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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.

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 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