TUAW How To: Getting early access to 1.1.2

Quite a number of people have asked me over the past few days: how did you find the 1.1.2 iPhone firmware update before it appeared in iTunes? The answer is simple: Apple publishes its most recent version releases on the web. You'll find this version list at http://phobos.apple.com/version in gzip format. To see this from the command line, issue curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | gunzip. You'll probably want to pipe it through more, which shows a page at a time, or open the entire results in TextEdit, i.e.

More: curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | gunzip | more

TextEdit: curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | gunzip | open -f

The results are published as standard xml. Since I knew that the European iPhone would ship with version 1.1.2, I set up a shell script a couple of days in advance that searched through this feed to find "1.1.2". Eventually it showed up and I could download the firmware several days in advance of the iTunes release.

Getting such an early head start is truly the exception rather than the rule. This is a good trick to put into your arsenal when you're waiting for a specific release.

Updated to add " curl -s -L ". Thanks Justin.

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Source: http://phobos.apple.com/version

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Quite a number of people have asked me over the past few days: how did you find the 1.1.2 iPhone firmware update before it appeared in...

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Collin

Cool! It didn't dawn on me that you could easily pipe gzipped cURL results to 'gunzip' like that. That alone is a handy tip to remember when poking around with HTTP based services with cURL.

November 13 2007 at 11:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

James F

That's all good, but what about a jailbreak for us PPC users?

November 13 2007 at 8:11 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

I have a quick related question. I am using ATT contract. I unlocked my iphone with anySIM 1.0.2 in my 1.0.2 firmware. I revirginized my baseband using iPhone elite's method . I then upgraded to 1.1.1 and did never unlocked or jailbreaked since.
Now, my question is, is it possible to upgrade my phone to 1.1.2 without bricking it and still use ATT?

November 13 2007 at 5:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

igrec

Did anyone notice that the 1.1.2 iPhone firmware contains hints on a soon-to-come italian release of the iPhone with TIM ?
http://www.casualtek.com/2007/11/13/visual-voicemail-cest-tout-simple/

November 13 2007 at 3:05 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ricardo

Thanks for posting this Erica!
I was really intrigued... However, it was one of those questions that popped up in my head like, "I wonder how the hell they know..." and then you posted this... jajajaja
Great job!

November 13 2007 at 1:57 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin

Furthermore, using curl (my version anyways), it didn't want to follow the redirect, so the entire command I needed to issue was:
"curl http://ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/com.apple.jingle.appserver.client.MZITunesClientCheck/version | gunzip | more"

November 13 2007 at 1:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Justin

Erica: don't forget the "curl" part of the command.

November 13 2007 at 1:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David

How can I download the firmware for iphone version 1.1.1 if I already have 1.1.2?

November 13 2007 at 1:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

puffyjacket45

First!