All Articles Tagged update

A New Version of the iPhone SDK is Now Available. Seventh beta version just posted.

So quoth developer.apple.com/iphone, continuing their breakneck, nigh-unprecedented release pace for the iPhone Software Developer Kit (SDK) and iPhone 2.0 beta firmware.

As always, enterprising developers will likely comb through every string and bit in the new release, looking for new features, and hoping strike gold as they have in the past. I’m still holding my breath for video recording and… cut and paste, but admittedly any new discovery will be welcome.

Meanwhile Apple Software Update is now delivering Quicktime 7.5, one of the core components of the Mac’s, and iTunes’ graphic layers. If you’re not prompted for it, and don’t want to trigger it via the utility proper, just surf on over to Apple and grab the direct download. (Note: Mac users will require a reboot — like we said, it’s core level. Windows users, please let us know if you’re likewise sent to the restart.).

Speaking of iTunes, iPhone 3G specs indicate iTunes 7.7 will be required to use Apple’s new handset, so expect another update sometime between now and the July 11th first release date. Other than iPhone 3G specific support and shifting activation to carrier stores, it’s unknown what else the update will bring.

Anyone want to guess? What’s hidden in 2.0 Beta 7, and iTunes 7.7? Give us your best shots!

I’m starting to think I really do have clout around this interweb thing (I can dream)

First, Installer.app received a search feature after I complained about the lack of it in my review. Now, my other complaint, the slight hesitation after installing new programs that sends you back to your unlock screen, has been fixed. It now quickly relaunches your Home Screen to seamlessly load the newly downloaded programs, which essentially makes Installer.app and its functions even more integrated into the iPhone.

Other noteworthy items in the update include the ability to refresh one source at a time and a search feature in the Uninstall category. Now in v3.11, Installer.app is becoming a powerhouse of a program and perhaps the most integrated native app that jailbreaking has to offer.

Installer.app is automatically installed when you jailbreak your iPhone with iLiberty+ or ZiPhone.

According to Engadget, Apple is serving up (yet another?) new beta firmware, this one doing away with the (confusing?) 1.2.0 designation and lining up squarely behind Steve Jobs’ announced 2.0 labeling.

Aside from some VPN, mail, and ActiveSync tweaks and re-org’s, Engadget can’t find much else aside from the shiny new version release, but as June gets closer, no doubt Apple’s engineers will get busier!

The iPhone FAQ is reporting that the issue we’ve seen with the earlier leaked 1.1.3 ROM update holds with the official ROM update. To wit: if you decide to downgrade your iPhone back to 1.1.2 (or even earlier), you’re phone will think that your SIM is invalid no matter what. You’ll quasi-brick your iPhone. I say “quasi” because it does seem you can safely upgrade to 1.1.3 again.

Anyway, the advice that Phone different has given you again and again still holds true: if you’ve done anything non-standard to your iPhone, stay the heck away from new updates until the hackers have had a chance to put it through its paces. Then again, the new location feature is super sweet, sweet enough that even if you do love Lights Out, it’s probably worth it to upgrade. After all, the SDK is getting released next month.

Here I had thought that Apple released it on Friday, in conjunction with their european iPhone launch. No, they officially launched it Monday night, to little fanfare. Again, there isn’t much to this update. It closes the TIFF vulnerability that allows people to easily hack their iPhones at jailbreakme.com, that’s about it.

My understanding of feature updates is this: Apple has to dangle the carrot to make official firmwares more compelling than unofficial, hacked firmwares. Are iTunes charging icons and international keyboards going to cut it?

Apple has released the 1.1.2 firmware for the iPhone out into the wild a little early, probably so that folks in Europe can download it directly when they get home. The 1.1.2 update weighs in at about 160MB, and it does update the baseband radio as well, bringing the radio software to 04.02.13G (from 04.01.13G in case you were wondering, and you probably weren’t). You can download the update directly from Apple.

As we’ve reported before, the 1.1.2 update closes the TIFF vulnerability that allows for the easy jailbreak from jailbreakme.com — I just used that site again yesterday to prepare an iPhone with 1.1.2 for Kevin of CrackBerry.com to use on his Rogers SIM card, and it just amazes me how easy it all is.

Apple has confirmed to pocket-lint.co.uk that the next firmware update, version 1.1.2, will be available tomorrow. The update brings several internationally-themed updates like international keyboards. UK users also get access to free wi-fi via The Cloud.

This update will fix the TIFF vulnerability, meaning that users can browse a bit safer. However, the closing of this security vulnerability means that the extremely easy AppSnapp method of installing 3rd party apps found at jailbreakme.com will cease to work.

We mentioned the release of iTunes and Quicktime in our podcast yesterday, but haven’t provided any release notes. There’s not a lot in terms of content for anyone deciding to update or not. Ambrosia reports that iToner still works — though the initial update will wipe out iToner ringtones, you can easily sync them over. The iTunes doesn’t touch a user’s library file, so there shouldn’t be any risk of anything. The QuickTime update includes improvements for converting video for the iPhone. Are you excited about this? Yah, me neither.

I’ve said it before, but the iPhone and Leopard were supposed to come out together. That’s why we have functionality orphans like Mail and Notes.

Well, Apple has a page up with 300 of the new features coming with Leopard on October 26. There are a few of note, one of which was noticed at jkOnTheRun:

Write handy notes you can access from anywhere — including graphics, colored text, and attachments. Group notes into folders or create Smart Mailboxes that automatically group them. Your notes folder acts like an email mailbox, so you can retrieve notes from any Mac or PC or access them from your iPhone.

There’s a little blurb about To-Dos as well. They’re getting integrated into the mail client. Hmmm… it would make sense why the Calendar application doesn’t have to-do items, if Apple has been planning to put them into their Mail application. This functionality would make Apple’s Mail.app a lot more like Outlook, which I think most people will welcome.

Create to-do items directly from email messages or notes in Mail. Simply highlight text in an email, then click the To Do button to create a to-do from a message.

I don’t think it’s long before we get a Leopard patch for the iPhone. I’d imagine that an iTunes update will accompany it as well, unless the functionality to sync to-dos and Notes is already hidden within the current version of iTunes. There may be other hidden iPhone updates as well; rest assured that I’ll post as soon as I read about them.

There are some reports that some folks are finding that the 1.1.1 firmware update for the iPhone has been pulled from Apple, and that the most recent version of iTunes is now reporting 1.0.2 as the most recent version. And if they haven’t, maybe they should.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ambrosia Software, makers of iToner, a software program used to put ringtones on an iPhone, have announced that they are still working on fixing iToner for firmware version 1.1.1. They expect to have an update Real Soon Now:

“it’s our job to make iToner continue to function as a product… and we think we’re going to be able to do just that. Very shortly we will be beta testing iToner 1.0.3 which we believe will bring iPhone OS 1.1.1 compatibility to iToner.”

And wireless positioning firm Navizon, who had a nice cell tower triangulation software bit called, cough, Navizon (discussed here), announced that though they’d give back refunds to users that upgraded to 1.1.1, they’re still alive and kicking and will continue efforts for users that are running firmware 1.0.2.

It is possible to downgrade your iPhone from 1.1.1 to 1.0.2, restoring some functionality of your iPhone. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and last but not least, here. We’ll have a guide up on how to perform this shortly if anyone is still stuck in brickville.

Well, the first major update is out. It brings some cosmetic changes to the iPhone, and fixes a few glaring issues. The ability to purchase tracks on iTunes is great, and I can see iTunes going a long way with this. For example, if Apple could get radio stations to have some sort of standardized ‘now playing’ list in exchange for money or shared revenue or something, perhaps one could buy a song that one heard on the radio and liked. That would be a much more dramatic tie-in than say, Starbucks.

The other major niggle fixed by this update is the ability to set different alert sounds for text messages, and linked alert sounds to the overal ringer volume. In other words, incoming text messages and calendar alerts now have a chance of actually grabbing my attention. Apple added ‘chime’, ‘glass’, ‘horn’, ‘bell’, and ‘electronic’. Needless to say, I’d rather be able to buy a ringtone and assign it; there’s got to be some sound effect CDs in their iTunes Music section, or maybe some gong sound at the beginning of a song or something, but the selection of alert sounds and ability to change their volume is a welcome change. You know, like someone pulling a splinter out of your arm. I’d like to go on record to state that this update is also better than a poke in the eye.

Still, there are things I was hoping for in the update that aren’t here yet. There’s still no To-Do functionality, still no Stereo Bluetooth, still no OBEX Bluetooth. There’s no Notes sync, no SDK or Widgets support (unless Apple’s hiding it for a later surprise). Apple still has a long way to go with their iPhone software, and if this update is an indication, there will be many many months before me and pure bliss.

In all though, I wouldn’t change the scores I gave to the iPhone when I first reviewed it. As a quick recap, I gave it 7/10 if you’re coming from the smartphone world, 9/10 if you’re coming from the featurephone world. The lack of ringtones and alert messages were major flaws, to be sure. But the lack of installable applications, games, To-Do lists, editable office documents (Notes still doesn’t cut it; who can write anything major in Marker Felt?), Stereo Bluetooth, ObEx, USB Mass Storage, eBook reader, cut and paste, Exchange, no multiple recipient SMS, no AIM or other instant messaging, no video record, no wireless sync….

I have two iPhones, one that I’ve been keeping “clean and pristine,” and that’s the iPhone that I use most of the time. I do have another iPhone though, that I have done all manner of hacking and installing apps and the like. If, like me, you have an iPhone that you’d rather keep on version 1.0.2, it’s easy to select older versions of the firmware when you restore the iPhone:

• On a mac, hold down the “option” key while clicking on the “restore” button. Then you can select the firmware file you want, just look for the file named iPhone1,11.0.21C28_Restore.ipsw, it should be in your home folder under Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Update.
• On a Windows PC, hold down the “shift” key while clicking on the “restore” button. Then select the firmware version you want — you should be able to find it if you’ve restored 1.0.2 before by searching for all files and folders and looking for *restore.ipsw

Along with the official changes of yesterday’s update, there are some unofficial changes that aren’t good enough to make a bullet point on Apple’s list. Which is weird, because some of these are huge.

• You can now select different alerts for incoming messages:
  Settings -> Sounds -> New Text Message -> choice of:
  Tri-Tone (default), Chime, Glass, Horn, Bell, Electronic
• International keys are available by holding down the letter key.
• The iPhone mail application supports MP3 and .wav Attachments
• includes the closed captioning abilities promised
• enables a debug console for MobileSafari for web developers to find errors on their pages:
  Settings -> Safari -> Developer -> Debug Console [on/off]
• breaks every 3rd party jailbreak — the iPhoneDevWiki team will have to reverse-engineer the iPhone all over again
• since the iPhone can’t be jailbroken, there is no way to get 3rd party ringtones on the iPhone.

And just for the sake of posterity, after the break there’s a readable version of Apple’s list of official changes.