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Filed under: iPod Family, iTS, Software, Hacks, How-tos, Software Update, iPhone

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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Tip of the Day

To find out what version of Mac OS you are running, go to the Apple logo in the top left corner, click it and choose About This Mac. From that window you will see the version number, processor, memory and chosen startup disk. Clicking Software Update will check for updates, and More Info... will open up an extensive list of everything on your machine.


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