Jobs Says No Tethering iPad To iPhone

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

Comments

You get what you pay for?

[LostCluster]

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[shutdown -p now]

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[bondsbw]

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[nine-times]

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

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

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[GF678]

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[Entropius]

The key to computer design isn't to give the users the features you think they will find useful; it's to give the users the ability to decide what features they want. That's why computing is so wonderful: if you give people universal Turing machines they can do all sorts of things on them that you never thought of, and thus your product is more useful than it otherwise would be.

Some people just use their netbook as a net-book -- as a gateway to the internet, email, etc. But I'm glad that there's a full computer inside there, on which I can (and do) run all sorts of things: Picasa, GIMP, Olympus Studio, games, etc.

Perhaps somebody, somewhere, wants to run openssh on their iPad -- or Apache. Just because Apple doesn't think it's a good idea doesn't mean that somebody somewhere won't want to do it. This is the whole point of computing -- it's a universal information processing machine.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[Renderer of Evil]

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

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

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[aussie_a]

You've heard

It just works.

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[sjames]

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[rsidd]

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[adolf]

Plainly, as with any other multitasking system, such problems depend on the apps.

You've just chosen better-behaved applications than GP has.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[knarf]

I've heard the same statement from Linux/Ubuntu

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

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

• Given a solid implementation the Linux user will see his work spread to different distributions. He (or she of course) will receive praise from users and developers alike.
• The Apple user will see his work derided as a hack by the Apple faithful. He (or she) will be branded as a hacker and possibly pirate in the common media sense of the word as he will have breached several license agreements to be able to make the thing do what it should. He will also see his work been made ineffective with the next firmware release and will read stern warnings about 'unauthorized firmware modifications' being the cause of 'bricked' products.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[t0p]

Linux-based software "just works" on a wider range of hardware than does Mac-based software.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[tclgeek]

You can't be serious. You can't. I've used various flavors of unix for roughly three decades, and as much as I love it I just can't agree with that statement. Linux requires tweaking and knowing arcane stuff. I'm sorry, but it simply doesn't "just work". Ok, granted, you can pop in an ubuntu disk and be up and running lickety split, but "it just works" as a meme means more than it "just works". It means you can go about your task thinking more about your task than about the OS. Linux is simply not there yet.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[am 2k]

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

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

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[hey!]

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

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

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[MrHanky]

Oh, please. This isn't done to make things "simple", it's done to make you pay more. That's all there is to it, you're just making excuses. Ever wondered why you Mac Fanboys are so despised? Perhaps you wouldn't be if you didn't feel the need to do ridiculous PR exercises to save Apple's image all the time. They're not working for your best interest, so you should feel no obligation to work for them.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[IANAAC]

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

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

Re:You get what you pay for?

[gparent]

Except she probably doesn't call him every patch tuesday.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[delinear]

Why is "user experience" always the standard answer to these kind of questions? If you particularly want or need multitasking then the practise is quite blatantly diminishing your user experience. What's the harm in having it disabled by default and giving power users the option to enable it - even if it means looking up how to do so and trawling through a few menus, that short term initial hit to user experience will be cancelled out for that user by the long term benefits.

Am I just being too cynical/paranoid when I say this is probably less about user experience and more about resources? Killing multitasking pretty much guarantees everything runs faster on your device compared to others, even if your hardware is underpowered, suddenly you can better price your product against your competition for hardware which is required to run applications X, Y and Z.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[mdwh2]

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

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

Why in the world would I want to share cycles with apps from other developers on a task oriented portable device? It's bad enough there are unforeseen push notifications from different vendors fucking up the UX, now I have to bend over backwards and play nice with every resource hog on the app store?

You do realise that no one is forcing you to install every single application on the "app" store? The reason I want to share cycles with an application, is that if I've chosen to install it, it probably means I want to share cycles with it! If I didn't want to, I wouldn't install it.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[am 2k]

If your mother can't run one script from a command line

nope

and follow the prompts to reinstall the driver

she would have called me by then

then she probably doesn't need the extra 3D performance from a proprietary binary video driver either.

uh wtf? So you're saying just because my mother enjoys playing some casual games that require 3D once in a while, she has to become a Linux wizard who's able to recompile drivers on the command line? Don't you think you're a bit out of touch with reality there?

To phrase it differently (and more generically): How is the desire for using the hardware you payed for to its fullest potential (or close to it) related to the requirement that you learn programming?

To move to another example: A 3D graphics artist requires 3D graphics, but programming and/or compiling stuff on the command line (those two are pretty much the same for non-geeks) is not part of the job description.

I've got one more: I'm programming using CUDA right now, so I need the Nvidia drivers (and the latest ones at that). However, I'm not paid to f*ck around with the system every other week to get it to a working state again.

Re:You get what you pay for?

[amicusNYCL]

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

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

How are they going to stop it though?

[lordsid]

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

Re:How are they going to stop it though?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Chances of stopping 100% of cases? Pretty much zero.

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

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

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

This is why I'll never own anything apple.

[mirix]

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

Re:This is why I'll never own anything apple.

[badasscat]

Maybe because the devices his company produces do what most people want, and do those things really well.

I'm not going to argue with your main point but there are a couple of statements you make that I do disagree with.

Disclosure: I just got over a 36 hour iPhone binge, where I thought my old phone had broken and it turned out that the iPhone was the cheapest smartphone I could actually get given my upgrade status, so I tried one. I returned it the next day.

I also own an iPod, and I do love that.

Given my experience with the iPhone (and the iPod), I don't believe these devices do anything particularly well. What I think is that they don't do anything badly. That's a different thing. Apple is really good at not fucking things up for most people, and at not allowing most people to fuck things up for themselves. They are not very good at doing anything that's particularly amazing, or inspiring, or whatever you want to call it.

Just one example. Turn on the iPhone and what do you see? (I mean after you "slide to unlock", which you're forced to do every time you turn the screen on.) Yep, a sea of basically random tiny icons. This is the "revolutionary" interface some people talk about - random tiny icons. The home screen on the iPhone is almost totally useless. Without the tiny little message indicator above the email icon and the date on the calendar icon, there would be no reason to even look at it.

Most people buying iPhones have never used another smartphone, or at least not another good one, so they don't know what they're missing. I'm not sure they're going to be as forgiving of the same interface on the iPad.

It is an appliance for me, and I am happy that it just does the job I want it to do.

That's fine, and my wife loves her iPhone too and I'm happy that she's happy with it.

But what's wrong with giving people options? That was one of the reasons I returned my iPhone. I am completely fine with people getting a device and then just not even bothering to touch it except for making calls and sending emails using all the default stuff that it comes with. My wife got hers because it supports Japanese natively (which Windows Mobile doesn't and I don't think Android does either), and she can easily write emails in either language using the virtual keyboard. She never even bothered with the app store until literally six months after she got it. That's okay, her priority is just to have a phone with Japanese support that works out of the box and she loves it for that.

But what's wrong with giving the rest of us the option to do more? Why limit it? I mean seriously, why? It is borderline sadistic on the part of Jobs, to basically say "our phone is really powerful but WE WILL NOT LET YOU tap that power, and you therefore must deal with the experience created for the lowest common denominator even though this device is capable of doing anything you might want it to do."

I mean, you can't even disable "slide to unlock". You can't alter the home screen. You can't replace the weaksauce email app that doesn't even seem to have a "mark all as read" function that I could find. Why not? How does it hurt anybody to put in the option to do those basic things? What, they're afraid of support calls? So you make a function that's buried in some hidden menu that says "geek mode" and you put a little checkbox next to it. And you bury the instructions on how to find that menu on some members-only web site, and then it gets distributed through sites like Slashdot that only geeks read anyway. The geeks are happy, the normals are happy, what's the problem?

My first computer was an Apple II, and I loved it precisely because it was so open. This is a different Apple these days, and it's unlikely that I'll buy another multi-purpose device from them again. I do like my iPod, but it is intended to do one thing: play media. Just not screwing up a device's intended function is enough on a single-purpose device, especially because so many other manufacturers do. But I need more than that on a device that's intended to be "smart", which to me means it's not supposed to be limited to the functionality it has when it arrives in the box.

Re:Didn't he say this..

[zoid.com]

Oh, and BTW: I bet it will tether to my G1.

It's getting ridiculous

[linumax]

I'm expected to pay the service provider 30$ for home Internet, 30$ for phone and now 30$ for tablet?! Very soon our cars will be connected devices and not long after that glasses, watches, etc. Are we supposed to keep paying up per device? It's highly unreasonable, specially since most people don't use two devices at the same time.

Re:It's getting ridiculous

[zoid.com]

It's easy, don't buy it.

Re:It's getting ridiculous

[badasscat]

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

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

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

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

Forged Headers?

[NiteRiderXP]

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

Re:Forged Headers?

[Sir_Lewk]

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

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

Re:Forged Headers?

[amRadioHed]

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

Re:Forged Headers?

[Sir_Lewk]

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

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

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

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

Now personally, I'm going to go with "Steve Jobs actually said this", mainly because it sounds dickish enough to be something he'd actually say, but this is a completely seperate issue.

Re:hackers say yes tethering

[Yvan256]

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

Ouch.

[Chonnawonga]

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

What a jerk.

It's a shame

[toastliscio]

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

Re:yet another bad iPad-related choice...

[Al Dimond]

A couple other people have pointed out niche business uses for the iPad. The general market may not be the /. crowd, but it's not your niche, either.

And if the iPad browser doesn't support your web app just the way you want it you can't install a browser that does. Which kinda sucks. Apple's control over the device, to me, makes it poorly suited to any business use.

Good news for everyone else

[obarthelemy]

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

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

Re:yet another bad iPad-related choice...

[ducomputergeek]

My general experience is that if you stick to the specs, web-apps work pretty well the same way in Safari, FF, Opera, and Chrome. Until Apple turns Webkit into IE, then it's time to look at other platforms. But as I said in the OP, the full browser app renders perfectly on the iPhone/Touch but the screen is too small to make an effective demo.

But Apple's control makes it relatively easy to work with in a small shop. Why? We know exactly what the rules are and have a much smaller number of variations to do QA against. If it works on one iPad, it's going to work on them all. It makes it easy to offer our clients a written guarantee of "This will work with the X version of the iWhatever". To contrast that to Android, we're currently charging clients double the amount for the same guarantee because with Android we have to spend a lot more money on acquiring hardware and QA testing.