Third-party iPhone applications to arrive Monday

A deceiving headline. They imply that they have inside information, but when you drill down, it is a series of sourceless "shoulds."

I still don't know how Apple could possibly ship a phone on Monday when it has yet to show up on the FCC database --unless they have somehow arranged a Monday approval date with the FCC.

First paragraph: "A source at a software company that has been working on a native iPhone application tells us the company is getting ready to launch that application on Monday"

That sounds pretty definite to me.

The SDK is not quite out of the beta yet.

The devleopers have not had a chance to test their apps on new iphones or any real devices (not the developer devices with custom firmware).

There is no way apple will unleash thusly untested apps on the users. You can only make one first impression and it better be the good one.

I recall Apple themselves saying late June for the App Store go-live. They could have pushed things forward however, but I doubt it.