SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

The new 2.1 update for iPhone and iPod touch is said to “fix lots of bugs”, in Jobs words. Fewer dropped calls, improved battery life, no crashing when having tons of apps and quicker sync with iTunes. And what is more, Apple claims it solves all the security vulnerabilities… which means OpenClip won´t work on 2.1.

Many of the security issues were serious, like the one affecting the service mDNSResponder. This vulnerability allows DNS forging through DNS cache poisoning (which theorically means that a hacker should be able to replace the website you get when you type an URL on iphone, learn more about DNS poisoning on Wikipedia´s article). For a full list on iPod touch vulnerabilities fixed with 2.1, visit this Apple link.

On the other hand, one of these fixes breaks the OpenClip trick. OpenClip is an open-source framework which allows easy copy & paste through any apps using it (starting on firm 2.0). The trick was that since 2.0, apps were able to access other third-party app files, which made OpenClip possible. However, seems Apple doesn´t want anybody improving their OS even if the improvement is really useful, well-done and eagerly awaited, as they have fixed this supposed vulnerability (CVE-ID: CVE-2008-3631, look on the list) on 2.1 firmware, making OpenClip completely unusable. OpenClip developers are already thinking on alternatives, like creating a fake Contact for sharing the copied data.

Anyway, iPhone update has been announced for friday 12th, and we wonder why a 2.1 firmware update for iPod touch is already available on iTunes Store (new iTunes 8 required). As ComputerWorld suggests, Perhaps Apple learned from the overwhelming of their servers when they made available the 2.0 firm update the same day of the iPhone 3G launch, making in-store activations fail.

After all the bugs and issues found on 2.0, and the not-resolving minor updates, many are skeptical on the speed improvements.