iPhone/iPod touch v2.1 upgrade released

The new iPhone/iPod touch 2.1 upgrade has been released and promises to solve the most vexing issues that popped up in 2.0.

iPhone 3G users will be pleased to hear that this update reduces the number of dropped calls due to the flaw in the 3G radio.  This flaw caused the phones to draw too much power from the network which overloaded the local cell and subsiquently caused the calls to be dropped.

The update also works with third party applications better than the last version.  Installation of the apps will be quicker and having lots of them installed will no longer generate as many crashes or hangs.

Genius playlists introduced with iTunes 8 arrive with this update as well.  Just like in iTunes, you can select any song in your library, tap the Genius icon and generate an appropriate playlist.

Another big issue in 2.0 was the, sometimes dramatic, slowdown in syncing with iTunes.  Both syncing and backup have been optimized to speed things up again.  Other optimizations improve battery life, speed the loading of Mail, Safari and Contacts as well as improving the reliability of POP and Exchange email.

Several iPod UI elements have been updated to provide more information to the user in a clearer way.  In list views, Songs now display the album and artist and Podcast episodes add the Artist and date of the episode.  The Podcasts list is now in a Grid View format which displays larger album art and adds the number of new episodes.

Several security issues have been fixed in this release including flaws that could allow session hijacking, arbitrary code execution, and DNS record forgeries.  Full details are available directly from Apple in Knowledge Base Article: HT3026.