For those who have been living in a hermetically sealed box for the last few months, today marks the second major iteration of Apple’s iPhone hardware and software.
iPhone 3G
The iPhone 3G official went on sale today! Assuming you could get one you might be having problems getting it activated because the demand has apparently melted the Apple and AT&T activation servers.
NOTE to potentially smug 1st generation iPhone owners: you aren’t immune to this issue. After upgrading to the new iPhone software (see below) your phone must also be re-authorized so there is at least a chance you may see some delays as well.
Or you could have been brave and/or stupid and downloaded the update when it leaked last night and avoid the rush completely, like I did.
OS X iPhone 2.0
The iPhone 3G comes with a new major revision of the iPhone operating system, but owners of the original iPhone have not been left out. Running Software Update in the Apple menu should produce a new iTunes 7.7 download, which when installed and launched will offer to upgrade your iPhone to the new 2.0 version. The App Store is the main new feature (and it is a huge one) but there are other tweaks here and there as well.
Perform a complete iPhone sync before performing this upgrade to ensure al of your current iPhone data is safely backed up.
A word of advice: BE PATIENT! iTunes will first download the approximately 150MB update then go through a protracted period of “Preparing iPhone for Update” that will probably make you very nervous that something’s gone wrong. When that’s done there will be another longish actual update period and then finally the iPhone will reboot. DON’T UNPLUG IT YET! After rebooting iTunes will then have to re-authorize the phone. If at any time you see a prompt asking whether this is a new phone or if you want to restore from the phone’s saved settings make sure you choose to restore so the phone retains it current number, etc.
When the update is finished you may be surprised to find an empty phone. I know I was. Not a big deal because we synced everything before installing the update, right? Hit the Sync button in the iPhone section in iTunes then walk away for a while as all of the iPhone’s music, photos, video and data are restored.
When that’s done you’ll be running the latest and greatest iPhone OS version and can then proceed to waste hours and hours poking around in the App Store.
All This and Apple TV Too!
If you own an Apple TV now you can send that time waiting for the iPhone restore to finish by running software update on it as well. In addition to a bone fide photo browser (in addition to the slideshow option) the update also brings Mobile Me integration (the new incarnation of .Mac) and the very slick ability to control your Apple TV remotely from your iPhone using Apple’s Remote application which is free and worth 1000 times the price (and yes, I do know that 1000 x 0 is still 0. Don’t nitpick.)