We had some server issues this morning, and no thread was created for this story. Here are the two comments I've received in e-mail so far.

"Another problem I found with the update mechanism was that after updating the Facebook application it did not replace the old version but instead left both the old and new applications inside my Mobile Applications folder. This is the only update I've found for my apps so far so don't know if it was a fluke or Apple is simply neglecting to delete and replace the old app."

and

"While there's lots of attention being paid to 3rd party apps, no one that I know of has done an in-depth review of iPhone / iPod 2.0 support for the display of attachments (Word, Pages, Powerpoint, Keynote, etc.).

I am especially interested in the display of Keynote presentations both for local, in-hand viewing and for presentation via the new TV out cable that I don't have yet. I would probably be able to justify buying this cable from Apple if I could use it to make Keynote presentations available to an audience greater than five people. Transitions, Builds, Actions, Embedded Video -- what is sent to the big screen?"

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Jon Seff - Senior News Editor, Macworld

The application on both the phone and iTunes just doesn't seem to have the "latest" info.

For instance, this morning my phone had a neat little 1 in the red circle on the appstore application to tell me an application had and update. I open the application on the phone and its for Cro-Mag Rally. Great.

I open iTunes to before proceeding and I have the number 2 in a circle by the applications label indicated that iTunes thinks I have 2 applications needing update. I click on "show updates" and THREE applications appear.

To make matters worse by the descriptions it wanted to "update" Dizzy Bee to version 1.0 (when the version I have loaded in iTunes and my phone is currently 1.3.

Jive was an "update" to 1.0, which is the same version I have installed.

And Endigo needed to be updated from 1.01 to 1.02 (correctly).

Cro-Mag Rally didn't appear on the list. (Though it showed up as an update on my iPhone.

Curious, I clicked "Update All Applications" and then noticed the "Downloads" area showed 4 applications downloading - Cro-Mag was now downloading.

In the end everything worked out. Newer versions were not erroneously replaced with earlier versions.

But even after this process, the Applications tab in iTunes still showed 2 - indicating (falsely) that there were two applications that needed to be updated.

One final thing thats wrong. If you review your applications within iTunes it will now show todays date (7/23/08) as the purchase date for the app. I purchased this app on 7/12/08 but it was updated to the latest version on 7/23/08. Date modified also shows 7/23/08.

All in all things eventually get updated. But the amount of erroneous application update counts and information associated with the applications is really sloppy.

This situation is only going to get worse with the more applications I collect. Definately a motivation not to purchase many apps.

At the moment I'm checking for updates on both iphone and in itunes and both say all apps are up to date. Yet I do notice a new version of Cro-Mag Rally is up and neither my iphone or itunes is letting me know that there is an update so there is definitely something buggy with the update system.

Weird. I never saw anything on my iPhone about updates, but was reading about how Evernote and some others had been updated. It wasn't until I synched to iTunes, and used iTunes to check that I found them.

Supposedly a number is supposed to appear on the Apps Store icon on the phone? Never seen it. wtf?

Some of my updates went pretty smoothly, the one that mattered the most was a disaster. The OmniFocus update which I was very much looking forward to (personally and because I use it to show coaching clients an example of a GTD program) froze and crashed on my phone. Suffice it to say that I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out what was causing iTunes to throw up an error saying it wouldn't intstall. Eventually I ended up restoring my iPhone that finally got past the bug and let it on. Way less user friendly than most of my experiences with iTunes and other Apple software. I look forward to it being a whole lot more streamlined.

If it had done what it looked like it was trying to do initially, show an update icon and just update my phone over wireless (not sure if it can do so over edge) I would be in handheld heaven.

I got the number 2 by the apps icon on my wife's iPhone. I clicked it and it downloaded the two updates. There was blue progress bar at the bottom of each grayed icon. When I synced her iPhone and my 3G iPhone later in the day, the apps folder in iTunes indicated no upgrades were required. Trying to sync the wife's iPhone I got a message asking if I wanted to transfer apps from her iPhone that were missing in the appls folder in iTunes. I replied no. It keeps asking each time I sync her phone. No such problem on my 3G, which has all of the same apps. Should I choose to add those apps to my iTunes apps folder?

Similar issues. Crow-Mag Rally. Both iPhone and iTunes told me an update was available. I let iTunes update. But iTunes won't update the CMR on my iPhone. App Store still tells me that an update for CMR version 1.0.2 is available. I get info in iTunes for CMR and it tells me its already at 1.0.2, but it just refuses to update the one on the iPhone. Pretty lame. I guess I'm going to have to download it on the iPhone manually too.