Why Does Apple Keep Changing the Charging Protocols?

I bought an iPhone 3G yesterday, and after having a 1st-Gen iPhone for about 5 months, I'd have to say I'm not altogether impressed with the new one. Non-recessed headphone jack, check; faster downloads over 3G, check. The rest of it.. I dunno.

The most irksome detail I've encountered so far is that something has changed in the -- what is it called, the docking mechanism at the bottom of the phone that connects to the dock -- that makes all my previous docks (and I have quite a few around the house) obsolete. Worse, this iPhone will not charge from the adapter I have in my car, the Dension ICE>Link which originally integrated all my iPod controls directly into my car stereo.

When I got my first iPhone back in February, the first thing I noticed was that when I plugged it into an older "universal dock," I'd get an error message, "this accessory is not made to work with iPhone." I managed to work around it. I bought a new dock that is compatible, and I discovered that so long as I was using the iPhone as an iPod in my car, it would charge that way. So I wasn't losing battery charge if I listened to my iPhone/Pod in the car. That was good enough.

Now, with 3G, first, I discover that the Universal dock that I purchased with the old iPhone generates the same stupid 'will not work with iPhone' message that the OLD iPhone generated with an older dock. So this iPhone 3G does not work with a dock that I purchased for the original iPhone, which did not work with the dock I had purchased for my iPods. Sheesh.

But, again, it gets worse: now, when I slip the 3G unit into the cradle/adapter in my car, it will not charge ever, not even when I'm using the iPhone 3G as an iPod. The audio connects, I can still use the iPhone as an iPod and listen to it and control it through the car stereo, but I'm draining the battery when I do.

So, from iPod, to iPhone, to iPhone 3G, it appears to me that Apple has changed something in the protocols for each new generation so that all the docks and accessories from the previous generation are no longer viable. Why are they doing that? What is the UPSIDE of this very obvious and irritating downside, other than the upside for Apple that gets to sell me ever more accessories.

Are other iPhone 3G users encountering irritations like this? What sort of work around are there? Anything?

The GPS and the faster data speeds of 3G are nice features, it's also nice to have a flush headphone mount (I can use this one with a bluetooth stereo headset transmitter). But there are other ways that this unit is just not integrating into the way want to use it, and I may be very tempted to go back to the original iPhone.

Anybody want to chime in with their experience?

Thanks,

--PS