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If you own any of the family of iPhones or touch’s, then you will have already downloaded or made plans to download the new OS version.

Other blogs will have more information about the special features and what to expect, or simply how to enable features that your carrier supports.

If your a customer of AT&T, tethering and mms will be delayed for technical reasons regarding mms, a block has to be removed. Tethering is more of a billing problem, unlike using a rocket stick or a pmcia card, your not using any more data than you would by using safari in the iPhone, however AT$T wants to price it with a data plan for more money, the only thing that I would say in their defense is that they at least were more or less upfront with that, I would be surprised if more carriers did not do the same thing or at least have plans for it.

Now on to the upgrade itself.

In a word it was horrible.

When you visit cellphone or technical blogs and forums, a lot of what you hear is going to be rumor and happenstance, with a few nuggets of real information.

Anyways one of these bits of information was that the upgrade was going to go live at midnight pacific time on the seventeenth, which would make it 3 am on the east coast. That never happened, so I waited like everyone else for 1pm eastern.

It was actually 1:11 when iTunes finally decided that, no, 2.1 was not the actual up to date software and would I Ike to update. Duh, click yes. Up to this time, everything had gone well, the software had been downloading and I was about to start the actual update process, when everything came off the rails.

My iPhone would not back up to the computer , the new OS was sitting on my hardrive with no way of manually installing it. Apples help , diagnostics and google were simply of no help in diagnosing the problem and any kind of solution.

I did have one option, the nuke and pave method, which eventually got invoked, but I wanted to avoid that till I had no other alternative. Changed USB ports, tried a different computer and cable, all to no avail. The iPhone would sync with my laptop, which ruled out the cable. I was faced with the possibility that something was corrupted and finally hit the restore button.

In good conscience I can’t blame apple for this predicament, in truth I had known about this problem for several weeks and did not believe that it would stop an upgrade in it’s tracks.

Since the iPhone had no problem syncing, all I had really lost were my notes and Internet settings for wifi. I think what really hurt was the notes, it never really dawned on me that a native app for the iPhone would not sync, it’s a greyed out area in iTunes.

So far the only new item that I have not tried is tethering, for Rogers customers it’s supported at the moment. Look in settings/general/network about two thirds of the way down, to enable it.

Bluetooth, more or less was a snap, I just had to remember how to set the headphones to seek other devices and the iPhone paired them instantly. From there I went to the iPod setting and picked a song at random, stereo Bluetooth was probably the one item that’s the bees knees for me with this update. Obex is not supported at this time, that I am aware of, and if I had to guess won’t be for sometime. This will probably one of the reasons to jailbreak the phone in the future, after I can asscertain that this build will be stable and won’t have patch updates in a couple of weeks.

Copy and paste worked like a charm, I ended up doing it without realizing it, since the notes were scrubbed, my password for the router was only stored on my computer and I had to boot into Linux. Typed in the password and tapped the number string in notes and the copy function came up.

Just found out, copy and paste does not seem to work with the facebook application.
MMS worked easily, both sending and recieving. Even the saving picture worked like a charm. SMS has a new feature that apart from texting in landscape, let’s you delete individual text messages, not something I need at the moment , but should be a huge hit with cheating spouses.

Spot light is one of the new applications that came out with 3.0 , unlike other applications, you don’t swipe to the left, but either to the right or the home button on the first page. Simply put, if it’s on your iPhone, spotlight will find it. As well as being an onboard search engine, it will also launch apps, so we are no longer limited to a certain amount of apps corresponding to pages.

That’s it for this installment, look here for more information as it becomes available.

Your humble scribe is stunned, simply stunned at this development. At one o’clock I am on twitter awaiting word on the newest addition to the iPhone operating system, and the gleeful shouts of users who have downloaded or curses from the backlog of waiting for a download slot to open up.

What actually happened, for those that may have had better things to do , is that the new OS wont be available till June 17. Bwwwwwwwwwwwahhhhhhhhh ??????????, I can just see Steve chortling away, foolish minions us. It even gets better with the deathstar crew. Otherise known as AT&T, see MMS , only one of the things thats been long awaited will not be available till some time later in the summer, a software switch that tells the network not to forward an MMS or multi media message to the iPhone has to be manually deleted.

Tethering , locked right from the get go on AT&T until they come up with some way of making our American cousins pay for it. I am awaiting word that Rogers , my Canadian carrier is going to do the same thing. Hopefully the brains of that operation are going to be going with what brung em, and tethering will be free.

The only other thing of note is that a new iPhone called the 3GS is going to be released two days after the software upgrade for $299.00 for a new contract signup. Dropping the price of a 16 gig to 199 dollars and any remaining 8 gigs to 99 dollars. Now I hear that Rogers is bringing back the 6 gig data plan for 30 bucks a  month , so this will bear watching for me personally .

So instead of listening to my iPhones ipod function with the bluetooth headphones, I am going to have to wait a further week. IF there is a bright side to this debacle, its that at least the release date is now firm, instead of waiting on someones whim in cupertino.

With the Palm Pre finally out and no longer in the vapour ware  category, the days of apple leading this little dance are coming to a close, make no mistake , the iPhone will rule the airwaves for some time , but its going to have to work for every unit sold now. I only await a gsm version of the pre, before I give up and place the iPhone into iPod mode full time.

Okay here is the deal folks, yesterday, which was June 04, depending on when you read this, I was reading a review of the palm pre which has finally been slated for release, and the techno scribes have been doing their pre launch write ups.

So there I was,this is no shit.

Going through the review and they happened to compare something to the iPhone, and then threw in an Easter egg in brackets (coming on Monday). Ya , way to perk my nipples dudes.

Engaget being a review site will publish both fact and what ever is coming down the grape vine, ie rumors. For the past several months at any rate, this has been nothing new and I was consigning it to the rumor mill.

A few minutes later, I am looking at an upgrade to wunder radio, a streaming application for radio stations on the Internet and clicked on the download button. This begins like normal and then aborts with a cryptic message that mentions iTunes. Twice more I attempted this, after first verifying my password, as I believed that to be the problem.

The third time, I looked at the upgrade and it was specifically for 3.0. Hoho, so my Easter bunny at engaget may not have been shovelling rumors after all.

Later that evening, I pass the word on to the folks on hofo, while I am typing up the post, I go back to engaget and what the heck, the little Easter egg is no where to be found, no cite, no cred, I’m just posting rumors like everyone else.

Screw it, I posted anyways. Even without the cite, no way would the einsteins at apple release 3.0 updates for apps, unless the launch was iminent.

So I’m calling it here folks, sometime on Monday June 08, OS 3.0 will be available.

Fair warning to the jailbreaking community, as with the 2.1 update, you have to wait a few days till the JB developers bring out the updated software to jailbreak the phone.

For those new to the jailbreak scene, if you have downloaded the new version of iTunes, 8.2, the drivers are different enough that you won’t be able to sync your device. A restore should bring back the device to factory, allowing you to download the new update OS without any major interuption in service or bricking your phone.

Anyone who does not restore their phone, downloads the update and ends up with a paper weight, refrain from posting your woes on message boards, you will be mocked merciliously.

You have no excuse this time.

Tux

So far the majority of my blog entries have been done with the wordpress iPhone app. Since they are simple text entries with no multi-media content as of yet, the app is perfect for my needs.

The ability to create blog posts from where ever I am has allowed me to reclaim time and post in the nook and crannies of my day, and home time is for what I want to do.

The App supports multiple blogs and allows you to upload pictures, which is extremly handy when doing iPhone app reviews. Simply hold down the power button, hit the d pad and watch the screen blink. Add the picture via the photo library or shoot a live shot.

Most peope that I have talked to, do not advocate posting a live entry, prefering instead to write the content and then save to local file, and format their blog at home or work in a more conventional way, me I hit publish and go.

As I wrote in a post several months ago, the app now supports landscape mode for text entry, comments can be viewed and marked as spam or approved as needed. Regarding comments, my site is set up to moderate comments, the blizzard of spam that comes through, notably the kind that have ??????? In the body of the comment makes this nessecary if you do not have the askimet widget activated (strong suggestion, for those that don’t)

I may go to an unmoderated format soon, as the spam has litterally dried up, but it’s not a major issue at the monent.

If the wordpress app has any flaws, it’s saving a post as private. This happened to me several days ago and other than blaming myself, I don’t know what went wrong, or more litterally where the post went.

I have 2.7.1 rev, with admin privilges and it’s gone. Anyone wishing to post as private, I would heavily suggest that you save it to draft and then classifiy it on the fullsite rather than upload it through the app.

The app is useful and has been updated several times, plus it’s free. If your just a casual blogger or wish to create content for future blogs the app can be very useful.

On the downsides, it can throw you some curveballs regarding the private posting.

8/10

If you have a wordpress blog and an iPhone or wish to make your blog entries relevant to the mobile communities, the ansewer is a widget thats available on the wordpress site.

Go into your widgets section of the admin section and an option should be there to search for more, type iPhone into the search box and it should produce the widget, I can’t think of the name off hand, but will edit the post later tonight.

There is an automated process that allows the casual wordpress blogger to upload widgets and all thats required from the user, is to activate the widget. Activation is simply by clicking on the activate hyperlink and your golden.

The results of this activation will change the look of your site, at least as tested on the iPhone, but for text only blogs, it distills the useful from the wasted space of a full fledged website.

For multi-media blog sites I would advise that you do not use this widget, without experimentation on your site, the deactivation process is just as easy, however it’s not a solution that fits all sites

I downloaded this app several weeks ago and while I have not actually used it yet, it has kept me occupied with what it can do.

Quite simply it takes every movie thats out or coming out and presents it in a nicely formatted way. Movie title, brief blurb and rating, art work and a hook to tie it into YouTube if a trailor is available.

As well it also lists which movies are coming out on DVD or blu-ray, with the same information the new release movies advertise.

Take all that, then add in the closest theaters that the new movies are playing in, plus show times. For those wanting any sort of outside rating system, the app uses among other good folks, rotten tomatos.

I’m not one to require someone elses opinion to see a movie, so it’s up the user to see if that’s helpful or not. While the app also supports netflix, alas Canada does not. Someone else will have to chime in on how useful it is.

This app gets a 10/10, stable, focused on what it does and it’s free.

A new application to review just launched several days ago for news. Wall Street Journal, one of the premiere news organizations dedicated to the financial community has launched an iPhone application.

Where Bloomberg news stopped with their excellent app, WSJ took over and ran with the concept. Not only text based news, but the application also supports their video and radio articles that they push out.

Like Bloomberg, it’s raison d’être is news that impacts the financial world and after several days of viewing articles, it does exactly that, add in the ability to view other lifestyle and arts sections of the print paper and it becomes a front page app on any adults phone.

While the app is free, the WSJ is so far non-commital over the content staying free. With the release of Apple’s 3.0 software release for the iPhone coming just weeks away, their commitment for in application subscription services would make this a “subscription ready” app.

Which is a good thing, when the target audience for their service probably already subcribes or would not mind subscribing to a useful news aggregation service.

With print media no longer able to afford thinking of the electronic version of it’s product as a loss leader, if the WSJ does go all or partial subscription, it may be the first, but it will not go that way alone. For us the end user, paying money online is pretty much a heretical thought, but it’s one that can no longer be shrugged off.

If information wants to be free, as the internet anthem went in the nineties, then our concept of free is going to have to change. Free of monetary cost may take a back seat to being free to deseminate to the masses at a cost, instead of being relegated to financial ivory towers and ivy league business schools with no desire to let the plebes view forbidden knowledge.

While I did not mean to rant on the journal or any institution, as both the information, news, and financial theory are readily available to anyone with the desire to view it, study it and put it into practice. The financial media has been one of a limited niche, the point being that the industry is going to encounter an AOL moment, where millions of aol’er were turned loose on the Internet.

Between the iPhone, blackberry and the follow on data devices, the financial world is poised to get an infusion of plebian’s reading their services. It behooves this media to get it right, when and if it comes to subscription models, as the rest of the Internet world will be watching avidly.

Thought I would throw a quick post up after the new updated wordpress app came out. Other than landscape mode, which I am typing in as we speak, I have not plumbed the depths of the new software.

I am thrilled, landscape is so much more comfortable to type than the portrait mode. At the moment I am engrossed in the AIG debacle on twitter and am soon going to have to tear myself away, 5 am rears it’s ugly head soon enough and I am not one to be able to wait till the last moment before leaving for work, afternoon shift cannot come fast enough.

On to new business.

The blog is going to have a new category in the next couple of days. I just picked up a 300 milimeter lens and I want to start photo blogging.

So it’s official, every thing that has been asked for since the first generation iPhone has been confirmed included in the update. Except for the fact that the first generation iPhones won’t be included, no love for them.

A source* tells us that the reason for not giving the first generation folks has to do with the money arrangement that apple and AT&T came to. The telco giant has to remit money to apple and has no interest in allowing the 2G’s to upgrade the OS when they can be pushed to upgrade to a 3G, and apple coincidently gets none of the bennies.

Which in my opinion is the height of stupidity if true. Lord knows the first of the 2G contracts are coming to term sometime this year, and so apple and AT$T screw them over, and oh yeah would you like to look at a nice shiney 3G while your bending over.

So let’s put that in the rumor category, no matter what I think. Apple goes on a full court press to give the 3G folks like me the basic services the phone should have launched with to start with, cause every other type of phone has it standard and give the 2G folks a perfect shot at giving the palm pre and sprint a very close look.

To be honest there is something about the palm product that has apple concerned enough to get off the pot and respond to our pleas and demands, so much that I seriously want to look at it when it finally hits Canada.

For now, we got the majors.

Cut and Paste

Push notification

Stereo Bluetooth

Native MMS

The minors

Turn by turn gps

P2P game play

The bad, besides ignoring the 2G folks has to do with the app store, 3.0 apps will have in application payment capabilities that in some peoples minds* will encourage nickel and dimeing for upgrades, unlocks , yearly or monthly subscriptions.

Thats something I would seriously have to look at before making a judgement. Magazine, newsmedia, probably netflics can make a good case for a monthly or weekly subscription, medical journals and legal stuff, yeah I can see that. Other than those, it’s a hard call.

For the 2G owners, I cannot see apple at least giving an update that won’t include some of the features that the 3G owners are getting, not and possibly losing detectors to palm who may not have even thought to originally as well, the fine folks over at winpwn etal, can probably port it over.

But no matter, make apple and AT$T earn their money on your next upgrade cycle, this was shoddy of them.

* will edit to add references later

Without much fanfare this week I deleted that loved/hated app technews. In the end it was not all that hard a choice, it had gone from freezing and crashing , to not even loading headlines.

For a while I was flirting with Ms G, googles news reader and for the most part, I can’t really say anything bad about it. Search tentacle sex tech, and I am pretty sure that google would have an rss feed to view.

Then one day, I really don’t recall when actually, but a new app came to my attention. This seemed to be almost a step up from technews, as they share a common name, itechnews.

Where the original technews would display the top stories, itech would separate them into the top headlines and then further by the tech genre. Cellphones have their own folder for example, so your not getting telco tech mixed up with Linux tech and the like.

Not that I have no complaints with the app, oh no. It’s just that they are minor in nature. It was supposed to be able to read offline, I can see touch users downloading headlines using wifi at home, but looking for a signal when you get beyond the blurb, as it opens the stories in an internal browser.

That’s probably my biggest peeve, in that the browser will load the whole page including the advertisements. Now this being the real world and people gotta put food on the table, ads are a nessesary evil, but they bog down the load times.

Any other cellphone, would have this set up as a cron job, and let me choose when the device updates. Not being able to run background tasks in the iphone scotchs this idea, and it feels like I am down loading usenet articles on a 14.4 modem again.

So I have been using it for about a week now and while it’s crashed a couple of times, it’s been no worse than any other app. Jumping from story to story has finally sated the info junkie in me and I would give this app a seven out of ten.