iOS 5 Over-the-Air Update Video, Documents on iCloud, and Other Notes

Friday July 22, 2011 6:18 pm PDT by Arnold Kim

InsanelyGreatMac posts the above video showing the new iOS 5 Beta 4 over the air (OTA) updating in action. As we noted the OTA update also saves bandwidth as it only sends changes rather than the entire OS image.

• @MuscleNerd reports that OTA update won't work on Jailbroken devices.

• We reported that iPhones must have 50% charge or be plugged into a power source to download the OTA update, but @johnheimkes reports this requirement is not enforced on the iPad which allowed the update to occur with only 12% charge.


• Settings app displays a badge when an over the air update is available.


• Apple has added a "Documents and Data" toggle for iCloud which allows you to turn on/off the ability for apps to save data and documents to the iCloud. There is also a way to chose whether these updates occur over 3G or only over Wi-Fi. This allows Apps to save their own data and user data to the iCloud so that it is available across devices, and backed up into the cloud.
• The OTA update downloads over Wi-Fi or 3G connections.

[ 62 comments ]

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rtkane
111 months ago

Feels like a slap in the face for jailbreakers...
That really sucks.


I don't think Apple cares about jail breakers.
Rating: 10 Votes
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L I G H T I N G
111 months ago

The over the air updates are very slick and a marked improvement for sure..Too bad Apple blocked OTA updates for those jailbroken...haha.


Why would jailbreakers want OTA updates? Apple is doing them a favor by not corrupting their firmware.
Rating: 3 Votes
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wovel
111 months ago

Feels like a slap in the face for jailbreakers...
That really sucks.


So now we should expect Apple to go out of there way to make things work for jail breakers? Maybe we should expect them to apply a delta update to something when they have no way of verifying what is actually there...
Rating: 3 Votes
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mdriftmeyer
111 months ago
I see a lot of I/O error by the host in this video.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Rocketman
111 months ago
I think it was about a year ago that the US carriers said OTA Apple updates would not count against bandwidth. I would be curious if there is a way to see if that is true in practice on these tests.

It makes business sense to do that. You don't want to discourage OS and security updates for any reason by any user.

Rocketman
Rating: 3 Votes
Avatar
Aaargh!
111 months ago

Feels like a slap in the face for jailbreakers...
That really sucks.


Allowing a delta update on a jailbroken device would be far too dangerous. Remember that a delta update only contains the changes between the previous version and the new version, that won't work reliably if the old version is not exactly the same as the one that was used to create the delta. Once you jailbreak your OS is modified; applying a delta to something else than what it was created against will give an undefined result and probably just brick the device.
Rating: 2 Votes
Avatar
SheepNutz
111 months ago

Feels like a slap in the face for jailbreakers...
That really sucks.


Don't worry, the dev team will just figure out a way around that or a way to enable OTA updates for jailbreakers.
Rating: 2 Votes
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S.Jobs
111 months ago
good, i hate updating the whole thing for a couple megabytes
Rating: 2 Votes
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Blakjack
111 months ago
I found it funny when the time lapsed and he mentioned that it was an hour vs 4 minutes
Rating: 2 Votes
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Branskins
111 months ago
It probably works on the iPad at 12% because the iPad has much longer battery doesn't it? Like the iPad only warns you at 10% whereas the iPhone warns you at 20% and 10%.
Rating: 2 Votes

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