My German’s a bit rusty, as Humprhey Bogart remarks to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, but if you spreken sie deutsch a little better than me — it would be hard to do any worse — and have an interest in the iPhone launch over in Germany, head on over to MacWelt for a metric ton of iPhone coverage. There’s a photo galley of launch events in Munich and Cologne, though you’ll be restricted to thumbnail views. Still, it’s interesting to see how interest in the iPhone translates to other parts of the world. (We mentioned the U.K. coverage earlier.)

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If you’ve watched the Discovery Channel for more than a few minutes, chances are you’ve come across the show MythBusters. In at, special-effects gurus Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman — previously seen pimping Intel’s Santa Rosa chipset at an event in San Francisco in May — test popular myths and urban legends (and, in the process, shoot and explode things on a regular basis).

Macs have made several cameos on the show in the past. But in a recent episode called “Trail Blazers”, Adam whips out an iPhone (complete with what appears to be Incase’s Leather Fitted Sleeve) and uses the Stopwatch function of the Clock app to time how long it takes for a 7-foot trail of gasoline to burn from one end to the other. That’s much cooler than my last use for the Stopwatch — figuring out how long it took me to walk home.

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After much speculation, iPhone 1.1.2 has been released—sort of. While it’s not yet appearing for everyone who runs the iPhone software update check in iTunes, you can snag the rather hefty 160MB file directly from Apple. To install, you’ll need to drop the ZIP file in your ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Software Updates folder and then connect your iPhone and option-click the “Check for Updates” button; iTunes will give you a dialog box from which you can select the ZIP file and it’ll carry out the update as normal. Or you could just wait until it shows up in iTunes. Any moment now.

I’ve only been running 1.1.2 for a matter of minutes, but there are already a few new features. The biggest change, as predicted, is the International support, which you’ll finder under Settings -> General -> International. You can change the language of the entire phone into French, German, or Italian (wait, when is Italy getting the iPhone?); I changed it into French for kicks, so I could check my courriel. You can also enable four additional keyboard layouts: English (UK), French, German, and again the mysterious Italian; doing so puts a little globe icon next to the spacebar whenever the keyboard comes up. Tapping it will cycle through the keyboard layouts you’ve enabled. One nice touch I discovered was that if you toggle into the number/punctuation mode, it replaces the $ key with the appropriate currency symbol for your layout: £ for the UK, € for French, German, and Italian.

The International section also contains an “Asian Font” setting, in which you can pick either Chinese or Japanese (what, no Thai? Korean?). And “Region Format” lets you control how information like date, time, and phone numbers are formatted. You can choose from a bunch of different locales for each language. There’s still no built-in support for Arabic and Hebrew in Safari, though. Apparently some regions get more loving than others.

1.1.2 brings a couple of other small additions as well. The phone’s battery charge now shows up in iTunes, next to your phone icon under Deviccies (pictured above). And your custom ringtones—both those purchased through iTunes and those you transfer with software like Ambrosia’s iToner—now appear in their own “Custom” section of Settings -> Sounds -> Ringtones, above the “System” tones (and all of my iToner ringtones remained intact through the update).

The one downside to the update—which, in and of itself is actually a good thing—is that Apple has patched the TIFF exploit that could be used to jailbreak the phone and install third-party apps. All third-party apps disappeared along with the update. The good news is that iPhone hackers have already apparently cracked 1.1.2, so look for a new jailbreak procedure shortly.

The biggest question for me, which I’ve yet to answer, is whether 1.1.2 does anything about the much-discussed battery draining problems which seem to have plagued many an iPhone user. I’ll be checking it out in the next few days, and shall not rest (or recharge) until I’ve discovered the truth.

[via MacNN]

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A little over twenty-four hours for now, the floodgates will open and the crowd of customers waiting for the arrival of the iPhone in the UK and Germany will finally have their one true desire. As we reported earlier in the week, it seems that the European iPhones will feature a new version of the iPhone’s software, 1.1.2.

According to the folks at one UK tech publication—who claim access directly to the horse’s mouth—the new version won’t be restricted to just continental iPhoners: rather, Apple will roll out 1.1.2 to the whole world tomorrow. We still don’t know exactly what 1.1.2 will bring with it, other than presumably a patch for the TIFF exploit, but rest assured that as soon as it hits the tubes, we’ll be all over it like, er, bloggers on a software update.

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There’s nothing more exciting then an iPhone launch day — the thrills, the chills, the seemingly endless lines. When I think back through the mists of time to my own sepia-tinted memories of the U.S. iPhone launch from the bygone days of late June, I remember essentially sitting at my desk in San Francisco from about 3 p.m. local time to field reports from our East Coast correspondents and not getting up from the desk until sometime after 8 p.m., when the last of our West Coast dispatches had been filed.

Now, our U.K.-based friends get to experience the same thrill. At least they only have to contend with one time zone. Anyhow, November 9 is iPhone launch day for both the U.K. and Germany, and, as far as the former is concerned, our colleagues at Macworld UK have already begun chronicling the line forming outside the Regent Street Apple Store in London. (There’s a report from Germany now, too.) Ah, memories — misty-water colored memories.

Be sure to follow all the goings-on at Macworld UK. We’ll pick up a few dispatches here and at the Mother Ship — especially if that rumored 1.1.2 software update rears its head today.

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