DaveTheNerd.com