Apple cut the price of the iPhone by $200 as part of a major announcement of new iPods, a mobile version of iTMS, and a coming iPhone software update. The 8gb iphone is now $399, and the slow selling iPhone is $299 while supplies last.
This is clearly a move to broaden the market for the iPhone, but it also suggests that they are making room for a new iPhone at the $499 price point. The obvious candidate is a 16gb model at $499, especially since they are offering the new iPod Touch in that capacity. I would expect it to be announced a little after the iPhone software update is released later this month for yet another little PR boost.
I’m also guessing that the update will have more to it than support for th mobile iTMS.
Nate True has analyzed the files changed by the iPhone 1.0.2 firmware update, and it doesn’t look like there is really any room for new features given that it’s just over 3MB. A few files got a little bigger, the kernel actually got smaller, and they seemed to do a little cleanup. Not too surprising then that few improvements or bug fixes have been observed, and it seems likely that at least a few of those were wishful thinking.
Apple has just pushed out the second update (1.0.2) for the iPhone. Once again, they are only saying it fixes bugs.
People who have hacked their iPhone are already reporting issues, but again, it sounds like Apple has basically left the modders alone. Most of the problems can be solved by going in and is to go in and installing the hacks again. Some hacks will need to be updated, but someone has already come up with a fix for the Installer.app.
Update 8/22/07: Yesterday Nate True posted an analysis of the files changed by the update. The bottom line is that there isn’t much room for feature improvements or bug fixes. I’ve added notes below in cases where the observations seem to be wishful thinking because no relevant files were touched.
Other reports follow:
- More and more people are reporting that the cellular signal seems more stable. Whether this is cosmetic, or actually represents an improvement in the way it interfaces with the cellular network is unclear. eas-This is probably a phantom, there were no changes in any files related to the cellular radio or status display.
- Only 3.7MB, which makes it almost half as small as the last one. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for them to sneak in new features
You can now skip to the next chapter in movie file Apparently this worked before.- A few people think the bottom button-bar in Safari in landscape mode is shorter. eas-another phantom, no files related to Safari were changed
- “Safari is snappier” but this may just be a result of rebooting the iPhone as part of the upgrade process. eas-as above, no safari changes, however, it is imaginable that changes to the kernel could have an impact here.
- Safari reportedly allows scrolling on long pages now, even when there is a lot of the page left to load. eas- Another likely phantom, no changes to Safari or webkit, though it seems plausible that improvements to I/O or task scheduling or similar in the Kernel could have an impact here
- Still no flash.
- Faster WiFi performance. Some people are reporting 50% better speeds according the the speedtests they’ve tried. eas-it is not inconceivable that kernel changes could improve networking performance.
- The music player still crashes sometimes while browsing the web with Safari
- The iAsign activation hack still works
- iFuntastic 2.5 works just fine (if you are on a frikin mac)
- Engadget had a major freakout with their modded iPhone that broke their iPhone backup.
- People who used iPhoneRingtoneMaker to add custom ringtones report that they ringtones are still there after the update, and that they did not have to do a full restore.
- iPhone remembers password on secondary e-mail accounts for people who had problems before eas-No e-mail files were changed.
- Fixes problems with closing “tabs” in Safari when you have a combination of pages in vertical and landscape mode open. eas-with additional use, it is obvious that this is still a problem.
Discussions elsewhere:
Newsflash: There is now a free GUI application for unlocking the iPhone.
Apple started pushing out an update to the iPhone software a few hours ago. I’m in the process of installing it right now, but I’ve been reading on other people’s experiences. This is a run down on what’s changed:
Apple’s release notes for Update 1.01 only lists three of security fixes for Safari and the WebCore and WebKit components it makes use of, but users are reporting other improvements.
Apple’s security fixes address vulnerabilities discovered by independent security researchers last week, including, cross-site scripting, malicious code execution, and phishing attacks using masqueraded URLs.
The update is only 7.1MB, but Apple has incremented the Software, Firmware & Modem Firmware. Users on Howard Forums, Apple’s own discussion forums, and comments on various blogs report other improvements and enhancements, which I’m summarizing below (even if I’m not entirely sure what a few of them are really describing).
The list of files changed by the update that Nate True compiled shows that lots of software on the iPhone was changed. So far, these are the changes people have observed: Continue reading ‘What’s new in the iPhone Update 1.0.1′
