Word is going around that the iPhone 3G has a Trusted Computing chip to
detect tampering and thus disabling jailbreaking and SIM unlocking. All
reported 2.0 unlocks are on iPhone 2G and iPod Touch.

It will be interesting to see if the jailbreak community gets around this
or not.

I have a development iPod Touch 8G that I sacrificed to the 2.0 software,
so with that I took a look around.

Of the Apple bundled applications, the big change is in Mail, and that's
in the Settings application. The interface in the Mail application itself
is mostly the same. Add Account now allows Exchange, and .Mac is now
called mobileme. There's support for Push, and for setting up polling.
The IMAP support still sucks big time.

The Calendar application finally allows you to manipulate multiple
calendars (yay!) but still has the same idiotic limitations on recurrent
events (boo!). It escapes me how they think this is a serious calendaring
applicaton with those limitations.

Still no task manager, although there are a couple of iTunes Store
applications that offer that (but with no Exchange synchronization).

The Contacts application is mostly unchanged, other than showing
non-alphabetic names (e.g., in Japanese) under the "#" heading instead of
under "123". Still sorts non-alphabetic names by Unicode codepoints
instead of providing a mechanism (e.g., yomi in Japanese) to do it
properly (as Microsoft does).

Maps has some cosmetic changes, the default zoom level is a bit further
out, and there's a new location query. Otherwise it's mostly the same.

Calculator changes the shape of the buttons from round to rectangular and
adds a change sign button. It's still just a basic calculator.

Safari, YouTube (I always use MxTube), Stocks, Weather, Clock, and Notes
seem largely unchanged. You still only have a choice of Google or Yahoo
for search engine in Safari.

With few exceptions, the Officially Approved iTunes Store Applications are
a major yawn: crap like "flashlight", tip calculator, applications that
duplicate web functionality (and won't work without an Internet
connection), public domain ebooks at $1 each, public transit network maps
& schedules, etc. Only a handful (e.g., the AOL software) are
interesting. Many of the interesting applications have equivalent or
superior choices in the Installer (jailbreak) community.

Bottom line:

If you upgrade to 2.0 or buy an iPhone 3G, you're trapped in Apple's
walled garden with mediocre apps and enterprise features that are still
several notches below what's on Windows Mobile or Blackberry. There will
probably be a jailbreak soon for iPod Touch or iPhone 2G running 2.0, but
iPhone 3G may be more difficult (or, Apple hopes, impossible).

Unless you need the Exchange/Push services, there isn't much reason to
upgrade an iPod Touch or iPhone 2G to 2.0. You'll have a much more
functional device by jailbreaking 1.1.4 (e.g., using ZiPhone).

-- Mark --

http://panda.com/mrc
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.