We’ve been exchanging somewhat excited messages internally at Geardiary for the last hour or two. Both Dan and I have upgraded our iPhones to version 2.0 firmware thanks to instructions found at MacRumors (worked like a charm – NOT available for Touch though). There’s honestly not much to see until you dive into the App Store. Once I saw what was available. How easy it was to download. And drove home listening to streaming AOL Radio via EDGE (no rebuffering whatsoever) it hit me. RIM, Palm and those software distributors that base large amounts of their livelihood on their platforms should be afraid (Between you and me, what I really said was they should be “wearing adult diapers”). I think the iPhone message over the next week is going to be all about the App Store and what’s available there. Dan has a quick run down of what he has discovered so far.
Well, I decided to jump in… I downloaded the new firmware, installed without a hitch and put a couple of apps on my iPhone.
First up?
For those who haven’t used Evernote before, it is a note taking program that effortlessly synchronizes all of your notes. It has a client for Windows, Mac, Web and now iPhone!
I now have all my notes on my iPhone all the time. Amazing. And now the ability to easily add to those notes — voice, picture or written text – via the iPhone.
All notes appear to be geotagged as well though I haven’t had a chance to explore that feature. Why would I want to use a standalone voice recorder when the (free) Evernote app lets me make voice notes AND synchronizes them up to my notes database.
eReader
The eReader site still says there is no iPhone reader.
Guess again! Not only is there a reader but once I put in all my log in info my entire eReader library was there.
I downloaded David Baldacci’s Hour Game and it looks AWESOME! Kindle, SonyReader- be afraid be very afraid.
NYTimes- looks great.
Who needs dead tree versions?? Not me. Could the iPhone delivery model be something that potentially saves local newspapers from extinction?
Also available and now on my iPhone- Jott, Twitterific, eBay, AIM…
As Wayne put it- if I were Palm, Blackberry or Windows Mobile I would be more than a little concerned right now.
And let me remind you- this is on my Gen 1 iPhone. No 3G required to see these improvements. So far, it works perfectly.
PS – Here’s a screen shot of the free AOL Radio APP — which streamed for about 1/2 hour today via EDGE while I was in my car – with NO re-buffering or interruption in the music.
