Manual Updating Your Iphone and Ipod Touch to the latest 2.2.1 firmware

I've found this in a couple different places on the net but none that I saw had the complete instructions on how to do this.  So, this is my attempt to provide some decent instructions on how to update your iPod Touch or iPhone to the latest 2.2.1 firmware.

If you've tried to do this already within iTunes, you may have noticed that the upgrade is big.  Very big.  Over 280 megs in size for me.  The annoying part about it though is my connection to Apple's servers is less than stellar.  I was averaging a 2 hour download and, with the local library's internet connection flaky, it kept timing out over and over again.  And again.

The solution is a manual upgrade.  The problem is that some fancy Googleing doesn't show any real documentation on the iPod or iPhone support sites over at Apple.  At least I didn't find anything.

Part 1: Grab the Goods

The first part of the solution is obtaining the files.  For this, you need to figure out where the files are on the Apple servers.  The folks over at Live Crunch have provided them for us:

iPhone 2G

Download Firmware 2.2.1 - iPhone1,1_2.2.1_5H11_Restore.ipsw

iPhone 3G

Download Firmware 2.2.1 - iPhone1,2_2.2.1_5H11_Restore.ipsw

iPod Touch 1G

Download Firmware 2.2.1 - iPod1,1_2.2.1_5H11_Restore.ipsw

iPod Touch 2G

Download Firmware 2.2.1 - iPod2,1_2.2.1_5H11a_Restore.ipsw

Now one of the questions I had was what version of the iPod Touch did I have?  I found out that since my model has an internal speaker, (I can hear audio when I play something if the headset isn't plugged in) I have the iPod Touch 2G version.  If you're lucky enough to have an iPhone, the 2G has a metal back to the case while the 3G has a plastic one.

So anyway, since I'm using Firefox, all I have to do is a right click on the link followed by a "Save File As..." to save the file somewhere I can find it later.  To be honest though, I still had time out errors as before, even though not running the file through iTunes made it come down a lot faster.  Actually had to log into the server here and pull it via a get command followed up ftping the file back to the laptop.  Lots of fun.

Before anyone asks, it doesn't matter if you're using a Mac or Windows.  The upgrade file is the same. 

Part 2: Do the Deed

Getting the file is actually the hard part.  Doing the upgrade is fairly easy.  Connect your device to whatever computer has your affiliated copy of iTunes.  For me, it's the laptop since I usually have both with me every day.

Anyway, fire up iTunes and wait for everything to handshake. Normally to upgrade, you would click on the icon for your device followed by the Update button.  This time it's going to be a bit different though, depending on what you're using for a computer.  If you're on a Windows based PC, hold down the Shift key on your keyboard while clicking on the Upgrade button.  If you're on a Mac, you have to hold down the Option key while clicking on the Upgrade button.

iTunes will then permit you to browse to the location of the downloaded file and will use that instead of downloading it from the Apple upgrade servers.

This saves a lot of time as well if you're lucky enough to have a couple of iPods.

Hope this helps. :)

edit: After writing this, I found a couple of sites that says you have to hold down the Alt key on a PC when clicking on the Upgrade button.  To be honest, I don't remember which one I held down.  I believe it was the shift key and have left it that way in the article.  If that doesn't work for you, please try again but with the other key.