Massive Triad Rollout
The iPhone 2.0 firmware was released on Friday, July 11th, alongside the new iPhone 3G and MobileMe (formerly .Mac) service. By all accounts, this colossal triad of offerings in 21 countries was a tremendous success and virtual disaster. Activation servers were overloaded and MobileMe services were unavailable. Yet, Apple managed to sell over 1 million iPhones over the weekend and activation issues appear to be resolved. (Apple, in a email to MobileMe subscribers apologized for inconveniences and extended membership an additional month.) This triad of releases with such strong demand is quite an accomplishment. In many cities, the iPhone has sold out.
Having acquired an iPhone in February 2008, I wasn't in line for the July iPhone 3G. The faster model appears to have been designed to appeal to the holdouts - those who were waiting for the price of the phone to come down - or at least legally come to their country. Indeed, by the end of the year, the iPhone 3G should be available in over 70 countries.
New Firmware
The prior 1.4 firmware did not support third-party applications without hacking. The latest firmware is a free upgrade to iPhone customers and a paid upgrade for iPod Touch users. Firmware controls appearance and functionality on the device. Large corporate users welcome the addition of Microsoft Exchange email support with Push services and remote wipe among a plethora of other features. Smaller businesses and individuals can acquire similar Push services with MobileMe for $99 per year.
Push differs from Fetch services in that the former is "push" to all subscribed devices nearly instantaneously. Fetch moves the same data from email, calendars, contacts, or bookmarks at timed intervals. Sync requires the iPhone to be tethered to a computer to exchange updated information. With MobileMe, changes made on the iPhone can appear in a Web interface, on a Mac and designated PC computers over the air. This serves at least two advantages. (1) Someone at the home or the office can maintain your calendar based on recent phone calls. You will see them be returning to avoid scheduling conflicts while in the field. (2) Data entered while away from your computer is backed up in the event the iPhone is damaged or accidently left in an inaccessible place.
Even the previous generation iPhone has more responsive navigation with the new firmware upgrade. Safari Mobile has gained speed too. And the auto screen dimmer actually works with 2.0 firmware.
iPhone Apps
July 11 was a special day for me because of the 2.0 firmware upgrade that supports the new App Store. Apple opened up this service to purchase iPhone applications over the air or via iTunes. In many ways, this transforms the platform from mobile phone to mobile computer. Over 500 applications from third-party developers made the debut. Many more thousands will be introduced in the coming months. Quite a few are free or less than ten bucks.
Contacts gains a separate icon and a search field to keep users from scrolling through hundreds of entries. Contacts can be combined with the free third-party Google app for combining local and Internet searching. Unfortunately, only the primary name or company field (not both) is queried in local searches.
Remote is a free Apple app that controls an iTunes library on a wi-fi network. Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks, and Radio playlists can be controlled. The More button allows selections to be grouped by artist, composer, genre and album among other options. Songs or music play on the host computer or Apple TV with ability to select speakers connected via AirTunes. Currently, .mov video, .mp3 audio but not AAC podcasts are listed within Remote.
Without reviewing each one, favorite third-party apps include Google, Urbanspoon, Where To?, People, YPmobile, Dial Zero, Save Benjis, Shazam, Epocrates Rx, and iPint. You can find out more about each of these and read reviews on the iTunes Store. More applications than I thought rely on a Web connection.
Omissions
As mentioned, some applications have anomalies that will likely be corrected in future updates. However, there are still glaring omissions. I would be remiss if I were to omit mentioning copy & paste, which has been requested by users on many public forums since the release of the original iPhone, nearly a year ago. In an interview on July 14 by ExtremeTech with Apple head of iPod and iPhone marketing, Greg Joswiak, indicates "cut and paste" hasn't been ruled out; it just wasn't near enough to the top list of features.
Though the iPhone represents the epitome of a transition to paperless offices, there are (thankfully) still many uses for paper. Printing is a no show in the 2.0 firmware. Printing PDF forms, Word documents, or photos without resorting to emailing to a personal computer is useful. To be fair, most printer models are replaced every few months. Vendors are not likely to spend resources developing additional printer drivers for discontinued hardware. Nevertheless, a compromise may be to include a generic printer driver (that may not access all available features of the target printer but still get a page out) along with the ability to select printers that are shared over the network. The Mac OS X already offers the latter on desktop computers. Printer drivers can be installed on one machine and shared. The shared printers can be used by networked computers even in the absence of local drivers. This certainly appears feasible since the iPhone is powered by a variant of Mac OS X.
My third request is for remote Quick Look to be implemented on the iPhone. Essentially, enable iPhone users to view file directories and document previews of a networked computer. Combined, with the print option, this would make the iPhone quite useful in office meetings where one tends run back to a cubicle to obtain a missing file. Already a third-party developer has risen to the task and produced FileMagnet.
Conclusions
Despite a few omissions, the firmware upgrade offers significant benefits to every iPhone user and provides a firm foundation for future third-party development. First-generation iPhone users will be satisfied for many months to come, provided we have enough room to store our every growing digital life.