A major update to the iPhone's firmware arrived at the stroke of midnight Thursday, surprising Apple (AAPL) watchers and taking just a little steam out of the Friday launch of Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm.

iPhone 2.2 contains dozens of fixes and improvements — most of which had been telegraphed in advance through leaks from the developer community. Apple's handy checklist:

• Enhancements to Maps
  • Google Street View
  • public transit and walking directions
  • display address of dropped pins
  • share location via email
• Enhancements to Mail
  • resolved isolated issues with scheduled fetching of e-mail
  • improved formatting of wide HTML email
• improved stability and performance of Safari
• Podcasts are now available for download in iTunes application (over Wi-Fi and cellular network)
• Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
• Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
• Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
• Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard Settings

No. 1 on that list — Google Street View — is the first new feature we tried out. It also happens to be the most conspicuous trick that Google (GOOG) Android phones performed that iPhones couldn't.

Well, now they can. For example, here's the street where Steve Jobs works, as seen through an iPhone sitting 2,944 miles away:

One caveat: The iPhone lacks an internal compass, so it still can't deliver Google's vaunted Compass Mode, where the view changes as you swing your smartphone left and right (see here).

For more on what the update offers, see here. To download it, plug your iPhone into your computer and click on Check for Update. iPhone 2.2 weighs in at 246 MB and installs in less than 10 minutes.

Steve Jobs waited until the end of his keynote address on Tuesday to announce the news that iPhone owners had been waiting for: a software update with fixes for the device's many bugs.

"It's a big update," he promised as he ticked off the benefits of  iPhone 2.1: fewer dropped calls, improved battery life, dramatically faster back-ups, new performance enhancements and – he added three times for good measure – "it fixes a lot of bugs."

The update arrived as promised Friday morning, and with the exception of a few wished-for improvements that didn't materialize – turn-by-turn GPS support, landscape viewing of e-mail and cut-and-paste chief among them -  it seems to have delivered the goods.

"It is much faster overall," wrote "ghostface147" on a forum at AppleInsider, speaking for many who followed. "No scrolling lag, faster opening SMS and Safari seems snappier."

In fact, the adjective "snappier" was used so often that it became a running joke – in part because the same term was used to describe iPhone 2.02, the software update released in August that left so many bugs unfixed.

"Here at Ars [Technica]," wrote Jacqui Cheng, in her review of the latest security improvements, "we like to think of [2.1] as the 'make the iPhone stop sucking' update." (link)

But that doesn't do it justice. The performance enhancements Jobs promised are real: apps load faster; backups that used to go on for many minutes are over in seconds; long contact lists that seemed to take forever to load pop up almost instantaneously; and so far, app crashes do seem less frequent.

There are also some nifty software improvements, the most significant being the so-called Genius feature. Unveiled on Tuesday on the iPod nano and touch, it lets iPhone owners find tunes that go well together and create compatible playlists on the fly. One caveat: the Genius icon won't appear until the iPhone has been re-synced (see here).

Overall, the early reviews, while somewhat grudging, are almost universally positive.

"We'll need to take some more time to finish testing the battery and phone call reliability," writes David Chartier at Ars Technica, "but after our early experience with the new software, we're confident enough to tentatively remove the beta badge and say that the iPhone OS 2.0 may have finally arrived." (link)

Below the fold: Apple's official list of the improvements in iPhone 2.1 Software Update.

This is interesting.

Nearly three weeks after Apple (AAPL) started shipping Leopard, the sixth version of its flagship operating system, and urged Mac users around the world to step up to OS X 10.5, it has just released the largest software update in memory for its previous two versions, Tiger and Panther.

The major improvement in OS 10.4.11, besides a slew of scary sounding security patches, is that it gives Tiger users Safari 3.0, the version of Apple's Web browser that was included in Leopard's $129 purchase price. But there are changes across the board, including upgrades in most of Apple's pro products. See the official list below the fold.

According to John Gruber, writing in Daring Fireball, this is the first time he can remember Apple delivering a point upgrade (i.e. to .11) to the previous Mac OS X generation after the release of a new one. As more than one commenter has remarked, it shows unusual concern in a personal computer company for its legacy users.

Software update OS X Version 10.4.11 is a monster, weighing in at 321.5 megs in its largest configuration (combo update for Intel Macs), a download that would take, as Tidbits points out, 18 hours over a dial-up modem or 3 minutes via a home fiber link.

Apple recommends that you backup your files before upgrading and warns that you "may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you've modified the operating system through other means."

But judging from early returns in the Apple.com discussion boards, the software update appears to be relatively problem-free. The main complaint — that the weather and stock widgets were broken — seems to stem from problems at Apple's end. Perhaps its server farms are busy delivering those 321.5 meg files.

You can get the upgrade through the usual Software Update function or by clicking on one of these links.

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 Combo Update (PPC) – 180.8MB

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update (Intel) – 128MB

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 Combo Update (Intel) – 321.5MB

• Mac OS X 10.4.11 Update (PPC) – 67.9MB

Below the fold, Apple's list of improvements: