iOS 4 Is Here -- Almost Smooth Sailing
As of this past Monday, Apple's latest incarnation of its iPhone OS was released to the public. Now rebranded "iOS", with this version specifically called "iOS 4", there are a lot of features available to the later model iPhone and iPod touch models. It seems a little weird that Apple would release the latest and greatest version of its OS before the practically-here iPhone 4s come out... maybe they are hoping that the large installed based of 3GS users will find the significant issues with the the OS (and with iTunes 9.2, which is required for the installation of iOS 4).
The installation itself took around 45 minutes, including times for iTunes to perform backups and for the install image to be downloaded and verified. There was also a carrier update (in my case from Rogers); this was a quick download (by comparison to iOS 4) and installation was equally brief. Then, after the updates were done it was smooth sailing.
Almost.
First, let me say that iOS 4 is nice. Very nice. It seems a bit snappier on my 3GS, although that may be my imagination. I have heard, however, that if you are using a 3G that you will experience some slowdowns after the install. You know all about the new features of the OS, as they've been plastered just about everywhere (Switched, Engadget, Ars Technica, etc.) on the web. For me there were a few things I needed to immediately do:
Onwards to wallpaper. This went off without a hitch, and I am now in love with the water bubble wallpaper that shipped with iOS 4. There are many wallpaper sites out there if you are looking for alternatives (I personally love InterfaceLift for both Mac desktop and iPhone wallpapers, but that's just me). The key thing to remember is that you don't want to pick something that is too busy... that will make the icons / labels / status bar look just as busy and confused.
My next thing to try was Folders. They are intuitive to set up and to use (especially if you've seen demo videos online before!). Simply dragging the icon from one app over that of another will create a folder. It will use some intelligence to name the folder (likely based on the App Store category for the apps) but you can override this. I'm not sure yet if you can ever rename a folder once it's created or not... something I'll have to try the next time I'm in iTunes (update: I just did... and folders can be fully renamed and manipulated... nice!), I guess. After fiddling with folders for about a half hour I've gone from eight screens of icons to only two. Yes, it'll take me an extra tap to get to apps within folders... but it was taking me several swipes simply to find the icons previously, so I guess this is a win. One bug that cropped up now and then when I was setting up my folders was that is I was dragging an icon from a different screen onto a folder, sometimes the iOS Springboard got a little confused, and instead of inserting the icon within the folder it tried reshuffling the icons on the screen (folder and otherwise) to make room for the icon I was trying to drop. After a few confused attempts I would let it drop onto the screen, then I would drag the icon from its new location and into the folder with no problems. A minor bug that I'm sure Apple will get around to fixing in the inevitable iOS 4.01...
By this time I decided to look for iBooks again. Couldn't find it using iTunes... but the AppStore app did find it. It just wouldn't install... for about a half hour. In hindsight, it is clear that Apple rolled-out the iBooks app after iOS 4, and that these things take a while to propagate. Since I've been using iBooks for a while on my iPad, I already had a number of books ready to be copied to the iPhone while it was busy installing. This went off without a hitch and once the app was installed I opened the book I'm currently reading on my iPad. A little smaller (obviously) but still very nice. The new bookmarking feature was cool, so naturally I tried that out right away. And since I was in a multitasking kind of mood, I had the iPad also looking for app updates in the App Store. Lo and behold, there was a new version of iBooks ready for it as well (not thinking that it was the same universal app, duh). That installation went smoothly and I tried it out.
Oops.
This version of iBooks has the cool feature that it will synchronize bookmarks between devices (although I'm not sure what it bases this on... Apple ID? MobileMe ID?). So, let's see, I've been reading one book for quite some time on my iPad, then I open it in iBooks on the iPhone, open it to a page near the beginning, then drop a bookmark. So, when I subsequently opened the same book on my iPad my current reading position was... set to wherever it was on the iPhone... several hundred pages back from where I'd been reading it. Oy. Should have been prepared for that, since anytime synchronization is involved weird (or just unexpected) things can happen.
Which reminds me... after letting the iPhone sync again I got a pop up from MobileMe Sync (okay, technically iSync) telling me that 250 of my bookmarks would be deleted from this computer if I agreed to sync, and would I like to go ahead? Having just been burnt (burned? sometimes English is a bit too fussy) by iBooks, I decided to take out some insurance... so I made a copy of my Bookmarks.plist file and told iSync to go ahead. Naturally it deleted my bookmarks. Restoring the file brought them back and forcing a re-sync restored them as far as MobileMe was concerned.
Or so I thought.
It turns out that there isn't an easy way to see Bookmarks on MobileMe itself (the web site, I mean). So I was taking it on faith that it had my bookmarks and was doing nice things with them... the iPhone seemed to have them intact so all looked good. Except that the iPad now had no bookmarks whatsoever! Double oy. Looking around the Internet gave me a few ideas on how to force a re-sync on the iPad (most involved turning off MobileMe sync on the iPad, letting it remove any remaining bookmarks, rebooting the device and re-enabling sync. Tried it.... and it didn't work. Well, it did work but it took one and a half days to finally clue in that the bookmarks weren't there and copied them over.
I wonder what my next set of iOS4 side-effects will be.... I know I'll regret pondering that...
The installation itself took around 45 minutes, including times for iTunes to perform backups and for the install image to be downloaded and verified. There was also a carrier update (in my case from Rogers); this was a quick download (by comparison to iOS 4) and installation was equally brief. Then, after the updates were done it was smooth sailing.
Almost.
First, let me say that iOS 4 is nice. Very nice. It seems a bit snappier on my 3GS, although that may be my imagination. I have heard, however, that if you are using a 3G that you will experience some slowdowns after the install. You know all about the new features of the OS, as they've been plastered just about everywhere (Switched, Engadget, Ars Technica, etc.) on the web. For me there were a few things I needed to immediately do:
- Grab iBooks
- Change Home Screen Wallpaper
- Organize the Home Screen using folders
Onwards to wallpaper. This went off without a hitch, and I am now in love with the water bubble wallpaper that shipped with iOS 4. There are many wallpaper sites out there if you are looking for alternatives (I personally love InterfaceLift for both Mac desktop and iPhone wallpapers, but that's just me). The key thing to remember is that you don't want to pick something that is too busy... that will make the icons / labels / status bar look just as busy and confused.
My next thing to try was Folders. They are intuitive to set up and to use (especially if you've seen demo videos online before!). Simply dragging the icon from one app over that of another will create a folder. It will use some intelligence to name the folder (likely based on the App Store category for the apps) but you can override this. I'm not sure yet if you can ever rename a folder once it's created or not... something I'll have to try the next time I'm in iTunes (update: I just did... and folders can be fully renamed and manipulated... nice!), I guess. After fiddling with folders for about a half hour I've gone from eight screens of icons to only two. Yes, it'll take me an extra tap to get to apps within folders... but it was taking me several swipes simply to find the icons previously, so I guess this is a win. One bug that cropped up now and then when I was setting up my folders was that is I was dragging an icon from a different screen onto a folder, sometimes the iOS Springboard got a little confused, and instead of inserting the icon within the folder it tried reshuffling the icons on the screen (folder and otherwise) to make room for the icon I was trying to drop. After a few confused attempts I would let it drop onto the screen, then I would drag the icon from its new location and into the folder with no problems. A minor bug that I'm sure Apple will get around to fixing in the inevitable iOS 4.01...
By this time I decided to look for iBooks again. Couldn't find it using iTunes... but the AppStore app did find it. It just wouldn't install... for about a half hour. In hindsight, it is clear that Apple rolled-out the iBooks app after iOS 4, and that these things take a while to propagate. Since I've been using iBooks for a while on my iPad, I already had a number of books ready to be copied to the iPhone while it was busy installing. This went off without a hitch and once the app was installed I opened the book I'm currently reading on my iPad. A little smaller (obviously) but still very nice. The new bookmarking feature was cool, so naturally I tried that out right away. And since I was in a multitasking kind of mood, I had the iPad also looking for app updates in the App Store. Lo and behold, there was a new version of iBooks ready for it as well (not thinking that it was the same universal app, duh). That installation went smoothly and I tried it out.
Oops.
This version of iBooks has the cool feature that it will synchronize bookmarks between devices (although I'm not sure what it bases this on... Apple ID? MobileMe ID?). So, let's see, I've been reading one book for quite some time on my iPad, then I open it in iBooks on the iPhone, open it to a page near the beginning, then drop a bookmark. So, when I subsequently opened the same book on my iPad my current reading position was... set to wherever it was on the iPhone... several hundred pages back from where I'd been reading it. Oy. Should have been prepared for that, since anytime synchronization is involved weird (or just unexpected) things can happen.
Which reminds me... after letting the iPhone sync again I got a pop up from MobileMe Sync (okay, technically iSync) telling me that 250 of my bookmarks would be deleted from this computer if I agreed to sync, and would I like to go ahead? Having just been burnt (burned? sometimes English is a bit too fussy) by iBooks, I decided to take out some insurance... so I made a copy of my Bookmarks.plist file and told iSync to go ahead. Naturally it deleted my bookmarks. Restoring the file brought them back and forcing a re-sync restored them as far as MobileMe was concerned.
Or so I thought.
It turns out that there isn't an easy way to see Bookmarks on MobileMe itself (the web site, I mean). So I was taking it on faith that it had my bookmarks and was doing nice things with them... the iPhone seemed to have them intact so all looked good. Except that the iPad now had no bookmarks whatsoever! Double oy. Looking around the Internet gave me a few ideas on how to force a re-sync on the iPad (most involved turning off MobileMe sync on the iPad, letting it remove any remaining bookmarks, rebooting the device and re-enabling sync. Tried it.... and it didn't work. Well, it did work but it took one and a half days to finally clue in that the bookmarks weren't there and copied them over.
I wonder what my next set of iOS4 side-effects will be.... I know I'll regret pondering that...
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