Apple Seeds 2nd Beta of iPhone 2.1 Firmware to Developers

[happydude]

I hope it sorts out passwords, it won't hide the letter i typed until i type the next one

i actually like this feature, and assumed it was on purpose. maybe it isn't. with the non-tactile feedback, it's nice to be able to make sure i previously hit the correct letter before going on to the next. i hate typing in the password, then waiting for the page to load only to find out in incorrectly typed it in. given strength of connection, it sometimes is a couple minute process. this has saved me that time for a couple instances already.

 

[palmerized]

Ya, I love this new feature.

i actually like this feature, and assumed it was on purpose. maybe it isn't. with the non-tactile feedback, it's nice to be able to make sure i previously hit the correct letter before going on to the next. i hate typing in the password, then waiting for the page to load only to find out in incorrectly typed it in. given strength of connection, it sometimes is a couple minute process. this has saved me that time for a couple instances already.

 

[Smith288]

i actually like this feature, and assumed it was on purpose. maybe it isn't. with the non-tactile feedback, it's nice to be able to make sure i previously hit the correct letter before going on to the next. i hate typing in the password, then waiting for the page to load only to find out in incorrectly typed it in. given strength of connection, it sometimes is a couple minute process. this has saved me that time for a couple instances already.

The last letter you type actually disappears after a few seconds too so I dont know who is over his shoulder as he keys in top secret passwords...

 

[Luap]

I must agree with the keyboard lag issue. Last night I needed to send an urgent reply to an email from my iPhone. In the end I had to give up as it was taking me so long just to type one word. Luckily I was close by a friends place so I was able to send an email from their PC. Not happy!

I've had the lag before too. It's an inconvenience, granted. But honestly, did no one notice that it goes away for quite a while after restarting the phone?? Has to be better than going to a friends house to use their PC to send an email?? No matter how close the friend may be.

 

[kingtj]

Yeah......

The biggest "bug" that's annoying me right now with firmware 2.0 (seems to happen equally often on a 1st. gen. or 3G iPhone) is the tendency for keyboard typing to get extremely sluggish - requiring a reboot.

Obviously, it's some kind of memory leak - and needs to be fixed. A number of people have posted YouTube videos showing the issue and complaining about it. My phone seems to do this at least once a week or so, and it really mars the overall good, solid experience to using it.

It seems like really, Apple has been short-changing the "early adopter" for a LONG time. It's almost a tradition with them. (Many Apple fans joked about not wanting revision A of anything of theirs, way back in the 1980's ... and for good reason, usually. Look at the old Apple "LC" series machines. Later revisions were FAR superior to their earlier counterparts, in almost every case.)

What feels "worse" now is the number of manufacturing flaws and quality issues - even in product lines they've been selling for quite a while. I hate to say it, but I suspect much has to do with having everything manufactured in China though. Too hard to keep a close eye on all the details, ensuring they're really building everything to the quality standards you demand/expect, etc.

Look at all the Macbook Pros having video issues thanks to defective nVidia GPUs? Look at all the iMacs that had bad logic boards due to the bad capacitors used on them. Look at all the water-cooled PowerMac G5's with pump failures. Quite a few rev. 1 iPhones (like my last one) developed problems with a sliver or "wedge" developing on the display where the colors looked wrong too. Turns out, the substrate backing was peeling away from the back of the LCD due to heat buildup. Another known issue Apple is swapping phones out for, on a case-by-case basis.

I still love Apple products, but I don't expect them to magically have "better quality" than everybody else when they have their stuff assembled in the same places everybody else does. At this point, I just hope their customer service after the sale is better, so they'll exchange all the stuff of theirs that breaks or fails!

The first beta didn't really fix the embarassing issues with 2.0 of the iPhone OS.

I hope this version does, but I am not optimistic.

Apple's days of quality are long gone, sadly. This is the last time I will be an early adopter of their products. I am tired of getting burned by Apple's horrific quality of late.

 

[sunfast]

Reading all this makes me feel exceedingly fortunate that I've had no problems. It could be a bit snappier, as it were, but no major bugs of note.

 

[BWhaler]

i want "stability" more than any new featuers

i dont want "Auto-Quit" on my Safari

i dont want to wait 5+ sec to see my SMS or General Setting ....

i hate Firmware 2.0

I agree.

I don't want more features, Apple; just give us quality.

The iPhone really sucks now. Bugs, idiotic technical design decisions, etc. (e.g upgrading an app erases all of the data, saved progress, etc. Apple should fire whomever made that decision and the people who did not raise the red flag for it.)

To drill into the "app upgrade process" to highlight the problems with Apple in the past couple of years, I cannot comprehend how dumb that design decision.

Would they ever allow that functionality on the Mac? Never. When you try to imagine someone arguing this upgrade feature for a desktop--it will install an application, put the icon somewhere randomly on the desktop, and erase all the saved files--it is so obvious that it is a idiotic design decision.

And yes, I understand why it is this way, but as Steve says, don't stop at complexity when solving a problem. You stop at simple, elegant solutions.

Last September it was the OS on the iPod which was buggy as hell. Then there was Leopard, shipped about 4 months before it was commercial grade, and even with massive bug fixes still has things like Spaces/Firewall/etc. which are idiotically designed. Now we we get iPhone OS 2 and mobileme, which flat out does not work and has equally stupid design decisions.

Quality is the Achilles heal of Apple. If Microsoft and Dell were smart, this is how they would attack Apple. (Not that I would buy a Dell or Windows, but this is where they should attack since Apple has been weak on the quality front for years. It's just now that the world is noticing.)

 

[saminsocks]

i actually like this feature, and assumed it was on purpose. maybe it isn't. with the non-tactile feedback, it's nice to be able to make sure i previously hit the correct letter before going on to the next. i hate typing in the password, then waiting for the page to load only to find out in incorrectly typed it in. given strength of connection, it sometimes is a couple minute process. this has saved me that time for a couple instances already.

You can see what letter you're typing when it zooms in on it. I don't find the appearance of the last letter necessary. Granted, if I'm close enough to someone while typing in a password that he can see what I'm typing because the letter lingers it's either a really close friend or someone who has a gun in my back.

 

[dwsolberg]

No new features, please.

I was really excited to hear that Snow Leopard won't have any new features. OS X only needs tweaks and speed.

The same is even more true with the iPhone. With the App Store, it's amazing. Now let's have it work. The keyboard lag is embarrassing, and the delays are distracting. Stability and speed are the ONLY features I want. (After that, I do have a few ideas...)

 

[LiveCrunch]

You might read this if you want to know more about it.

http://tinyurl.com/iphone21firmware

 

[DiamondMac]

Ugh, was sending a text message and started off the message with an "A" which stuck for about 10 seconds followed by a "b" which then took 10 seconds to unstick

I just gave up

No thanks, too much time

Fix it, please, Apple!

 

[BWhaler]

The first beta didn't really fix the embarassing issues with 2.0 of the iPhone OS.

Apple's days of quality are long gone, sadly. I am tired of getting burned by Apple's horrific quality of late.

GREAT! Get a Dell, an Instinct and liberate us from your whining and drama!

I am still enjoying Apple products, even with a few glitches here and there. I am enjoying my iPhone 3G from day one. Never froze. Some Apps crashed but nothing major. The App store is great, fantastic solution.

Contacts sometime gets laggy, for 3 or 5 seconds. I don't cry tears of blood because of that. I prefer to keep using my iPhone rather than experiencing disasters and real horrific quality like "web browsing" in a LG dare or an Instinct.

In the meantime Apple continues to improve and iron out the quirks of their revolutionary products. Bravo.

Gus

Apple Apologists. They are all the same.

"go buy a Dell" they say, and they have no issues whatsoever.

(Then they go on to list a handful of quality issues, just like this poster did. )

This is why Steve hates the fan boys.

If you can't see the genuine problems with this launch, you're a fool. Every apple employee I know is talking about the storms in the hallway over this. Every single one.

Fan boys. Giving the Apple Community a bad name since 1978.

 

[vandozza]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)



Apple Apologists. They are all the same.

"go buy a Dell" they say, and they have no issues whatsoever.

(Then they go on to list a handful of quality issues, just like this poster did. )

This is why Steve hates the fan boys.

If you can't see the genuine problems with this launch, you're a fool. Every apple employee I know is talking about the storms in the hallway over this. Every single one.

Fan boys. Giving the Apple Community a bad name since 1978.

QFT.


can anyone tell me if the 3G reception issues are improved at all?

 

[binaryskies]

I must agree with the keyboard lag issue. Last night I needed to send an urgent reply to an email from my iPhone. In the end I had to give up as it was taking me so long just to type one word...

Ugh, was sending a text message and started off the message with an "A" which stuck for about 10 seconds followed by a "b" which then took 10 seconds to unstick...

Yeah, I have to agree it is really frustrating when that happens. What I usually do is push the home button. Wait around 2 seconds and then go back to typing the email or SMS. Once I do that it works without any lag.

 

[sellitman]

I'm still on 1.1.4 until all the bugs get fixed. My nearly one year old iPhone kept crashing ( Popping back to the home page) so I went to a store and they gave me a new (Old) iPhone. Luckily it had 1.1.4 on it instead of 2.0.

If they don't get their act together I won't upgrade mine for sure.

Also with all the cracks forming on the new iPhones.....I love my Aluminum model even better!

 

[Rybold]

Yeah, I have to agree it is really frustrating when that happens. What I usually do is push the home button. Wait around 2 seconds and then go back to typing the email or SMS. Once I do that it works without any lag.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try this from now on until the new 2.1 Update is released.

 

[DiamondMac]

QFT.


can anyone tell me if the 3G reception issues are improved at all?

Depends on where you are at

3G works great in some places and terrible to non-existent in many other places around New Orleans (all covered by the 3G AT&T map though). I have read many other posts on here saying the same thing

 

[vandozza]

Depends on where you are at

3G works great in some places and terrible to non-existent in many other places around New Orleans (all covered by the 3G AT&T map though). I have read many other posts on here saying the same thing

no the 3g "issues" run much deeper than coverage.

in australia we have had 3g coverage for quite a long time, the network is established.

i can put an iphone, moto v3x, and a nokia 6110 all side by side, on the same network, and see vastly different results.

the nokia and moto never show below FULL strength. the iphone 3g is lucky to have 1 bar of 3g reception, more likely it will revert to 2g or have "no signal"

there is something wrong with the iphone, and i'm hoping its a software fix.

 

[DiamondMac]

there is something wrong with the iphone, and i'm hoping its a software fix.

For some friends of mine, it works great at almost all times for them. Full bars whenever I am with him with great reception and speed.

 

[vandozza]

For some friends of mine, it works great at almost all times for them. Full bars whenever I am with him with great reception and speed.

your argument is hardly convincing... "For some friends..." "it works great at almost all times..."

i too have an iphone that sometimes works, almost well

from the evidence we are collecting in Australia -
- its only the 2100mhz band, the 850mhz is ok (we don't have 1900mhz 3g here.)
- there doesnt seem to be problems in cities, where you are picking up signal from multiple towers. the problem is more apparrent in fringe areas, where there is little overlap of signals, and you may be relying on one tower.
- of course you get a strong signal in cities, where there is often <500m between towers (close together to deal with call denisty more than is required for coverage.)
- the iPhone is capable of picking up a strong 850mhz 3g, or 2g signal, we are therefore hopeful that it's a software, network stack problem.

of course this is all speculation and I can only speak of what is being seen in Australia. (out of 100 people surveyed about 70 are having issues of some description.)

 

[DiamondMac]

your argument is hardly convincing... "For some friends..." "it works great at almost all times..."

i too have an iphone that sometimes works, almost well

from the evidence we are collecting in Australia -
- its only the 2100mhz band, the 850mhz is ok (we don't have 1900mhz 3g here.)
- there doesnt seem to be problems in cities, where you are picking up signal from multiple towers. the problem is more apparrent in fringe areas, where there is little overlap of signals, and you may be relying on one tower.
- of course you get a strong signal in cities, where there is often <500m between towers (close together to deal with call denisty more than is required for coverage.)
- the iPhone is capable of picking up a strong 850mhz 3g, or 2g signal, we are therefore hopeful that it's a software, network stack problem.

of course this is all speculation and I can only speak of what is being seen in Australia. (out of 100 people surveyed about 70 are having issues of some description.)

I apologize if you thought I was trying to "convince you" as I was just stating what several iPhone 3G customers have experienced with their iPhones which has been consistent, solid 3G service at home, work, and vacations without any drops or problems.

If you don't have that issue as I see many others do not, so be it but apparently some are getting the service they wanted from it and I doubt they are the only ones.

 

[JSUDaniel]

GREAT! Get a Dell, an Instinct and liberate us from your whining and drama!

I am still enjoying Apple products, even with a few glitches here and there. I am enjoying my iPhone 3G from day one. Never froze. Some Apps crashed but nothing major. The App store is great, fantastic solution.

Contacts sometime gets laggy, for 3 or 5 seconds. I don't cry tears of blood because of that. I prefer to keep using my iPhone rather than experiencing disasters and real horrific quality like "web browsing" in a LG dare or an Instinct.

In the meantime Apple continues to improve and iron out the quirks of their revolutionary products. Bravo.

Gus

I totally agree! I am so sick of all these people whining about Apple products. if you don't like Apple, DON'T BUY IT!

Personally, I recently switched from PC and have realized that Apple products are WORLDS ahead of Windows based PCs.

 

[cpljwlusmc]

I am an iPhone developer. How do I know if I am accessible to the iPhone 2.1 seed?

 

[solo84]

What's in the 2.1 firmware?

Looks like turn-by-turn GPS is in and also correctly working PUSH anyone heard anything else?

 

[adiemask]

Whats your source for the info about GPS