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Apple to charge iPod Touch owners for new OS - again

Can you spare $10 for a cup of Cocoa?

WWDC Apple will release version 2.0 of the iPhone operating system in early July, CEO Steve Jobs has revealed. Existing iPhone owners will get it for free - iPod Touch owners, however, will have to cough up $10.

iPhone 2.0 offers the ability to view and edit iWork documents - files from Apple's own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps. More users, we suspect, will make use of the upcoming OS' ability to handle Office documents.

In addition, the new system software will revamp the IPhone calculator, adding a scientific mode that's activated by turning the device on its side. Pictures found on the web or sent by email can be saved - though the new iPhone OS' parental controls will ensure junior's not downloading images his folks would rathe he didn't see.

Messages can be moved into folders and deleted in groups. Contacts can - at last - be searched.

Jobs also heralded "fantastic" support for Asian languages, now with character recognition.

You can add the new AppStore to the list, and support for MobileMe, Apple's revamped .Mac online service now extended to the iPhone and Windows as well as the Mac, and given a BlackBerry-style push component.

All good stuff, but what has Apple left out? Glimpses into the OS afforded by the iPhone software development kit (SDK) suggest there's still no Copy and Paste, support for MMS and video recording.

Still, Touch owners aggrieved by the $10 upgrade charge may feel happier knowing that the update costs half of what the last one did but delivers more.

But you have to ask, is Apple really so ungenerous it can't take $10 on the chin? Especially, when it can afford to give the upgrade to iPhone owners for nowt.

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