iPhone News Updated

MegaPhone is essentially a new version of iPhoneDrive which adds the ability to add, edit and delete notes directly on your iPhone in addition to enabling you to use your iPhone's or iPod Touch's unused storage space as a disk drive to say backup data or transfer between Macs.

Ecamm Network is a two-person Massachusetts software company, the same folks who have brought us such Mac classics as iGlasses and iChatUSBCam. With the release of MegaPhone (iPhoneDrive renamed) they have added the ability to add, edit and delete notes directly on your iPhone. Instructions on how to use the note feature are available here.

The latest version of the iPhone application also adds the ability to delete SMS and call log items along with numerous minor fixes and enhancements.

When the MegaPhone was first launched (v1.0), it helped you transfers files to and from an iPhone using a neat finder-like interface which Mac users are familiar to. "That's pretty much it," Glen Aspeslagh had said back then, who founded ECamm with his twin brother Ken in 2002, "It's a very simple niche product that fills a missing feature." He then went on to add "The iPhone doesn't have that functionality, so we thought we'd try to write a program to add the feature".

When they released v1.2 of MegaPhone, the application in essence turned the Apple iPhone or for that matter even iPhone Touch into a storage device for people who want to take files from their Mac on the road.

Apple seem to have deliberately omitted the Disk mode from the iPhone to avoid people having access to iPhone's OS X files with the intention I guess to avoid hacking. However, it is a nice feature to have your phone or MP3 player also double up as a thumb drive which is exactly what MegaPhone helps you achieve enabling you to use your iPhone's or iPod Touch's unused storage space as a disk drive to say backup data or transfer between Macs.

In addition, with the iTunes and iPhoto integration introduced in v1.2, MegaPhone also provides easy access to your iPhone's iTunes and iPhoto media. You can now simply drag music and videos from the iPhone to your desktop, or send them directly to iTunes. This feature thus allows you to, for instance, sync music from one Mac to an iPhone using iTunes, then extract the same music to another Mac.

The advanced settings feature allows you to switch from seeing just the "safe" files rather than seeing every available file, including the manifests and lock sync files that are created by iTunes during synchronization thus adding a level of safety.

Thanks to MegaPhone's Mac OS X interface as you can seen in the screenshots below it makes it quite simple to transfer files between your Mac and your iPhone. However, do note that MegaPhone does not provide you an interface for you to have access to your files from your iPhone, its only for access from your Mac.

Ecamm have also clarified on their website that MegaPhone achieves all this without changing or hacking the iPhone that could void iPhone's warranty and stores your files in the media section of the iPhone's disk.

MegaPhone works with all iPhone firmware so far including 1.1.3. Unfortunately, as you would have noticed it currently only works on Mac, Windows users can check out TouchCopy which I had reviewed sometime back.

You can check out MegaPhone for a 7-days trial period, after which it will cost you $19.95. The point to note here is that you can install MegaPhone on all of your Macs without the need to purchase multiple licenses.

Click here to visit Ecamm's website to get more details on MegaPhone and don't forget to share your feedback on the iPhone Application in the comments for the benefit of other iPhone Hacks readers.