Considering the depths that Apple fans will plump into a new version of iOS even before it’s released — let alone a month later — we’re amazed to hear that developers are still stumbling upon new features of iOS 4.2… especially when those features are as buzzworthy as augmented reality. Yet that’s just what Occipital has discovered lurking in the firmware of Apple’s latest iteration of its popular mobile operating system.
There’s already a few hacks out there to allow you to extend the admittedly rather limited AirPlay functionality of iOS 4.2 to run on non-iOS devices: last week, for example, TUAW’s Erica Sadun released AirPlayer, an app that tricks AirPlayer into think your Mac’s an AppleTV.
Now, though, plucky and ingenious hackers are figuring out how to do the same thing on non-Apple hardware, and the first fruit of those labors has now been released for Linux.
With every major new release of iOS comes a period of anticipation for the next release of a stable jailbreak courtesy of the iPhone Dev Team… and the good news this time around is that it doesn’t look like iOS 4.2.1 set the Dev Team back very far at all.
One of the most frustrating aspects of iOS 4.2 and OS X 10.6.5 is how Apple’s new wireless printing standard, AirPrint, was gimped at the last minute from running on pretty much every shared network printer connected to a Mac to only officially supported on 11 AirPrint-compatible printers.
One iPad owner named Stan was so frustrated, in fact, that he wrote to Steve Jobs. “You got me all hyped about AirPrint. Now with iOS 4.2 released, I find out that I can only print on 11 select printers. Seriously?!”
Seriously, replies Steve, before reassuring Stan that the move to driverless, wireless printing is a vast undertaking, and that iOS 4.2’s AirPrint support is only the first step.
It’s been well over six months since we last heard that Apple might be considering dropping its MobileMe subscription fee, but newly discovered code in the iOS 4.2 and 4.2.1 gold master builds suggest that Apple hasn’t scrapped plans for MobileFree: in fact, it could launch imminently.
Apple has just released another gold master candidate of its long-awaited iOS 4.2 firmware to developers. This version is iOS 4.2.1, and we assume it quashes the Wi-Fi bug that’s recently been affecting the iPad.
MacRumors reports that Apple has instructed developers not to resubmit their applications under the new build, suggesting that only minor fixes are included in this update.
Unfortunately it’s not the iOS 4.2 news many of us have been anticipating, however, it’s nice to see Apple are fixing these bugs before they release the firmware to the public.
Developers can get their hands on iOS 4.2.1 via the iOS Dev Centre.
Last week’s great disappointment was the discovery that Apple had mostly pulled AirPrint support from OS X 10.6.5, which would allow you to print documents directly from iOS to almost any shared network printer. Native AirPrint support was trimmed only to a small number of AirPrint-compatible HP printers, and while hacks exist to get AirPrint support back via the command line, they’re a little beyond the capability of most users.
Enter FingerPrint, a new application from Collobos Software that enables AirPrint printing over Bonjour for many of the omitted printers. It accomplishes its neat trick by fooling Bonjour into broadcasting your normal printer in such a way that iOS 4.2 can see it.
We reported on Friday that a nasty WiFi bug causing random drops in the gold master build of iOS 4.2 was likely to delay release of the update from anywhere between a few days to the end of the month.
It looks like that report was right: Apple has just dropped a second GM build of iOS 4.2 for the iPad, updating the GM from 8C134 to 8C134b.
Where this puts the official release of iOS 4.2 is anyone’s guess. We’ve previously heard rumors to expect iOS 4.2 to drop tomorrow, but some sources are placing the official release date as far away as November 24th.
Ultimately, what it will all come down to is how much testing Apple thinks the new GM will require for a fix to a single WiFi bug. Taking all bets!
In the meantime, you can download the second GM for developers here.
One thing’s for sure: iOS 4 hasn’t been very kind to iPhone 3G owners. Not only did the major update end up slowing most iPhone 3G devices to a crawl once installed, but iOS 4.x under the iPhone 3G is missing many of the features like multitasking or GameCenter that other devices get to enjoy.
The good news for iPhone 3G users is that the soon-to-be-released iOS 4.2 update supposedly does a lot to improve the 3G’s sluggishness problems. The bad? Apple’s culling yet another promised feature from 3G owners: AirPlay isn’t coming to the iPhone 3G after all.
I hope you didn’t jump out of bed at the crack of dawn today, throw open the curtains, crack open a few eggs in the frying pan, connect your iPad to iTunes and then sit down to spend the next few hours to continuously hammer the “Check for Update” button, because we’ve got some bad news for you: it doesn’t look like iOS 4.2 is going to drop today.
Along with AirPlay, AirPrint was a fiercely promoted new feature in iOS 4.2, promising a powerful new printing architecture that allows iOS devices to easily and wirelessly print to any networked printer.
Don’t be surprised, though, if AirPrint is nowhere to be seen when iOS 4.2 is released on Friday: according to a report on MacStories, Apple has pulled support for AirPrint from iOS 4.2 at the last minute.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been checking Software Update a few times every day this week, waiting for Apple to finally dislodge some of its bigger releases from its development pipe: namely, Mac OS X 10.6.5, iTunes 10.1 and iOS 4.2. No luck yet, but according to , all three are imminent… and two of those updates will go live today.
The iPhone 3G’s sluggishness under iOS 4.0 is so legendary that it has sparked an entire class action lawsuit, but does iOS 4.2 improve things any? Yes, according to TipB: they say that Apple has greatly improved the iPhone 3G’s performance when typing, scrolling, pinching, zooming and browsing under iOS 4.2.
Is that enough to end Bianca Wofford’s class action lawsuit? Probably not… but it certainly makes her claims of an Apple conspiracy to force obsolescence of the iPhone 3G a lot harder to believe than it was already.
When iOS 4.2 for iPad is released in November, jailbreakers won’t need to wait before they can have their way with their iPads.
iOS jailbreak expert, iH8sn0w, released some images today of a jailbroken iPad running the iOS 4.2 firmware. The image above shows an iPad running the MobileTerminal jailbreak application, that gives users access to the command line.
This is great news for those that like to jailbreak their devices, but it comes as little surprise to many who have expected the jailbreak release for several weeks since its announcement.
If you’ll be jailbreaking your iPad as soon as you’ve updated to the iOS 4.2 firmware, let us know what your reasons for jailbreaking are in the comments.
[via AppAdvice]
We’ve only had the iOS 4.1 jailbreak for a few days, but the most publicly vocal (and, let’s face it, beefcakiest) member of the Dev Team, MuscleNerd, has just hit his Twitter feed, letting people know that a new version of the Limera1n and greenp0ison jailbreaks will be coming on Sunday and support iOS 4.2.
Two and a half weeks ago, as New Zealand rolled back their clocks for Daylight Savings Time, Kiwis started noting an odd iOS bug: any recurring alarms they had set on their iPhones were going off an hour early. Curious, but then it gets curiouser: last week, when Australian had to adjust for Daylight Savings Time, it happened again.
We love the story: its like a mini-Y2K for iOS 4.1, hitting iPhone users around the world as their country enters Daylight Savings Time… and with Europe set to enter DST on October 30th, and America on November 6th, the bug is about to hit a lot more people.
So what does Apple intend to do about this? Apple Australia says they’re on it and have developed a fix that will be included as part of an upcoming software update. Since iOS 4.2 has a late November ship date, that means we’re likely to get an iterative iOS 4.1.1 update sometime before the 30th, when all of Europe starts hurling their iPhones dramatically against the wall when their alarms rob them of an hour of sleep.
Starting in November when iOS 4.2 drops, we’ll finally be able to print directly from the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad through AirPrint. At the beginning, AirPrint will mostly only work with printers shared on your network, but eventually, AirPrint-certified printers will appear that can sense nearby iOS devices out-of-the-book.
In the meantime, though, we’re going to have to settle for some printers kludging iOS printing… namely by assigning each printer an e-mail address to which documents can be sent for printing through your iPhone or iPad’s built-in Mail.app.
HP’s just announced three such printers: the HP Envy e-All-In-One, which will cost $249 and do the whole smorgasbord of home printing duties including printing, copying and scanning; the HP OfficeJet Pro 8500A Plus, an all-in-one office inkjet with wireless connectivity; and the HP PhotoSmart eStation, which costs $499 and is capable of printing photos of up to 9600×2400 dpi, and comes with an optional (blargh) Android tablet.
They’re all attractive printers, and they are all technically “AirPrint-compatible” in that when AirPrint rolls down the software update pipeline, they’ll at least be shareable from your Mac. If you want a truly AirPrint compatible printer, though, best wait for a spell longer.
There’s an interesting change in the way iOS 4.2 handles orientation lock on the iPad… one that indicates a curious design backpedal on the part of Cupertino.
Previously, orientation lock on the iPad was handled with a physical hardware switch on the side of the device, but in iOS 4.2, it has been repurposed as a physical “Mute” button, with the orientation lock achieved the same way it is on the iPhone 4 or iPod Touch under iOS 4: through the multitasking tray.
It’s a minor but significant change that, I suspect, portends the elimination of the mute/screen orientation button on the second-generation iPad. For famously minimal and streamlined Apple, a physical mute button doesn’t make a lot of sense on an iOS device that isn’t a phone.
[via MacRumors]
Apple has today released the first beta of iOS 4.2 for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, which is now available to download for developers.
4.2 comes just a week after the public release of 4.1, and was first previewed by Steve Jobs at Apple’s media event on September 1st. The update introduces some much-anticipated new features to the iPad in particular, including; folder organization, Game Centre, and long-awaited multi-tasking. AirPlay, a new feature for streaming music to your device, is also introduced to iOS in this update, along with the wireless printing feature, AirPrint.
Devices supported in beta 1 include the iPad, the iPhone (3G and above), and the iPod Touch (2nd-gen and above).
The iOS 4.2 download weighs in at 514MB and is currently only available to registered developers through Apple’s Dev Centre. The update is scheduled for public release in November.
Too busy to read our liveblog coverage of Apple’s September iPod Event? Everything you need to know about Apple’s new products is below the fold, including details about the new iPod Shuffle, Nano, iPod Touch, AppleTV, iTunes and iOS update.
