iPod Touch 2.1 Firmware Features and Availability

[MacRumors]

Apple's iPod Touch 2.1 firmware appears to be consistently available now. While the iPod Touch 2.1 Firmware seemed to be available shortly after yesterday's keynote, many users had some difficulty in installing the update early on. The official list of changes include:

- Genius playlist creation
- dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
- improved email reliability, notable fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
- faster installation of 3rd party applications
- fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes if you have lots of 3rd party applications
- faster loading and searching of contacts
- other bug fixes

Forum users have been compiling a list of other changes they have found. Some of these are said to include:

- Faster App updates and installtion
- When viewing songs it says Artist And Album underneath the Song title.
- Podcast has more descriptive information
- Can now selectively mute certain sound effects (new mail, key taps)
- More responsive
- Much faster backups

Apple also announced the 2.1 firmware will be released for the iPhone this Friday. The features are generally expected to be the same for the iPhone update. Nike+ support, however, is notably absent for the first generation iPod Touch and iPhone users due to the lack of proper hardware support at this time.

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[optophobia]

Anxiously awaiting the iPhone update, and really really hoping it will fix the call drops, 3G loss, and app crashes.

[pcorajr]

Looks good, they are fixing a lot of the little annoying things that 2.0 broke. Hopefully they will start adding new Features, like copy and paste

[whooleytoo]

Hmmm... I'll wait and see if the "much faster backups" really materialise this time. Many people said the 2.0.2 iPhone firmware really speeded things up; but that was only true for the first few backups after installing the new firmware. After that things settled back down into hour-ville.

[Scooterman1]

With iTunes 8 release, and iPod Touch updates yesterday, Apple must be holding the iPhone updates until Friday so that we don't drag down their Servers like last time.

[a1016neo]

If this is true, then we can call 2.1 the next 1.1.4!

[maiden16tiger]

i want to know what this hidding features are!!!

[BigD58]

So does anyone know if the iphone 2.1 software will include genius playlists as well?

[manu chao]

Originally Posted by whooleytoo

Hmmm... I'll wait and see if the "much faster backups" really materialise this time. Many people said the 2.0.2 iPhone firmware really speeded things up; but that was only true for the first few backups after installing the new firmware. After that things settled back down into hour-ville.

My backups still only take about 5 seconds (using 2.0.2 obviously). Couldn't you just try to restore the iPhone (yes, a few settings have to be changed afterwards) to see whether backup times get reasonable again?

[amac4me]

This week is turning out to be big for software updates. iTunes, Quicktime, Front Row, iPod touch 2.1 firmware, iPhone 2.1 firmware by the end of the week. Perhaps this weeks tops out with the 10.5.5 Mac OS X update.

Once all these software updates are out of the way I hope the next round of news from Cupertino ends up being new Macs!

[jhiner]

Push notification???

[websyndicate]

Safari is much Snappier.

[sharp65]

Originally Posted by jhiner

Push notification???

Nope, wasn't included.

[FightTheFuture]

wouldn't it be possible to build the firmware to support the receiver that comes with the Nike+ package? i don't understand why they would make software for Nike+ and only have it available on the 2nd Gen iPod Touch and nano.

[mainstreetmark]

Any second now, someone will demand Copy/Paste. Fair enough, but I haven't had a need for that one yet. I may use the phone differently.

What I would like to see is:
- Stop moving my apps around when one gets an update
- In fact, a way from iTunes to group them on iPhone's screen.
- A "clickwheel" function in the iPod.app so I can track through long songs and podcasts, like I used to be able to do
- A working MobileMe, which syncs.
- Syncing of mail messages, as well as just my mail account passwords, or whatever it's syncing now. I don't like reading mail twice on my pop accounts.
- The ability to turn off the apple default applications I'll never use like 'Stocks'

But, yes, not to sound like a complete complainer, I love the third party apps. All I could have hoped for (well, open distribution would be nice). I don't think I'll own another cellphone besides the iPhone for a decade. I'm excited to be part of the early time.

[sharp65]

Originally Posted by FightTheFuture

wouldn't it be possible to build the firmware to support the receiver that comes with the Nike+ package? i don't understand why they would make software for Nike+ and only have it available on the 2nd Gen iPod Touch and nano.

It's a hardware change to support it.

[stofferdk]

Originally Posted by sharp65

It's a hardware change to support it.

he meant making the existing external hardware available for the iPhone with a software upgrade.

[sparklesgirl2]

Originally Posted by FightTheFuture

wouldn't it be possible to build the firmware to support the receiver that comes with the Nike+ package? i don't understand why they would make software for Nike+ and only have it available on the 2nd Gen iPod Touch and nano.

I don't think it's even included in the Nano.

I agree, I think Jobs was a little misleading about that yesterday. I swore he said that Nike+ would be available in the update to 2.1.

[DaveTheGrey]

I'm so looking forward to iPhone 2.1 when I'm looking at the fixed bugs list!

[n8te]

Upgraded to 2.1 last night...

Has anyone noticed the wifi dropping off when the touch goes to sleep? Plus it seems my wifi is not picking up as well (in my house).

Thanks!!

[mr.steevo]

Hi,

The Genius is very good at suggesting all the music I haven't purchased from the iTunes store, and that's about it.

s.

[UnseenLlama]

If Nike+ uses a variant of bluetooth (from what I've read), why can't the iPhone be a receiver and use that frequency?

I'm glad there was some announcement for Nike+, but from a hardware perspective, Apple and Nike need to keep moving. Bring out the heart rate monitor and additional watches that not only control playback, but also show you stats while you run. Those two things are worth more to me than the inclusion of Nike+ in the iPod touch.

[BennehB]

Safari now renders SVG.

[macaron1]

Kind of sucks not to have Nike+ on the iPhone. I now have the wristband but it feels like a downgrade from my older Nano.

[chrisgeleven]

Originally Posted by mainstreetmark

Any second now, someone will demand Copy/Paste. Fair enough, but I haven't had a need for that one yet. I may use the phone differently.

What I would like to see is:
- Stop moving my apps around when one gets an update
...
- Syncing of mail messages, as well as just my mail account passwords, or whatever it's syncing now. I don't like reading mail twice on my pop accounts.

I read somewhere on the forums that 2.1 keeps apps in the same place now.

As for syncing of e-mail messages, that is what IMAP is for. POP by design cannot be synced. Check with your e-mail provider to see if they allow IMAP access. I use IMAP with Gmail between my Macbook, iPhone, and the Gmail web site and it works very well.