Undo Typing

If you happen to shake the phone when there is nothing to undo then the “Nothing to Undo” dialog will slide onto the screen.

Nothing to Undo

This handy feature isn’t available everywhere in the phone.  For example, the keypad used for actually dialing telephone numbers does not support undo.

Text Sending Error

Clicking the exclamation icon brings up a handy dialog to ask if I want to send it again.

Try Again?

I don’t recall having seen this feature before, so it might be new with the iPhone 3 OS release.

iPhone Update

Voice Memos

Apple added the ability to record voice memos.  I was a little bit peeved that they forced it on to the main screen, however, as they kicked one of my applications off to do it.

Voice Memos

Searching

One of the long-awaited features is the ability to search the iPhone.

Searching

Finding

Text Messaging

Apple made one minor improvement in text messaging.  They changed the progress bar from an overlay that covered the entire screen to a little bar in the top of the screen.  This has the effect of allowing you to continue with composing your next message while one is sending.  That is particularly useful when you are trying to have a quick-witted conversation.

New Progress Bar

As an added bonus, you can now turn your iPhone sideways to send test messages.

Sideways Text

I’m not sure how useful of a feature that actually as you don’t really get to see much of the conversation.  Of course, the text bubble could have all been placed on one line.  The keys are bigger, so it may help those who have difficulty hitting the correct one.

The solution is, as mentioned in many places, to repeatedly plug in and remove the jack.  This will convince the phone that the headphones are not plugged in.  Be sure to have the iPod playing something so you can hear when the phone resets itself.

It would be nice if Apple would determine what the source of the problem is and issue a patch that resolves it.

While today’s experience wasn’t as bad as that last session, it was not without its problems.  The iTunes application kept seizing the window focus and telling me about its progress.  While I do appreciate knowing what applications are doing, it is not “okay” to steal the computer’s focus just to tell me that the application is still doing what I just told it to do.

iPhone Update Focus Stealing

This sort of messaging just isn’t that important.  I just don’t need to know that badly.  It is rude for applicaitons to take over like this.  Apparently whatever task I was performing while this update is taking place is simply not important enough to allow me to continue doing it.  Sorry, Apple, but you have things backwards in this.

I wonder:  would the iTunes application have behaved this badly if I had used my MacBook Pro to update the software on the iPhone?

Everything started OK. iTunes told me about all of the nifty things my iPhone would be able to do right after the update.

I was soon greeted by this rather disturbing message:

So I did. iTunes then informed me that there was a problem with my internet security settings were wrong.

A quick check revealed that both SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 were enabled.

Trying again didn’t really change anything. I received the message a few times, but it couldn’t give it much attention as I needed to get some actual work done.

Later, iTunes would sit on the “Accessing iTunes Store” step for extended periods.

Eventually, it would timeout with a slightly more informative message than the SSL/TLS message.

(Yes, I did switch computers during this process. I’m good programmer after all … try different tricks to see if something works …)

By this stage, I knew that Apple was having problems. I would just have to be patient. I figured I’d check on Apple’s web site to see if they had any sage advice. No such luck.

So, I spent much of the morning looking at this:

After about 4 ½ hours I finally received a message on the phone that all would be well.

And Apple’s web site today tells how successful the iPhone 3G rollout and upgrade for existing phones was.

There are a lot of seemingly interesting new features on the updated iPhone. It will be interesting to see if the iPhone will be able to attach to my employer’s rather finicky VPN for one. The ability to add third-party applications also looks interesting.