So much for all the speculation then. At last night’s Macworld Expo keynote, Apple boss Steve Jobs DIDN’T announce any new iPhones. Nope, not even a memory-boosted 16GB model, let alone a 3G iPhone. Although disappointing if you were hanging on to buy one, at least it’s good news if you’re an iPhone early adopter, fearful that your first-gen model would be trumped less than a couple of months after you bought it.
However, iPhone did feature in Jobs’ keynote in other ways. For starters, he announced that Apple has now sold more than four million of the handsets, and reckons it’s secured 19.5% of the US smartphone market - behind only Research In Motion’s BlackBerry range. More importantly, iPhone is getting a firmware update today with some new features. v1.1.3 is available today - including in the UK, since I’m downloading it via iTunes now.
It includes a reworked Maps application that’s easier to use, and has the ability to find your location. Obviously, this isn’t based on GPS, so presumably it’s using the Cell ID of your handset, via O2’s local masts. Also new is WebClips, which let you save Safari bookmarks as icons on your iPhone Home Screen. You can also customise the Home Screen by rearranging icons in whatever order you like.
Other stuff: there’s IMAP support for Gmail, and support for Lyrics in the iPhone’s iPod mode, although I’ve yet to get hands-on to find out how this works exactly - whether you have to download the lyrics yourself, or even pay extra for them from the iTunes Store. The iPhone’s video player has been improved with support for chapters, titles and alternative language tracks.
Big news at the Macworld keynote was Apple’s new iTunes Movie Rentals service, which in the US will let people rent films for $3.99 or $2.99 (the former for new releases, the latter for older flicks). It’s not launching here until later this year, but the new iPhone firmware includes support for it anyway, so we’ll be ready for rented movies on the move when they do become available.
Finally, after downloading the new firmware, you’ll be able to - wait for it - send text messages to multiple recipients at once. Cor! I’m not sure what’s more shocking - the fact that this wasn’t an option from day one, or the fact that many of us didn’t even realise it had been omitted.
Anyway, iPhone firmware 1.1.3 is a fat 162MB download, so it’s coming down now to my PC. Once I’ve got to grips with it, expect some hands-on impressions of the new features. There’s also a video tour on the Apple website, via the link below.
Oh please, please stop talking about the iPhone. Nobody cares. This used to be a good site.