jole writes "The newest iPhone 3.1 update intentionally removed tethering functionality from all phones operating in networks that are not Apple partners. This is not limited to hacked or jailbroken phones, but also includes expensive 'officially supported' factory-unlocked phones. To make the problem worse, Apple has made it impossible to downgrade back to a working 3.0 version for iPhone 3GS phones."
You may have forgotten, in your rush to insult, that by and large people don't care about things that have no effect on them. The majority of Apple customers aren't hurt by this and therefore have no reason to care. Your argument works for that small percentage of people who scream about software freedom, and of course that opinion gets modded up here so you feel like it's common - but in the real world, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
Actually, if i read this and several other IT sites and their reader's reactions, it's the non-Apple-users who like to see iPhone-customers like that.
I know quite a few people with iPhones (and other Apple gear), and are quite happy with it, but not in your "look at how cool i am" way. It's the rest of the world that likes to apply that stereotype to them.
"I believe that the typical iphone customer is a "look at me, I have a cool iphone" idiot."
I'm a typical iPhone user and I would like to give you another perspective. Let me take you back in time to the pre-iPhone days. I was a Verizon customer and I was constantly pissed off because every single phone I had with them would not allow me to sync ANYTHING with my Apple computer. I couldn't sync my contact, my music, my ringtones, nothing. I constantly saw all these neat little tools that allowed Windows users do this, but I was left out in the cold. I don't know if you ever had re-enter all your contacts in your phone manually, but I had to do this about 3 times and it sucked.
When the iPhone came out, I willing dumped Verizon and switched to AT&T. Not because their service is better, but because the iPhone actually allowed me to use the phone like I wanted to. Is Apple perfect? No. I think a lot of what they do is great, but things like this (disabling tethering) sucks. I'm not sure if it's completely Apple's fault. My guess is that they receive pressure from the carriers to do certain things. That's just a guess. But either way, my experience using a "phone" is about 1000% times better than what it was prior to the iPhone. Not sure if that makes me "cool" or not.
I would say "keeping up with the Joneses". No apostrophe. You are not keeping up with something specific of theirs, but rather them as a group. If you were talking about your phone keeping up with the Joneses' specific phone, then that would be correct, but just keeping up with them on a status quo level, would not require an apostrophe.
If you try hard enough you can convince yourself that anything is a good thing and should be protected, look at Scientology for example. It's pathetic and funny, but there's always some gullible people ready to exclaim it. There's one thing to be a fan, to accept it's pro's and con's and love it anyway, to want to see it get better. It takes an extra step to be blind to the short comings and defend stuff that's NOT in their interests using mental gymnastics. What makes it even funnier is Apple's "luxury" price tags, these people are not only defending stuff that's not in their interests, but they're paying a fortune for the privilege. As they say, "a fool and his money are easily parted".
Palm Pre (and Pixi) has a Homebrew community with a FREE tether program.
WebOS phones are Open Source OS phones, so the Tether capability can't be disabled as it's based on Open functionality, not a closed API.
in the US, a Sprint Simply Everything plan (includes Unlimited data use) is around $1000.00 cheaper a year to have.
So, you can have an Open Source phone with a real Homebrew community, a cheaper unlimited plan and have your Tethering program UNBLOCKABLE. Sounds like the Pre is a better deal all around.
I love how you capitalized "Unlimited" as if it really were "Unlimited" I doubt in the dictionary it states the definition of Unlimited to mean "Without limit, except in the case of a 5gb limit"
No, I capitalized "Unlimited" because I have capsitis and tend to overuse the shift key. I was in a hurry to post and didn't spell/caps-check my post properly.
Um, I've been doing that for a long time now on Windows Mobile using home brew ROMs. I really hate hearing about all these awesome innovations by Palm and Apple that I've been using for years, but nobody cares because it's Windows Mobile! I'm also on Verizon, so I've had faster and more widespread network coverage as well (at least everywhere that I need my phone to work in the US).
Some 5 year ago now I imported a Nokia E70 from overseas for use with T-Mobile. Not only did the phone support bluetooth and wired tethering right out of the box, but it had a generic SIP client that worked perfectly with my asterisk setup on the wifi network. T-Mobile eventually intentionally put a stop to unsigned clients (Read: My imported and unlocked phone) using their data network, which was when I dropped them. On the plus side coming from their data network makes AT&T look good, which I'm told is about the only way the AT&T service or data network could look good.
The Nokia E90 Communicator looks like an even better phone but we're not going to see it in the USA, presumably because it has similar features. Other than the shiny Apple interface and the difficulty with making it work with a US provider, the E70 was a superior phone to the iPhone for my particular needs. If I could be guaranteed that the E90 would work with a US provider and would not have its features intentionally brain damaged by the telcos, I would drop my iPhone in a heartbeat for one.
The technology has been there for years, it's the telcos screwing things up.
I've been doing that for a long time now on Windows Mobile using home brew ROMs.
90% of the road warriors out there are not using and don't want to use home brew for their business needs.
I really hate hearing about all these awesome innovations by Palm, Apple, & Windows Mobile using home brew ROMs that I've been using for yearson my Blackberry, but nobody cares because it's Research In Motion (RIM)!
If Ms cared, they could shut out tethering any time they wanted. Thankfully for you, they apparently don't care.
You know what, I don't care if it's open source or not, because it does the job I want it to do. Plus, MS couldn't turn it off without disabling all network access for all apps. The tethering is an app just like a browser, a mail client or any of a thousand other OPEN SOURCE pieces of software written for Windows Mobile. Simply because they aren't all available in a handy little App Store doesn't mean they don't exist. You just actually have to do a Google search or two to find them.
So you had to spend 6 months disabling copy&paste, tethering, MMS, multitasking, A2DP and other features so that your Windows Mobile phone behaves more like an iPhone?
they're buggy and overall the devices run slower and are less customizable.
Care to share an example? Sounds like you have plenty... or are you just recycling wrong, out-of-date groupthink?
Not the GP, but I have two (both on Sprint)
A) Moto Q9c. I thought this was the worst POS phone I ever put my hands on, with slow speeds, lockups, and misfeatures, so I stupidly reupped and got
B) Palm Pro (Treo 850e). I was wrong. This makes the Q9c look like a miracle of modern fucking engineering. All the problems of the Q9c, and more, including the fact that some genius decided a phone doesn't need a fucking power button, so you have to open the batter compartment and hard reset whenever WinMo decides to shit itself, which it does... often... at the worst possible times...
I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that apple was locking their phones basebands. That is the locking is occuring in the cell-phone part of the phone which has it's very own firmware and DSP not the main "operating system" CPU part of the phone. So this tethering denial may be just a side effect of the well known baseband locking that occurs when they lock the cell phone to a carrier class. The iphone Dev team has never cracked the Cell phone firmware.
I think it might be "pre"-mature to say the pre is completely open source. The CPU part of the phone might be, but does that assure that they won't permenantly lock the carrier class? I could imagine that some service providers might want Palm to do just that in return for subsidizing the phone.
We shall see. Right now there's not enough Pre phones out there for the main market let alone a gray market of re-banded phones to be siginficant. Apple did not start locking the phones this way till the 3G. the 2G phones supposedly, it is said, can't be locked that way. But I honestly don't know enough to argue the matter, I'm just repeating what i've gleaned on the iphone-dev team blogs.
You're right, the lock occurs in the phone's baseband. That's why the next *sn0w unlock by the iphone dev team will probably modify the.ipsw file so that you can update your phone to 3.1 WITHOUT updating the baseband, thus allowing both tethering AND downgrades to 3.0.
TFA is WRONG. I have a contract in my country which allows tethering and while it's true that tethering stopped working immediately after the 3.1 update, my provider unlocked tethering a few days later.
Also, I should correct my original post. Another poster stated that the claim is over the life of the contract (2 years) not one year. This is correct, I apologize for any confusion. it's around $500 - $600 US a year difference, which is $1000 - $1200 US per contract term.
But that's still a significant savings, and given the choice, I'd pick a cheaper, more compact, True Open Source phone over the iShackle any day.
Seeking promotion so you can afford a 1200$ yearly phone bill is kind of crazy.
Also, i read your sig link "VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT - Asthma Patients Left Gasping for Air - consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/09/asthma_hfa05.html"
I think that article should be renamed to "VICTIMS OF CORPORATE GREED". From the article, the government ban on CFCs is driven by citizens to preseve the environment. The even bigger problem is her insurance company turning her down on something she worked so hard to prepare for. Now she can't do anything, jump ship to another insurance company? Hope they accept pre-existing conditions (not likely).
Fuck AT&T. I don't tether currently. I didn't cringe when I got charged $26 per line for "activation". I didn't cringe at signing a 2-year contract to get a phone for $300. I didn't even cringe at an "unlimited" data plan that limits downloads to 10MB files (which, coincidentally, is smaller than most of the apps on the "approved" app store).
Why is Apple sticking with these people. The overall user experience of an "approved" iPhone is significantly worse because of AT&T's behavior as greedy little fucktards.
Fuck AT&T. I don't tether currently. I didn't cringe when I got charged $26 per line for "activation". I didn't cringe at signing a 2-year contract to get a phone for $300. I didn't even cringe at an "unlimited" data plan that limits downloads to 10MB files (which, coincidentally, is smaller than most of the apps on the "approved" app store).
Why is Apple sticking with these people. The overall user experience of an "approved" iPhone is significantly worse because of AT&T's behavior as greedy little fucktards.
If you read the article you'll see that it's not just AT&T that Apple did it for. It's across all providers even if they have a legally unlocked phone and approved tethering in their contracts. I can only hope Apple gets a ton of bad press and negative feedback on this one and puts tethering back.
No, it's not all providers. Tethering still works fine in 3.1 on providers that support it, such as Fido/Rogers in Canada.
For example, my iPhone from Fido running 3.1 still has tethering support, just like it always has.
Tethering has only been disabled in 3.1 for providers that don't officially support the iPhone. That sucks, certainly, but let's not engage in hyperbole. If you buy a phone not supported by your carrier, you run the risk of this sort of thing. That's true with any phone, not just the iPhone.
Listen to yourself. Your carrier is not supposed to support a phone, it is supposed to support a _standard_, whether it is CDMA, iMode or GSM like the rest of the world uses, This makes it possible to bring your phone overseas with you too, you know, and do things like buy a phone without the uncertainty of wondering if it will work where you live. The thing is, you've been in slavery so long that your level of expectation is so much lower than that of everyone else. Yes, you, American.
Tethering has only been disabled in 3.1 for providers that don't officially support the iPhone. That sucks, certainly, but let's not engage in hyperbole. If you buy a phone not supported by your carrier, you run the risk of this sort of thing. That's true with any phone, not just the iPhone.
That is completely not true. If I buy an unlocked phone I have the expectation that every feature supported by the phone will work unless the operator doesn't specifically have that feature (like an MMS server).
Tethering is totally different in that regard. The network can't tell if the bits come from the phone or a device using the phone as a modem. So it is completely artificial to limit tethering and Apple had no right to disable it for all non-partner networks. Whether I can use tethering is between me and the mobile operator. Apple has nothing to do with it and this.
This sort of action is so completely in line with Apple current practices though and I hope their asses get nailed to the wall because of it. It might teach them a lesson.
Was this feature was purchased with the phone? I see a class action looming if so. Manufacturers do not hold the right to downgrade product after purchase.
So the FCC has started looking into unfair business practices of cell providers. This could be a smoking gun. A 100% legal unbundled phone that will only support tethering on a single providers network, that previously did support tethering.
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) [today.com] as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
...when I actually wanted an iPhone. Glad I never wasted the money. Why would anyone want to buy something thats capabilities change almost monthly at the whim of Apple and AT&T? It still can't do things an old Moto RAZR did five years ago. The iPhone was relegated to "gadget" status at my company earlier this year (meaning they won't support it as a communication tool for managers). Now it seems to be failing in the gadget category as-well. I really don't even know who to blame anymore- AT&T is an obvious target, but Apple is responsible for a lot of this too.
... but of entertainment for the rest of us. Seriously, this is hilarious. It's like being back in high school again and watching the heartrending saga of Jill and her cavalcade of BFFs finally have a tragic argument destined to elicit tears at every juncture. For the participants, tears of frustration and despair, and for the viewing public, tears of laughter.
I mean, really.
Apple: "Our new phone is awesome!" Fans: "Yes, it is! Wait... where's cut and paste, and media messaging?" AT&T: LOLwhat?
Then...
Apple: "We now have cut and paste... kinda! And the phone is faster!" Fans: "Yay! Wait... I want a refund on the difference!" AT&T: "I'm sitting this one out!"
And now...
Apple: "We now have tethering, and media messaging!" AT&T: "No we don't! In fact, you're killing our network by using the extra capacity you paid for!" Fans: "I'll cut you!"
I just... don't even know what to say. Kudos, to all participants. You've provided more drama than money could buy, and for that, I thank you!
It is actually worse than this for 3.0 lovers. Apple is refusing to sign any more firmware images pre-3.1. This means if you have a problem and need to restore, you WILL be upgraded to 3.1, even if you just want to restore your 3.0. There is (as of yet, and speaking to the dev team maybe forever) no solution around this problem. You only hope would be to have grabbed your signing keys prior to the 3.1 release(or just keeping a 3.0 image around downloaded within itunes), which is something beyond most of the population.
Unfortunately, the 3.1 update also removes any ability of an unlock because they upgrade the baseband as well. I use the term upgrade loosely because they removed most of the minicom commands the baseband will accept to limit their exposure to exploits.
That being said I'm happy with my iPhone because I'm in the small minority of people who jailbreak their phones and don't hit update until a dev team member has a solution for me to upgrade without losing the functionality I've come to enjoy.
A hack that has been disabled at AT&T's request, just like it would be on any other phone that has updates. Apple didn't "remove a feature" - the iPhone can still tether just fine - as long as your carrier supports it.
Does it suck? Hell yes. Is it unexpected? Hell no.
This was in all of the betas, and known about two months ago. If you were "in the know" enough to install a hacked carrier profile on your device, then you should have been following closely enough to know not to install the update. (Oh, and the Pre and it's "free" homebrew community? What about those mandatory updates that install themselves after ten days? And the data collection Palm does? Apple doesn't even do either of those.)
Throw this down at AT&T's feet, not Apple's. Apple certainly has no interest in you tethering or not. If anything, it makes their device more valuable, so they have an interest in allowing it. But clearly AT&T would rather rape you at an unspecified future date for an unspecified amount of money. All the more reason for Apple to leave AT&T as soon as possible.
A hack that has been disabled at AT&T's request, just like it would be on any other phone that has updates. Apple didn't "remove a feature" - the iPhone can still tether just fine - as long as your carrier supports it.
This doesn't appear to be true. Based on what I've read, tethering is only possible now if your carrier supports it *and* Apple supports your carrier. For instance, Orange here in the UK support tethering on most plans. But Orange isn't a supported carrier for iPhone (as Apple have an exclusive deal with O2), so even if a buy an unlocked iPhone from Apple, I wouldn't be able to use it for tethering on Orange.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
So deal with it already, and quit with the hysterics. There's been Nothing New To See Here for years now.
iPhone: Single vendor/carrier in most areas, with significant lock-in. Tightly tied to iTunes on the desktop and the app store. Jailbreaking possible, of course, but it can be fragile.
Pre: Single vendor/carrier, with significant lock-in. Mildly less application lock-in with homebrew hacking, but not all that different from iPhone jailbreaking. OS updates are mandatory so this can change at any time (they're installed automatically after ten days). Palm collects obscene amounts of data on its users, so goodbye privacy.
Android: "Free" - until you try to get root access, and then we're back to fairly involved hacking again. So as usual, only as free as they let you be.
So yeah - NONE of these phones are remotely free out of the box. All of them can be hacked to do what you want with them. Pick your poison.
The difference with Android, versus the other two options, is that the hardware manufacturer and the OS implementer are decoupled.
Android supports root just fine. However, device manufacturers offer no official means to get to root and no official means to flash root-enabled system images. This is no different than Linux supporting root but TiVo not exactly enabling it on their DVRs.
What Android needs is some manufacturer to step up and offer root-capable devices, with limited muss or fuss.
...until now (well it's is coming "Soon (tm)"). The new Nokia N900. A truely open mobile computer (with a phone). It's Debian under the fancy Maemo hood. Albeit not x86.
Getting a root shell using the building Xterm is very easy for those that want to do it, and are a bit technically inclined. Add a certain repo, add the rootsh.deb, open xterm, sudo gain root, and viola! Or you can enable R&D mode using the flasher (firmware updater) utility.
Could it be the abusive wireless companies? No... they have shown time and time again that they do not improperly influence or direct Apple to do any of the things they have done lately such as removing the Google voice suite from the App store. Nope! Not a move pushed by AT&T and all the congressional investigations will show is that they didn't do it and/or don't "recall" doing it. That of course depends on the definition of what "it" means.
Cue the Apple apologists and the others who say "well? don't buy an iPhone!"
What about the poor souls who bought one with expected functionality and had it only to have it yanked out from under them.
What is really wrong here is the lines of ownership. Once someone owns something, is it proper for the previous owner to change and manage how you can use it? Sure, users don't "own" the software, but that is a matter of question there as it has been shown in other instances that copyright holders don't always have the right to control how a work is used. (yes, I know there are exceptions such as playing a DVD in a bar/club... but frankly, I don't think that limitation should be allowed either.) With every push like this, the rights of consumers are being trampled and removed. This is a big and growing problem. Consumers need to push back.
I mean, come on, seriously. ANY time you;re doing something with an Apple device that's against the EULA or the provider's terms, Apple ALLWAYS turns off that function in the next release.
Further, you were TOLD WEEKS AGO that 3.1 broke the provider file hack and that only jailbroken devices and phones runnin 3.0.1 and older would be able to maintain tethering.
The hackers will win out and fix it soon enough, that is if AT&T doesn't start enabling it now anyway as they're doing with MMS.
Plus, adding tethering to an iPhone is $25 more per month, not $60 like it is on the crackberry or the Pre.
The only crap, expensive software I have on my Diamond 2 is... Erm... Oh, wait, I downloaded a cooked community ROM with all of the rubbish removed and installed the apps I use. The WinMobile community is HUGE, with a large amount of free software for the platform.
XDA Developers [xda-developers.com] is somewhere you want to look before considering purchasing any smartphone, especially one you want to toy around with.
Did you RTFA? Apple disables tethering for companies that aren't Apple partners. It has nothing to do with whether or not the carrier allows tethering. Apple is still living in a world where they can shove an authorized provider down their customer's throats, as if they weren't doing business in Europe, where the phone and the service are supposed to be separate.
I think that (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I think that (Score:5, Insightful)
You may have forgotten, in your rush to insult, that by and large people don't care about things that have no effect on them. The majority of Apple customers aren't hurt by this and therefore have no reason to care. Your argument works for that small percentage of people who scream about software freedom, and of course that opinion gets modded up here so you feel like it's common - but in the real world, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
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Re:I think that (Score:4, Insightful)
I know quite a few people with iPhones (and other Apple gear), and are quite happy with it, but not in your "look at how cool i am" way. It's the rest of the world that likes to apply that stereotype to them.
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Re:I think that (Score:5, Informative)
"I believe that the typical iphone customer is a "look at me, I have a cool iphone" idiot."
I'm a typical iPhone user and I would like to give you another perspective. Let me take you back in time to the pre-iPhone days. I was a Verizon customer and I was constantly pissed off because every single phone I had with them would not allow me to sync ANYTHING with my Apple computer. I couldn't sync my contact, my music, my ringtones, nothing. I constantly saw all these neat little tools that allowed Windows users do this, but I was left out in the cold. I don't know if you ever had re-enter all your contacts in your phone manually, but I had to do this about 3 times and it sucked.
When the iPhone came out, I willing dumped Verizon and switched to AT&T. Not because their service is better, but because the iPhone actually allowed me to use the phone like I wanted to. Is Apple perfect? No. I think a lot of what they do is great, but things like this (disabling tethering) sucks. I'm not sure if it's completely Apple's fault. My guess is that they receive pressure from the carriers to do certain things. That's just a guess. But either way, my experience using a "phone" is about 1000% times better than what it was prior to the iPhone. Not sure if that makes me "cool" or not.
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=)
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!Surprised (Score:4, Funny)
No one is surprised enough to comment.
Buy a Pre (Score:3, Insightful)
Palm Pre (and Pixi) has a Homebrew community with a FREE tether program.
WebOS phones are Open Source OS phones, so the Tether capability can't be disabled as it's based on Open functionality, not a closed API.
in the US, a Sprint Simply Everything plan (includes Unlimited data use) is around $1000.00 cheaper a year to have.
So, you can have an Open Source phone with a real Homebrew community, a cheaper unlimited plan and have your Tethering program UNBLOCKABLE. Sounds like the Pre is a better deal all around.
Unless you are an isnob, of course.
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No, I capitalized "Unlimited" because I have capsitis and tend to overuse the shift key. I was in a hurry to post and didn't spell/caps-check my post properly.
Sorry about that.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the equivalent iPhone plan truly unlimited? Or are you just going off on a tangent here?
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The Nokia E90 Communicator looks like an even better phone but we're not going to see it in the USA, presumably because it has similar features. Other than the shiny Apple interface and the difficulty with making it work with a US provider, the E70 was a superior phone to the iPhone for my particular needs. If I could be guaranteed that the E90 would work with a US provider and would not have its features intentionally brain damaged by the telcos, I would drop my iPhone in a heartbeat for one.
The technology has been there for years, it's the telcos screwing things up.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been doing that for a long time now on Windows Mobile using home brew ROMs.
90% of the road warriors out there are not using and don't want to use home brew for their business needs.
I really hate hearing about all these awesome innovations by Palm, Apple, & Windows Mobile using home brew ROMs that I've been using for years on my Blackberry, but nobody cares because it's Research In Motion (RIM)!
Tethering un-modded for years!
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Mobile isn't Open Source.
If Ms cared, they could shut out tethering any time they wanted. Thankfully for you, they apparently don't care.
You know what, I don't care if it's open source or not, because it does the job I want it to do. Plus, MS couldn't turn it off without disabling all network access for all apps. The tethering is an app just like a browser, a mail client or any of a thousand other OPEN SOURCE pieces of software written for Windows Mobile. Simply because they aren't all available in a handy little App Store doesn't mean they don't exist. You just actually have to do a Google search or two to find them.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:5, Funny)
So you had to spend 6 months disabling copy&paste, tethering, MMS, multitasking, A2DP and other features so that your Windows Mobile phone behaves more like an iPhone?
Now that's crazy stuff.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:5, Interesting)
The major difference is due to the fact that it's an M$ product it's APIs aren't open
Is that so? [microsoft.com]
they're buggy and overall the devices run slower and are less customizable.
Care to share an example? Sounds like you have plenty... or are you just recycling wrong, out-of-date groupthink?
Not the GP, but I have two (both on Sprint)
A) Moto Q9c. I thought this was the worst POS phone I ever put my hands on, with slow speeds, lockups, and misfeatures, so I stupidly reupped and got
B) Palm Pro (Treo 850e). I was wrong. This makes the Q9c look like a miracle of modern fucking engineering. All the problems of the Q9c, and more, including the fact that some genius decided a phone doesn't need a fucking power button, so you have to open the batter compartment and hard reset whenever WinMo decides to shit itself, which it does... often... at the worst possible times...
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Baseband locking (Score:5, Interesting)
I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that apple was locking their phones basebands. That is the locking is occuring in the cell-phone part of the phone which has it's very own firmware and DSP not the main "operating system" CPU part of the phone. So this tethering denial may be just a side effect of the well known baseband locking that occurs when they lock the cell phone to a carrier class. The iphone Dev team has never cracked the Cell phone firmware.
I think it might be "pre"-mature to say the pre is completely open source. The CPU part of the phone might be, but does that assure that they won't permenantly lock the carrier class? I could imagine that some service providers might want Palm to do just that in return for subsidizing the phone.
We shall see. Right now there's not enough Pre phones out there for the main market let alone a gray market of re-banded phones to be siginficant. Apple did not start locking the phones this way till the 3G. the 2G phones supposedly, it is said, can't be locked that way. But I honestly don't know enough to argue the matter, I'm just repeating what i've gleaned on the iphone-dev team blogs.
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Re:Baseband locking (Score:5, Informative)
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That's iSnob (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you are an isnob, of course.
According to the iMarketing department, all iWords must be written with the second letter in iCaps.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:4, Funny)
Good point. So it's even cheaper now.
Also, I should correct my original post. Another poster stated that the claim is over the life of the contract (2 years) not one year. This is correct, I apologize for any confusion. it's around $500 - $600 US a year difference, which is $1000 - $1200 US per contract term.
But that's still a significant savings, and given the choice, I'd pick a cheaper, more compact, True Open Source phone over the iShackle any day.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:4, Funny)
The fact that you're on slashdot is contradictory to your post.
Besides, it takes 10 seconds of middle school level math to do.
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Re:Buy a Pre (Score:5, Interesting)
Seeking promotion so you can afford a 1200$ yearly phone bill is kind of crazy.
Also, i read your sig link "VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT - Asthma Patients Left Gasping for Air - consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/09/asthma_hfa05.html"
I think that article should be renamed to "VICTIMS OF CORPORATE GREED". From the article, the government ban on CFCs is driven by citizens to preseve the environment. The even bigger problem is her insurance company turning her down on something she worked so hard to prepare for. Now she can't do anything, jump ship to another insurance company? Hope they accept pre-existing conditions (not likely).
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Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck AT&T. I don't tether currently. I didn't cringe when I got charged $26 per line for "activation". I didn't cringe at signing a 2-year contract to get a phone for $300. I didn't even cringe at an "unlimited" data plan that limits downloads to 10MB files (which, coincidentally, is smaller than most of the apps on the "approved" app store).
Why is Apple sticking with these people. The overall user experience of an "approved" iPhone is significantly worse because of AT&T's behavior as greedy little fucktards.
Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck AT&T. I don't tether currently. I didn't cringe when I got charged $26 per line for "activation". I didn't cringe at signing a 2-year contract to get a phone for $300. I didn't even cringe at an "unlimited" data plan that limits downloads to 10MB files (which, coincidentally, is smaller than most of the apps on the "approved" app store).
Why is Apple sticking with these people. The overall user experience of an "approved" iPhone is significantly worse because of AT&T's behavior as greedy little fucktards.
If you read the article you'll see that it's not just AT&T that Apple did it for. It's across all providers even if they have a legally unlocked phone and approved tethering in their contracts. I can only hope Apple gets a ton of bad press and negative feedback on this one and puts tethering back.
Especially since they are now effectively committing fraud: http://www.apple.com/iphone/iphone-3gs/tethering.html [apple.com]
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Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not all providers. Tethering still works fine in 3.1 on providers that support it, such as Fido/Rogers in Canada.
For example, my iPhone from Fido running 3.1 still has tethering support, just like it always has.
Tethering has only been disabled in 3.1 for providers that don't officially support the iPhone. That sucks, certainly, but let's not engage in hyperbole. If you buy a phone not supported by your carrier, you run the risk of this sort of thing. That's true with any phone, not just the iPhone.
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Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Insightful)
a phone not supported by your carrier
Listen to yourself. Your carrier is not supposed to support a phone, it is supposed to support a _standard_, whether it is CDMA, iMode or GSM like the rest of the world uses, This makes it possible to bring your phone overseas with you too, you know, and do things like buy a phone without the uncertainty of wondering if it will work where you live. The thing is, you've been in slavery so long that your level of expectation is so much lower than that of everyone else. Yes, you, American.
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Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Insightful)
Tethering has only been disabled in 3.1 for providers that don't officially support the iPhone. That sucks, certainly, but let's not engage in hyperbole. If you buy a phone not supported by your carrier, you run the risk of this sort of thing. That's true with any phone, not just the iPhone.
That is completely not true. If I buy an unlocked phone I have the expectation that every feature supported by the phone will work unless the operator doesn't specifically have that feature (like an MMS server).
Tethering is totally different in that regard. The network can't tell if the bits come from the phone or a device using the phone as a modem. So it is completely artificial to limit tethering and Apple had no right to disable it for all non-partner networks. Whether I can use tethering is between me and the mobile operator. Apple has nothing to do with it and this.
This sort of action is so completely in line with Apple current practices though and I hope their asses get nailed to the wall because of it. It might teach them a lesson.
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Purchased Feature (Score:5, Interesting)
FCC may be interested (Score:5, Insightful)
So the FCC has started looking into unfair business practices of cell providers. This could be a smoking gun. A 100% legal unbundled phone that will only support tethering on a single providers network, that previously did support tethering.
Apple embraces Evil(tm) (Score:5, Funny)
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) [today.com] as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
I remember... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not an issue of AT&T, Apple, or "Fanboys" (Score:5, Funny)
... but of entertainment for the rest of us. Seriously, this is hilarious. It's like being back in high school again and watching the heartrending saga of Jill and her cavalcade of BFFs finally have a tragic argument destined to elicit tears at every juncture. For the participants, tears of frustration and despair, and for the viewing public, tears of laughter.
I mean, really.
Apple: "Our new phone is awesome!"
Fans: "Yes, it is! Wait... where's cut and paste, and media messaging?"
AT&T: LOLwhat?
Then...
Apple: "We now have cut and paste... kinda! And the phone is faster!"
Fans: "Yay! Wait... I want a refund on the difference!"
AT&T: "I'm sitting this one out!"
And now...
Apple: "We now have tethering, and media messaging!"
AT&T: "No we don't! In fact, you're killing our network by using the extra capacity you paid for!"
Fans: "I'll cut you!"
I just... don't even know what to say. Kudos, to all participants. You've provided more drama than money could buy, and for that, I thank you!
Apple. It just...works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except when they don't want it to.
Re-possession of already purchased functionality (Score:4, Informative)
Ha ha, just kidding. Welcome to America.
It's worse. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the 3.1 update also removes any ability of an unlock because they upgrade the baseband as well. I use the term upgrade loosely because they removed most of the minicom commands the baseband will accept to limit their exposure to exploits.
That being said I'm happy with my iPhone because I'm in the small minority of people who jailbreak their phones and don't hit update until a dev team member has a solution for me to upgrade without losing the functionality I've come to enjoy.
Tethering on AT&T was a hack (Score:4, Informative)
A hack that has been disabled at AT&T's request, just like it would be on any other phone that has updates. Apple didn't "remove a feature" - the iPhone can still tether just fine - as long as your carrier supports it.
Does it suck? Hell yes. Is it unexpected? Hell no.
This was in all of the betas, and known about two months ago. If you were "in the know" enough to install a hacked carrier profile on your device, then you should have been following closely enough to know not to install the update. (Oh, and the Pre and it's "free" homebrew community? What about those mandatory updates that install themselves after ten days? And the data collection Palm does? Apple doesn't even do either of those.)
Throw this down at AT&T's feet, not Apple's. Apple certainly has no interest in you tethering or not. If anything, it makes their device more valuable, so they have an interest in allowing it. But clearly AT&T would rather rape you at an unspecified future date for an unspecified amount of money. All the more reason for Apple to leave AT&T as soon as possible.
Re:Tethering on AT&T was a hack (Score:5, Informative)
A hack that has been disabled at AT&T's request, just like it would be on any other phone that has updates. Apple didn't "remove a feature" - the iPhone can still tether just fine - as long as your carrier supports it.
This doesn't appear to be true. Based on what I've read, tethering is only possible now if your carrier supports it *and* Apple supports your carrier. For instance, Orange here in the UK support tethering on most plans. But Orange isn't a supported carrier for iPhone (as Apple have an exclusive deal with O2), so even if a buy an unlocked iPhone from Apple, I wouldn't be able to use it for tethering on Orange.
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MAC WORLD story time again! (Score:5, Funny)
I've always been a PC at heart.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
Uh. y'all sure its been disabled? (Score:5, Interesting)
Weird. Tethering is on my 3.1 phone. Not sure whats happening to you folks.
General menu -> Netowork ->Tethering -> On.
About says:
Network: YES OPTUS (australian carrier)
Line: Virgin Mobile
Version: 3.1 (7C144)
I'm on the developer program so maybe developers get extra goodies?
There is no freedom on smartphones (Score:5, Insightful)
So yeah - NONE of these phones are remotely free out of the box. All of them can be hacked to do what you want with them. Pick your poison.
Re:There is no freedom on smartphones (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference with Android, versus the other two options, is that the hardware manufacturer and the OS implementer are decoupled.
Android supports root just fine. However, device manufacturers offer no official means to get to root and no official means to flash root-enabled system images. This is no different than Linux supporting root but TiVo not exactly enabling it on their DVRs.
What Android needs is some manufacturer to step up and offer root-capable devices, with limited muss or fuss.
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Re:There is no freedom on smartphones (Score:5, Informative)
Getting a root shell using the building Xterm is very easy for those that want to do it, and are a bit technically inclined. Add a certain repo, add the rootsh
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What could possibly have motivated this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could it be the abusive wireless companies? No... they have shown time and time again that they do not improperly influence or direct Apple to do any of the things they have done lately such as removing the Google voice suite from the App store. Nope! Not a move pushed by AT&T and all the congressional investigations will show is that they didn't do it and/or don't "recall" doing it. That of course depends on the definition of what "it" means.
Cue the Apple apologists and the others who say "well? don't buy an iPhone!"
What about the poor souls who bought one with expected functionality and had it only to have it yanked out from under them.
What is really wrong here is the lines of ownership. Once someone owns something, is it proper for the previous owner to change and manage how you can use it? Sure, users don't "own" the software, but that is a matter of question there as it has been shown in other instances that copyright holders don't always have the right to control how a work is used. (yes, I know there are exceptions such as playing a DVD in a bar/club... but frankly, I don't think that limitation should be allowed either.) With every push like this, the rights of consumers are being trampled and removed. This is a big and growing problem. Consumers need to push back.
FUD (Score:4, Informative)
This is a surprise how? (Score:4, Informative)
I mean, come on, seriously. ANY time you;re doing something with an Apple device that's against the EULA or the provider's terms, Apple ALLWAYS turns off that function in the next release.
Further, you were TOLD WEEKS AGO that 3.1 broke the provider file hack and that only jailbroken devices and phones runnin 3.0.1 and older would be able to maintain tethering.
The hackers will win out and fix it soon enough, that is if AT&T doesn't start enabling it now anyway as they're doing with MMS.
Plus, adding tethering to an iPhone is $25 more per month, not $60 like it is on the crackberry or the Pre.
Re:This is why (Score:4, Informative)
XDA Developers [xda-developers.com] is somewhere you want to look before considering purchasing any smartphone, especially one you want to toy around with.
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Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
Did you RTFA? Apple disables tethering for companies that aren't Apple partners. It has nothing to do with whether or not the carrier allows tethering. Apple is still living in a world where they can shove an authorized provider down their customer's throats, as if they weren't doing business in Europe, where the phone and the service are supposed to be separate.
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