Well, I jumped the gun a bit and installed the iPhone 2.0 update.
Overall, I’m not super impressed … the incremental functionality improvements are rather limited.
Some of the applications look cool, but I’ve only played with a few of them.
What I’m really disappointed in is the lack of base functionality enhancements … things like ..
- No voice dial
- No stereo bluetooth
- No Google Calendar integration
- No Jabber / XMPP chat application (there were rumors about this)
- No cut & paste in the editor
Actually, the lack of Google Calendar integration is the biggest issue for me. The only calendaring application that iTunes will integrate with on windows is Outlook … and I absolutely despise Outlook.
From what I’ve been lead to believe, iTunes is supposed to integrate with any ‘iCal’ application (which, apparently, Outlook is one) … I’m quite surprised that nobody has written a basic synchronization application for Google Calendar that iTunes will integrate with. The fact that Thunderbird is (supposedly) an iCal client (when the appropriate extensions are installed), and iTunes doesn’t recognize it, leads me to believe that iTunes integrates with Outlook as an application and not as an iCal client.
The lack of voice dial and stereo bluetooth are annoying mostly because I consider that kind of functionality to be in the “Rev 1” category … especially from a company like Apple.
Considering all the hype, it’s kind of a let down.
The rumoured XMPP client is present and accounted for, but rather than a chat client it actually powers the notification service (it’s used for MobileMe’s push mail etc.).
Sam, That’s very interesting. Do you know if it’s documented anywhere? ‘course I’m still surprised that nobody has come up with a XMPP chat client yet. I suspect it’s coming though.