The long awaited upgrade for the Apple iPhone is now ready to be downloaded and installed from iTunes. Names iOS 4 the OS upgrade is free to all iPhone users and will install automatically when you connect your iPhone to iTunes and press the update button.

In a slightly unusual move Apple have released the iPhone OS update before the new devices hit the stores. Normally it is the other way round.

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One of the main bugbears with the iPhone is the lack of multitasking functionality.  The new iPhone OS iOS 4 introduces multitasking, but it is not inherent.  The developers need to code specifically to allow multitasking.  TomTom have announced that the next version of thier software will support both iOS 4 and multitasking.

This means that you will be able to run your Turn by Turn navigation app alongside your favorite Speed Camera Warning app (assuming that supports multitasking too).

Press release from TomTom follows:

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Back in January we saw a demonstration of Destinator 9 on the iPhone at CES. It has taken a few months but now it is available in the Apple AppStore for Western Europe. With a price tag of £30 ($50) it represents great value compared to Navigon at £70 and TomTom at £53, but is more comparable with ALK’s CoPilot at £36.

Destinator 9 is a fully featured Turn by Turn navigation system with voice guidance and featuring Navteq mapping. It also has iPod controls, easy to use POIs including creation of your own ‘StickyPOIs’ but seems to lack importing of custom POIs, and does not have support for Speed Cameras.

The full Destinator Press Release follows:

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When the iPhone was launched there was really two competitors in the Smartphone market: Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Blackberry was aimed very much at email and the corporate market, whilst Microsoft’s Windows Mobile was for the techno savvy. Along came Apple with the iPhone and the App Store and iTunes and voila we have a mass market consumer product.

Apple decided to control the system as much as possible with single carrier agreements, a very closed development environment, allowing you only to load apps and music via the App Store and iTunes.

The ‘New Kid on the block’ is Android which is exactly the opposite. This has been adopted by T-Mobile, Sprint, and in a few days time Verizon Droid. The “I Don’t” advert for Droid highlights the restrictive features of the iPhone Platform.
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Ahoy there me hearties!!!

If you are a sailor and want to keep an electronic version of your logbook then RockAByte may have the answer for you with the JourSail application available in the AppStore. This app basically allows you to record pertinent data of your voyage, and then send it via email to friends and family.

The GPS and iPhone clock are used to timestamp and log position with each entry. Each entry can be displayed on an interactive map. I assume that this is over the wireless connection which, of course will not be available at sea…

Available for £3.49 or $5.99 this seems to be somewhat overpriced for the functionality provided.

Available on the iTunes AppStore
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In the last week we have had a number of announcements from GPS companies regarding Turn by Turn navigation for the iPhone. Yesterday AT&T added their offering to the market available for “FREE” on the iTunes App Store. However it seems that Apple have allowed AT&T to break all the rules…

The AT&T Navigator application is free to download, but to use it you need to pay a monthly subscription of $9.99 directly to AT&T in your monthly billing. This is a double rule break. Firstly Apple states that all applications that require subscriptions or in-app purchases must be chargeable in the first place. Secondly AT&T are openly billing their clients outside the App Store (and assumable not passing Apple any commissions).

Now the question here is are Apple setting a president and does this mean that any developer can use the same principle to provide a subscription service? Or is it that the wireless carrier waves a big stick and demands one-off policy changes. Knowing Apple I would not think it is the latter, but I also doubt it is the former so what is really going on here?
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After the excitement of the iPhone OS 3.0 upgrade coming out yesterday I decided to upgrade my iPod Touch. After connecting to iTunes I was met with a screen telling me I needed to pay for the upgrade.

Woah hold on are iPod Touch users second class Apple citizens? This was something that Apple had kept very quiet in the run up to the launch of the new OS, but I suppose alarm bells should have rung when there was no beta software for the iPod Touch.

The upgrade costs $9.99 on the US AppStore or £5.99 on the UK one.

Well we have been waiting for this moment for a while now, but the Apple iPhone OS 3.0 has just arrived for download. Use iTunes to upload it.

So having looked at the hardware for the new iPhones it is time to look at the software. For quite a while now the new iPhone OS 3.0 software has been in Beta and despite NDAs pretty much everything leaked about the functionality that would be included.

A couple of things that didn’t leak (or were not paid any attention) were items like Video, Voice Control, Access to Accessories, Voice memos, and the Nike+ interface.

For me the main features of the new OS3.0 software are:

• Copy and Paste
• Security
• Faster OS
• Video capture and editing
• Access to accessories
• More bluetooth protocols
• Personal Area Networking
• In App Purchase
• Push Notifications
• Access to Maps in the application
• Access to the iPod Library
• Streaming Video
• Compass support

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If you have an Apple TV or even some remote speakers connected to your iTunes application on your Mac, then you will know that it is quite tricky trying to control it to get the content you really want.

Apple have developed an iPhone application to overcome some of those limitations: Remote.

Apple Remote connects to either your Apple TV or iTunes using WiFi.  This then allows your iPhone to act as a remote controller for your device.

You can connect to a number of devices or iTunes Libraries, but only one is active at any one time.  To make the initial connection you need to authorise the iPhone on the Apple TV of iTunes library so you cant just find Apple TVs around you and start to control them…

Once connected you have pretty much full functionality for an iTunes library, being able to browse by playlist, artist or album.  You can also tap on the search to find the particular item you want.

Tapping on the more icon presents the menu shown to the left.  This provides control of some of the lesser used features of the iTunes library.  From here you can gain access to your video collection, podcasts and TV shows.

In fact this just about mirrors the functionality that you can find in iTunes, and this is great for controlling the iTunes on your computer, but less so for the Apple TV.

In fact for the Apple TV the whole application is really back to front.  The controls for movies are hidden behind a couple of taps.  That is not to say that Remote is not useful, more that is it not as useful as it could be.

The Apple TV has many more functions than the iTunes Library on your computer, and none of these are catered for.  Remote cannot be used as a substitute for the little remote control provided with your Apple TV.  Even the very basic minimum of adding a dial control and text entry would make this a far better application.

Available from the Apple Appstore as a free application

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