iPhone Firmware v1.1.4 is Out!

So yesterday is the day a batch of new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, along with other Apple announcements, come out, and what happens?

... All of Miami (where I live) is plunged in a power outage, along with parts of the state and rolling blackouts. Great!

I'm OK and so are most of the folks down here in the area, but I was rather annoyed I missed all the fun, and didn't get to write news for you, our dear readers.

I'm glad to be back today to bring you the news you've come to expect from us at Homotron.

Of course, the first thing I did when I got power back in the evening was to download and install the new iPhone v1.1.4 update that was released to bring you my impressions on any new features that may be crawling around.

And those new feature features (never try to compose an article in English after reading news in Japanese, your sense of plural words gets shot to hell) are:

Nothing.

That's right. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of new features, and if there are, Apple's hidden them well. This seems to be primarily a bug fix release. The only new "feature" is the ability of Safari tabs to retain their content after loading (instead of white screening all the time and having to load the page again.)

The lack of new features has led many to believe that v1.1.4 includes the updates and software necessary to enable official third party application support that is supposed to arrive any day now, but a close look at the firmware and framework contents by Erica Sadun of TUAW reveals that no real changes have been made, casting doubts on third-party app support:

No changes in the number of frameworks. Pretty much all the frameworks look like the exact same releases as 1.1.3--same number of bytes. UIKit has changed: 2687236 vs 2687140.

So little has changed software wise, that users of ZiPhone, a popular jailbreaking application, report that the v1.1.3 jailbreak works with v1.1.4; however, the developer of ZiPhone is warning to hold off using the tool on v1.1.4 iPhones for now as he tests for full compatibility.

Apple had previously announced that the iPhone SDK and official third-party application support was arriving in February, and since Tuesday is their regular release date and v1.1.4 seems to hold no new features, there are rumblings that Apple will soon announce a delay.

We should be hearing from Apple by Friday regarding any changes to the release schedule.

For now, I'll frown at my iPhone for not providing me with official third-party apps yet.