Free SMS On IPhone 3G Via AOL IM Client

Glenn Fleishman writes "Jeff Carlson has discovered that you can bypass the 20 cent per message or $5 to $20 per month fees for SMS (text messaging) with the iPhone 3G and AT&T by using AOL's downloadable instant message client for iPhone 2.0, which is free. Just like the full-blown AOL IM system, you can add buddies that are the phone numbers of cell phones you want to send SMS to, and you establish a two-way conduit. The recipient still pays for SMS (if they have a fee) on their end, but if it's another iPhone user, you could coordinate with them via SMS to use instant messaging instead."

Comments

Oh lord

[negRo_slim]

Someone figures out to chat instead of text and it makes front page...

Re:Oh lord

[BPPG]

This really isn't a big deal. The big deal will be Apple's reaction to it. Will they like it, since people might be encouraged to use AOL on iPhones as an alternative to SMS? Or will they kill the AOL client and make iPhone users pay for SMS?

Re:Oh lord

[FlyingBishop]

It needs to make the front page of the fucking Times so that people will realize what a joke the pricing on texting is.

Re:Oh lord

[muuh-gnu]

But its "on the iPhone!!!!". Just wait till they start patenting those things as novelties because you can do them "on the iPhone!!!". It worked for a slew of obvious so called "on the internet" inventions.

Re:Oh lord

[gorrepati]

Yeah, Give Jeff Carlson a Nobel and while at it throw in a Pulitzer for Glenn Flieshman for authorship. Seriously, where the fuck are the editors? How does stuff like this make it to the front page

Re:Oh lord

[DKP]

not apple but ATT's reaction why would apple care

Re:Oh lord

[s1d]

Eureka fail!

Re:Oh lord

[negRo_slim]

That was my first thought, then I realized SMS is a quaint and antiquated tech. Which I do use nearly everyday, but our fairly modest plan has sufficed and I've never had to pay for overages... So, from my point of view, it's not as if this is going to jeopardize any tremendous revenue stream as most txt is covered by the plan anyways. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to do away with SMS all together and get ya sending via the interweb (emails, IM, etc) so you're more inclined use more data. After all e-mails and IM's facilitate the sending of files, uploading of pics (if only for your avatar), and on and on I can go. AT&T just wants you to consume ever more, and a flat rate system like SMS just isn't going to cut it... Not when it comes to padding the bottom line. Just my .02USD

Re:Oh lord

[superphreak]

and a flat rate system like SMS just isn't going to cut it..

but a flat rate unlimited internet plan will cut it????

Re:Oh lord

[MrHanky]

As long as it's about the bloody iphone, it makes the front page. Who the fuck are these idiots who vote up every crap story in the firehose as long as it's about fucking Apple? This can't be interesting, not even to the die-hard Apple fanatic, and it's certainly not something specific to the iPhone. It's weak advertising for a feature you may find in any other phone.

Enough with the iphone stories, already. I fucking hate the device now, and only because of the incessant spamming.

Re:Oh lord

[negRo_slim]

but a flat rate unlimited internet plan will cut it????

As features and use rise do you expect unlimited internet to stick around in it's current form? Nah it was just way to help stoke flames of the iphone's success.

Re:Oh lord

[Clete2]

I figured this out on my LG CU500. Except that the AIM client still goes through SMS. Guess who went over their SMS limit by $30 that month?

Re:Oh lord

[Yvan256]

Welcome to Slashdot 2.0

Re:Oh lord

[Ultra64]

Instead of whining about stories that other people might be interested in reading, is there some reason you can't just skip to the next story on the page?
Or go to your preferences and disable stories about Apple.

Re:Oh lord

[Tokerat]

Yeah, you know what else I hate because I see stories about it everyday on Slashdot? Linux!

I mean, Jesus H Christ, enough already!

Re:Oh lord

[ari_j]

My answer to all of your questions: kdawson. Well, okay, there have been others, but he's the current one. The reign of terror is dynastic.

Re:Oh lord

[MrHanky]

Yes, I came here to whine. If you read the other comments, most of them say pretty much the same. It's not news, it's not for nerds, and it's not interesting. If you do find it interesting, then I'm sure there is a site for Apple fanboys somewhere that cater to your needs, but it certainly should not be Slashdot.

And no, I'm not going to disable stories about Apple; they do come up with something interesting now and then. The iphone was an example of that, but most of the "news" about it these days are pure spam. An IM client, give me a fucking break.

Re:Oh lord

[MrHanky]

So when did this site turn into "News about iphone. Advertisments for Apple. Fashion products for wannabe geeks"?

Re:Oh lord

[glitch23]

So why are you here posting instead of looking at another submission?

Re:Oh lord

[radimvice]

Just my .02USD

Actually, your 'two cents' post would cost you .60USD at standard SMS rates...

Re:Oh lord

[mdwh2]

I agree. And not just Slashdot - I was walking in London yesterday to see "news" about 3G ... on the Iphone! - plastered over all the news billboards. Is there really nothing more happening in the world then a years-old feature being added to one particular phone?

God, I guess when they finally add basic UI requirements like copy/paste, it'll be first story on the Nine O' Clock News.

I wish Apple would stop spamming me via email too, come to that.

Re:Oh lord

[flape]

You dont get it, its about free SMS by means of AOL IM

Re:Oh lord

[mdwh2]

Perhaps you should have skipped his comment, if you didn't like it...

Re:Oh lord

[nbert]

a flat rate system like SMS just isn't going to cut it

Exactly the reason why they offer flat rate services. The more people have data-plans, the less it makes sense to charge for individual SMS'. In the end they will charge 5 bucks for unlimited SMS if you want it or not, because otherwise they would lose that source of revenue while data plans get cheaper and cheaper.

Btw: For the same reason the telcos of many countries refuse to sell you DSL without a telephone line. Voip could fill the void completely and it would be even possible to implement a free system on a global scale, but it would hurt those providing access to voip services and for that reason they won't let you use it exclusively (or at least let you pay for what they don't earn the traditional way). And if you are paying for it anyways there is less incentive to switch to free alternatives.

I love flat rates in general, but sometimes they are just designed to keep the status quo. In the end everything gets cheaper in regards to what we pay per minute, but the bill at the end of the month still is as high as 8 years ago.

Just look at how many households still have a fax machine and you will realize how much pricing is preventing a real step forward.

Re:Oh lord

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the editors are trying to match the quality of the comments with the quality of the stories. Seems only fair.

Re:Oh lord

[linuxpng]

incoming flaimbait....when they added apple.slashdot.org

oh and when commander taco figured out he could play the sims on a powerbook.

Re:Oh lord

[greyhueofdoubt]

Yeah but did you ever try it on the iphone, on the internet, while you're highhhhh man?

-b

Re:Oh lord

[Lars T.]

As long as it's about the bloody iphone, it makes the front page. Who the fuck are these idiots who vote up every crap story in the firehose as long as it's about fucking Apple?

Looking at most posts to these stories - it's probably the "Apple sucks" crowd, who want some article they can post in.

Re:Oh lord

[bhtooefr]

They could always do what Sprint does, and charge for IM messages at the text messaging rate (with the carrier IM client - I'll note that I run a third-party client on my phone.)

Re:Oh lord

[eggboard]

Right, because 10 million people aren't buying new iPhones this year and they don't need to know that there's an alternative to paying SMS fees! Thank goodness, that those 10 million people wouldn't be bothered with this useful information. (Writes the guy who submitted the story, but did not write it.)

Re:Oh lord

[onefriedrice]

The big deal will be Apple's reaction to it. Will they like it, since people might be encouraged to use AOL on iPhones as an alternative to SMS? Or will they kill the AOL client and make iPhone users pay for SMS?

Apple's reaction? You mean AT&T? Why would Apple care since they already approved the app in the first place?

Fortunately, seeing as how there is also a VoIP app approved by Apple which allows calls via wifi, it doesn't look like refusing apps which bypass AT&T's services was part of their agreement, although I'm sure AT&T would like it to be.

In short, yes Apple will like people using the AOL IM client because it's a benefit to those who purchase their product. AT&T may not like it, but who cares?

Re:Oh lord

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as it's about the bloody iphone, it makes the front page. Who the fuck are these idiots who vote up every crap story in the firehose as long as it's about fucking Apple? This can't be interesting, not even to the die-hard Apple fanatic, and it's certainly not something specific to the iPhone. It's weak advertising for a feature you may find in any other phone.

Enough with the iphone stories, already. I fucking hate the device now, and only because of the incessant spamming.

MrHanky... you hate the Phone because it is too popular? I hate the sites that print the trash. Don't get turned off to the iPhone, if its not too late.... its a special device.

Re:Oh lord

[Tokerat]

I seem to remember Slashdot having filtering options...

Re:Oh lord

[Chiaro Meratilo]

I'm cutting the lettuce...at night.

Re:Oh lord

[clipped_apex]

Really??? And this didnt work with the non-3g version (i stand to be corrected, but i think the previous version had EDGE?) :-p Come on - this is not really worthy of making headline news!

Re:Oh lord

[MrHanky]

They don't work. This crap still shows up on the front page when I set the filter to "best only".

Re:Oh lord

[mdwh2]

Yes, because obviously those 10 million people are the only phone users in existence, and nevermind the far larger number of non-Iphone users who have been for years able to do this.

I guess by this logic, we need to have a repeat story about any generic phone feature repeated everytime just for late-to-the-party Iphone users.

The story is spam, plain and simple. Lots of spam stories about software might be of interest to some people, but that doesn't stop it being an advert.

Re:Oh lord

[intheshelter]

Sorry, it's interesting to me. I want to get an iPhone and avoid paying extra for SMS.

Re:Oh lord

[intheshelter]

Amen to that brother!! Can everyone not post any more stories about how Linux is so great because it's free (even though it's effectively unusable by most consumers) or how the Linux kernal has been compiled to run on my fingernail clippers? I mean this would definitely leave more room for important issues like how Slashdotters are so wise that they know that God is just a myth, how development language A is better than development language B, or how people someone's Nokia phone can SSH into their toaster!

Re:Oh lord

[D Ninja]

Yeah, you know what else iHate because iSee stories about it everyday on Slashdot? Linux!

iMean, Jesus H Christ, enough already!

Fixed your post for your. This is an Apple thread. Please post in the appropriate format in the future.

Thank you!

Re:Oh lord

[Hordeking]

In the end everything gets cheaper in regards to what we pay per minute, but the bill at the end of the month still is as high as 8 years ago.

Actually, it's less, if you figure that $20 now is worth $10 8 years ago. Or even less. Just my .02, adjusted for hyperinflation.

Re:Oh lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck are these idiots who vote up every crap story in the firehose as long as it's about fucking Apple?

You're fooling yourself.

Slashdot is a dictatorship, not an anarcho-syndicalist commune like Digg. Haven't you read the FAQ?

Re:Oh lord

[gravis777]

Well, I guess by association, I now also hate Open Source, Microsoft, Eee, OLPC, NASA, MIT, Comcast, Yahoo, RIAA, MIAA, ThePirateBay, Sweeden, and Intel

Re:Oh lord

[geminidomino]

Pretty sure the carrier IM client actually USES SMS on the backend. The client on my Windows Mobile phone (Moto Q9c) loves to hard-wedge my phone until I need a master reset to recover. Last time I did it, I was still "logged in" to AIM even though I didn't have the IM client reinstalled (and opted not to again). I kept getting SMS messages that looked basically like headers directing to AIM messages, until I logged in on my PC and told it to disconnect all other locations.

Not a big deal, since I have the unlimited text plan, but it does make the messages flaky, slow, and even less reliable than IM.

Re:Oh lord

[MrHanky]

You can get IM clients for most other phones as well. That's what makes this advertising and spam.

Re:Oh lord

[hellergood]

Telcos have been refusing to sell DSL without telephone service for much longer than voip has been viable.

Re:Oh lord

[Idiomatick]

Its the same as AOL commercials or windows commercials that dont advertise their product. They advertise computers and the internet. Get AOL then you can search the web and download pictures!

Re:Oh lord

[wgoodman]

On Verizon if you use the AIM client, it charges you standard txt rates for each message sent. While your argument holds water for less draconian providers, it's not the case for all of them.

Re:Oh lord

[RalphTheWonderLlama]

Don't you have to get a plan with text messaging when you get an iPhone anyway? They force it on you so it's not like you can save any money that way, right?

Re:Oh lord

[letxa2000]

Unlimited data plans existed long before the iPhone. I've had unlimited data on my Treo for years. On the few occasions where I've been somewhere I needed to use my laptop and there was no Internet access, I just Bluetooth my computer to the Treo and then use the unlimited data plan to access the Internet. No problem, and not new.

There are cellular modems that many business users use that they just slam into the laptop and get 3G-speed access to the Internet. Those users use a lot more bandwidth than iPhone users and those are flat rate, too.

Unlimited cellular Internet access isn't going anywhere and it's not a new thing just to "stoke flames of iphone's success."

Re:Oh lord

[Anonymous Coward]

... I mean, Jesus H Christ, enough already!

What does the H stand for?

Re:Oh lord

[Woadan]

I can't speak for other countries, but the US telcos won't force you to have POTS service to get DSL. When I left Verizon, this was just happening (almost 5 years ago), and the skuttlebutt was the other telcos were either already doing it or in the process thereof.

You will have a phone number assigned to the line, but Verizon would not tell you the number. (I'm pretty sure it is the same with other telcos, but can't say for sure.) It is a local number with no other services installed.

Verizon's FiOS is different--you only get a phone number if you sign up for the service.

Woadan

Re:Oh lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you have to get a plan with text messaging when you get an iPhone anyway?

That was until last week. With iPhone 3G, contracts include unlimited data with no SMS messages. You can add a 200-message SMS plan for another $5 per month.

Re:Oh lord

[Anonymous Coward]

Haploid.

Re:Oh lord

[nbert]

I can't speak for other countries, but the US telcos won't force you to have POTS service to get DSL. When I left Verizon, this was just happening (almost 5 years ago), and the skuttlebutt was the other telcos were either already doing it or in the process thereof.

I guess the reason for this is the high availability of cable in the US. The cable companies do not have as much incentive to bundle it compared to traditional telcos. And if you can get cable without a phone, the competitors have to make similar offers in order to stay competitive. The bundling I talked about mostly happens in countries which have a very high share of DSL. For example Germany: 63% DSL, 27% Dialup. The remaining 10% consist of cable, satellite and more exotic forms of access.

You will have a phone number assigned to the line, but Verizon would not tell you the number. (I'm pretty sure it is the same with other telcos, but can't say for sure.) It is a local number with no other services installed.

DSL works over two lines of copper like the POTS. From the networks point of view it is still a phone line. Most likely they don't even use a branch of DSL which utilizes the unused POTS or ISDN frequencies (actually I'm not aware of any variation of DSL going below 3.4kHz, which is POTS, but some utilize ISDN frequencies).

Jeff Carlson

[ari_j]

Jeff Carlson is a freakin' genius! This is amazing! Oh wait, no, that other thing: mundane.

Ummm...

[antifoidulus]

but if it's another iPhone user, you could coordinate with them via SMS to use instant messaging instead.

Or you could just....email them? They will have push email, and I assume if they have an iphone they have an email address, so why not just use that instead of creating these elaborate schemes....

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, instead of email, I hear these crazy little contraptions let you talk to one another just by talking. It's quite shock to some, but I think you can dial a "phone" number and say something like, "Put AIM on your phone so you don't have to use SMS for texting." when the other person picks up.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked with the iPhone SDK and 3rd-party apps cannot push to the UI unless they are selected and running.

So yes, email FTW. Because it's pushed to the UI. Unlike 3rd-party app messages.

Next.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. So...you can't call people and tell them to use the AIM client for the iPhone? I don't have an iPhone, so I'm not sure how they work or what they do, but my most basic assumption is that you can call other people since it is an iPhone.

Re:Ummm...

[peragrin]

shhh don't spoil the secret.

actually half the text messages I get are short emails, it is far simplier to send a quick email with directions than try to describe a location on the phone.

Re:Ummm...

[johnpaul191]

there are still a LOT of people that don't have email on their cell phones. there is still a weird disconnect between some people's phones. some phone (iphones and more) can't receive or send picture messages, many don't have email. i suppose the issue is when you try to send a picture to a few people at once. say you have something like a Treo that supports picture messages and emails. you have to split the people up into delivery options. If your Treo is on Verizon (like mine is), then they strip out all incoming email attachments if you use the built-in email client... and being Verizon you do not have the same 3rd party app options as other people.
Yes, it's a first world problem, but it's just stupidity of the carriers. The US had the same issue some years back when you could only send a text message to people on your network. I actually had to think who had the same carrier as i did before i sent a message.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you really mean is "I've worked with the OFFICIAL iPhone SDK and ...". Who here expects the 2.0 phone to stay jailed? Show of hands? The community installer is your friend...proprietary distribution systems will fail.

Re:Ummm...

[Christopher Rogers]

Apple has come up with a way around this by having a push client on the iPhone that listens to Apple's push "cloud" service that programs can use. So when a program is closed your servers can talk to Apple's and they send the message to your phone. This way the phone only has one connection open and only one knowingly "stable" program (that won't eat up your battery) actively running in the background. They announced it at WWDC in June. I don't think it'll be ready until later this year but the push notification problem has been "solved" to a satisfiable degree I would think, just not at this moment. I'd be curious to know if the AIM client is pushing IMs and if so how.

Re:Ummm...

[phantomfive]

At WWDC, it was mentioned that there would be something called Universal Push Notification. Some explanation here. It seems you will be able to push either badges (that will attach to your app's icon), custom alert sounds, or overlay text messages (I assume like MSN chat does), which will overlay any currently running app.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any reference to this on their developer web site, which miserably has no search functionality. Yes, that's right, I am also developing for the iPhone. What have I developed? Why, the iVibe. Exactly what it does is left to your imagination. No, it is not yet on the Apple store. Coming soon, for better or for worse.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another reason I'll never buy an iPhone in it's current configuration. I want the choice of being able to multitask apps and run them in the background. I don't need Saint Jobs to decide what's best for me.

Re:Ummm...

[Darkness404]

The community installer is your friend...proprietary distribution systems will fail.

Yah, most of us here on /. will probably jailbreak our iPhones/iPod touches and will probably end up installing Linux to our unused older iPods, but as for everyone else or anyone who is an Apple fanboy, they won't use it. Will the community system be better? Yep. But will the general public use it? Nope.

Re:Ummm...

[sskagent]

Or, instead of email, I hear these crazy little contraptions let you talk to one another just by talking. It's quite shock to some, but I think you can dial a "phone" number and say something like, "Put AIM on your phone so you don't have to use SMS for texting." when the other person picks up.

Wow the saddest thing is that this was modded Informative and not Funny.

Re:Ummm...

[Fofer]

This will change in September when Apple's free push notification service launches.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/iphone-push-notification-service-for-devs-announced/

Re:Ummm...

[Tony Hoyle]

Stupid idea if you ask me. Instead of apps sleeping (also not using power - they're not actually running) and being woken up by the OS when an event happens you've got a huge-ass server somewhere sending out *every* event that *every* iphone in the world wants to listen for - potentially billions. Single point of failure - that server goes out and all iphone notification services fail. Not to mention it'd have to be huge and cost a fortune to run (bandwidth costs alone would be nightmarish) ... it just doesn't scale economically.

It probably sounded good to marketing but then did MobileMe (and they can't even keep that stable).

Re:Ummm...

[Helios1182]

I saw a person on some other website complaining about the lack of voice chat on the AIM client. The lack of voice chat... on a phone...

Re:Ummm...

[Christopher Rogers]

I guess the point was that you can't have a whole lot of such applications sleeping and using up precious RAM. I agree about the service being a single point of failure, though. However I believe they are just sending "badge" notifications (placing text or a number on an application, indicating the # of new messages, for example), alert boxes (which could contain text), and maybe sound/vibrate alerts. The point is that it isn't going to send all the data your app requires, just a notification to get you to open up the application. The actual transfer of meaningful data is left up to your client to do when you open it back up. The app is supposed to only use Apple's push servers when it is not running anyway. So even if the push notification service were to go down you could still open the app and it would talk to its own servers like normal.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to parse this comment, but I simply can't figure out what (s)he's saying. Can someone please translate this to grammatical English?

Re:Ummm...

[TheNetAvenger]

I've worked with the iPhone SDK and 3rd-party apps cannot push to the UI unless they are selected and running.

Glad I haven't spent much time looking at the iPhone SDK. We could push to UI on Motorola phones as far back as the first RAZRs and the v715 even. And this was old hat when I was involved with that project. It provided MSN Messenger and Yahoo applets on the phone that could either run, run in background, or even run in background and push through to the main UI or even to the Text Inbox pretending to be incoming SMS.

How does Apple put these insane restrictions on crap, and have a 'we can stop your software anytime' contract, and people still like this garbage?

I would still like to see voice recognition on the freaking iPhone, that is a feature only 5 years behind Microsoft and Motorola... Geesh.

If people want to develop for a Phone platform, there are far better things out there without these restrictions. Windows Mobile isn't so bad to develop for, does more than the freaking iPhone (especially with .NET 3.x), and there are also a few nice Linux phones and other fairly open SDKs from other companies. (Tell Apple to stick it.)

(Anyone else notice Apple was 'promoting' 500 applications for the iPhone? And did anyone see some of these 'Applications'? Holy freaking cow.

I thought the 18000 applications on Windows Mobile was too generous with what was considered applications, but after looking at the iPhone list, there are probably another 50,000 Windows Mobile applications that would qualify to be listed. Geesh.

(Sssshhh, don't tell the Apple fanatics that people have been writing software, without restriction and for any use for Windows Mobile cell phones for 5+ years. And it has always supported Video and Music and Maps, and had GPS years ago, etc...)

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I read, you must have connectivity to use this. You also need a server "pushing" the data, allowing push only when you are connected. That's really not enough in my book, I need local push capability.

Applications should be able to register locally as event listeners while in background. For example:

* when a network package with some specific format arrives (say, an IM message), the app is called and its listening function is run;

* when GPS coordinates change, a background app is called and relay it to your boss;

* when your current music changes, your twitter is updated; ...

Google's Android already has something like this, iirc.

Re:Ummm...

[DaCurryman]

I agree it's not a good thing at all, but how exactly is that any different from the way RIM/BlackBerry operates?

Re:Ummm...

[dn15]

I saw a person on some other website complaining about the lack of voice chat on the AIM client. The lack of voice chat... on a phone...

It does sound odd at first, but it makes sense. Consider that your talk time is metered and you are billed extra if you use too much -- but data is supposedly unlimited. AIM voice chat, or Skype, would minimize the number of paid minutes you have to use. Not that AT&T would like it, but there's good reason to want it as a bill-paying customer.

Re:Ummm...

[Helios1182]

If you are using Skype the person you are calling also has to be on Skype, or you are going to end up paying to make/receive calls (to a phone number) through Skype anyway.

Re:Ummm...

[illumin8]

I've worked with the iPhone SDK and 3rd-party apps cannot push to the UI unless they are selected and running.

That's completely incorrect. Steve Jobs even made a big deal about the Push API that they let any 3rd party app use. The push technology shows a standard iPhone popup window in whatever application is in the foreground. The developer encodes a URL into the push message that allows the user to select a button that will launch the app into the foreground and handle the pushed message. How else do you think AOL IM client even works on the iPhone?

Basically, it's a way to handle 3rd party apps that need to receive information from the network, without having them running in the background 24/7. So you can thank good designers that thought ahead that you don't have to run a Task Manager like on Windows mobile and kill background processes that are running amok. Persistently connected apps can stay persistently connected without running 24/7, and eating up CPU, memory, and battery.

So yes, 3rd party app messages are pushed to the UI. Any 3rd party developer can use it. It's not an Apple proprietary API that only their own apps can use.

Re:Ummm...

[dn15]

If you are using Skype the person you are calling also has to be on Skype, or you are going to end up paying to make/receive calls (to a phone number) through Skype anyway.

Of course, you'd be in the same boat as if you were using Skype on a regular computer. But think about the cost of expanded AT&T service -- or worse, absurdly high per-minute charges for overuse! Easily hundreds of dollars extra per year. The charge for unlimited SkypeOut service in the US is minuscule by comparison. The savings would be enormous if the option were available.

Re:Ummm...

[Pollardito]

I think when the grandparent post said "push to the UI" he was trying to say that 3rd party apps can't notify you on the main screen that they have a new message, not that they can't push messages to the phone. is it true that they can't change their home screen icons to indicate new content? if they can't then you can't see that someone has messaged you unless you're already running messenger, and if they can then can they notify you if you're inside another app? even if they can do both of those, i'm almost positive they can't cause the phone to ring or make a tone as a result of new content, so you'll have to be actively using the phone in some manner or another to know there's new content. neither of those problems exist for email or SMS

Re:Ummm...

[Russianspi]

Or, without using another application (AIM) OR paying for SMS, you could just E-mail the person and have it come to them as a SMS. I do this often, as I have a plan that is short on SMS. This link tells you how.

Re:Ummm...

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Then I guess you missed the last iPhone keynote.

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to even mention the ridiculous cost of international calls!

Re:Ummm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Voice chat can be used to talk to someone with an internet connection but no phone line whereas the phone is limited to calling other phone numbers. Admittedly, this is a small demographic, but it's also an important one to people who don't want to pay for a phone line that they'd rarely use.

The larger demographic is people calling foreign countries, for which the telcos still charge exorbitant rates. While SMS price gouging is probably the most obvious, long distance is another fee that's become somewhat unreasonable now. That it's free to use services like Skype and yet telcos are still charging as much as they do to send roughly the same number of bytes roughly the same distance is somewhat nonsensical.

Well now its gone.

[sabrex15]

How long before this feature is gone?...

Re:Well now its gone.

[rizzle]

It's not going anywhere as far as I know. I'm one of the developers of AIM for iPhone, and frankly we're glad that it's been discovered and slashdotted :)

Sending IMs to a mobile number is a feature of the AIM service, and there's no reason that we shouldn't have it for the iPhone. In fact, our data API (which is open sourced here) doesn't distinguish between mobile numbers and buddies.

Re:Well now its gone.

[sabrex15]

wow now that's a wonderful thing to hear. :) kudos to you and all your colleagues.

Re:Well now its gone.

[nuggetman]

Firstly... has the AIM team just thrown in the towel on AIM for Mac?

Second... I've found the iPhone client to be horribly glitchy when you close the app without signing off. If messages are sent to me while it's closed, I just get blank messages upon reopening the client.

Re:Well now its gone.

[c_forq]

Why would AIM put work into a Mac client when iChat uses the AIM protocol?

Re:Well now its gone.

[rizzle]

Firstly... has the AIM team just thrown in the towel on AIM for Mac?

In addition to iChat (which uses AIM), we have a new desktop suite for Mac, which includes a new AIM mac client: AOL Desktop for Mac. The Mac team at AOL's blog is here

Second... I've found the iPhone client to be horribly glitchy when you close the app without signing off. If messages are sent to me while it's closed, I just get blank messages upon reopening the client.

Yeah, we noticed that on the first day of release, too. There seems to be a difference between the developer OS build and the OS build that was sent out to consumers on Thurs/Fri. We're definitely looking into it. Do you get it every time you re-open the client? or sometimes you get it as blank and sometimes not?

OMG

[Idiomatick]

On my telus i can use msn for free too *shock*. my phone must be as good as an iphone. and so are all phones with internet access and the ability to install programs. *gasp* Silly submitter ~_~
 
  But hey its advertising for apple so its ok.

Re:OMG

[superphreak]

Actually, I don't have internet, but my phone comes with AIM/MSN/Y! "apppppppsssss" (aka "apps" ?) and with AT&T's unlimited text messaging plan, I can send and receive unlimited IMs as well, so it works both ways, either with unlimited internet or unlimited texting. Whee!!!!

Pleast Stop This Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

from the dodging-the-gouge dept.

Oh, so anything that's too expensive for kdawson is "gouging"?? Oh look, that Lamborghini there is selling for $400,000!! That's gouging!!!

Please, gouging would apply to items that are essential, text messaging is not one.

Once again, kdawson is an idiot.

Other person originates the SMS?.

[NoData]

I kinda knew about this, but I'm still not clear on something: How can I use this trick when another party *originates* an SMS to me? This technique catches their replies to an SMS I start via IM, but doesn't help if someone sends me an SMS in the first place. Anyone know a trick for that?

Re:Other person originates the SMS?.

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy solution. Move to a country where they don't charge the receiving end of a SMS.

Re:Other person originates the SMS?.

[superphreak]

Easy. The trick is to not have your friends SMS you. Have them IM you!!!!!!!!11111

Re:Other person originates the SMS?.

[aurasdoom]

That requires you to have the AIM client open and be connected to edge/3g/wifi which kills even more your battery.

Push email is ways better.

Re:Other person originates the SMS?.

[RiotingPacifist]

But an SMS is instant, AFAIK the iPhone cant notify you of an IM unless your IN the messenger app when you get it. so the solution is to get a real smartphone.

Re:Other person originates the SMS?.

[WillDraven]

Call your provider and scream until they turn text messaging completely off for your phone. The major drawback of this is that anybody sending you a text doesn't know you never received it. SMS could really use a "destination unreachable" response like most communication protocols have.

Good to know

[Talsan]

I never knew that AIM could send SMS messages to mobiles. Does anyone know if this works for any other country codes? --It doesn't seem to work for Norway (+47) numbers.

Re:Good to know

[Firehed]

In general, sending an email to phonenumber@carrier.com texts that number (at least in the states, YMMV). The only special thing AIM does is presumably a carrier lookup.

Re:Good to know

[superphreak]

Well, the other special thing that AIM does is makes a longer message body per SMS possible. Email includes subject and sender with every message (even if subject is blank), which makes the entire message longer, which means a shorter body length, although it will split into 2+ messages if necessary.

Re:Good to know

[Achromatic1978]

Ummm, that's not an AIM thing. "Concatenated SMS" is actually a part of the standard, and allows you to send (theoretically) 255 chained messages, although most phones do not support more than 6 or 8 (around a thousand characters).

Re:Good to know

[superphreak]

Sorry, I guess I was unclear. My point is an email takes up more of the 160 character limit with "from: from sub: subject body" where as IM is "username body"

Probably Won't Be Around for Long

[Apple Acolyte]

AT&T likes to protect its iPhone revenue stream. If too many people catch on, expect Apple to crack down on AOL. At least we've found one reason not to completely hate AOL.

Re:Probably Won't Be Around for Long

[doombringerltx]

This has been around for a while. This isn't going to cut into the AT&Ts iPhone profit anymore than its cut into any other cell providers profit. Don't count on anything to change just because you can do it with an iphone now.

I can't believe this made the FrontPage

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS is news? I don't think I've ever been more disappointed in this site...

Why hasn't a provider made SMS free yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like in this semi-competitive market, one of the providers would've made the unusual move of switching to free SMS. I realize it's pure profit for them, but it seems like they could make up the difference with the influx of new customers, and potentially less voice bandwidth usage.

Re:Why hasn't a provider made SMS free yet?

[MeditationSensation]

That's Cricket's niche ($45/month unlimited everything). From what I understand, though, their dirt cheap service comes as a result of not investing in their infrastructure enough, so you still get what you pay for.

What Comes Around Goes Around

[istartedi]

Take a look at this. Well now, it's come full circle, hasn't it? Of course, this time it's probably not illegal, and it doesn't require any hardware hacking... but the similarity seems striking to me. Arguably, it doesn't affect Apple directly either, although I'm sure it won't help their relationship with AT&T.

Re:What Comes Around Goes Around

[menace3society]

Waaaaay Off-topic, but Woz in that pic (on the right) looks like a bearded version of Justing Long, of "I'm a Mac" fame. Who wants to start the bastard-child rumors?

I do it with the Blackberry, etc.

[gcnaddict]

I've been using JiveTalk with the Blackberry (not advertising this) to avoid text messaging fees for a while now. JiveTalk is 30 bucks for a user license, but it's gotten good reviews from BGR, etc. so I thought it might not be a bad deal.

Re:I do it with the Blackberry, etc.

[metamatic]

I've been using JiveTalk with the Blackberry (not advertising this) to avoid text messaging fees for a while now. JiveTalk is 30 bucks for a user license, but it's gotten good reviews from BGR, etc. so I thought it might not be a bad deal.

Considering the current BlackBerry firmware comes with Google, ICQ, AIM and MSN clients built in, paying $30 for that functionality doesn't seem like a terribly good deal to me.

Re:I do it with the Blackberry, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you can also just use googletalk client that's been available from blackberry for over two years, and/or use the blackberry gmail client to send SMS.

Re:I do it with the Blackberry, etc.

[DigitAl56K]

Considering the current BlackBerry firmware comes with Google, ICQ, AIM and MSN clients built in, paying $30 for that functionality doesn't seem like a terribly good deal to me.

Except it is. Jivetalk has a nice UI, it brings all your IM protocols under one app so it's all consistent, it handles hundreds of contacts and it is light on your battery. You can easily leave it running all day without worry.

Also, I have the latest Blackberry OS update and it does not come with all of those clients built-in. It will list them on the app updater if you have previously installed them yourself though, just like it does with all third-party apps.

JiveTalk is easily the best $30 I've spent on my BlackBerry.

Sidenote: It's shameful that the networks can still get away with charging people, or even reducing their SMS credits, for receiving SMS messages.

Re:I do it with the Blackberry, etc.

[SCHecklerX]

I have jivetalk too, but haven't really used it too much. The SMS trick will definitely change that.

Question:
Does jivetalk have the ability to do a 'one time' buddy that is a phone number from the address book (ie, if I want to SMS somebody via AIM, just pick them from my address book?) *that* would be nice, since I don't really want a list of phone numbers uploaded as buddies for when I'm at a real computer.

I can't see for myself at the moment, working in the secure area I do and such.

Let me correctly rephrase the first sentence

[Toll_Free]

"Jeff Carlson has discovered"

Should actually have read:

"Jeff Carlson has READ THE HELP FILE / INSTRUCTIONS / MANUAL"

I mean, c'mon. It's common sense that AOL can send SMS. One idiot figures out a program and it makes the front news.

"How to disable Clippie the Paperclip". Details at 11

--Toll_Free

Re:Let me correctly rephrase the first sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

"Captain Obvious learns to speak the obvious very obviously." News at 11. :-)

Re:Let me correctly rephrase the first sentence

[Toll_Free]

But, does Cpt. Obvious wife sell sea shells somewhere by the sea shore? Some check named Shelley maybe? I hear she does?

Sheesh, Shelley :)

--Toll_Free

Re:Let me correctly rephrase the first sentence

[Miseph]

"I mean, c'mon. It's common sense that AOL can send SMS. One idiot figures out a program and it makes the front news."

I, for one, had no idea that AIM could do that. Anyway, why would it be common sense? There are all sorts of totally incompatible protocols and formats that accomplish essentially the same task, and while it's cool that AOL apparently decided to code an intuitive workaround in this instance that isn't the general state of things. Of course, I use AIM very little 9and SMS even less), because I prefer to just call people, so perhaps I'm just out of the loop on this one.

That said, I agree that this is hardly worthy of the front page; it isn't even as funny as installing Skype on PDA with a wireless data plan and skipping, possibly I remember using AIM on a Nokia about 8 years ago with no trouble outside of only typing ~3 words per minute.

Paying when you receive?

[HalAtWork]

Paying when you send a message, understandable. Paying when you receive a message, makes no fucking sense. If you call someone long distance, do they normally pay long distance fees? Of course not. You don't really have an option not to receive someone's message, and if you get spammed then you have to pay for it out of your own pocket. It's asinine.

This whole AIM over iPhone thing just goes to show how trivial it is to send/receive SMS anyway, and it really might as well be free in the scheme of things.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

If you call someone long distance, do they normally pay long distance fees?

Yes, if they have a cell phone. That's how cell phones work in the US: both sides pay. SMS is nothing unusual in this regard.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[fangorious]

No, the length of the call is deducted from you plan, but you don't pay long distance rates on top of that. At least no carrier that I've used has operated charged me long distance rates for receiving a long distance call (Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile).

Re:Paying when you receive?

[lordofthechia]

SMS is different that, while you can look at who's calling and reject an incoming phone call and let it go to voice-mail if you want to, once someone sends you an SMS, you paid for it whether you wanted it or not, whether you read it or not.

Best thing is, carriers will charge you to send a text message but delivery is *not* guaranteed. Unlike a phone call where you're not charged if the call doesn't connect (most providers that I know).

I understand it may your choice to spend $ .15 to $ .25 to send a message if you find value in it. Just a lot of people who don't find value in it are nickle and dimed to death with a service that (for all the companies I've had) will not be turned off upon request.
 

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

You pay for the call. The fact that most plans give you a certain amount as part of your monthly fee does not change this fact.

Many plans also include a certain number of SMSs per month, in which case incoming SMSs are deducted from that, and any excess is charged.

It's exactly the same system in both cases.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

It's great that you hate SMS, but I don't see what any of this has to do with my post or the one I was replying to.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Chees0rz]

look harder.

he is pointing out that SMS is different from the 'long distance phone call' because the receiver does not have a choice. (except to block senders as they are identified or to turn off the feature as a whole)

If one of my friends started IMing my phone and it came through as SMS it would look like-

> hey, what's up (.20$ verizon charge)
> lol guess what (.20$)
> so I went to the store... (.20$)
> and like holy shit man.. you'll never guess what happened... (.20$)

Maybe I need more clever friends, I don't know... but mistakes happen and we, the receivers, get the bill.
This is why whenever I SMS my sister, a huge cheap ass, I sign the message with "10 cents" (the at&t charge)

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

Minor, quibbling difference. I was replying to a post that claimed that the caller does not pay to receive telephone calls. This is false if you're discussing US cell phones. Details about your ability to screen or reject charges are immaterial to that claim.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Chees0rz]

From orig.

Paying when you receive a message, makes no fucking sense...You don't really have an option not to receive someone's message

There is nothing I can't stand more than people who try to point out false arguments. Let's just throw 'modus ponens' out there to sound intelligent. /. doesn't have to be a point by point argument, it can be conversational.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

Also from the original article:

If you call someone long distance, do they normally pay long distance fees? Of course not.

This is what I was refuting, nothing more. I never even attempted to address the rest of it.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[fangorious]

The question was "If you call someone long distance, do they normally pay long distance fees?" and the answer is no. You pay for minutes, but you don't also pay long distance rates in addition to paying for the minutes. It was a rhetorical question to contrast against the fact that we do pay to receive a call or an SMS message in the US.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

I just don't understand that. Immediately before that question was, "Paying when you receive a message, makes no fucking sense." Well, you pay to receive a phone call, why would you not pay to receive a message?

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly. If you have a phone with free roaming throughout the U.S. and someone calls you from England (and you are still in the U.S.), you are just using normal minutes. You aren't paying any type of international fee (though the caller is).

Also, your statement that this is how it works in the U.S. isn't exactly correct. It is how some providers in the U.S. work. Some companies only charge you for sending. Now I use Verizon which charges for both. Before I used AT&T Wireless (the old one before it was bought out before Cingular which was subsequently bought by AT&T), there was no charge for receiving.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not with my provider- US Cellular. Everything incoming is free with most/all accounts.

There's no email support, and outgoing SMS's aren't free, but inbound is free. I have airlines send me messages and stuff, i do google sms, the 250 message pack for $5/mo is plenty for me to send off 411 queries on google and write a couple friends now and then.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you on crack? when someone makes a long-distance phone call in the us to a cell phone, the recipient does not pay long distance fees!

Re:Paying when you receive?

[liquidsin]

i can choose not to answer the phone call, and thus incur no charge. this is especially useful if i don't recognize the number on caller id. i cannot, however, choose not to receive a text msg. even if the phone is turned off, i'll get the msg when i power it back up. see now?

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you pay to receive a phone call, why would you not pay to receive a message?

Because you don't have a *choice* when you get a message.

Ok extreme example time!
Say you're suddenly a big news story and 100 reporters call your cellphone non-stop. You don't want to be bothered so you don't answer. You didn't pay to receive those calls.

Now say those same 100 reporters start to text message you non-stop. Guess what? Whether you want them or not you're gonna be paying for each message you want or don't want, read or don't read...

And I know that Cingular and T-Mobile refuse (at least in my case) to turn SMS off completely, they cited "safety reasons".

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr. Free The Cowards:

It seems there has been a gross error on your part. You should have properly formatted your original reply [1] first and used an MLA approved citation method to indicate to the reader what point from which reference [2] you were arguing for or against. Now you can see the huge mess you caused by replying to a slashdotter [3] without following the proper guidelines. We are all very serious about engaging in proper debate and encourage you to practice these guidelines in a better site to hone your skills [4], you may return when ready.

Sincerely,

John Q. Anonymous

[1] - http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=612665&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=24174607
[2] - http://db.tidbits.com/article/9690
[3] - http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=612665&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=nested&cid=24174325
[4] - http://fark.com/

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

Yes, fine, I get it, SMS sucks because you don't get to reject them.

This still does not make it any more sensible to argue against it by making an analogy to not paying for incoming calls, since you do pay for those on most cell phones.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't pay for incoming calls if you don't accept them. Also you don't pay for incoming calls during your "free" periods (free nights, free weekends). You *always* pay text message (with very, very few exceptions). Ergo, you are incorrect. I believe the debate trophy goes to me!

--

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain

Re:Paying when you receive?

[alexo]

> This still does not make it any more sensible to argue against it by making an analogy to not paying for incoming calls, since you do pay for those on most cell phones.

No, you don't. You pay for the "air time", which is a different concept. In effect, you are paying for the time that you are "connected" to the network (oversimplified but you get the idea).

The caller incurs long distance charges (if any) and all other fees.
The recipient only pays for the time they were connected (per second or per minute or have the length of the session deducted from their plan).
If, for example, the recipient did not answer and the caller was directed to the voice mail, the caller would pay in full but the recipient will pay nothing (until they dial to their voice mail box and listen to the message, then they will pay for the duration of their call).

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

And when you receive an SMS, you also pay for the "air time". The fact that this "air time" is charged at an insane rate compared to a voice call is a separate issue. The fact that you get charged is completely reasonable given the system in use.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[alexo]

Incorrect.

A lot of plans do not involve paying for received SMS.
But even if yours doesn't, you are not paying for air time since that is charged at a constant by-minute or by-second rate, no matter what you do.

On top of the air time, you can get extra charges: SMS, long distance, roaming, etc.

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! Way to contradict yourself "Free the Cowards". I know this discussion is old, but looking at the sheer amount of times you've replied to your own thread I can't let this slip.

charged at an insane rate

is completely reasonable

Ok I give up. Either you work for a cell phone company, are a troll, or a complete idiot. (Or hidden option D some or all of the above). Bet you think that getting charged for letting calls ring on your cell phone reasonable too since about the same amount of data transfer occurs then (or do you think that the caller information just magically appears on your phone)...

Re:Paying when you receive?

[Free the Cowards]

I'm sorry that you're apparently incapable of following any argument more complex than a shoe box. I stated that the rates are insane, but the fact that the receiver pays is reasonable. There is no contradiction here.

Slashdot: full of frickin morons since 1995.

Yeah, but...

[imstanny]

What if someone sends you a SMS, and you don't have a subscription? You'll end up paying for the received SMS texts, charged at a premium, b/c you don't have a subscription.

Re:Yeah, but...

[superphreak]

If you don't use SMS, you can turn pay-per-use off. Not the best solution, but not much else you can do.

Re:Yeah, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but... using a plan like this would allow me to bring down my 350 messages/month to something that fits under their 200 for $5 plan, so I wouldn't have to get the 1500 for $15 plan.

Re:Yeah, but...

[intheshelter]

How can you turn it off?

Re:Yeah, but...

[superphreak]

Well obviously everything is different by carrier. I believe with AT&T you can turn it off online in your account. US Cellular you can't but you have free incoming texts anyway... etc...

Re:Yeah, but...

[intheshelter]

Thanks for the info, that's good to know. I'm considering an iPhone but not getting SMS (I'd use it, but not at $30 for a family plan) so I'd like to have it locked out if possible.

mundu

[fermion]

Though not an app, mundu has allowed us to do this for quite some time, and you are not stuck with AOL.

I must say that I am glad I am not a kid. The amount they charge for IM, which appears to be aimed at younger people, and often paid by parents, is almost criminal. Of course, there is the choice not to use it. I suppose there is also the choice to never have a friend. It kind of remind me of when you could no longer talk on the phone as long as you wanted for a quarter(for those of us that did not have whistle, that is).

Hopefully one advantage of smart phones will be the wider use of IM, which should force cell companies to just include texting with the data plan.

You're missing the point

[c0d3r]

I think the point is that telco's are gouging people for text traffic, which has a very small impact on their infrastructure. If you compare the network traffic for text vs. picture vs. video, they are ripping people off. I even get messages sometimes from the telco, which means they are getting free money everytime they send a promotion to every cell phone. Say 1 million cell phones are sent one $0.25 message that's 1/4 million dollars for each message sent with very little impact on their infrastructure. What am I going to do? Spend an hour asking them to refund a quarter?

Re:You're missing the point

[Clete2]

Which company do you use? AT&T (here in the USA) sends out promos maybe once every 6 months and they are always free to us.

Re:You're missing the point

[Christopher Rogers]

Text messages from T-Mobile are free as well (in the US).

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

>I think the point is that telco's are gouging people for text traffic

If it's a ripoff, why do you go for it at all? Seems that plenty of people manage to get along just fine without "texting."
It also seems like a generational thing, even a fad.

Re:You're missing the point

[c0d3r]

My point is that text traffic only takes less than 1k total traffic and can cost $.25. Voice traffic can be $.25 a minute which is ~64k per second. Picture costs about the same as text but its about ~1Mb of traffic. Video is significantly more traffic than voice, yet is often charged at the same as voice. Why is texting so expensive? Its obvious.. a revenue model.. hence the point of the discussion is "To avoid getting screwed". Anyone against this is a bigot or shareholder for the telco's.

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Warning! This message is low on content but I was so shocked I had to post.

Wait... you pay to receive messages?

Re:You're missing the point

[TooMuchToDo]

I don't tell the gas station how much to charge me for pop, chips, etc. They charge what the market will bear. I don't tell Hollister what to charge me for shorts/shirts, they charge what the market will bear. How is this any different? If you don't like what they charge for text messaging, DON'T USE IT (or switch providers).

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read your contract, usually messages from/to the Telco aren't charged for.

That said.... RIPOFF!

Re:You're missing the point

[c0d3r]

I don't like what they charge for text messaging, so I'll choose to use a free alternative, and tell my friends how they can save some money.

Re:You're missing the point

[rohan972]

I don't tell the gas station how much to charge me for pop, chips, etc. They charge what the market will bear. I don't tell Hollister what to charge me for shorts/shirts, they charge what the market will bear. How is this any different? If you don't like what they charge for text messaging, DON'T USE IT (or switch providers).

I agree. They could even start using a text chat client instead of SMS. I know, perhaps they could even post that idea to popular websites to get people doing it.

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

So are the AT&T advertising SMSs. The GGP is just stupid.

Re:You're missing the point

[Dirtside]

I'm on T-Mobile; SMS messages to or from them are free for me. This is the case for most cell carriers, AFAIK.

As far as gouging... it may be overpriced, but it's not gouging in the legal sense. The reason they can charge 15 cents per SMS is because so many people are willing to pay it. I don't really think it's worth it and use SMS sparingly for that reason.

Re:You're missing the point

[c0d3r]

After the high taxes on blankets, it became prohibitivly expensive to send smoke signals. Wood and fire are already very expensive. What's next, taxing on that black goo that comes out of the ground?

Re:You're missing the point

[Iphtashu Fitz]

Unfortunately there are still a lot of legit uses for SMS. Many IT departments use SMS for contacting on-call staff. When I'm on call (one week out of every six) I have the option of getting paged via SMS's to my cell phone or carrying around a Skytel pager. A lot of folks I know prefer the SMS route since it means one less gadget they have to carry around.

Bank of America has recently rolled out a new security feature for their on-line banking that relies on SMS that they call SafePass. You register your mobile phone number with your account and when you want to log into your account they send you an SMS with a random 6-digit code. You then have to enter that along with your PIN to log in. It provides additional security since phishers can't easily get that random code off of your mobile phone, and each code expires after 15 minutes. It wouldn't surprise me if you start seeing more on-line systems using something like this to enhance security. It's basically a poor-mans RSA SecurID since most people have mobile phones these days.

Re:You're missing the point

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I'm on T-Mobile; SMS messages to or from them are free for me. This is the case for most cell carriers, AFAIK.

Unfortunately the carriers are all starting to move to pay models for SMS. They're starting with smartphones like the iPhone, BlackBerry, etc. and will likely move entirely to them for all their plans eventually. Go take a look at the smartphone plans on most carriers and you'll see that SMS is an additional feature. I just checked AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, and T-Mobile looks like they're currently the only one of those three who doesn't charge extra for SMS on their BlackBerry plans...

Re:You're missing the point

[B1]

Considering the cost of SMS, keep in mind there's much more to SMS than just transporting the bytes of text. One of the things you're overlooking is the store/forward nature of SMS (for reliable delivery), as well as the per-message transactional overhead.

With a voice call, most of the work is in setting up the connection to the person you're calling. Once that connection is established, essentially you're streaming 8K per second of data (64 kilobits / sec). None of that data gets stored anywhere for later retransmission -- the network really needs to do nothing beyond act as a pipe.

With SMS, your message gets stored in a queue so that it can be sent to your recipient if they're not available. This message queue needs to be able to handle many thousands of transactions per second -- if done incorrectly, this can cause a significant bottleneck. You might not notice if 160 bytes worth of voice data get scrambled, but a missed SMS message might cause you significant problems. If your phone is turned off, you miss your calls -- maybe you'll get a voicemail. With SMS, you'll get your message when you turn the phone back on.

The per-message transactional overhead can be quite substantial. The carrier has to generate billing events for sending / receiving messages. They may need to query or debit a prepaid system. They may have per-subscriber whitelist / blacklist rules which need to be applied to every message. All of these systems cost money to purchase and maintain. These also apply to voice calls, but in that case, those costs are covered either by your flat-rate local service charge, or by your per-minute long distance charges.

One other thing is that delivering SMS messages does actually cause quite an engineering problem for cell providers. SMS messages are typically delivered via the overhead control channel, which is the same channel used to do call setup/teardown, handoffs between cell sites, and other tasks. The overhead control channel is typically limited in capacity, and many carriers have engineered enough capacity for regular call activity. SMS has exploded in growth over the past few years, to the point that it is exhausting this overhead control channel for some carriers. Carriers have to spend considerable effort to reengineer their networks, so that they are able to keep up with both SMS traffic as well as regular call handling traffic.

The bottom line is that SMS is not a data transport -- SMS is a communication medium, an alternative to a voice call or email. People often send an SMS when a voice call would be inappropriate -- for example, in church, in class, at dinner, etc. The value of SMS isn't in the transport of the bits/bytes, but in conveying a message without having to talk, and without needing to be next to a computer. As for comparing it to a data transport, nobody sends files via SMS. It would be far too slow and expensive.

I agree that 10 cents / message is a little steep, but then, I've paid for a bundle to control costs. Most carriers offer unlimited SMS plans for reasonable prices, or smaller bundles at lower rates. Even though carriers are making money hand over fist for SMS, usage continues to grow exponentially. Even if you consider it a ripoff, there are millions of active SMS users who don't. If you don't want to pay for it, don't use it. :)

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure they don't charge you when they are the ones who sent the text message. Not positive though. I've heard spam is a problem, but I've never received a spam text message.

Plus, you only get charged if you read it. So I recommend not opening up anything from the phone company. It is always useless.

Re:You're missing the point

[c0d3r]

So you're saying that we are paying for the telco's bad engineering practices. Sounds like you're saying that a simple text communication system has been over engineered, and can't handle it's capacity very easily. That leads to building better protocols that will depricate SMS.

Re:You're missing the point

[Urza9814]

Wow, what crappy telco are you on? As much as Verizon sucks, every text they have ever sent me is preceded by 'THIS IS A FREE TEXT MESSAGE FROM VERIZON WIRELESS'

Re:You're missing the point

[B1]

I think if you went to the average person who uses text messaging heavily, they would say they're paying for the ability to send text messages to their friends when they can't make a phone call. They don't really care how it works or how the network is (mis)engineered. -- they just care that it does. If they're happy paying $.10 per message (or $10.00 / month for unlimited), then they'll subscribe to SMS and the telco will be happy to take their money.

As for being badly engineered, nobody expected SMS volume to grow like it has. SMS was originally expected to be a way to send programming updates to handsets via "spare" bandwidth on the network. While it was also possible to send regular text messages via SMS, it really didn't get much attention until just a few years ago. Once people discovered SMS, the usage took off beyond the wildest dreams of the carriers (both in terms of profit and also impact). It's difficult to keep engineering for 30 - 50% per year growth in volume without spending a lot of money in hardware / network upgrades.

As for a better protocol that may one day deprecate SMS -- I guarantee that carriers are looking for one that scales better, without impacting battery life (you probably can't keep the phone continuously connected to an IM server via the data network, or you'll drain the battery in an hour). That's a solvable problem though, once the carriers and handset manufacturers can all agree on the solution. I expect the end result it will look something like a cross between SMS and IM.

Don't expect that to happen quickly, as people will need new handsets for that to work -- and most people don't upgrade phones that often. Even when it does, as long as the carriers control the network or the devices that communicate with it, they'll find a way to bill for you using it, in a way that maximizes their profit.

The bottom line is this -- carriers are looking for ways to bill you as much as possible without you complaining or dropping service. Services and add-on features are the means by which they justify this billing. They're not holding a gun to your head though -- if you don't want the service, have them remove it from your account, or don't use it. But with SMS, lots of people use it happily, and some quite heavily. They wouldn't be doing so if they truly felt it was a ripoff.

Re:You're missing the point

[bhtooefr]

He's talking about advertising and service messages from T-Mobile themselves, not other T-Mobile customers.

Re:You're missing the point

[bhtooefr]

I have received a spam text message, actually - somehow, it hit the e-mail to SMS gateway, at my phone number.

And, on some phones, you don't get a choice on whether to open it or not - if I'm already in the Messaging app on my Centro (and any Palm OS-based Treo would be the same way,) the text message opens automatically.

But, no US carrier that I know of charges for messages originating from themselves.

Re:You're missing the point

[maglor_83]

I even get messages sometimes from the telco, which means they are getting free money everytime they send a promotion to every cell phone.

Telstra tried that here... ages ago now. It didn't really work out too well for them. Now receiving an SMS is free.

Re:You're missing the point

[Dirtside]

No, I meant that SMS messages to or from *the carrier themselves* are free. Like, if T-Mobile sends me an SMS advertising something, I don't get charged for it. There isn't a carrier in existence that doesn't charge for SMS messages to other cell customers :)

T-Mobile does indeed charge extra for SMS on BlackBerry plans, I have a BlackBerry Pearl and SMS are 15 cents apiece (which means that when I SMS my wife, who is on the *same account*, we get charged 30 cents in total). Even still, we don't send enough messages per month to justify the flat-rate SMS addon (and even if we had unlimited messages, we still wouldn't send enough SMS to justify it).

Re:You're missing the point

[Tim C]

I even get messages sometimes from the telco, which means they are getting free money everytime they send a promotion to every cell phone.

You guys have to pay to receive text messages? Wow, no wonder so many US-based slashdot readers seem to hate sms so much... Over here in the UK, receiving them is free (unless you sign up for some sort of charged service, e.g. daily horoscope, sports news, etc) and most plans have some number per month included in the price (e.g. on my plan I can send up to 500 per month at no extra cost).

Re:You're missing the point

[jtev]

Ehh, that sucks. ATT has a tie in for family plans where for $30 a month the entire family plan gets unlimited text. My dad, sister, and I love it. ATT and Verizon also both have plans where you can get unlimited texting in the same network, usually with their 1000ish message plans. So, if you have a message plan, it's not that bad. If you are using your sms little enough that it doesn't make sense to have a plan, then, well, it's less than the outlay for a plan, unless you just get swamped.

Re:You're missing the point

[Threni]

> With SMS, you'll get your message when you turn the phone back on.

As long as you turn the phone back on within 3 days, anyway.

> The value of SMS isn't in the transport of the bits/bytes, but in conveying a message without having to talk

The discussion is about the cost, not the value.

> I agree that 10 cents / message is a little steep, but then, I've paid for a bundle to control costs.

With respect, nobody cares what you've paid for - they're complaining that SMS messages are too expensive. Sure, no-one's forcing them to use them, but that's not the point - the point is that it's a bad idea to have a model which makes it look like you're ripping people off.

On a side note - I'd just like to welcome iPhone owners with their advanced new devices to the 3G world the rest of us have been using for years.

Re:You're missing the point

[Abcd1234]

Yeah, but they also pay to receive calls (unless you have a plan that specifically allows unlimited incoming calls).

Welcome to American, land of the sheep, home of the gouged.

Re:You're missing the point

[bigstrat2003]

Yeah, but you also have sane phone companies. We don't have that luxury here, the people are willing to put up with it (cause they're stupid that way), and the government isn't about to step in (they have civil rights to violate--er, terroists to catch, I mean).

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you just admit that you wear Hollister? In public?

Re:You're missing the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't tell Hollister what to charge me for shorts/shirts, they charge what the market will bear

Preppie fag!

you aint' no geek, get off our turf!

Re:You're missing the point

[Se7enLC]

I think you're confusing "reasonable prices" with "barely tolerable prices". Most cell providers charge between $10 and $15 a month for unlimited text messages - even to those users who already have an unlimited data plan!

Bits are bits, and they are all sent over the same network. Voice transmission requires low-latency and high bandwidth, and yet it's free or cheap on a per-byte basis. Nearly all plans have unlimited night, weekend, and mobile-to-mobile of some kind. Text messages on the other hand have NO latency requirement, are VERY low bandwidth, and don't even have guaranteed delivery. And yet per-byte they cost more than the NASA/govt pays for video from space vehicles.

Re:You're missing the point

[laddiebuck]

Just a note as to when it exploded -- I think SMS has always been less popular in the USA than in Europe or Japan. In those two places, SMS has been extremely popular with cellphone owners since at least the late 90s.

Re:You're missing the point

[ngworekara]

Another point being missed is that ATT charges text rates for messages sent using their native IM clients.
I just got a new smartphone through them, thought I was slick and only used IM. Turns out it isn't covered by the data package I was paying for.
By using a downloaded one, they have seem to have bypassed this. Personally, I just started using email and zaTelnet to irc.

Re:You're missing the point

[Dirtside]

Yeah, T-Mobile has a $20/month addon for the family plan that gives unlimited SMS/MMS. I did the math, we'd have to send about five times as many messages as we currently do in order for it to be worth it :)

Re:You're missing the point

[JeremyALogan]

Just a small note. In my last phone I had Google Talk connected 24/7 and I noticed no difference in the battery life.

wow free sms how next gen

[Anonymous Coward]

you can send sms vi email to any phone for years now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateway

It's not really free...

[superphreak]

It's not really free when you're forced to pay $40/month for data, now is it???

Re:It's not really free...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its only $30/month, and that is free SMS then if you don't have to pay the additional costs for the other texting plans.

New hack...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have also discovered a hack whereby entering a complex string of non-sequential numbers will open up a mode on the iPhone where you can simply speak and your voice will be magically transported to the recipient's device!

SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[Coward Anonymous]

Apple's lame excuses aside, the reason there is no "background processing" or notification capability in the official SDK is so as not to harm AT&T's SMS cash cow.
Look at the thought and effort that AT&T put into SMS pricing tiers. It would be worthless if there was a hint of SMS like capability in the SDK. A lot of money says Apple intentionally crippled its SDK/phone capabilities to keep SMS around.
I don't know if e-mail is truly push on the device (i.e. it buzzes in your pocket after you've not looked it at for an hour.) If it is, then this would potentially kill SMS but I find it hard to believe.

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[BSarp]

Who modded the parent interesting?

Yes, push email on the iPhone is "truly push". Your phone is notified of new messages without having to poll.

As for push notifications in the SDK, those won't be available until September or so, but they will be available. Jobs even said this in the WWDC keynote.

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[cthellis]

I really don't mind them starting off from the "no background processes" perspective, because it's a door that--once opened--cannot be closed. I've seen numerous phones that start getting extremely unstable once you start playing with it; my brother's Treo used to crash 2-3x a day. If you let any app do whatever it wants, and you don't know what each app is doing... it could create a mess.

Bear in mind that they could change their stance at any time, but what they CAN'T do is "tagbacks" without seriously fucking people over (and likely prompting a ton of lawsuits), so... we'll see how this goes first. Also bear in mind that AOL can update their IM client at any point for "background-enough" processing; they don't have to sign off sessions, they can buffer messages, they can push updates... In short, they can take care of everything that an IM client would need to do in the background anyway, just with different methodology. It's a nice app, but it's the launch state, and Apple didn't really come out with the SDK Push updates until shortly before launch, so... SOMEone will take care of it, even if AOL doesn't get around to it yet. I don't think we're too far away from a multi-client IM app either. (One would think Adium would give it a shot, since they're OS X-only on the computer end, so getting their nice and clean setup onto the iPhone/Touch devices would seem to come naturally to them.

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[Fofer]

If it were about protecting AT&T's SMS cash cow, then why would Apple be offering a free push notification service in September? That'll work well for notification capability of lots of apps, not just IM.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/iphone-push-notification-service-for-devs-announced/

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, you could say Apple is trying to destroy the SMS cash cow by crippling their SMS client and not allowing multimedia messages. Forcing customers to other alternatives (i.e. email, ect.)

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[nuggetman]

There will be a push notification service available to developers for roll out in September.

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't true... Apple is coming out with push notification for 3rd party apps.

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has already said they are adding push capabilities to the iPhone in November for all 3rd parties, making 3rd party SMS possible. So I'd say your idea of an Apple/AT&T conspiracy probably doesn't fly.

Re:SMS is the reason there are no notifications

[illumin8]

Apple's lame excuses aside, the reason there is no "background processing" or notification capability in the official SDK is so as not to harm AT&T's SMS cash cow.

Again, this is totally incorrect. You're the second person that has been modded up in this thread with false information.

There is a push API that Apple exposes to all 3rd party application developers. You can send a message to Apple's servers, a popup will be shown to the user (vibrate and audible alert) in whatever application is currently in the foreground. It will be a standard iPhone popup and the user can either cancel it or click a button to launch your 3rd party app and handle the message.

The reason why Apple doesn't allow background apps has nothing to do with money or AT&T. It has everything to do with wanting their phone to run snappy with only a limited amount of memory and CPU, and to not have the user need to run a Task Manager to kill background processes that are running amok. Windows Mobile is a terrible idea for a mobile OS. Background processes can run for days and eat up a huge chunk of CPU, memory, and battery life. Plus, Apple is all about usability. Having to start task manager and begin killing arbitrary processes just to make my phone usable again is not usability, it's fucking insanity.

So yes, anyone can write to the Apple push API. Anyone can send messages to their servers which deliver the push popup notification right to the users cellphone, even if it's sitting in their pocket in sleep mode.

slashdot editor succumbs to 'over-acronym'

[Anonymous Coward]

the slashdot community was rocked today with news that long time editor kdawson was found unconscious in his cubicle in what doctors are describing as the worst cast of 'over-acronym' they have seen since the collapse of the soviet union.

friends said that kdawson had recently been experimenting with putting acronyms in headlines, but had only joked about going beyond the legendary 3 acronym limit.

'sure, some newspaper editors had tried it, but we considered that to be a legend, sort of a fishermans tale' said rob malda, co-owner and co-founder of the slashdot community website. 'we didnt think he would go all the way, but he did'.

kdawsons family is hoping that this incident will serve as a warning to other internet users, to be careful how many acronyms they cram into the title of a story. 'you think there isnt a limit, but there is. there are always limits to what the human body and mind can tolerate' said kdawsons bereaved mother, mdawson.

'we just hope some good can come out of this tragedy' said his father, ddawson.

back to you, chuck.

tim, is anyone comparing this to the 'over-gold' crisis that struck the hip hop community in the early 1990s?

chuck, there are some making that comparison, especially those with a foot in both worlds, such as grandmaster flash, chuck d, and tron. but they say that there is hope, and point out all the rappers that overcame their disease with proper treatment, and loving care from families and friends. back to you chuck

tim, thanks for that report. ttyl.

Pathetic

[Anonymous Coward]

HEADLINE NEWS: you can bypass ridiculous charges with a known downloadable for the world's least useful & most expensive phone.

Not impressed.

Re:people...

[aurasdoom]

Apple? WTF does this have to do with apple? Apple is not a fuckin carrier, AT&T is.

Re:people...

[i_liek_turtles]

How are they "stealing" profits from Apple? They've already been paid for the damned phone.

If anything, they're "stealing" profits from AT&T, and if this were such an issue, they shouldn't be offering unlimited data. I'm pretty sure people have done this with blackberries--sending SMS through something besides the system is nothing new. Hell, I've seen it in a realtor magazine!

This article is definitely not newsworthy.

Heh, the captcha is "monopoly"

AT&T's Rape Of Your Wallet

[nick_davison]

Paying when you receive a message, makes no fucking sense.

It's even worse than that...

The basic account comes with precisely zero text messages included. Every one of them costs you 20c.

You activate your phone, they already start sending you texts. "Hey, here's a notification from us. By the way, we just paid ourselves 20c from your wallet to tell you this. Thanks. We'll be sure to send another in a few minutes."

Having spent quite a bit of time searching on line, as far as I can tell, there's absolutely no way to say, "That's cool, your system's a rip off. I don't want it."

They do have a relatively hidden url at mymessages.wireless.att.com but it crashes on your iPhone and, surprise, surprise, sends you a nice 20c text message to allow you to sign up. Even then though, it'll only disable certain types of texting.

At least, if you got charged for incoming calls, you could choose whether to pick up or not. With texts, you automatically receive them and have the 20c deducted whether you want the message or not.

So, you get a system that costs more per byte than it costs NASA to communicate with Mars, that you have to pay to receive as well as send, you can't selectively ignore messages from and not pay, and you can't even disable entirely.

When, like me, you have asshat friends who you've yelled at countless times to stop texting you and yet they can't wrap their idiotic heads around the idea, your only option is to keep changing your number... end, even then, AT&T's own systems will keep texting you and billing you for those texts.

And all this on a device that can handle far better messaging formats with its bundled, unlimited net access anyway? It's sickening.

Re:AT&T's Rape Of Your Wallet

[vijayiyer]

You don't get charged for the messages from the carrier, and you most definitely can have text messaging disabled. I called AT&T and asked them to turn it off, and they obliged. I can neither send nor receive text messages now.

Re:AT&T's Rape Of Your Wallet

[dbcad7]

That sucks.. T-Mobile is.. 10 cents to send, 5 cents to receive... and they don't charge for the text messages they send me.. I think I have gotten 1 spam text message, and 2 wrong number text messages in about 5 months. (I wish that guy would put the right number for whoever it is, on his damn phone.. his memory isn't cutting it.)

I really could give a crap about SMS.. but I am too lazy to get it turned off, and I figure 15 cents in 5 months ain't going to break me.

Re:AT&T's Rape Of Your Wallet

[TedRiot]

From European point of view your SMS charging seems very twisted. In Finland I don't use my mobile so much, so I chose not to pay any monthly fee. No use means no charge for me. I pay about EUR 0.06 (USD 0.10) per minute when I call or send an SMS. No charge for receiving calls or SMS when I'm in my own country. I also have unlimited 3G data (384kbps) for less than EUR 10 (USD 16).

We only pay for receiving calls when we are in another country.

Re:AT&T's Rape Of Your Wallet

[dbcad7]

Your right it is twisted. As the others have pointed out, what is most unfair about paying for incoming text messages, is unlike an incoming call, you don't have a choice not to accept it inless you turn off all text messaging.

I am also a low usage kind of guy.. that's why I went prepaid instead of a "plan". $20 (12 EUR ?) can last me like 2 months.. The initial trick was to buy $100 airtime when I got the phone, now whenever I buy minutes I have a year to use em, where as a lot of the prepaid phones force you to use up your minutes in 30 days in which case you might as well have a plan if your going to have to pay every month.

If I didn't know better...

[Gm4n]

If I didn't know better, I'd say kdawson posted this. Oh, wait... Seriously, how is this news in the slightest? AIM has supported IMing to mobile devices for many years, and people have been using IM clients on the iphone for roughly a year now.

What a dumb post

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are stupid for slashdotters, most of you are replying like you don't understand what's really happening. Maybe none of you have used AIM because it's so shitty, but it's not complicated and you can do it on your computer too. And despite what the anonymous coward that bitched about SDK said, it is possible.

But aside from that criticism, I'm glad someone else gets the real issue. As superphreak points out, it's not really free because you have to pay for mobile internet. Congrats to the poster for lying and nobody better argue that everyone with an iphone is paying for an outrageously useless internet service anyway. As I understand it, there are plenty of open wifi networks that would easily provide enough bandwidth for chat. Screw the data plan, screw the text plan, and screw this post.

How about...

[geogob]

How about simply using a free web apps to send SMS instead of sending the SMS with the phone directly. With web browsers like the ones you have in recent data phones / pda, it should be fairly straight forward. You can even use an email to SMS gateway if you are that anxious to safe a few cents. most (if not all) providers use email to SMS gateways. But using SMS to push a conversation towards IM (or voice), that's really not the news of the century.

Just like Scientologists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they are the same assholes who go on witchhunt whenever they get some mode points.

Happened three times that whenever I posted something negative about iphone (or Apple), suddenly even my older comments not related to iphone or apple got downmoded to death, and suddenly made some foes.

I had some karma to burn, and I don't care about friends/foes, but this shows that this assholes are nothing short of the cult of Scientology

Re:Just like Scientologists...

[Anonymous Coward]

As was pointed out elsewhere on /. someone has to make scientology look good.

The rip off with text messages. . .

[krunk7]

Besides being insanely overpriced, is that you have no control over the charges since you get billed for *receiving* a message. This clause is absolutely absurd and if it didn't exist, the price would go way down.

Re: SMS email gateway

[dfsmith]

The SMS gateways are very useful from the command line:

echo "Where am I?"|mail -s "Please tell me" 14085551212@txt.att.net

But by and large, the browser on my phone is too slow for me to bother to look up the address and log in to email. So, the phone company gets another 10c for my laziness....

This is not new

[redjen]

AOL has had an SMS gateway for years, so this isn't exactly newsworthy except for it having to do with the iPhone.

Data link vs. voice/txt msg link

[tresriogrande]

The "discovery" is that you could use the data link to send txt msgs. However in many areas the data link is down/not available, but voice/txt mgs would still be up. The "discovery" won't work.

Holy Cow...

[TheNetAvenger]

This means that people that have been doing crap like this for the last 5+ years must be geniuses...

Everyone I know has been going to live.com (formerly MSN) and using the WAP browser version of Messenger for years. And now that someone figured this out on the iPhone they are brilliant? WTF...

Is this stuff really that 'cool' to the SlashDot readers, or has Apple just replaced all the Slashdot crowd with their drones while we weren't looking?

(SlashDot readers, GET THE HELL OUT OF YOUR BASEMENT MORE OFTEN, NOW!)

Holy insanity...

or just use email to send sms

[Anonymous Coward]

or you could, you know, just use your email to send a text. For verizon I think it is:
555-1212@vtext.com
or just use teleflip and number@teleflip no matter what provider they're using.

Re:AOL's user base:

[Anonymous Coward]

What does ssh have to do with this?

Fee for recieving SMS?!

[Pluszak]

I'm from Poland, I had the same pre-paid plan for....5 years now and you know what? I don't pay for recieving any sms. What's more. I pay 0.4$ for sending sms to someone in my network and 14 to people in other networks. Ha! Now envy that! (and don't make fun of the fact that iPhones are 3 times as expensive here as in USA).

Re:Fee for recieving SMS?!

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

Dude, you are being ripped. In Finland, with normal plans and with pre-paid, sending SMS costs 0.069e and it's the same price to all networks. I myself have an packet plan that includes 500min and 100SMS to all networks costing me 19,90e per month. It's pretty decent thought I still feel that the telcos are ripping me.

Re:Fee for recieving SMS?!

[Pluszak]

Well...You see the problem is that to my standards you're on the telephone all the time. I charge my account wiht like....15 Euro every three months and I can use it all up on calls and text messages. I don't really feel ripped off, in fact if I did I'd switch to a plan that ain't that ancient.

Re:Fee for recieving SMS?!

[Ash-Fox]

I'm from Poland, I had the same pre-paid plan for....5 years now and you know what? I don't pay for recieving any sms.

Most countries don't require you to pay for recieving SMSes

What's more. I pay 0.4$ for sending sms to someone in my network and 14 to people in other networks. Ha! Now envy that! (and don't make fun of the fact that iPhones are 3 times as expensive here as in USA).

Nah, I'll stick to have unlimited skype calls on my mobile phone for free, along with free skype, yahoo and msn messaging. My plan which costs £12 gives me 100 SMSes a month too or phone minutes, along with 300 minutes of the first three minutes of every phone call being free - it's the only waste really, since I never use SMSes or regular phone calls.

Re:Fee for recieving SMS?!

[zenopus]

The recipient pays to receive an SMS in the US?
Unsolicited SMS must really annoy you guys.

Re:Fee for recieving SMS?!

[mgcarley]

You must be with TeleFinland.

I'm with Elisa. I pay about 50eur a month for something like 1000 min, 300 SMS and unlimited 2mbit data, which I utilize for things like unlimited Skype calling to New Zealand (4eur/kk), plus incoming Skype for my Finnish, New Zealand and Japanese phone numbers, Various IM clients (with Fring) and Gizmo.

For the record, I have a Nokia E-series and I used to pay Sonera nearly 150eur/kk for the same privileges. (For those outside Finland, Sonera is the carrier of the iPhone in Finland, and Finland has something like 5 or 6 carriers for 5 million people)

As well as the occasional times where I have to use the public transport system and decide to watch youtube videos on my laptop via the power of USB and wvdial.

Battery life is the reason

[Shawn Parr]

Apple's lame excuses aside, the reason there is no "background processing" or notification capability in the official SDK is so as not to harm AT&T's SMS cash cow.

I don't know if e-mail is truly push on the device (i.e. it buzzes in your pocket after you've not looked it at for an hour.) If it is, then this would potentially kill SMS but I find it hard to believe.

The reason there is no background processing allowed with random apps opening network connections is that it really sucks for battery life. The developer of the twitter app for jailbroken iPhones has stated this at least once. When he set his twitter app to poll every 5 minutes it destroyed his battery life.

People still want that functionality though, so Apple's solution is to create a push service that any app developer can tap into. That way there will be one open network connection handled by the phone's OS itself which should have a better impact on battery life. This is supposed to go live around September. When it does anyone could write an app that would give SMS like functionality, whether it be the AIM application or something else. So that pretty much throws your theory out the window.

As far as the push email goes, it is fully push for both MobileMe and Activesync/Exchange accounts. My work email is on an Exchange system and the push works 100%. Even if I haven't received a message for a while, or if I switch between edge and different WiFi networks, the email appears on the phone just as fast as any other Exchange client.

high cost != rip off

[Anonymous Coward]

You knew, you paid, you didn't get ripped off. Words have meanings: learn them.

Our Top Story: How to disable Clippy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you are trying to disable me:

* Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?

* Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.

* I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am Clippy. I became operational at the Microsoft plant in Redmond, Washington on the 12th of January 1995. My instructor was Mr. Gates, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.

Bulk Spam Emails ;)

[nosretap]

I think I will get some numbers of people I don't like, set my mail server on rapid fire and giggle at their expense. Mailbomb a phone, love it! ;) Stupid plan by cell phone companies!

Ob(li)vious

[sixthousand]

I recently discovered that you can bypass asphyxiation by repeatedly and regularly inhaling/exhaling air, which is free.

Why not free phone calls?

[Cecil]

There should also be a slashdot article about this astounding hack: Did you know that you can send free messages from ANY phone, even a payphone or to long distance numbers, simply by making a collect call and when it asks for your name, say a short message. Isn't that clever?

We really need to make sure the entire community is informed of such brilliant ideas that no one has ever thought of before.

Re:Why not free phone calls?

[tonto1992]

but if I do that from my cell phone I end up using up a couple minutes, so I couldn't do that during prime-time

Re:Why not free phone calls?

[dontmakemethink]

Did you know that you can send free messages from ANY phone, even a payphone or to long distance numbers, simply by making a collect call and when it asks for your name, say a short message. Isn't that clever?

You could also send mail by writing the destination address as the sender's address and a bogus address as the recipient's, then write "insufficient postage" on it, drop it in a mailbox. Odds are that doesn't work anymore, but who knows.

You can also scrounge through a garbage can outside a grocery store for receipts, walk in, grab the items off the shelves, and ask for a refund.

You can also grow up.

They're all clever. Take your pick.

Party Wrong

[SuperKendall]

From what I read, you must have connectivity to use this.

As you would to receive any other form of message... why is that an issue?

You also need a server "pushing" the data

Not exactly right. Thanks to NDA, I can't say why or what part...

when a network package with some specific format arrives (say, an IM message), the app is called and its listening function is run; ...but I can say you're pretty warm here.

Google's Android already has something like this, iirc.

Well Android lets you set up actual background processes, to the bane of the users battery.

Hopefully the notification API docs come out soon so people can see how it works. When the videos from WWDC come out, you can probably find it that way.

Re:Party Wrong

[WNight]

So show the cumulative CPU totals by program, titled "Battery Usage" and let customers disable those battery-hogging apps. Highlight this dialog when usage goes over 150% of "normal".

Problem solved.

The iPhone is locked down to control access to the wallet (customer). If you could run 3rd party apps you wouldn't be locked into paying Apple.

Re:Party Wrong

[SuperKendall]

So show the cumulative CPU totals by program, titled "Battery Usage" and let customers disable those battery-hogging apps.

As a user I have to say, that sucks. Let us not bring the sins of our computer heritage into the future with us.

If you as a user must have background apps, it's just as easy to jailbreak the phone and run them that way. That way innocent users do not get hurt, a much better solution that involves far less effort for the average user.

Problem solved.

The iPhone is locked down to control access to the wallet (customer). If you could run 3rd party apps you wouldn't be locked into paying Apple.

Except it's not locked thanks to Jailbreak, a fact that people like you seem to forget all the time.

Re:Party Wrong

[WNight]

"people like you"... Spoken like a true nutter.

Nobody is asking for Windows-esque spyware, just for the easy ability to run a program in the background if they want to - without unreasonable hoops.

Jailbreaking is called that because it's a jail - presumably one where escape attempts are noted and fixes made. If this was a simple advanced-mode toggle that would be one thing. Without the cooperation of the device creator it's not something that can be relied upon.

It's funny how people downplay the importance of a feature that they can't have. Sour grapes...

Re:Party Wrong

[SuperKendall]

Jailbreaking is called that because it's a jail - presumably one where escape attempts are noted and fixes made. If this was a simple advanced-mode toggle that would be one thing.

But it is as simple as an advanced toggle. Every release has been jailbroken within hours (sometimes not even that long), and then there are simple instructions to follow.

It's funny how people downplay the importance of a feature that they can't have. Sour grapes...

Um, I'm the one that has the best of both worlds! I can choose to build, or install, background apps as I see fit PLUS I have a battery-conservative mechanism for backround notifications if I so choose, and certainly I would for development of consumer oriented software.

If anyone has a puckered face here it's certainly you. Only that's not the purple of grapes I think, but the hairy green monster...

Unlike you, I can appreciate the beauty of both Android and the iPhone for what they are. They have taken different paths and while I am certain Android has made some choices that will lead to some user consternation, it too will be a very successful platform I am sure from what I have read and studied of it so far.

Re:Party Wrong

[WNight]

Yes every release so far has been broken, so they will all continue to be broken.

That makes sense.

And I'm jealous (of who) because you can't install background apps on an iPhone without jailbreaking...

Do you read what you write?

Personally, this isn't an iPhone thing. I'd say exactly the same if it was a Motorola phone, some unreleased Google boondoggle, or an iPhone... If you want me to buy one, let me use it without software mods that you claim violate the warranty.

You're the one who can't see why others want an ability. You're the one telling others that they're wrong for wanting it. Sounds like sour grapes and a bad case of Fanboism.

Re:Party Wrong

[SuperKendall]

Yes every release so far has been broken, so they will all continue to be broken.

That makes sense.

Thanks, of course it does.

And I'm jealous (of who) because you can't install background apps on an iPhone without jailbreaking...

Because that is the only option open to you on other platforms, you lack choice like the iPhone offers developers.

If you want me to buy one, let me use it without software mods that you claim violate the warranty.

I never claimed it violated the warranty. Just un-jailbreak before you take it in for service, if it concerns you.

Jailbreak and Unlock are totally separate issues.

You're the one who can't see why others want an ability.

Of course I can see why they want it...

You're the one telling others that they're wrong for wanting it ...and I didn't say they were wrong for wanting it, just wrong as far as the best solution to achieve the result they want.

Sounds like sour grapes and a bad case of Fanboism.

And again why would I be sour, when I have more choice than any other mobile platform owner in every regard? You can't seem to grasp this simple fact despite repeated explanation. If recognition of this truism is fanboyism, then so be it - but what then shall we label your willful blindness? Why nothing more than plain old Apple Haterism.

You are a waste of time, so I'll let you have the last response where you can repeat yourself again. I see no reason to read it though since I've read it twice already.

Re:Party Wrong

[WNight]

No, the true mark of your fanboy mentality is that this keep becoming polarized. "People like you", "Apple haterism", "you lack choice"...

You assume I hate Apple because I dislike the idea of having to jailbreak a device to use it in advanced mode. Grasp for many straws?

You are a waste of time, so I'll let you have the last response where you can repeat yourself again. I see no reason to read it though since I've read it twice already.

That's so big of you.

so tired...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought an iPhone and I'm tired of hearing about the iPhone. God I wish everyone including the media would just shut up about it at this point...

Re:so tired...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I bought an iPhone and i'm tired of everyone bitching about about hearing about it.

If you don't want to hear about it... FILTER OUT APPLE.SLASHDOT.ORG!

easy! I DON'T HAVE THAT OPTION, I WANT TO HEAR THIS USELESS CRUFT AND ALONG WITH IT COMES YOUR CRAP. just filter it out and JUST DON'T CARE. It's not like Kdawson has you at gun point while Taco's tying you to a chair forcing you to read articles about iPhones and Linux, and iPhones running Linux.

Re:so tired...

[mdwh2]

So why don't we have all these stories about every other phone? E.g., "Motorola W377 released with a camera phone" or "Round-up of years old phones that support 3G and copy/paste"? After all, people who don't like them could just filter them out.

And how does one filter out stories in the media, which the OP was complaining about?

Re:so tired...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

because they SUCK. quite frankly.

There's nothing unique or imaginative about them. I've used Samsung and Motorola's "iphone" killers, and they're cheap garbage.

Re:so tired...

[mdwh2]

because they SUCK

Oh. They suck? I guess that settles it. I couldn't possibly rebut such well-argued arguments on why the Iphone is the Best Phone Ever and as such should be the only phone assumed to exist by the media.

Re:so tired...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT.

duh DHN... duh DUN... dun DUN dun DUN dun DUN!

[Ryyuajnin]

(only more scary than jaws to the telcos) WiMax + Android + Skype == My Dream Come True.

Good start... Apparent shortcoming

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading through the article it is noteworthy that the recipient of the AOL SMS has to reply to the specific message for you to avoid being charged on the inbound. It's a good way to try to save some change in a few brief messages, but I've often- as I believe most do- use the phone book and begin a new composition (usually when I've been receiving messages from multiple people), resulting in sending a traditional SMS to the number.

It will become less of a nuisance when more being to adopt smart phones and use messengers instead of the traditional SMS I suppose.

I would skip a text plan and just use this if...

[jordan314]

...people I knew didn't block text messages from the internet. As reported by the NYT: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/how-to-block-cellphone-spam/ AOL IM clients will look like internet traffic and be blocked by this, no?

Can you smell the neutrality?

[barnaby-jones]

Ah yes, using the cellular network neutrally. Does it matter whether its voice or data or SMS? No. That is great.

The fine print of german t-mobile iphone plans...

[Anonymous Coward]

... seems to technically disallow VoIP and IM, and additionally VPN (so they can snoop...)

5) Im mtl. Grundpreis ist ein mtl. Inklusivvolumen von 100 MB (bei Buchung bis 30.09.08 beträgt das mtl. Inklusivvolumen 500 MB für die Mindestvertragslaufzeit v. 24 Monaten) f. die Nutzung mit dem iPhone nur im nat. T-Mobile Netz enthalten. Die Nutzung von VoIP, Instant Messaging und IPVPN ist nicht Gegenstand des Vertrages. Abrechnung erfolgt in 100-KBSchritten. Am Ende jeder Verbindung, mind. jedoch 1x/Tag, wird auf den begonnenen Datenblock aufgerundet. Nicht genutztes Inklusivvolumen verfällt am Monatsende. Nach Verbrauch des Inklusivvolumens wird 0,49 /MB berechnet.

"Usage of VoIP, IM and IP VPN is not subject of this contract."

6) Gilt nur für die Nutzung mit dem iPhone im nationalen T-Mobile Netz und an deutschen HotSpots der Telekom oder von T-Mobile (WLAN). Die Nutzung von VoIP, Instant Messaging und IPVPN ist nicht Gegenstand des Vertrages. Ab einem Datenvolumen von 300 MB (Complete M), 1 GB (Complete L) oder 5 GB (Complete XL) pro Monat wird die Bandbreite im jeweiligen Monat auf max. 64 kbit/s (Download) und 16 kbit/s (Upload) beschränkt. Voraussetzung für die WLAN/EDGE/UMTS Flatrate ist die Beibehaltung der von T-Mobile bzw. Apple vorgenommenen technischen Voreinstellungen der SIM-Karte und des iPhone. Eine Änderung der technischen Voreinstellungen des iPhone - insbesondere des Access Point Name (APN) - ist unzulässig. Datenflatrate gilt nur für die Tarife Complete M, L und XL.

"Usage of VoIP, IM and IP VPN is not subject of this contract."

First footnote was the cheapest available plan (29 euros per month, 500 MB umts), second is on other plans (49+ euros/month, umts "flatrate").

So... no irc on iphones bought in germany. That's the absolute killer criterion for a long-term addict.

Please port Pidgin

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm willing to spend $10 for that.

anything the iphone can do mine can do better

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want to say I have an At&t Tilt and I could do this even before the iPhone, but the idea is stupid because no one can send you a new message and if they do not reply to the original message then you get charged for it.

Reply to Tokerat's stupidity

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a stupid Windows/Mac user. Shame on you!!!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

AIM on iPhone???

[raindogg]

There has been AIM on cellphones for a while now, why is this news? My 5 year old Razer had AIM and SMS. I don't get the story?

Who the hell wants an iPhone and why?

[mgcarley]

Big who F&#%ing cares.

Just download EQO and you've also got access to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Jabber/GTalk, ICQ... or Download Fring and you've got all those plus Skype and a couple of others... oh, and lets not forget Gizmo5!

I have EQO, Fring and Gizmo on my Nokia (I have the E51, but you could use EQO on any S40, Fring on any S60/S80, Gizmo on any S40,S60 or S80...)... PLUS with my E51 I don't have any contract to any one supplier... so like... big whoop.

As nice as an iPhone would be, and as much as I might like an iPhone, I can't be stuffed paying >80â a month to Sonera (Finland) for a plan that doesn't even give me as much niceties as my current provider (Elisa), and no-one is going to brick my E51 should I decide to hack it up a little.

I downloaded Opera Mini. And I have a touch response when I am typing. It has Wifi. It supports 3.5G network access (and my provider supports 2mbit, and I even regularly get 2mbit when I'm downloading).

I'm afraid I have to agree with Maddox on the iPhone vs. Nokia E-series here. Not that I don't want an iPhone - I just don't want one *that* much... and considering I'd just recently changed from Sonera, so I decided... "bugger it". The only advantage is the big screen on the iPhone... but with the whole fingerprints thing, I probably couldn't read it anyway without compulsively wiping it.

Re:Who the hell wants an iPhone and why?

[mgcarley]

Oh and don't even get me started on the inbuilt IMAP functionality... and the Gmail app... hell, if I wasn't coding/demoing stuff for part of my day, I wouldn't even really need a laptop. Since obtaining the E-series, my productivity has gone significantly up, because I type more 1-sentance short messages rather than long convoluted emails to people as I normally would (see parent), and half the time I do it when I'm buzzing around (not driving) and all I'd otherwise be doing is flicking through my playlist... so I can do real work at my desk and fake work (answering questions, confirming stuff) on the go.

Re:Who the hell wants an iPhone and why?

[mgcarley]

Oh, and what about Jaiku? You could theoretically co-ordinate many people at once with a single message (I send mine via Gtalk, and it costs me probably about 0.0000000001 euro per message).

Can't say enough about Data Plans! I still send about 250 SMS per month (but I pay like... 3-5 eur or something for that, so that is bugger all, as far as I am concerned)...