Boot up iTunes 8, connect your iPhone and you should see a satisfying text box burbling up, informing you of the 2.1 update. And instead of the usual “bug fixes”, Apple’s chest thumping a bit on this one with a rather satisfying list of what 2.1 actually does:
• decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• significantly improved battery life for most users
• dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• faster installation of 3rd party applications
• fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
• improved performance in text messaging
• faster loading and searching of contacts
• improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation
Any improvement, readers?
Update: Here’s a little thing: There is a now a separate “Apps” section in the Sync page in iTunes. There is still the mysterious “Other”.
does this change the firmware on the iPod touch also, or just the iPhone?
It updates the firmware on the iPod touch so long as the iPod touch had the 2.0 firmware.
aw i can’t do this till i get home tonight! i hope it fixes the thing where the sound just stops working all of the sudden and you have to reboot the phone.. that would be nice.
Joel added the update, so just as an answer: the mysterious “other” category is for stuff like album art.
Does ‘Other’ include the firmware? There ain’t hardly no album art on my iphone, yet it’s still chewing up 250mb.
There’s a mysterious ‘other’ on almost any iPod, my 5th gen and my Shuffle both have an ‘other’. It’s where data files, ‘orphaned’ tracks/photos/album art, all that ‘other’ stuff live. If you do a restore, you’ll probably see your ‘other’ drop a great deal.
I always figured the “other” was Steve Jobs’ DNA code.
“Other” is the holographic extension that allows you to have sex with it.
Better as hell know what “Other” means when the TSA asks ya!
Hasn’t there been an apps page ever since they opened the Apps part of the iTunes stare?
the “Other” section of the hard drive capacity is mostly taken up by your album art. my album art uses up about 300 mb
Option to wipe data? So if some tool gets my phone and can’t get in, he/she can wipe my info?
Am I getting that wrong?
JBang @12: I think it’s so that the phone can be remotely wiped if it gets stolen, or so that Apple can wipe any malware that inexplicably gets past the Apps Store screening.
@12 JBang:
It’s an option that you can set to make your phone wipe all its data after ten consecutive incorrect passcode entries, so that a persistent thief can’t keep trying passcodes and eventually get at your data. It doesn’t allow a thief to wipe your data unless you’ve previously set the option, it’s not a remote wipe, and it’s nothing to do with malware.
my iphones paid apps stopped working mysteriously when 2.1 came out, before i had upgraded
as i had jailbroken my phone, all my homebrew still worked, but all paid app store apps would quit during their boot phase
so i tried to update
in the process all my data was lost
poo poo