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iPhone 3.1 Update Disables Tethering
jole writes "The newest iPhone 3.1 update intentionally removed tethering functionality from all phones operating in networks that are not Apple partners. This is not limited to hacked or jailbroken phones, but also includes expensive 'officially supported' factory-unlocked phones. To make the problem worse, Apple has made it impossible to downgrade back to a working 3.0 version for iPhone 3GS phones."
Apple fanboys really enjoy tethering. Along with aby other type of bondage.
No one is surprised enough to comment.
Palm Pre (and Pixi) has a Homebrew community with a FREE tether program.
WebOS phones are Open Source OS phones, so the Tether capability can't be disabled as it's based on Open functionality, not a closed API.
in the US, a Sprint Simply Everything plan (includes Unlimited data use) is around $1000.00 cheaper a year to have.
So, you can have an Open Source phone with a real Homebrew community, a cheaper unlimited plan and have your Tethering program UNBLOCKABLE. Sounds like the Pre is a better deal all around.
Unless you are an isnob, of course.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Fuck AT&T. I don't tether currently. I didn't cringe when I got charged $26 per line for "activation". I didn't cringe at signing a 2-year contract to get a phone for $300. I didn't even cringe at an "unlimited" data plan that limits downloads to 10MB files (which, coincidentally, is smaller than most of the apps on the "approved" app store).
Why is Apple sticking with these people. The overall user experience of an "approved" iPhone is significantly worse because of AT&T's behavior as greedy little fucktards.
This is why I refuse to buy any Apple related products.
Was this feature was purchased with the phone? I see a class action looming if so. Manufacturers do not hold the right to downgrade product after purchase.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
So the FCC has started looking into unfair business practices of cell providers. This could be a smoking gun. A 100% legal unbundled phone that will only support tethering on a single providers network, that previously did support tethering.
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
...when I actually wanted an iPhone. Glad I never wasted the money. Why would anyone want to buy something thats capabilities change almost monthly at the whim of Apple and AT&T? It still can't do things an old Moto RAZR did five years ago. The iPhone was relegated to "gadget" status at my company earlier this year (meaning they won't support it as a communication tool for managers). Now it seems to be failing in the gadget category as-well. I really don't even know who to blame anymore- AT&T is an obvious target, but Apple is responsible for a lot of this too.
... but of entertainment for the rest of us. Seriously, this is hilarious. It's like being back in high school again and watching the heartrending saga of Jill and her cavalcade of BFFs finally have a tragic argument destined to elicit tears at every juncture. For the participants, tears of frustration and despair, and for the viewing public, tears of laughter.
I mean, really.
Apple: "Our new phone is awesome!"
Fans: "Yes, it is! Wait... where's cut and paste, and media messaging?"
AT&T: LOLwhat?
Then...
Apple: "We now have cut and paste... kinda! And the phone is faster!"
Fans: "Yay! Wait... I want a refund on the difference!"
AT&T: "I'm sitting this one out!"
And now...
Apple: "We now have tethering, and media messaging!"
AT&T: "No we don't! In fact, you're killing our network by using the extra capacity you paid for!"
Fans: "I'll cut you!"
I just... don't even know what to say. Kudos, to all participants. You've provided more drama than money could buy, and for that, I thank you!
Read: Rabbit Rue - Free serial nove
Except when they don't want it to.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The only crap, expensive software I have on my Diamond 2 is... Erm... Oh, wait, I downloaded a cooked community ROM with all of the rubbish removed and installed the apps I use. The WinMobile community is HUGE, with a large amount of free software for the platform.
XDA Developers is somewhere you want to look before considering purchasing any smartphone, especially one you want to toy around with.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I was under the impression, perhaps wrongly, that apple was locking their phones basebands. That is the locking is occuring in the cell-phone part of the phone which has it's very own firmware and DSP not the main "operating system" CPU part of the phone. So this tethering denial may be just a side effect of the well known baseband locking that occurs when they lock the cell phone to a carrier class. The iphone Dev team has never cracked the Cell phone firmware.
I think it might be "pre"-mature to say the pre is completely open source. The CPU part of the phone might be, but does that assure that they won't permenantly lock the carrier class? I could imagine that some service providers might want Palm to do just that in return for subsidizing the phone.
We shall see. Right now there's not enough Pre phones out there for the main market let alone a gray market of re-banded phones to be siginficant. Apple did not start locking the phones this way till the 3G. the 2G phones supposedly, it is said, can't be locked that way. But I honestly don't know enough to argue the matter, I'm just repeating what i've gleaned on the iphone-dev team blogs.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Ha ha, just kidding. Welcome to America.
It is actually worse than this for 3.0 lovers. Apple is refusing to sign any more firmware images pre-3.1. This means if you have a problem and need to restore, you WILL be upgraded to 3.1, even if you just want to restore your 3.0. There is (as of yet, and speaking to the dev team maybe forever) no solution around this problem. You only hope would be to have grabbed your signing keys prior to the 3.1 release(or just keeping a 3.0 image around downloaded within itunes), which is something beyond most of the population.
Unfortunately, the 3.1 update also removes any ability of an unlock because they upgrade the baseband as well. I use the term upgrade loosely because they removed most of the minicom commands the baseband will accept to limit their exposure to exploits.
That being said I'm happy with my iPhone because I'm in the small minority of people who jailbreak their phones and don't hit update until a dev team member has a solution for me to upgrade without losing the functionality I've come to enjoy.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
What is funny about this, is that people are defending Apple and attacking AT&T over this. As if Apple was taken advantage of. I think we are starting to see the real underbelly of the mac beast. This is their product and you WILL use it how they tell you to.
really, im not surprised apple is doing this sort of thing. their hardware may be good, but their totalitarian control over the software environment ruins it. it lost them the personal computer market, and it seems they havent learned that lesson.
A hack that has been disabled at AT&T's request, just like it would be on any other phone that has updates. Apple didn't "remove a feature" - the iPhone can still tether just fine - as long as your carrier supports it.
Does it suck? Hell yes. Is it unexpected? Hell no.
This was in all of the betas, and known about two months ago. If you were "in the know" enough to install a hacked carrier profile on your device, then you should have been following closely enough to know not to install the update. (Oh, and the Pre and it's "free" homebrew community? What about those mandatory updates that install themselves after ten days? And the data collection Palm does? Apple doesn't even do either of those.)
Throw this down at AT&T's feet, not Apple's. Apple certainly has no interest in you tethering or not. If anything, it makes their device more valuable, so they have an interest in allowing it. But clearly AT&T would rather rape you at an unspecified future date for an unspecified amount of money. All the more reason for Apple to leave AT&T as soon as possible.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I've always been a PC at heart.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
Weird. Tethering is on my 3.1 phone. Not sure whats happening to you folks.
General menu -> Netowork ->Tethering -> On.
About says:
Network: YES OPTUS (australian carrier)
Line: Virgin Mobile
Version: 3.1 (7C144)
I'm on the developer program so maybe developers get extra goodies?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
mac fanboys crying about their expensive telephone and masquerading it as a slashdot article. i especially love how the submitter stated "very expensive" when describing the unlocked phones. you didnt buy a macphone for the cost savings, so stop acting like its suddenly an issue.
the cognitive dissonance here is mac users are starting to realize no matter how great a guy steve jobs is for the I culture, Ma bell will always have the last word. no, they dont share the mac philosophy of innovation and ease of use because it goes against their closed system of regulated service. you knew this when you owned a regular cellphone before you bought the i-phone and continued to ignore it. you knew the telco was screwing you for the cost of the phone, the cost of the data service, and the support but you ignored it because of the cool factor.
heres your tipping point: dont like it? stop buying it. innovation or no, if its at the cost of your freedoms which you so easily discard time and time again, is it really worth it? This device isnt designed to further the culture of mac or innovation, its designed to make money. its designed to use the mac brand, the mac cult, and steve jobs to make money. had AT&T a say, they would just as soon abolish advanced features and run everything off AS400's for all eternity but the customer constantly demands more, and they see the tie-in with apple as a chance for branding.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So yeah - NONE of these phones are remotely free out of the box. All of them can be hacked to do what you want with them. Pick your poison.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I use my iphone with T-mobile. for 1000 minutes it's $39. that's not unlimited, but I don't use that many minutes so for me it is. My data plan is $6.25 a week. I say week and not month because T-mobile lets you switch the data plan on and off at will without any impact on your plan (no new 2-year agreement). SO I only switch it on when I travel a few times a year. The rest of the time I just use WiFi for the internet. In my home town I really don't need to have google so bad that I can't just walk to a coffee shop or something to use the iphone. But on travel (especially in the car or public transit, or airport, or whatever you do need the web on the go sometimes for maps, car rentals, hotel reservations, dinner plannning, staying connected with the office).
So you might say, well yeah but sprint is unlimited and has an always on data plan. And I reply yes but I have an iphone which, presently at least, is unarguably more supported in terms of usability (apps and connectivity to easy itunes management and perifrials), has a high resale value, and uses a carrier with better coverage (including sim card conveneince for international travel).
FOr my usage pattern, which may not be yours, t-moble is by far the better deal cost wise as well.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Unless you are an isnob, of course.
According to the iMarketing department, all iWords must be written with the second letter in iCaps.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Could it be the abusive wireless companies? No... they have shown time and time again that they do not improperly influence or direct Apple to do any of the things they have done lately such as removing the Google voice suite from the App store. Nope! Not a move pushed by AT&T and all the congressional investigations will show is that they didn't do it and/or don't "recall" doing it. That of course depends on the definition of what "it" means.
Cue the Apple apologists and the others who say "well? don't buy an iPhone!"
What about the poor souls who bought one with expected functionality and had it only to have it yanked out from under them.
What is really wrong here is the lines of ownership. Once someone owns something, is it proper for the previous owner to change and manage how you can use it? Sure, users don't "own" the software, but that is a matter of question there as it has been shown in other instances that copyright holders don't always have the right to control how a work is used. (yes, I know there are exceptions such as playing a DVD in a bar/club... but frankly, I don't think that limitation should be allowed either.) With every push like this, the rights of consumers are being trampled and removed. This is a big and growing problem. Consumers need to push back.
Did you RTFA? Apple disables tethering for companies that aren't Apple partners. It has nothing to do with whether or not the carrier allows tethering. Apple is still living in a world where they can shove an authorized provider down their customer's throats, as if they weren't doing business in Europe, where the phone and the service are supposed to be separate.
Because you were man enough to post your opinion with your actual user name, I'm going to respond. I love Apple, and I'm a fanboi. I used to run an old Samsung phone that was the first generation to have a color screen and texting capability (don't remember what model it was, just that it was big, had an antenna and camera, and was blue). Bought that back in 2004. I resisted the whole smartphone/iPhone rush up until this year because I was on T-Mobile, I loved their service, and I didn't want to pay assloads of money. But my wife got an iPhone and was on AT&T, and she loved it. So finally this year after much nagging by her, I left T-Mobile, went to AT&T, and got an iPhone 3G for $99 plus the standard 2 year service agreement. So now I pay $15 more a month now with AT&T for unlimited data and voice than I did with T-Mobile for just 400 minutes and unlimited texts, and I get all the versatility and features that the iPhone has. I also refuse to jailbreak it because I do not want to waste my time having to dodge getting my phone bricked. It does everything I want it to do. I really don't care how much a year I'm spending, because it's within my monthly budget and I'm getting far more in terms of features than I used to. Plus, once my two year term is up, AT&T's lock on Apple will be over, and I'll be able to go back to T-Mobile with my iPhone. So now that I've bored the absolute fuck out of you with my long-winded summary, let me say this - I love Mac and iPhone because it does what I want it to do, when I want it done, with a very low minimum of hassle and cost in my opinion. This is obviously not your sentiment. But I would ask that before you just badmouth us Mac fanbois again, you consider that SOME of us chose Mac not because it's anti-MS, but because it meets our needs. Now get off my lawn :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Apple opted to use DRM not because the music companies forced them to, but because it was beneficial to Apple. The only "evidence" behind what you're saying is what Steve Jobs himself claims. "Oh, help us, help us, we're a poor multi-billion dollar company, the music companies are having their way with us and there's nothing we can do about it!" It's a huge load of bullshit. Any company opposed to DRM would refuse to do business with any labels that forced it upon them. Apple only pretended to be opposed to DRM so they could play the victim to their fans while simultaneously making millions off them through vendor lock-in. Once they had the lock-in they needed, with millions of people having already bought ipods, made itunes accounts, and gotten used to the music pipeline between the two, Apple started offering limited DRM-less tracks in a format obscure to most mp3 players that weren't made by themselves, and later on released all their music in the same, rarely-seen-on-mp3-players format. Hooray, the assholes who were punching us in the face to begin with, are now only punching us in the stomach! What heroes! Industry pioneers!
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Tethering isn't disabled. What is disabled is tethering without the carrier giving you a signed configuration bundle to use.
I've talked to a few people who use AT&T and still have tethering on their iPhones after upgrading. They got the new configuration bundle and have no problems.
Apparently, this was a request from almost all of the official carriers to prevent the iPhone from tethering without their permission (which can be had for another $20 or so per month). This was originally aimed at supported carriers, but it is also affecting unsupported carriers too.
That's what happens when you tie the hardware to the provider.
AT&T disabled tethering for AT&T customers. Tethering is working fine on 3GS on Fido before and after the 3.1 update.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
I must say that having developed for Android and iPhone, iPhone was much more enjoyable of an experience. I think Android has a good platform, but its not all there yet. I like the feel of my iPhone apps much more, whereas like most non-Apple GUIs and window systems, Android feels clunky and non-standard. Android, however, hosted my app immediately whereas Apple takes weeks and weeks of unknown approval status to either a) give you some bullshit reason your app isn't accepted, so fix it and start the process over or b) allow your app in the store and then watch as everyone says "great but *bug*" and quickly scramble to fix the bug and then wait yet again for Apple to approve your new bugfix version.
it may also be easy to rob a bank but that doesn't make it legal.
Is a blackberry a smartphone?
AT&T:
BlackBerry Personal plus Tethering $60
How about a "PDA?"
AT&T:
PDA Personal plus Tethering3 $60.00
http://www.wireless.att.com/businesscenter/popup/dataconnect-comp-table.jsp
AT&T is just the first carrier I happened to look at. But I think they offer tethering for smartphones. Really expensive tetherting, but tethering.
I mean, come on, seriously. ANY time you;re doing something with an Apple device that's against the EULA or the provider's terms, Apple ALLWAYS turns off that function in the next release.
Further, you were TOLD WEEKS AGO that 3.1 broke the provider file hack and that only jailbroken devices and phones runnin 3.0.1 and older would be able to maintain tethering.
The hackers will win out and fix it soon enough, that is if AT&T doesn't start enabling it now anyway as they're doing with MMS.
Plus, adding tethering to an iPhone is $25 more per month, not $60 like it is on the crackberry or the Pre.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I noticed that the tethering functionality enabled by the profile from http://help.benm.at/tethering.php stopped working after my upgrade to 3.0.1
The use of this profile works on even an un-jailbroken phone.
They did it in a rather sneaky way. The UI for tethering is still there, and active. It even says 'tethered', when plugged in â" but the update causes the iPhone to ignore DHCP requests for an IP address from the external device, which then times out.
The problem was immediately resolved by revving back to the 3.0 firmware.
I tested both jailbroken and un-jailbroken, on both 3.0 and 3.0.1.
3.0 tethering works, jailbreak or not, 3.0.1 tethering does NOT work, jailbreak or not.
Shame on you Apple. If you're going to intentionally break functionality, at least be man enough not to lie about it.