iPhone/Touch 3.1 and iTunes 9 Released

Apple released the iPhone and Touch 3.1 software upgrade today. A number of minor enhancements that will be sure to please the niche groups who will likely notice. The App Store Top 25 now includes a "Top Paid" vs "Top Grossing" to address those developers who felt slighted by those applications that were down at the $.99 price point. The App Store Genius feature provides suggestions for applications you might like. While not perfect for now (the suggestions will improve over time based on uploaded results), it does a good job of showing which of your installed applications was the basis for the recommendation. And finally, Apple added the ability to use Voice Control over Bluetooth. Other minor items you can check out via the link above. The team at The iPhone Blog provide a good walkthrough of the changes.

iTunes 9.0 was released today and hosts a number of new and noteworthy features. Genius Mixes are a new feature to help you "rediscover" music in your collection. It's like a prepackaged selection of songs based on a genre. The iTunes 9.0 syncing options have really improved with a new level of granularity all users will appreciate. There's a new Home Sharing option that allows you to not only stream iTunes content from other computers on your network, but you can also copy the content from the other computer as well (up to five authorized computers). It can even be configured to sync content automatically provided the content is purchased content. The iTunes store was resigned and the jury is out on how much it actually improved. I like the menu bars across the top as they seem to improve navigation. A new iTunes LP feature provides artist/album content previously found in vinyl albums and CD booklets that have been lost in the digital era. There's also Facebook integration and Wish List capabilities. Not addressed is the issue of how to address the growing number of items along the left hand navigational bar. Playlists are still difficult to manage. Navigation seems clunky. Does anyone else feel that way? The real win for me out of iTunes 9 is the improved ability to manage iPhone and Touch applications. There's also a new interface that allows you access to modify your iPhone or Touch icon screens without the pain of performing the same steps on the device. The ability to modify iPhone and Touch application icons and screens is a great addition, but I ran in to one or two bugs while moving icons and screens around. There's no option to name pages such as "Sports" or "Games". That would be a helpful way to manage the screen instead of using the current numbering system.