iPhone 2.2 Firmware
Apple released iPhone firmware version 2.2 today along with iTunes 8.0.2. The iPhone firmware brings a lot of anticipated updates and features, including Google Street View, public transit and walking directions to the Google Maps application, downloadable podcasts, and the ability to disable auto-correction when typing. A lot will be made about the continued lack of copy and paste, which Apple continues to ignore. I chose to focus on what is in there, and the additions to Google Maps and the podcast downloading make my life a lot easier.
It seems that there is no good bus route application unless you live in San Fransisco or New York. Google Maps on the desktop works great for bus directions, and having recently tried the Pittsburgh Port Authority busses, the Google directions on what busses to take worked great.
To examine the new Google Maps features, I decided to take a fictional trip to see the Steelers in Heinz Field.
The orange icon in the search listing indicates street view is available. Note the “Share Location” addition to the info screen, it opens an e-mail with a link to Google Maps in it. It’s another nice feature that should have been in from the beginning.
I start my trip after having a nice meal in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and get these directions, first car, then bus, and finally walking.
The bus map has icons indicating where you would need to walk and get on the bus. Tapping the icon gives you more information. Viewing the text directions is a little clearer, and double tapping on a step takes me to the item on the map.
Once there, I double check with Street View to get my bearings. Street View has been pretty responsive, but occasionally it takes a second for the images to load and you see the grid they’re placed on.
Podcast downloading is something that should have been there from the beginning. You still can’t subscribe to new podcasts on the phone (that I can tell anyways), but you can get new episodes of any podcast in the iTunes store over the air, just as you can with music. When they added the store to the phone, the infrastructure was done. I don’t see why it took so long for this. Just as with the App Store, there’s a 10MB limit for 3G downloading, but none for wifi. itms:// links work in Safari on the iPhone just as they would on the desktop. They open the App store page and you can download a few episodes of a podcast. Below are some images of this feature
Tapping on the iTunes subscription link brings up the podcast’s iTunes Store page.
The podcasts show up in the iPod and the listings have a “Get More Episodes” link to go to the store as well.
When synced back with iTunes, the podcast shows up with a subscribe link.
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