Apple just published a maintenance release of the iPhone OS 2.2.1 for the iPhone, iPhone 3G and the iPod touch. It’s pretty heavy with more than 240 MB and brings some bug-fixes and improvements:

• Safari: stability improvements – feels snappier now
• Native Mail app: Fixed issue where some images saved from Mail do not display correctly in the Camera Roll – no fuzzy jpegs anymore
• iPod: Fixed issue that caused some Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio files to skip during playback

As the Safari WebViews are used in many apps to display information this upgrade brings more stability to the whole platform.

How to update to 2.2.1: Ensure you have a good internet-connection and some time. Plug in your iPhone to your Mac (or PC) – within iTunes you’ll get a dialog box. Click update … and be patient

Microsoft’s Windows Life Hotmail service wasn’t fun on the iPhone (and on other mobile devices), until now: You had to check the emails via the hotmail website. This was possible with modern smartphone browsers – but it was a usability nightmare.
Now, it looks like Microsoft had to give in the pressure of their customers and add POP3 service to access emails from Hotmail. It’s an old hat for all the other free-mail-providers – but an “innovation” for M$. Now even M$ customers can access their Hotmail-emails via a standard email-client.
This way, it’s even possible to use the native mail app on the iPhone to receive and edit and send mails via a Hotmail account. Also other smartphones like the T-Mobile Google G1 or the Blackberry can now access Hotmail. On the Mac and the PC mail clients work, too – like Apple Mail, Mozilla Thunderbird or M$ Entourage on the Mac.

The following account settings are needed:

• POP-Server: pop3.live.com (port 995)
• SMTP-Server: smtp.live.com (port 25)
• SSL-Encryption for POP and SMTP connections must be turned on.
• SMTP password authentication must be turned on, too.

New email-accounts can be set up on the iPhone via “Settings” > “Mail, contacts, calender”. Maybe this makes Hotmail a little bit more attractive …

Source: news.softpedia.com

Really amazing to read these new figures: 500,000,000 app downloads. Never heard of a number like this at one of the mobile operator portals of the pre-iPhone century Vodafone life or T-Motion would have dreamed of numbers like this.
But the 500 million app downloads can not be compared with the number of songs, sold on iTunes: Apple only revealed the complete number of app downloads – free and payed apps. So there is a fundamental difference between the number of (paid and free) apps and (only paid) songs.
More than 15,000 apps is also quite impressive – but it is getting harder and harder to find the apps you really like on the AppStore. There is a lot of room for improvements to meet the needs of consumers as well as developers.

Deutsche Bahn and T-Mobile extend their traveling WiFi HotSpot service at the ICE train routes. Now, also the route Frankfurt am Main – Hanover – Hamburg is covered with WiFi internet access (“railnet”). Overall, we have WiFi internet connection within the train on most of the ICE routes in Germany:

• Dortmund – Düsseldorf – Cologne (also via Hagen and Wuppertal)
• Cologne – Frankfurt am Main Airport
• Frankfurt am Main – Stuttgart – Munich
• Frankfurt am Main – Hanover – Hamburg

The service offers laptop and especially iPhone users an internet connection even if the train travels at a maximum speed of 300 km/h – more than 180 miles per hour! Im always impressed about the quite stable and fast internet connection even when traveling that fast. And the best thing of all: as a (German T-Mobile) iPhone user you don’t even have to pay for the WiFi connection in the train!

Source/picture: Deutsche Bahn

Tim Pritlove talked about the iPhone and the native application development for that mobile phone with Martin Pittenauer and Dominik Wagner. Mac users may be aware of Martin and Dominik as the Coding Monkeys with their first Mac OS X masterpiece: SubEthaEdit, a collaborative text editor for the Mac. In 2008 the Monkeys also developed some iPhone applications, like Circulator or Big Clock. Tim, Martin and Dominik all together realized Blinkenlights Stereoscope a simulation of the Blinkenlights Installation Toronto 2008. That’s why they all can tell a lot of stories of the similarities and differences of programming for Mac OS X and the iPhone OS. Overall a great mixture for those interested in iPhone developement as well as experts.

The only downside for all international blog readers: The podcast is in German only. Here’s the link to the podcast!