The MobileMe Find my iPhone service certainly paid off for a Pittsburgh area man. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that police said the man was robbed at gunpoint in Shadyside (a neigborhood on the east side of Pittsburgh, home to an Apple Store) by two men who asked for his credit cards and the PIN numbers.

Police say he turned over his wallet, PIN numbers, and his iPhone. Later the man used his computer and MobileMe to find the location of the phone, and police located the crooks at a gas station. Officers recovered a pellet gun, stolen ID cards, credit cards and cash.

Three men have been charged in the incident with device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime. 2 of the 3 are also being charged with robbery.

TUAW has covered the fine iPhone apps from Tapbots more than once. ConvertBot is a beautifully-designed and functional app to do a myriad of unit conversion calculations, while WeightBot is my personal favorite app for keeping track of my incredible ballooning body.

Tapbots posted an entry on their blog today stating that the most recent version of ConvertBot (1.4) had been rejected by Apple. What was Apple’s reason for the rejection? As you can see in the graphic at the top of the page, the ConvertBot icon for time conversions looks very similar to the Phone app icon for recent calls. This is the same icon that has passed Apple’s scrutiny in previous versions, so it is ridiculous for the company’s eagle-eyed app inspectors to suddenly decide that the icon is unfit for iPhone consumption.

In a surprise move after years of breathless anticipation by users of Now Up-To-Date and Contact, Now Software released Now X Client for Mac on Thursday, August 27, 2009. In case you’re wondering, yes, this was the calendar and contact app formerly known as Nighthawk.

Why the snarky tone? Well, Nighthawk Now X has been one of the biggest examples of vaporware in the Mac community for at least two or three years. Many users of Now Up-To-Date and Contact, which was a relatively powerful set of applications for managing calendars and contacts, have waited patiently for the promised app, only to have their hopes dashed year after year. All of my clients who used NUDC have moved on to other Mac / iPhone or cloud apps.

Even this announcement is somewhat tainted. There’s no Windows version of Now X for people in multi-platform offices, the much-touted server module isn’t done, and the FAQ page states that “Now X runs on both Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.” Uh, guys, while you were developing this application, Apple came out with something called Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

It looks like Daily Finance guessed correctly. Early on Friday, Apple and China Unicom Ltd (CHU) announced a 3-year partnership to officially bring the iPhone to China. CHU will buy the handsets from Apple on a wholesale basis and will not participate in revenue sharing. CHU is the 2nd largest carrier in China, while China Mobile is first with 498 million users. In fact, China Mobile is the largest carrier in the world and China is the largest market. CHU hopes to get a competitive boost with the iPhone.

As we noted in July, the iPhone will be sold with Wi-Fi disabled in China, in accordance with Chinese regulations (the so-called “Great Firewall of China).

If you’re in China or plan to travel there, let us know if and when you begin seeing iPhones for sale.