Iphone firmware 2.0.2 is out! Yeah!! .... oh wait, I mean oh no!!!

Apple is beginning to worry me... I love the iPhone - it has a great combination of tools for checking email and web surfing that is surprisingly usable in a mobile package.

So version 2.0.2 was supposed to address "undisclosed bugs" - some of which were supposedly the bad 3G bugs.

I installed 2.0.2 on my phone, and immediately my reaction was positive (the "yeah!" part of the topic above) because everything was snappy and much more responsive than 2.0.1 -- and a world of difference over 2.0.

About as quickly as my excitement came, it turned south as I noticed a great number of things that no longer worked -- and they are critical issues too.

Wifi now continually prompted me for the connection key instead of remembering it every time. Email for some unknown reason started failing with "bad password" errors.

Thinking that I may have screwed something up with my restore from iTunes, I did a clean flash again of 2.0.2, and then didn't restore my settings from iTunes, so I had a completely clean config. Same problems again!

So somewhere along the line, Apple fixed the UI sluggishness in this new firmware, but broke critical functionality with Wifi and IMAP email!

Upon further searching on google, I find that public opinion is that Apple is scratching their head about the 3g problems, and releasing updates that they "think" will help. In my opinion, 2.0.2 came so fast after 2.0.1 that they obviously did not have enough time to test it properly. Reports from 3g users are that 2.0.2 doesn't fix any of their critical issues with speed/dropped calls/etc, and my experience shows that previously stable functionality isn't working for me now too -- a serious step in the wrong direction.

In a time when there is increasing criticism of Apple for not opening up their system and fighting the open source community, this is an example of what not to do.

I really do like the iPhone platform, but I hope Apple gets their act together, or else they will find me, along with a large number of other people, quick to move to the next smartphone platform that *is* open and to a company that *wants* to work with the large and growing open source developer community.

As always, my opinions are *MY OPINIONS* -- I make no claims that the issues I had will be a problem for anybody else, and you should make your own decisions as to how to use the info I shared. Like anybody's opinion, you need to decide for yourself whether you accept it and how it will impact your decisions in life.