A quick survey of the issues people are researching on Apple's shows that customers need more help with the iPhone, iPod, and Airport than with the Mac or OS X.

Of course, the Mac and the OS X operating system are much farther along in their respective product cycles than the iPod or iPhone, both of which were launched relatively recently. Another potential factor: Macintosh owners know enough about their computers, or can use OS X's built-in help resources, without turning to the support forum.

But people sure do have a lot of questions about Apple's gadget lineup. On Wednesday morning, the ten most "Popular Discussions" included only one Mac software issue -- a problem relating to OS X Mail. But there were three iPhone, three iPod, and two Airport discussions, plus one about iTunes.

The top has been an issue for so long that the thread was closed to new comments nearly a year ago. It relates to making calls when out of the country. This turned out to be more of an issue than an Apple one. No one seemed particularly happy with AT&T. "I just activated my international roaming," the original poster complained. "Another 'feature' which ATT alerted me to is that if I receive ANY calls -- even if I ignore them and let them go to voicemail, I will be charged the international roaming rate."

One of the top asks how to use an iPod Nano like a flash drive to move data between a Mac and a PC. Several people seemed to have problems doing that, or encountered serious problems after attempting it. "Please I need your help I just formatted my Ipod [sic] and my computer doesn't let me install the itunes [sic] programs," one wrote.