Today Netflix released an update to their iOS application that will allow iPhone owners to take advantage of anything available via the Watch Instantly section of their account.
The best part – it appears to work over both Wi-Fi and 3G.
For those of us with kids this is fantastic as I can now load up a movie or TV show the kids like to watch in the Instant Watch Queue and when we’re on the road (like the upcoming trip to their cousins) I can open the app and appease the one not playing DS.
Even though it may not be the home theater experience – will you stream to your iPhone?
I know, I know, everyone and their brother posted late last week about the ruling making the practice of jailbreaking your phone for “educational purposes” legal here in the US. (You can read the news story here.)
Personally I’m not going to rehash all of the stories that were written but I would suggest that if you have been living under a rock during the last week that you check out the post at ars technica and at Mashable.
Now, in the past I have jailbroken my iPhone and while I did test a recent jailbreak I have to say I’m not sure if I want to keep it jailbroken. When the 3.1.3 update came out I updated my phone which relocked it and while I was sorry to see some of the functionality I was using go away I’ve managed to function just fine without it for the last few months.
Would it be nice to have those features back? Sure, but the major one for me, multitasking, is now included in the OS. All the other “bells and whistles” like the Winterboard themes and easy access to turning on and off Wi-Fi are nice to haves – I can function just fine without them.
I’m thinking this has to do with simplifying things and making my life easier – if I keep my iPhone “locked down” there’s less for me to worry about and fewer applications for me to browse (of course I do have a Droid for work but that’s another story) which helps me stay more on track.
So, my question to you, my kind reader, now that it’s legal in the US to jailbreak – will you?
To be honest I was checking all day (ok, maybe not all day but fairly early on) and got my upgrade right around lunch time on the Eastcoast and so far I’m happy with my choice to upgrade.
There are a lot of new features that were included in this release but there were a couple in particular I was looking forward to.
Multitasking – this is by far one of the most sought after features for the iPhone. At one point I jail broke my phone (back at 3.1.2) just to get this feature even though it had a tendency to suck the life right out of my battery. The hooks are there for app developers to take advantage of it and while may haven’t yet one of my personal favorites, Evernote, already has. The ability to let photos and notes upload in the background is HUGE in my book.
Folders – another feature that I missed when I locked my phone back down. You simply drag one icon onto another and the iPhone creates the folder for you – simple. You are limited to just 12 apps per folder and it doesn’t appear that you can nest a folder within a folder but the feature works as advertised and I already have a number of folders set up.
Camera enhancements – there were a couple of enhancements to the native camera app, most notably a 5x digital zoom. This is another one of those features that I missed and even had an app installed so that I could zoom in. While I don’t remember seeing it mentioned elsewhere the camera function also seems to be a lot faster now – snap a picture and the shutter close delay is significantly shorter than before. I know for a lot of folks that’s not much but I for one use the camera an awful lot for data capture and every speed improvement is welcome.
I know there are a lot of features to this new OS update that I’m leaving out but those are the ones I was looking forward to (ok, being able to set your wallpaper is nice too). For those that are interested here’s the walk though video the folks over at Mashable shot.
So, did you upgrade? Not going to upgrade? Why not share in the comments.
Update: For those looking for yet more tips and tricks using the new iOS4 check out this post over at Lifehacker.com
