iPhone Firmware 2.0 - Discussion

[poetic_folly]

Apple announced iPhone firmware 2.0 (which is just marketing, btw - its 1.2, not 2.0. Unless they plan on going from 1.2 to 2.0 between now and June) Thursday, which will be released in June. Specific dates have not been made available yet, I'm sure it will depend on how fast they can get it finished (my Time Capsule shipped "in February" - which meant Feb 29th, heh).

We posted it yesterday in the SDK quasi-liveblog thread, but I'd like to have a thread specifically for the new firmware, not for the SDK.

Some highlights:

• Native support for Microsoft Exchange and ActiveSync.
• Ability to store web apps locally. This is a big deal - the SDK will allow for building of web apps which can be saved offline and ran when not connected to the net.
• AppStore, of course, allows you to download and install 3rd party apps straight from your iPhone. (Installer, Cydia).
• Major code differences compared to previous firmware versions. Erica took a look at the SDK, and said the headers/frameworks are very different, which many of the DRP guys have also confirmed. What does this mean to you? Existing 3rd party applications will have to be rewritten a bit to get them working on the new firmware, so when it initially comes out, and is jailbroken, we'll be waiting a bit for unofficial apps to come back out.

Since I know you'll all ask even though there's no way of telling yet - WHO KNOWS how long the jailbreak and unlock will take. Not I. This isn't to say it will take long, just that we don't have any way of knowing right now until it gets in the hands of the proper dev's and hackers. The firmware IS being released as a beta according to Apple, which has gone out to "thousands of developers," so that's a possible headstart.

There's still a huge international community of iPhoners, so don't expect jailbreak and unlocking to go anywhere. Also no word yet on whether AppStore will work on non-ATT iPhone's, such as all us T-Mobile iPhone owners. Members of the DRP Dev Team have found that the new XCode release knows if your iPhone has been activated on ATT or not, so that may speak ill for non-ATT folk wanting to access AppStore. Just another hurdle to jump.

Thoughts?

[cranie]

I'm happy and excited anytime the iPhone grows and "moves forward" in features and performance. If the people who make the apps that we can currently only use on jailbroken phones (i.e. Simplify Media) make them for the new FW and it's Apple approved that's a good thing no?

[Kay338]

sweeeeeet! cant wait.

[patrickj]

We heard tons of very, very good things yesterday - I think. All the enterprise features mean it should have Blackberry's makers real scared, the App Store sounds excellent and so on.

One - possibly - very disconcerting thing was spotted by John Gruber at Daring Fireball: he found a section of the SDK that seems to say no multitasking for 3rd party apps. If they remember their state / where you were at when you left them, that's no big deal. But ... if they don't, that is Suckerama and equal to a Palm Treo. Here's the section he highlighted:

Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits. It’s important to make sure that users do not experience any negative effects because of this reality. In other words, users should not feel that leaving your iPhone application and returning to it later is any more difficult than switching among applications on a computer.

And his post is here

Interested to hear what folks think on this ...

[viperstarpoint9]

I don't mind if only one application can run at a time it means the programs will run faster. However if the applications don't auto save (e-mail, text editors, and other programs that create saved files) then there will be some annoyances. Other than that I am all for this one restriction.

[Eurisko]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is DRP an acronym for?

[ajl917]

I think we need to get this 2.0 firmware to the devs and Zibri ASAP so they can get everything ready for the real deal and maybe App Store on 1.1.3/1.1.4...

[poetic_folly]

Secrets. It will never stand for anything.

DRP is the MMi sponsored dev team, check bottom of this page to see who they is. Made colloQ, WiSync, iRefresh, Debicizer, and more...

Originally Posted by Eurisko

Forgive my ignorance, but what is DRP an acronym for?

dont be a noob

[patrickj]

Originally Posted by viperstarpoint9

I don't m