iOS 4, iBooks for iPhone Now Available For Download

John Brownlee ()

iOS 4, iBooks for iPhone Now Available For Download

iOS 4 is now available for download through iTunes, adding over a hundred new features to the iPhone and iPod Touch, including multitasking. If you’ve got an iPhone 3G, 3GS or iPod Touch (second gen or above), plug your iDevice into your USB port and hit the “Update” button in iTunes now.

Busy updating? You can also now officially grab iBooks for iPhone through the App Store as well.

What do you think of the new OS? Let us know in the comments.

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iPhone, News, Software, Top stories |

  • joh

    iBooks requires at least iOS 3.2, which means you need an iPad or an iPhone or iPod touch with 4.0. This means no iBooks for the first generation iPhones and iPod touch. This is mean, Apple.

  • Conrad

    No home screen wallpaper for the 3G? Seriously? Do they think the processor can’t handle putting an image behind those icons or…

    Stupid. As a avid Apple Evangelist I feel cheated by this decision.

  • seth

    ok, i have iPT 2nd gen. I am extremely pleased with everything i got. very limited, but i’m really happy with iBooks and the FOLDERS!!! omg i have been wanting this since the beginning… anyway, really pleased. only disappointments are limit of 12 apps per folder and no folders within folders. i understand why, but still. another thing is no ipod controls with the double tap home. i know that multi-tasking wont come with it, but i would have liked to see that ipod controls and orientation lock that pops up. other than that fantastic update!

  • Cinar

    Just updated. Folders ok! Mailboxes ok! Home screen wallpapers??? euuuhh!!! What?? Not available for the iPhone 3G!!! Oh come on!!!

  • joh

    With folders and drop shadows behind icons and text you need enough memory to keep all that without reloading and rerendering everything every time you go back to the home screen and/or a fast CPU and fast graphics. I can understand Apple to disable this if it would work only slow and crappy anyway. There is not much room in those 128MB for much luxury, you need every MB for the OS and apps. And with the iPhone 4 now sporting 512MB I’m pretty sure that those things will not be supported anymore with the next iOS iteration (say 5.0).

  • David Fulero

    I have a 3G but I’m not even bothering, I’m getting the 4 in 3 days hopefully.

  • David

    This backup is taking f’in forever.

  • Adri

    I just downloaded the iOS 4, but all my pictures that were already on my phone in albums are blurry…. i am in the process of re syncing them hoping it will fix the issue, but not too pleased with it as I am obsessed with photography. Everything else seems great so far!

  • Nick

    Lack of support for the 3g is simply astounding. It is a facade created by apple to persuade you to buy a new device.

    This is the exact kind of support we have seen time and time again from apple. I will be taking my business elsewhere.

  • Michael

    I understand the 3G not having multitasking, but wallpaper? Come on. That’s just silly.

  • Rodrigo

    iOS4 totally rocks on my iPhone 3GS!!!
    First thing I noticed: faster boot-up and shutdown!

  • Jacob

    still downloading the os to my computer. havent synced it yet.

  • dboy

    * facepalm *

  • joh

    I just got the detailed iOS 4 changes via the Apple security mailing list. This update is *full* of security fixes, dozens of them. The first gen devices not getting any of these is a really bad thing. I just hope Apple will provide some in-between update for the original iPod touch and iPhone. Otherwise they will be great targets for all kinds of attacks.

  • http://ideorium.net belenus

    back-up takes ages :(

  • Sameet Gurusti

    Good to security update with iOS4. Just left phone to download update. Taking VERy long time. Happy to multitasking and have wallpaper! Sorry to all old iPhone. Tough luck, pony up and buy new one. Or get good deal on 3GS Instead. Time to upgrade!

  • Joshua

    iBooks won’t sync the PDF’s I put into iTunes.
    I even changed them to .epub format & still don’t show up.
    I don’t get it!

  • tarkin

    64GB 3rd Gen iPod touch updated very quickly. 8GB 2nd Gen very slow updating. Also, photos are blurry and very low-res. Will try resyncing them.

  • Dragosi

    Hi guys, I have a second generation Ipod touch 8 gb and i just updated to ios 4.0. Can anyone tell me why don’t I have iBooks on my ipod? I have the other features (except multitasking, home screen) but i should have iBooks.

  • Levo

    Upgrade was painless — maybe 20 min of backup and update combined. Maybe less. I have been up and running on iOS 4 for a few hours now. I love it! Folders are FABULOUS. I have re-organized from 9 screens of apps in total disarray to 2 screens of apps in neat folders.

    I haven’t spent much time with multi-tasking yet, but it works.

  • Paul

    iBooks is not automatically installed, you need to get it from the app store.

  • http://hawered.com Joshua Jenkins

    I have iBooks installed on my 2g iPod touch but whenever books download they hang at 100% and eventually disappear. I have spoken with 2 Apple senior advisors about the problem and the are reporting it to engineering. I don’t know what to do but I know others have the same issue, and if you fixed yours, please let me know!

  • cram

    hey guys, just as an info, apple does say on their website that multitasking and wallpapers arent supported on ipod 2g and iphone 3g.
    interestingly though you CAN enable these features by jailbreaking your device. i personally have an ipod 2g with 8gb, just jailbroke it today, and wallpapers and multitasking work fine. the whole os seems kind of slow, but if you use sbsettings to control which apps are running and quit the ones you dont need everything works just great.
    im not saying you should jailbreak, im saying if you want the multitasking and the wallpapers, there is a way! :)

  • JasonBST

    I am BEYOND mad. The only reason I did this stupid update was becuase we could (per Apples web site) add a home screen pic. To some this may seem stupid, but I had a reason for doing it. Now not only did this dumb thing not back up but after 4 hours of waiting but it deleted 179 pics 32 songs and most of my contacts. I would never buy another Apple product EVER. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE …. if you are reading this and have not yet downloaded the new release DO NOT DO IT. I am not the only person that had these troubles.

  • charles0101

    if you have a mac u can jail break 4.0…. and u can open up a .plist file some were in the ipod/iphone and enable wallpapers and multitasking…. i am not shure what the file is called :(

  • http://www.menumusings.com Mattheous @ Menu Musings

    I’m still rather ticked that there isn’t a Portrait Lock for iBooks. I mean really, Apple? Is it really that hard to do?