updating iPhone applications

Since purchasing a bunch of applications for my iPhone, I have on occassion received application updates on my iPhone. The App Store icon on the iPhone will have a red number appear on it, as if it has emails. That works fine, but I just discovered another method.

If you go to iTunes and choose Applications from the list of media available on your computer (upper left, where you can choose Music to get to your music files and playlists), you will get to see all of the software you have downloaded/purchased. On the lower right of that screen, there's a button called "Check for Updates". I had just done so and learned I had 12 application updates to download even though my iPhone was not indicating this. I downloaded them all and updated my iPhone.

One other thing I noticed was if I update an application via my iPhone, it builds the updated application into a new icon on a page wherever there's space for one. This then replaces the original icon you had on your iPhone. This means, if I update a program directly on the iPhone, I have to rearrange my icons to get them back to the way they were. But when I update via iTunes, all of my icons stay where they were.

So I guess we now have to check for updates in three places: Software Updates for our Mac via the menu, iPhone Software updates via iTunes (when the iPhone is connected) and now Application updates via iTunes. Fun fun.