I’ve got a 3GS and just downloaded the new OS about 10 minutes ago.
Here’s what I’ve found so far:
Go to contacts; edit contact, scroll down - you can now choose a ringtone and a text sound for that contact.
Go to settings; scroll down to Notes - you can now choose the font that your notes have.
Go to Safari; open a page; choose a word on that page. Now type that word into the box marked Google - at the bottom of the suggested terms is a bar that says “On this page (X matches)”. Scroll below this bar and you’ll see Find “searchterm”. Click that and it will highlight the word in yellow. Bottom-right is a new button marked “Next”. Click that and it will scroll through the highlighted search terms.
Er… that’s all I got so far. The last feature is the only one that I think is actually particularly good. I don’t think this is particularly revolutionary for this platform. I’m starting to think along these lines (NSFW language).
iPhone 4 users get a load more text tones (big deal). iPad people get a shitload of stuff.
Most of the changes were bringing the iPad into the world of 4.2 – folders, multitasking, etc. Airplay and Airprint now work, apparently, but I don’t have the hardware available (and probably wouldn’t use them all that much anyhow).
I don’t have it yet but you (jjimm) seem to have found all of the iPhone stuff with the exception of Airprint which Garfield mentioned. This was, indeed, mainly an iPad thing.
I’m slightly outraged that Apple actually charge for the latter. You get 90% of the features free from Google, and it’s not like they’re selling the damn hardware at cost (or are they? Maybe it’s the app store and iTunes they’re making money from. Anyway, they’re making a fuckshitload of profit from iPhones in general, at least extend the hand of gratitude by not charging £5 a month or whatever it is).
Doesn’t require a MobileMe account anymore – you just sign in with your appleID. I just did it with my iPad and it works like a charm. Apparently you do need an iPhone 4, an iPad or a 4th Generation iPod Touch though – don’t know why, maybe something to do with the tracking abilities?
I just tried to log in to MobileMe with my Apple ID and got a message saying “Sorry, your phone does not qualify you for a free MobileMe account”. So I’m guessing you do actually need one, just it’s free to generation 4 users.
I just downloaded a podcast and was able to navigate iPod while the podcast was downloading. Ever since 4.0 the phone would nearly freeze during iTunes downloads.
One thing that sucked was that my MacBook froze when the iOS update finished. Is it me, or is Apple putting out some bad software? I think Safari freezes at least a few times a week. And iTunes always has performance issues. I think I get the damn beach ball nearly daily nowadays.
Well, there is a difference between a MobileMe account and an Apple ID. An AppleID is something you use as a login to the iTunes app store. Doesn’t have to be a MobileMe acount.
A MobileMe account is an account associated with a “me.com” address (or a “mac.com” address if you signed up back when they were still using “mac.com”). You use the Apple ID to buy stuff from iTunes, and the Apple ID login is an e-mail address, but it doesn’t have to be a current or working e-mail address. For example, I signed up for an Apple ID years ago, using an earthlink e-mail address. I don’t use that e-mail address, so I told the iTunes store that I have a new e-mail address. But my Apple ID login is still the old earthlink e-mail address, even though that e-mail address will stop working one day. I asked them if I could change my Apple ID login to my new e-mail address, and they told me no. I don’t want to start a new Apple ID, because I have all these iTunes purchases associated to my original Apple ID with an earthlink login name.
the MobileMe account can be used for e-mail, to have an “iDisk” (virtual hard drive hosted on an Apple server), synchronizing of contacts / calendar items / safari bookmarks etc. amongst several computers, photo galleries, and things like that.
I don’t know if this applies to what you are trying to do, but MobileMe accounts and Apple IDs are two different things.
ETA: Now that I re-read your post, it looks like you already understand this, and the Apple ID is not sufficient to use the feature you are trying to use. Sorry! But since I typed all that stuff in, I’ll let it stand.
iPhone 3GS user here… yeah we get to change the text message alert tone, but can’t use a custom ringtone. So now we can choose from 6 tones instead of just having the default. Big frikkin deal. Whoop Dee Doo.
There are about 17 new text message tones, pretty goofy/fun too but some sort of odd ot be text tones.
I have a iPhone 4 so I logged in with my Apple account and did the find my phone thing. Very cool, map showed my house exactly (duh but still neat). Hopefully I will never need this though!
And I think this is a good place to bring this up:
I wonder what the process is for adding features. Each update brings really minor obscure changes (the ability to change the default font in notes to something very similar… for instance) but I wonder how many people have asked Apple for more glaringly absent features…
An audible battery low warning (all iphone’s batteries die stealthilly. Your phone is sat in your pocket unable to receive calls, and you have absolutely no idea). My iphone is the first phone I’ve ever owned that didn’t give me an audible warning when it was time to plug it in. And I’ve owned many phones!
An improvement to the app-killing feature and/or the option of turning off multitasking (I know they don’t actually use any performance resource. but some do, and in any case I like the reassuring feeling of knowing there’s nothing ‘running’)
At the moment it’s just silly. Double tap the button, aim for the red minus, wait for apps to shuffle to the right, aim for the minus… repeat) An obvious and easy addition would be a ‘close all’ button as the first thing on the list.