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Networking Cellphones Iphone Apple

Jobs Says No Tethering iPad To iPhone 423

tugfoigel writes "Anyone who currently owns an iPhone and was hoping they would be able to use it as a mobile Web access point for a Wi-Fi iPad just got some bad news. Reportedly, Steve Jobs has said this will not happen. Swedish blog Slashat.se claims they e-mailed Jobs directly to ask him whether or not you'd be able to tether your iPad and iPhone and received a terse 'No' in reply. According to the report, the email headers made it plausible that the reply had come from Jobs's iPhone."
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Jobs Says No Tethering iPad To iPhone

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  • Why did anybody think that they'd allow users to tether the iPad to anything when it's 3G data plan only costs $30 a month? With its limited OS, you can only run official apps that can't have high-bandwidth uses (like streaming video) on 3G. That's the reason you get such a discount compared to a $60 a month 5 GB plan...

    If you want to tether a computer and have iPad and iPhone and let them think they're on WiFi, you want a $60 a month plan and a MiFi device from either Verizon or Sprint.

    • by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:39PM (#31409892) Journal

      You're confused. This isn't about tethering something through iPad. This is about tethering iPad (the model without 3G) through iPhone. It's something that you can do with any cheapo netbook and any cheapo phone (not even smartphone).

      I don't see why anyone should be "allowing" (much less "not allowing") me to tether things the way I want, either. In fact, this kind of thing - "Unlimited mobile data plan for just $X! <small>for use with selected mobile devices with provider-supplied Web browser application only!</small>", which is so prevalent in North America, really irks me - back in my home country, I would get a proper data plan which lets me use teh tube however I see fit, without any such bullshit, for those very same $X (usually less, in fact).

      • by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:21AM (#31410160) Journal
        This is Apple we're talking about. It just works. Unless of course it doesn't, in which case you didn't need to do it anyway. Think different!
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by GF678 ( 1453005 )

          This is Apple we're talking about. It just works. Unless of course it doesn't, in which case you didn't need to do it anyway. Think different!

          Funny, I've heard the same statement from Linux/Ubuntu users as well. :)

          • by sopssa ( 1498795 ) * <sopssa@email.com> on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:31AM (#31410560) Journal

            At least with Linux you can code the feature in. Same with Windows (Mobile). Even with goddamn Symbian.

            $60 a month for 5GB limited 3G plan with some additional device? Jeez. I pay around $20 a month for 1 Mbit/s unlimited 3G and they happily send extra sim cards if you want to use the same contract with extra devices and no bullshit clauses about tethering etc.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Fjandr ( 66656 )

              Since T-Mobile changed their rate plans, I managed to upgrade two lines to unlimited data/Blackberry email for only an additional $10/month (and no contract extension to boot). And yeah, they don't give a damn if it's tethered to something or not. I think this is the exception to "you get what you pay for," unless people really are intending to pay that much to be screwed.

          • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:38AM (#31410594)

            A giant customized Starbucks in Cupertino California where lattes and no soy skim macchiatos are given out free to all employees. The background music involves a playlist of Nora Jones, David Matthews, John Mayer, and Bono on loop from an Ipod docked somewhere in the Apple/Starbucks facility. Hours are long but morale is surprising high as developers, hardware and software, are given 30 minute breaks to masturbate to the new itunes interface.

            All developers sit at cafe type tables with a Mac Book Pro while their lord and master Steve Jobs stands deskless in his predictable attire of a turtleneck and jeans. In fact, this is the preferred (mandatory) dress code at Apple. Jobs walks around to each and every department, separated by latte and vegan preferences, and checks on the performance and efficiency of his developers. At any given point in the day one may see Mr Jobs yelling at a programmer for not implementing a button in the perfect shade of corn flower blue (#6495ED) and immediately sends him to the apple punitive chamber, consisting of a HP Compaq running Vista Basic.

            There are 2 software development departments and 2 hardware development sections in Apple. For software there is the Apple core team, Apple Open Source team. In hardware there is the Apple systems and management team and the iDevice team. Since the OSX kernel consists of a BSD darwin kernel there is no real need for low level programmers and as such the entirety of the Apple core team consists of UI designers and photoshop junkies. All software churned out from the core team is designed in a program strikingly similar to Visual Studio's form designer but with Cocoa Objective C generated instead. The 16 hour day (Jobs demands 16 hour days since he himself never sleeps) of a core dev involves lining up the right shade of chrome with the latest photoshopped graphite button and maintaining the correct color scheme, not an easy job at all.

            The Apple open source team involves a little bit more coding, which is mandated to be done in TextEdit or the option of a $80 third party mac text editor. The Apple open source team doesn't actually create much code but searches the internet for interesting BSD licensed software and modifies it as it's own through obfuscation and conversion to objective C. Many of the items a mac user sees comes from the open source world stamped by apple such as the ability to play music taken from 67 different originally linux based players, CD burning, and the overall ability to click a mouse. Apple's legal department has no qualms about this practice and has assured many that since most of the code is BSD and if any is GPLed many Linux hippies should be grateful that Apple fostered WebKit by using KHTML and adding some Gecko bloat. Perhaps one of the most important items that the open source team has done to date is use parts of the FreeBSD to keep the kernel up to date.

            There's not much to say about the Apple systems and management team. I suppose they can be classified in to desktop and laptop systems. Because hardware work is beneath Apple in general and thought of being only worthy of Windows Users and as such can be found working on these beauties in the starbucks bathroom. Desktops are currently made by buying dell machines and putting them in Lian Li cases, where the majority of the costs goes to buying titanium Apple emblems to paste on the sides. Laptops consists of the rebranding of only the most silver and black Sony Viaos but talk has been going around about rebranding Asus EeePCs for a new Apple netbook but you didn't hear that from me, for fear of my life.

            The iDevice team's job is to develop for the ipod, iphone, itouch, and many other portable electronics apple may release in the future. Their jobs are very interconnected with the open source team as well as the core dev team. Using firmware from random samsung devices and giving it an OSX skin the ipod stands as a shining example that infringement only applies to greasy file sharers and that the music player remains the best in market

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by aussie_a ( 778472 )

            You've heard

            It just works.

            said about Linux? The biggest problem with Linux is it doesn't "just work". It in fact often "doesn't work" unless you go hunting for patches (which are almost always third party) and install them and all sorts of other stuff just to get stuff to work halfway decently. Linux only "just works" if you've gotten someone else to either vet the hardware and specific models or set up the computer themselves. And then it stops "just working" whenever you want to install any new applications that aren't

            • by rsidd ( 6328 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @02:31AM (#31410836)

              Linux "just works" unless you have unsupported hardware. Same as Apple -- except that a lot more hardware is supported under Linux, these days. There's a reason Apple doesn't allow third-party boxes to run OS X.

              • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @03:26AM (#31411068)

                Linux "just works" unless you have unsupported hardware.

                So it works unless it doesn't. Who woulda thought it! Behold the miracle of open source!

              • by tclgeek ( 587784 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @07:48AM (#31412178) Homepage
                You can't be serious. You can't. I've used various flavors of unix for roughly three decades, and as much as I love it I just can't agree with that statement. Linux requires tweaking and knowing arcane stuff. I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't "just work". Ok, granted, you can pop in an ubuntu disk and be up and running lickety split, but "it just works" as a meme means more than it "just works". It means you can go about your task thinking more about your task than about the OS. Linux is simply not there yet.
              • by am 2k ( 217885 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @07:57AM (#31412260) Homepage

                Uh, at least with Ubuntu, the list of unsupported hardware includes such minor things as all Nvidia graphics cards. They work fine with the (supported) default driver, but without any OpenGL.

                I've installed the official driver manually, and now every time there's a kernel upgrade (which seems to happen about once every other week right now), the graphical user interface breaks, and I'm dropped back to the command line. Then I have to reinstall the Nvidia driver manually again to get back to work. It took me about two hours to locate the problem and find the solution for the first time (it's not like the system tells you what is broken, it just doesn't work).

                Note that the kernel upgrades pop up automatically with the message "there are important updates you should install" and are only a click on "install" away.

                So, tell me how my mother should be able to handle that?

                • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                  by IANAAC ( 692242 )
                  So, tell me how my mother should be able to handle that?

                  She would call you, just like she does now when anything goes wrong with her Windows or Mac machine.

                • by StayFrosty ( 1521445 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @09:12AM (#31413040)
                  The NVIDIA and ATI proprietary drivers have been easily installed in Ubuntu by a program called jockey since the 7.x releases. It's under System --> Administration --> Hardware drivers. It can be launched from the CLI if you so choose with either jockey-gtk or jockey-text. Installing NVIDIA or ATI drivers is as simple as clicking on the driver and clicking "install." When there is a kernel update, DKMS automatically recompiles the driver for the new kernel so there is no screwing around with that any more either.
                • by Rozine ( 1345911 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @09:51AM (#31413594)
                  I understand your frustration, but you're doing it wrong. If you use the official hardware drivers program in the administration menu, kernel upgrades will not cause this behavior. (This is actually the default behavior on a new install now - it pops up and asks you). And it is supported by Canonical.
                • by agrif ( 960591 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:10PM (#31415792) Homepage

                  They're a click on "install" and a password away. Make sure she knows that when the computer asks for a password, it's asking to do something that could seriously screw things up, and should only be done with expert help.

                  Besides, you do know that the official nVidia driver is available in Ubuntu through the "Restricted Drivers" window, right? These get updated with the kernel, so this shouldn't even be a problem.

              • by Jurily ( 900488 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {yliruj}> on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @07:58AM (#31412264)

                unsupported hardware.

                No such thing in Linux. There's "experimental driver", though.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by siloko ( 1133863 )

              The biggest problem with Linux is it doesn't "just work". It in fact often "doesn't work" unless you go hunting for patches . . .

              he, he

              Roll up! Roll up! chuck that ole 2010 in the bin and welcome to version 1.1 of 1993!

          • by knarf ( 34928 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @05:24AM (#31411460)

            I've heard the same statement from Linux/Ubuntu

            In that case you should have your hearing checked. When something does not work in Linux the reaction is 'make it work, the source is available, did you file a bug report' - a marked difference I'd say. For the average user the end result might be similar but in Linux' case all it takes is a not so average user to make it work.

            Another very big difference becomes apparent when that user finally makes it work while another similar user makes his Apple-branded product do the same...

            • Given a solid implementation the Linux user will see his work spread to different distributions. He (or she of course) will receive praise from users and developers alike.
            • The Apple user will see his work derided as a hack by the Apple faithful. He (or she) will be branded as a hacker and possibly pirate in the common media sense of the word as he will have breached several license agreements to be able to make the thing do what it should. He will also see his work been made ineffective with the next firmware release and will read stern warnings about 'unauthorized firmware modifications' being the cause of 'bricked' products.
      • Because if they allow it the price for "Unlimited mobile data plan for just $X!" doubles or triples. Other customers would not be happy with that. You should start focusing on trying to get a new plan available for more money instead of trying to screw over the common customer who doesn't use their data plan for anything other than e-mail and an occasional webpage.
        • (Don't get me wrong, I hate apple and I hate AT&T, but it does cost AT&T money when you use their services).
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by kimvette ( 919543 )

            and yet, some other providers manage to provide unlimited voice and data for less.

        • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @02:15AM (#31410768) Homepage Journal

          The problem is, the carriers are bound and determined to call the crappy plan "unlimited" because it makes them sound generous. They don't want to have a "we really (well, sorta) mean it this time" plan because then they start to look like the liars they are. They ESPECIALLY don't want to start talking about $/GB because then customers might (GASP!) start comparison shopping.

          • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @08:05AM (#31412304) Homepage Journal

            Bingo. They aren't allowed to fix prices, because that's illegal. So they do the next best thing. They make it impossible for the customer to compare prices for what he is getting.

            This is like buying a car. Every time I've tried to buy a car, the salesman has tried to make the deal more complicated. Let's talk trade in! Nope. I'm selling my car separately. Well how about financing? Nope, I'm paying cash. What about this nifty special warranty the dealer offers? I'd rather just hand you the money than going through that charade. And no, I'm not handing you the money. Well, an extended manufacturer warranty? I'll self-insure, thank you.

            You see, we both know on some level that what I want to buy is a car. The dealer is trying to trick me into forgetting that.

            What I want from a mobile carrier is bandwidth. Period. I don't want to use *their* app store. I don't want to use *their* messaging service. I don't want a relationship with them other than this: I pay them monthly, and I get to make/receive phone calls and send data.

    • by bondsbw ( 888959 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:39PM (#31409894)

      I would pay more for the option. But I'm still waiting for AT&T to enable tethering on the iPhone.

      While I'm here... my biggest gripe is no multi-tasking. Apple enables multi-tasking, they sell me an iPad... it's that simple. Heck, I'd take limited background APIs. But the fact that no third-party multitasking is allowed will keep the device out of my hands.

      • by Renderer of Evil ( 604742 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:46AM (#31410638) Homepage

        I think you're confusing background processes with the term multitasking. iPad and iPhone both do multitasking just fine. You could be operating an app or playing a game, take a call and get back to whatever you were doing since the bulk of the application have a clever way of pausing and resuming.

        Background apps which aren't made by Apple (iPod, email, ical) are a terrible idea. Aside with the battery drain issues and bandwidth usage problems it eats into CPU cycles. As a developer I only test with stock devices and don't have the resources to test my application against 140,000 apps to see how they play together, especially when I'm pushing the CPU to its developer alloted limits.

        Why in the world would I want to share cycles with apps from other developers on a task oriented portable device? It's bad enough there are unforeseen push notifications from different vendors fucking up the UX, now I have to bend over backwards and play nice with every resource hog on the app store? No thanks.

        I think you'd be better off with a laptop. Background apps are bullshit, I don't care how well they are coded. They introduce uncertainty into the mix and I don't want to guess what my users are going to experience.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mdwh2 ( 535323 )

          By that logic, my 5 year old cheap dumbphone could multitask, because I could run the built in mp3 player at the same time as the built in email client.

          (And I just love that as soon as Apple drop multitasking, we have no end of people claiming it's a great thing. Should netbooks, laptops or desktops not multitask either? Why, when MS said they were going to limit Windows 7 on netbooks to 3 applications, didn't we have praise, with people saying they should go further and only allow 1 application?)

          Why in the

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 )

          Why in the world would I want to share cycles with apps from other developers on a task oriented portable device?

          Indeed! It doesn't work for you, therefore it works for no one. I'm glad that Apple made this choice for users so that no one would have to make it for themselves.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:47PM (#31409958)
      Steve Jobs could through a baby into a industrial tree shredder and you would still defend him.
      • by Cryacin ( 657549 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:03AM (#31410060)
        You sir just sent the English Language screaming through a tree shredder.
        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by mcgrew ( 92797 ) *

          Wouldn't that be "You sir just sent the English Language screaming throw a tree shredder"? ;)

      • by feepness ( 543479 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:07AM (#31410436)

        Steve Jobs could through a baby into a industrial tree shredder and you would still defend him.

        In his defense the baby was being kind of a dick.

        • by mr_da3m0n ( 887821 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:10AM (#31410458) Homepage

          Steve Jobs could through a baby into a industrial tree shredder and you would still defend him.

          In his defense the baby was being kind of a dick.

          Yeah we don't know what was that baby's problem.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            Steve Jobs could through a baby into a industrial tree shredder and you would still defend him.

            In his defense the baby was being kind of a dick.

            Yeah we don't know what was that baby's problem.

            I heard it was a crack baby, so it's an act of mercy.

    • by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:54PM (#31410000) Homepage

      Sorry, but at least part of the problem is, why am I expected to buy separate data plans for each mobile device that I have? I have paid for a data plan for my phone, so why should I have to pay for an additional plan for either the iPad or the MiFi?

      That's the reason you get such a discount compared to a $60 a month 5 GB plan...

      What's the reason? Is the "unlimited" data plan for the iPhone or iPad capped under 5GB? If AT&T wanted to charge $60 for 5GB, they easily could have done that, but they chose to charge $30 for "unlimited" data. If I use a set amount of data, what difference does it make to them if some of that data passes to another device?

      Let's just be honest hear: They're charging too much and imposing arbitrary restrictions because there's minimal competition, minimal regulation, and they believe that their customers will put up with being charged for a separate plan for each and every device they own.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Sorry, but at least part of the problem is, why am I expected to buy separate data plans for each mobile device that I have? I have paid for a data plan for my phone, so why should I have to pay for an additional plan for either the iPad or the MiFi?

        Most of the world doesn't. If you're stuck on a carrier with CDMA, you have to. But if you're using GSM/HSPA/EDGE/etc, you don't.

        YOu take the SIM out of your phone, stick it in your MiFi. I'd say to stick it in your iPad, but that requires a micro-SIM, in which

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by BearRanger ( 945122 )
      $15 a month in the US. The iPad is primarily a wi-fi device, or so it seems to me. Why would anyone pay for the unlimited data plan?
    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Why did anybody think that they'd allow users to tether the iPad to anything when it's 3G data plan only costs $30 a month?

      I'll pay $60 a month then.

  • by lordsid ( 629982 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:37PM (#31409888)

    Personally I'd like to know how he thinks he's going to stop it. Nothing like telling someone 'no' to challenge them.

    • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:09AM (#31410098) Journal
      Chances of stopping 100% of cases? Pretty much zero.

      Chances of making the process annoying, complex, and/or risky enough that relatively few people will bother? Pretty much 100%.

      When all you see is the aggregate profit/loss numbers, those relatively few will be basically irrelevant. If they somehow manage to use massive amounts of data, AT&T will just ban them anyway, and probably charge them a stiff ETF for the privilege.

      That's the thing to keep in mind: Content-level DRM is doomed because it only has to be cracked once, it can spread like wildfire in the clear from that point forward. Device-level DRM only has to be reverse-engineered once(per iPhone OS update, hardware revision, silent baseband revision bump, etc.) but the crack has to be applied per-device. TOS-level control can be circumvented merely by ignoring it; but you face the constant threat of termination and possible penalties.
  • how long before it's cracked?

    • by Yvan256 ( 722131 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:59PM (#31410036) Homepage Journal

      I guess it depends on the size of the rock you choose to crack it.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      how long before it's cracked?

      Hopefully not a long time. However, given that the second run of iPhone 3GS aren't completely jailbroken yet (they require a tethered jailbreak every reboot), Apple may have learned and make the new iPads even more difficult to jailbreak.

      Now, given that Apple's developers make stupid bugs, if you're planning on this, I would suggest buying an early revision iPad as it will likely have the buggy boot ROM allowing an easy jailbreak. A few months down the road (when a jailbreak hap

  • Steve's deathgrip on what I can and can't do with _my_ device... Why would anyone subject themselves to that?

  • by wampus ( 1932 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:42PM (#31409914)

    Steve must produce additional sizes of iPod Touch before they can join to form iVoltron.

  • Didn't he say this.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zoid.com ( 311775 )

    I'm pretty sure he said this two days ago. Yep... here it is:

    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2361029,00.asp [pcmag.com]

    2 days ago...

    I used to come here to get the lates tech news.

  • by linumax ( 910946 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:45PM (#31409936)
    I'm expected to pay the service provider 30$ for home Internet, 30$ for phone and now 30$ for tablet?! Very soon our cars will be connected devices and not long after that glasses, watches, etc. Are we supposed to keep paying up per device? It's highly unreasonable, specially since most people don't use two devices at the same time.
    • by zoid.com ( 311775 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:49PM (#31409974) Homepage Journal

      It's easy, don't buy it.

    • by nategasser ( 224001 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @01:34AM (#31410572)

      You use electricity in your vacuum cleaner, your blender, and your hair dryer, and you pay for each, even though you don't use them at the same time. Nobody complains about that.

      The difference is the unlimited plans. If consumers would consent to paying straight metered rates for bandwidth, like we do for electricity and gas/oil, we could be free of all these stupid packages and deals and calling circles and contracts.

      Cell phone service and broadband internet are commodity utilities, yet they're marketed as "lifestyle" services -- which means, expensive advertising that appeals to emotions.

      I hope that, before every device in our lives gets connected, that bandwidth becomes as boring and predictable as electricity or heating oil.

    • by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @02:02AM (#31410714)

      Are we supposed to keep paying up per device? It's highly unreasonable, specially since most people don't use two devices at the same time.

      We're going through the same thing right now with wireless telcos that we did with ISP's about 10-15 years ago. Some people probably don't remember it, others may have actually been too young to really know about it, but there was a time when the cable and phone companies considered having a router on their service as a terms of use violation. They would cut you off if they discovered it. People would actually hide their routers whenever they'd have to make a service call (I remember doing this!). They charged for internet use per connection, so to them using a router was "theft" because you could use one router for many different computers.

      Of course, today that sounds ridiculous, and ISP's even give away wireless routers. Verizon's standard DSL and FiOS modems are wireless routers.

      So hopefully in 10 years (or less), we'll be at that same point with the wireless telcos, where they realize they'll actually get more business by simplifying and letting people do what they want with their connections. And they actually will sell their service per household or subscriber, and not per device connection.

  • good heavens! That's crazy talk.

  • Forged Headers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NiteRiderXP ( 750309 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:49PM (#31409968)

    This is Slashdot, wake up people.
    How hard is it to forge headers, it's not like his email was signed with a cert?
    Maybe I should send a story in with fake headers and see if it gets posted...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      Yeah, but why? It's not like anyone would be offended if he had a secretary answer his emails, there is no reason to forge them. And if he did sign it with a cert, he could have just as easily given the cert to the secretary.
      • Re:Forged Headers? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sir_Lewk ( 967686 ) <sirlewk&gmail,com> on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:58PM (#31410024)

        The point is we have no reason to believe those emails came from jobs, anyone representing jobs, or even anyone sharing a point of view with jobs. It could have been some 12 year old eating cheetos and hotpockets while trolling mac forums in his mother's basement using a 15 year old PC running netbsd.

        Is that likely? Probably not, but acting like headers tell you anything is idiotic.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by amRadioHed ( 463061 )

          Faking email headers is trivial. Getting Steve Jobs personal email so that you can fake a reply is slightly harder.

          • Re:Forged Headers? (Score:5, Informative)

            by Mistlefoot ( 636417 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:22AM (#31410164)
            Not to mention, to ask Steve Jobs a question via his direct email address and then get a reply means either:

            1) someone is hacking Steve Jobs incoming email and read the question and replied
            2) someone guessed that Steve Jobs was asked this questions and then coincidentally spoofed an answer to person they correctly guessed asked it
            3) Steve Jobs replied.

            number 1 is big news - Steve Jobs email is not secure!!!!
            number 2 is conspiracy theory material
            number 3 confirms what Steve Jobs said in a pcmag article 2 days ago and seems the logically obvious choice.
            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Sir_Lewk ( 967686 )

              4) someone faked the entire exchange so they could get links to their website spread around the internet.
              5) any number of other possibilities, limited only by your imagination.

              We don't know what happened because email headers do not provide authentication.

              number 1 is big news - Steve Jobs email is not secure!!!!

              Newsflash, if you are not using GPG/PGP, which apparently Steve Jobs is not, then your email most certainly is not secure. This is only big news to anyone that doesn't know how email works.

              Now perso

    • Had it been the real Steve Jobs, he would have bricked the iPhone of the guy who asked the question, just to remind him whose house they are in....
  • by myocardialinfarction ( 1606123 ) on Monday March 08, 2010 @11:50PM (#31409988)
    He won't have been able to get it, since God is testing his faith.
  • ...because it will most likely get hacked just like the Kindle and iPhone were. Unless by some miracle the iPad becomes un-'jailbreakable.'

  • ... but iNo!
  • Ouch. (Score:2, Insightful)

    At the risk of being moderated "Troll"...

    What a jerk.

  • Tosh.0 (Score:4, Funny)

    by BUL2294 ( 1081735 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:06AM (#31410080)
    The more I read about the iPad's failings, the more I'd love to do this [comedycentral.com] to a (free) one...

    "We never even turned it on!"
  • by SlappyBastard ( 961143 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:16AM (#31410134) Homepage
    I'm outraged. Absolutely outraged. This is unprecedented. Unheard of.
  • It's a shame (Score:3, Insightful)

    by toastliscio ( 1729734 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @12:35AM (#31410246)
    It's a shame that in the 21st century you buy a device like that and then you have to ask permission to the company that made it for doing something obvious. The iPad can do that, but they prevent you from doing it via software, just because if you want to do something like that, they want you to spend even more money on another of their devices. So actually they don't make money on what they give you, but on what they take away from you. The EU has much more articulated antitrust laws than US (see MS Windows browser case), let's hope they'll do something, sooner or later. BTW, I'm a Linux and GNU and FLOSS supporter, so from my point of view Microsoft is nothing more than a company that tries to do its business, but before MS came along all kinds of computers where closed like Apples. Microsoft opened up the market and spurred strong competition between hardware producers so that now we have better tecnology at lower prices, now with Apple we can see again what the closed world was like. Will the apple hype ever deflate in front of such things?
  • FTFA (Score:5, Funny)

    by commodoresloat ( 172735 ) * on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @02:48AM (#31410922)

    Jobs's reply--"No. Sent from my iPhone"

    The big news here is that even Steve Jobs himself can't figure out how to turn off that annoying sig line.

  • by obarthelemy ( 160321 ) on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @03:18AM (#31411036)

    almost all WinMob and Android phones can do wifi -> 3g routing, so your iPad will be able to tether without even realizing it's tethering. Bluetooth -> 3G and Bluetooth -> Wifi would prolly not work, though, if the iPad's BT stack is anything like the iPhone's.

    I'd be leery of buying from a company with such a customer unfriendly attitude though. Their goal is clearly to sell more 3G upgrades, on which they take 90% margin.

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