It’s not the update we were hoping to see at this point in the year, but Apple just let loose its first iPhone OS upgrade in months, v3.1.3.
Changes aren’t exactly mind blowing, but they include battery reporting accuracy improvements, a third-party app launching issue fix, and more.
As always, to get the upgrade, simply connect your iPhone to iTunes, highlight your iPhone under the Devices section of the left column, click Check for Update, and let your PC (or Mac) do the rest.
According to Fox News host and tech blogger Clayton Morris, Apple will show off the next version of the iPhone OS at their press event next Wednesday, January 27.
The event, which was announced yesterday, is almost universally expected to be the launch of Apple’s long-awaited tablet, though this has not yet been officially confirmed by the company.
Morris reports that a source inside Apple told him on Monday that “the event would likely focus on three projects: The tablet device, iPhone 4, and a new round of iLife 2010 software.”
Neither we nor Morris expect the 4th Generation iPhone to be announced at the event, though this remains a possibility. iPhone OS updates have been nil over the last several months, reportedly because Apple’s team has been hard at work on software for the upcoming tablet. There is also speculation that, if true, the announcement of the next version of the iPhone OS alongside the unveiling of the Apple tablet makes it a lock that the tablet device will run an OS much closer to that of the iPhone than the full OS that runs on its laptops and desktops.
Including of the next version of iLife with the announcement of iPhone OS 4.0 and the tablet might indicate that a tablet-and-iPhone-friendly version of the software suite will be made available for the two devices. Touch-ready ports of iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, etc., would seem natural additions for Apple’s touch devices.
The makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking have ported their voice-to-text dictation technology to the iPhone. And the new app, Dragon Dictation, worked remarkably well in our tests, transcribing spoken words without a single mistake in nearly twenty attempts to trip it up.
Since the iPhone doesn’t support multitasking in third-party apps, you can’t use Dragon Dictation the way you use NaturallySpeaking on a PC; you have to copy-and-paste the resulting text into your target app, be it Mail, SMS, Notes, etc. Still, this can save you a lot of time if you’re not a fast touchscreen typist or if you have a lot to say.
Dragon Dictation [iTunes Link] is free for now. There’s been no word on the company’s plans – if any – to begin charging for the app or whether a paid version with more features is slated for release.
Spb Wallet [iTunes Link] is high up on our must-have iPhone (and Windows Mobile) app list, but until now users could only sync their iPhone’s Wallet with a PC. The key phrase being “until now.”
Yesterday Spb Software released a Mac OS X version of its Wallet Desktop.
In addition to being able to sync and backup your iPhone’s wallet(s) with the Mac, the new desktop version also makes it much easier to add and edit information. The company has done a good job giving the software a Mac-like feel and the wireless Bonjour sync works as advertised.
So, if you’re an SPB Wallet user with a Mac running OS X 10.5+, this one’s for you.
Apple has just released a new iPhone OS update, v3.1.2. The new version addresses several issues:
- Resolves sporadic issue that may cause iPhone to not wake from sleep
- Resolves intermittent issue that may interrupt cellular network services until restart
- Fixes bug that could cause occasional crash during video streaming
The 300MB+ update is now available for download via iTunes.
Vonage Mobile is a new iPhone app which allows users to make international phone calls on the cheap. “Cheap” is a highly subjective term, of course, and in this case “cheap” ranges from very cheap ($0.01 per minute to Canada) to not so cheap ($1.25 per minute to Afghanistan). You can see a full listing of Vonage Mobile’s international calling rates here.
The software works with your existing Contacts list. iPhone users can make calls either over Wi-Fi or AT&T’s 3G wireless network, while iPod touch users must, obviously, use Wi-Fi.
Payments are made via credit card: “With Vonage Mobile you only pay for the calls you make. Simply set up your refill amount and credit/debit card information and we’ll automatically refill your account when you’re running low.”
Vonage Mobile is also available for compatible BlackBerry Smartphones.
Download Vonage Mobile [iTunes Link]
Dropbox is, without question, our favorite online storage and syncing solution. With Dropbox installed on one or more of your PCs or Macs, files created or changed in one computer’s Dropbox folder are automatically synced with with the Cloud and the other PCs and Macs linked with your account (if you have the software installed on multiple computers).
It’s a pretty amazing service – fast, automatic and foolproof (if it’s in the Dropbox folder, it’s synced). And in our months of using Dropbox, we haven’t encountered a single error.
But now the service is even better for iPhone users: Dropbox has added the iPhone to its list of compatible devices with the release of the Dropbox iPhone app.
Once you have a Dropbox account (a 2GB account is free, but you can also purchase 50GB or 100GB of online storage), just download the free Dropbox iPhone app [iTunes Link]. Link the app with your account and you instantly have access to your Dropbox files from the iPhone.
From within the app you can view compatible files stored in your Dropbox (PDFs, Word, Excel and PowerPoint MS Office documents, JPG, TIFF and GIF image files, Keynote, Pages and Numbers Mac documents, text files, music, movies and more), or upload photos or videos taken with the iPhone to your Dropbox, in effect storing them online and syncing them with your linked PCs and Macs. Want to share a file in your Dropbox with someone? You can do that too, right from the app.
=========================================================
PDF: Dropbox iPhone Introduction
Editor’s Blog: Why I Love (LOVE!) Dropbox File Sync
One of the least talked about features of iTunes 9 is its new “Organize Library” tool, which tidies up your iTunes library contents with a more ordered folder system. If you’re like us, the more organized your files can be, the better, so here’s the Organize Library function in a nutshell.
On a PC or a Mac: Open iTunes 9 and go to File > Library > Organize Library. From this selection, you’ll get a small window with two options: Consolidate Files and Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization.
Consolidate Files takes all of the media files in your iTunes library (wherever they may be on your hard drive or drives) and copies them to a single folder/subfolder setup, while leaving copies of the files in their original locations.
The Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization option reorganizes your iTunes Music folder with separate folders for music, movies, podcasts, audiobooks, etc., making your iTunes folder structure a bit less of a nightmare to wade through should you need to find a file outside of iTunes.
Whether or not you use iTunes to automatically sync with your iPhone or iPod, we recommend all users have iTunes keep their music files organized. Not only does it make specific files easier to find, it also makes complete, library-wide backups of your iTunes database and media files a snap; you simply backup a single folder (and its sub-folders), and you’re backed-up and worry-free.
There’s been a lot of Web chatter (and slavish bootlicking) this week regarding Apple’s latest version of its perennial Mac OS X, Snow Leopard. I’ve been using v10.6 since Friday morning and, while there are back-end improvements, code rewrites and menu color changes galore, the upgrade hasn’t exactly blown my iPod’s socks off. In fact, if it weren’t for changes to Stacks, Exposé and QuickTime, I wouldn’t know the difference. Still, at $29 ($25 at Amazon.com), it’s worth the upgrade if for no other reason than it frees up drive space and speeds up some applications’ start times by a second or two.
Aside from not being able to resist upgrading to any new OS, I was also interested in seeing what impact, if any, Snow Leopard would have on the iPhone. Would syncs be faster? Would iTunes be less buggy during syncing and file transfers? Would my iPhone 3GS backups take less time? Would Apple include the $200 credit I’m still waiting on for ordering the iPhone 3GS before AT&T changed its upgrade price policy?
As you’ve likely guessed, the answer to each if these questions is: NO.
As far as I can tell, Snow Leopard makes absolutely no difference when it comes to using the iPhone with a Mac. In fairness, no such claims were made, but I thought this might be a point of interest for some iPhone users pondering the upgrade.
Its lack of improvements for existing iPhone models (and the latest version of iTunes) doesn’t mean that some of the technologies in Snow Leopard have no bearing on future iPhone models or functionality. For some information on what Snow Leopard could mean for the future of the iPhone, check out this interesting post at The iPhone Blog.
One of the most talked about iPhone apps this week is GPush [iTunes Link], a recently approved application that alerts you when new email arrives in your Gmail inbox. GPush is designed to placate users who want Push Gmail, but are still waiting for Google to offer this seemingly no-brainer service to its iPhone users. Seriously, Google – why are third-party companies having to do the heavy lifting here?
The app is fairly straight-forward; input your login username and password, authenticate, and GPush will send you alerts via iPhone OS 3.0’s push-notification system when new mail arrives. New messages show up just like text messages in a small, semi-transparent window in the middle of your screen, with the sender and the subject line. So far, so good.
But the application is limited to this function only; once you’ve been notified that new mail is waiting, you still have to use standard methods (web interface, iPhone’s built-in Mail app) to view your email. And in our two days of testing, the application failed to alert when new mail arrived about 20% of the time, which could be a real problem if you are a heavy Gmail user. The badge showing the number of Gmail messages waiting to be viewed also remains too long after mail has been viewed.
Irrespective of its limitations and intermittently lackluster performance, this is a v1.0 release, and will likely improve over time. At $0.99, it’s also a very small investment, and is easily worth the price if you spend too much time manually checking your GMail inbox for new messages.
Download GPush [iTunes Link]
