Billed as “the first major update to iOS 4,” Apple has announced that their iOS 4.1 software update will be ready and willing for your downloading pleasure on Wednesday, September 8th.
The news was posted on Apple’s UK website, although USA users can currently only see a “Coming Soon” message. We can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t get it at the same time as us Brits, so we assume this will be a worldwide roll out.
New features
The operating system update adds “Game Center, new iTunes features, high dynamic range photography and more to iPhone.”
The Game Center (we wish they’d properly spell it as “Centre” on their UK website) is billed thus:
Experience social gaming on your iPhone. Find friends or use auto-match to play against new opponents. Track achievements, compare high scores and more.
The HDR Photography feature lets users capture a greater dynamic range in their photos by automatically combining multiple exposures into a single HDR image.
Ping off
There’s also HD video uploads and the addition of the iTunes Ping, which has been Apple’s fairly disastrous entry into the social networking business.
Described as a service that “lets you see what music the other 160 million people using iTunes like and recommend,” Ping suffered an early embarrassing setback when Apple had a hissy fit with Facebook over their“onerous terms”, so any chance of integration with the world’s largest social network went flying out of the window.
Spans’n’scams
Worse was to come when spammers and scammers flooded the service with dodgy offers and ‘surveys,’ leading Sophos’s Security blogger Chester Wisniewski ato ask why on earth Apple didn’t see it coming:
“Most of the security industry has been pointing out the migration of spam from an email-only venture to blog/forum comments, Facebook, Twitter and other Web 2.0 platforms. But apparently Apple didn’t consider this when designing Ping, as the service implements no spam or URL filtering. It is no big shock that less than 24 hours after launch, Ping is drowning in scams and spams.”
Early feedback from some users hasn’t been too encouraging either, with users on urban75’s bulletin board commenting:
That ‘artists we recommend you follow’ bit is bollocks. There are 13 recommended to me, and U2 features in that 13 three times. U2!!! I reckon they’ve just got those artists on there and no others. Why the fuck would I want to follow Diddy. I can also apparently follow Linkin Park twice, if I so desire. F+ck you Ping.
…It’s utter crap. Not liking the new feel to iTunes 10 either. Fail this time
….I stopped when I could only like 3 genres.
Writing on PC World, Dan Tynan of ITworld perhaps summed it up best:
Welcome, Apple, to the wild world of social media. We wish you and your Ping users luck — you’re going to need it.
