Now available
This mornings Apple event is done and dusted, and while we’ll provide a wrap-up of the announcements later this morning, the juicy bits for iPhone owners are that iTunes 9 and iPhone OS 3.1 are now live and ready for your consumption! Here’s a quick overview of what’s new in each.
iTunes 9
- iTunes LP. Clearly trying to stimulate sales of whole albums rather than the current trend of buyers picking and choosing select tracks, Apple have added some pretty interesting new features that come packed with select albums. Animated lyrics, liner notes, videos and photos of the band, full-screen art – it all sounds very promising.
- Home Sharing. Apple have dramatically improved the library sharing function of iTunes. In the past, you could see and play tracks from other libraries over your LAN, but now you can authorise upto five computers on your home network to actually import tracks from one library to another, plus purchase syncing – buy a track on one computer and it instantly appears on the others. Great stuff!
- Genius Mixes. Building on the functionality of the genius playlists introduced in the last major iTunes refresh, Genius Mixes automatically creates mixes based on songs that it reckons go well together.
- Home Screen Organising. Yes, you heard that right. You can now organise your iPhone’s home screen from inside iTunes, allowing you to sort by category, alphabetically or in order of download date. This is a pretty welcome addition from where I’m sitting!
- Visual Redesign. Some subtle changes to colours, icons and layouts lie within.
As for iPhone OS 3.1, this brings a number of changes – some exciting and some just ‘stuff’. Unfortunately, as reported earlier this morning, it also breaks tethering for XT users. We’ll be doing all that we can to find a fix for this and will update you if and when this happens, but in the meantime XT users should only go ahead and update if they don’t use tethering and don’t intend to. For absolute clarity – tethering is when you use your iPhone as a ‘modem’ to allow your laptop or other device to connect to the internet.
Highlights of the update include ringtone purchasing from the iTunes store, improved wi-fi performance and bluetooth headset support for Voice Control. Here’s the full list of updates included in the package:
- Genius recommendations for Applications
- iTunes 9 support: Genius mixes, organise your apps directly in iTunes, Improved syncing options for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and photos, iTunes U content organisation
- Redeem iTunes Gift cards, codes and certificates in the App Store
- Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store
- Browse and download ringtones wirelessly from the iTunes Store
- Save video from Mail and MMS into Camera Roll
- Option to “Save as new clip” when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS
- Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on
- Remotely lock iPhone with a passcode via MobileMe
- Use Voice Control on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets
- Paste phone numbers into the Keypad
- Option to use Home button to turn on Accessibility feature on iPhone 3GS
- Warn when visiting fraudulent websites in Safari (anti-phishing)
- Improved Exchange calendar syncing and invitation handling
- Fixes issue that caused some app icons to display incorrectly
I just updated to 3.1. I am on XT and I read about tethering not working before I did it which doesn’t worry me. I am stoked with the caller ID fix.
The only problem (all be it a big one) is after updating my iphone wont connect with 3G. It works fine on wifi but when I am out and about it wont download on 3G. Has anyone else got this problem?
(PL4N8 has made 4 comments)
iPhone 3.1 update can brick your iPhone. iTunes 9 installs, runs iPhone 3.1 update, iPhone shows iTunes link screen and then can’t be updated/or restored. Happened to me, so I google searched and found articles starting to mention it, http://mikepearsonnz.amplify.com/2009/09/12/serious-problems-reported-with-iphone-31-update/
I’ve had to restore to 3.0.1 using iTunes 8.1 and lost last 3 days of data/apps. The backup before 3.1 update did not restore them.
(zoomzoom.mike has made 1 comment)
I had the same thing! Upgraded on Itunes for the Iphone then found I could not connect to the internet etc. Phoned TELECOM who had their big COME OVER TO US WITH YOUR IPHONE thing – which I did, and they informed me – they couldnt help. Weren’t able to give me any information about how to fix the problem – suggested I contact Apple. Given it is the weekend – Apple wasnt available!! Was getting really hacked off about now – found out – through searching on google I needed to reset the APN settings on my iphone for telecom – Phoned telecom back again, NO WE CANNOT GIVE YOU THAT INFORMATION – SUck!!!! I was really hacked off now!!! Did more research and found out all I needed to do was go to Settings on my Iphone – general – network – cellular data network – and where it has APN type : internet.telecom.co.nz Leave the username and password blank. This will make your phone work fine!!! Just like before!!!! No thanks to TELECOM, VODAFONE, OR APPLE!!!!!
(lorenah has made 1 comment)
@commsdelta – Are you sure you haven’t somehow disabled 3G in the settings of your phone? Go to settings –> general –> network and make sure ‘Enable 3G’ is set to on. Because XT is 3G only (no 2G), if you have 3G switched off you will experience the symptoms you mention – i.e. inability to send MMS, no signal etc. I assure you that updating to 3.1 on XT is not responsible for the issues you are facing, otherwise this page would be a million posts long with people crying out for help
@lorenah – Hi Lorenah – did you have our XT carrier bundle installed before you did the update? How about afterwards? There is no reason why updating to 3.1 should have removed the APN address from your settings. And yes unfortunately because Telecom is not an official iPhone carrier they are unable to support the device itself – all they can give you is a working SIM card to put in it. This site is probably the best place to come for support for the XT network so if you have problems in the future just post in our forums or use the contact us page. We’re a helpful bunch (and community) at iPhonewzealand!
I had the same problem as Lorenah. I had to reset my APN address. After updating to 3.1 my APN address came up as wap.telecom.co.nz and had to change it to internet.telecom.co.nz. I think everything works fine now. Is the MMS APN supposed to be wap.telecom.co.nz or internest.telecom.co.nz?
(PL4N8 has made 4 comments)
Please help!!
I updated to 3.1 two days ago and everything appeared to be fine (on XT).
Today when I tried using MMS it wouldn't work. I checked to make sure the "Show subject feild' was off and it was.
I turned phone off and on and did a reset, still no change.
I then reinstalled the XT carrier bundle, which seemed to work ok but now my phone can't pick up any service at all.
Does anyone have any ideas why its all of a sudden doing this?
(commsdelta has made 82 comments)
@Steve – Sorry feel quite stupid! after doing everything I could think of I phoned Telecom to check if there was a fault in my area. Turned out it was a nation wide problem and a lot of the 3G network as well as the old network was affected. I still haven’t heard anymore about this but they obviously managed to fix it about 6 hours later! Go Telecom!
(commsdelta has made 82 comments)
I am pretty pissed off with this update. Is there neway to downgrade back to 3.0. I use the Internet tethering every day for Internet usage. I have a 2 gb plan on xt. Who can I ring to abuse to get it activated? Lol. Nah but if I knew this before I updated I wouldn't of! How's the hackaround comin along?
(b0n35 has made 1 comment)