Tethering With Your iPhone 3GS

It turns out that even though AT&T does not allow tethering that there is still a way around that. To unlock the feature and use your iPhone as a wireless modem for your laptop just check out this post at 9 to 5 Mac.

There are a few easy steps:

1. Download the file at 9 to 5 Mac

2. Open the file with iTunes

3. Connect your iPhone and option click the restore button in iTunes and select the open file

4. Go to settings/general/network/internet tethering on your iPhone and turn it on

This will allow you to connect by USB or by Bluetooth; I have tested both and it did not seem to make a difference in speed. What have you found to be faster when tethering? Just remember that if you tether too much AT&T may catch you and can suspend your account or charge you hefty fees. Good luck and happy tethering!

iPhone 3G S First Impressions

Unboxing

After actually receiving my iPhone 3G S on the 19th as promised, I decided to take a few shots while unboxing it just for good measure. The only noticeable difference when you first look at the box is how much smaller it is than the iPhone 3G box and the “S” after iPhone 3G. I opened it up to find a device that looked much like the one I had purchased almost a year ago. The upgrades are clearly on the inside of the phone; two things on the outside of the iPhone are apparent after looking it over and using it a little bit. First, the lettering that says iPhone and 16GB (in my case) is now shiny like the Apple towards the top of the back casing. In addition, the screen clearly does not smudge as easily. This was noticeable from the first time that I touched the screen. On my iPhone 3G I would get smudges from the first touch and it just built and built until it looked awful. Now it actually does not smudge that much and the little that it does is cleaned off much easier. It almost only takes putting it in your pocket for a little and it will be a clean screen. This is definitely a great plus which was not mentioned much when the iPhone 3G S was announced.



Syncing and Activation

Upon connecting it to my MacBook Pro I found that it had to activate and restore from a previous backup of my iPhone 3G which did take a while since I had a lot of apps and music on it. In fact, I took the movies off of the sync just because I did not want to take that long. After it was done syncing it still said there was no service and that activation may take some time. I went online to check what kind of wait we were talking about here and found that Apple was reporting up to 48 hours activation time before the phone was ready to go so I tried swapping the old SIM card out with the new one even though it said on the instructions not to do so. I found that to work right away and was happily exploring my new device. I guess it is possible that the switch between the SIM cards will eventually happen and I will have to put the new SIM card back in, but I kind of doubt it. In any case, I will be keeping my new SIM card around for at least a week to be on the safe side.



First impressions

The first thing I tried out on the new phone was the compass. I wanted to see how well it worked. It works great, but actually orienting your Google Maps app to the direction you are facing is not intuitive at all. It took me a few tries to figure that out. All you have to do is touch the current location button on the lower left of the screen and then press it again. Then it will spin the map to the direction you are facing. It may ask you to calibrate your compass by waving the iPhone in a figure 8 motion, but once it is locked it works great. It is amazing how much better the Maps application is by adding just this one simple thing to it. This is one of the simplest and yet most effective upgrades on the phone.



Another thing I noticed just from opening up an app or two and playing with different programs was how much zippier the phone felt. Everything opens faster and refreshes and loads faster which while not making it instantaneous it does make it a smoother and cleaner experience. It already seemed a little better when I upgraded the iPhone 3G to the 3.0 software, but the 3G S really does mean speed. In case you are wondering, there have been a few speed tests going around to see how fast the iPhone is compared to the T-Mobile G1 and the Sprint Palm Pre and the new iPhone is faster than both.



I did also try the voice control a bit, but found that it was not as impressive as some other functions of the phone and I will likely not be using it much in the future. I will give it a few more tries probably, but I just don't see the big advantage even if I was trying to use the phone while driving since it was not as accurate as I had hoped. The next great thing about the new iPhone is the video capture ability and quick and simple editing. Although I have not had much time to play with that I have used it a little and found the picture quality to be quite good for a phone for sure and decent for a dedicated portable video camera. This is sure to make those cheap handheld camcorders worry about their market share. I will talk more about the camera and video camera in a later post.

Conclusion

The overall experience of getting the iPhone 3G S as compared to the 3G and the original was not as exciting, but was much less stressful and more enjoyable. The main reason is that I was able to pre-order it from AT&T and it was shipped directly to me instead of having to wait in line. Also, I actually got it on the day it came out instead of waiting in line at AT&T last year only to find out after two hours of waiting that the manager had lied when he said there were plenty of phones for everyone. The activation process was also a breeze since I was able to just sync the phone and switch the SIM cards rather than wait for a long time for an AT&T rep to waste my time with an activation that should take a couple minutes. All in all the experience has been a really good one and although the fact that the outside of the iPhone looks almost identical takes away from the excitement, the internal upgrades are quite noticeable with normal use and are likely to increase the productivity and functionality greatly for this next year while we wait for the new ones to comes out next June or July.

The iPhone 3G S is Finally Here!

After a whole year of anticipation (maybe a slight exaggeration) our wait if finally over. Today Apple and AT&T are releasing the iPhone 3G S to the eager public. This iPhone promises to be more of an internal upgrade than an external, but as Apple has said in the past it is more about the software than the hardware. While other companies are pushing the hardware specs of their devices, Apple is talking about software and functionality. This is what truly separates the iPhone and Apple from other phones and phone manufacturers.

With all that said though, the new iPhone has a lot of impressive specs to present. Apple claims that it is twice as fast and in fact that has been proven to be true with most normal tasks that the iPhone is given. This versions will especially see improvements in graphically intensive games which the older model had some difficulties running at times. Even with the increases power of the phone though, it still manages to get a little bit better battery life. Of course we would all like to see that day when we could have an iPhone that would last a week on one charge, but that is just not going to happen anytime soon.

I am hoping to have my new iPhone 3G S soon so I will post some unboxing photos and start to work on a full review.

Could This be the Next iPhone?

Picture from MacRumors.com

There are photos circulating that are supposedly the next iPhone. If the photos are real, then it would certainly be an improvement upon the current model's casing. I like the shiny black just fine, but a matte black with a little bit of grip to it would be a great idea. Also, bringing back the metal casing on the back instead of the plastic one that we have now would make the iPhone feel much more sturdy which is definitely something I liked about the original iPhone. We will have to wait and see of course if these are in fact real photos, but for now we can speculate and try and figure out what kind of casing we would like the best. The next iPhones are likely to come out around the middle of the year since this is when Apple has stated as the normal life cycle of the iPhone. Above is the picture compliments of MacRumors.com

UPDATE - it turns out that this is in fact not the new iPhone case, but it was either a consideration by Apple or a way to identify a leak in there staff. In either case it would have been very nice for the new iPhone to have a matte finish, but hopefully they consider it for the next one.

Flash for iPhone Coming?

There have recently been talks about Adobe bringing flash to the iPhone, but it has been almost two years since the original iPhone came out so does it really matter anymore.  Apple has been working on doing more than just fit the mold of every other company out there and has actually tried to make things the way they want them.  Flash is a great example of this.  Apple decided not to encourage Adobe to create flash for the iPhone in hopes that Apple can help push the internet to work better with the iPhone and possibly create a new platform that could make Flash obsolete.  This is an incredibly bold move that hopefully in the long run will make it possible for iPhones to have rich internet experiences, but for now it seems like it is hindering the internet experience.  Now that the iPhone is so popular it gives Apple more leverage to push for internet reform, but will it be enough to actually make any sort of dint in the out of date internet?  We will have to wait and see.

New MacBooks and MacBook Pros Announced

The event today proved to be quite an exciting event for fans of Apple notebooks. The MacBooks and MacBook Pros got plenty of revamps and they look stunning. You should definitely check out the Apple webpage to get the nitty gritty specs, but here are a few of the things that were rumors and I love that they turned out the way they did:

- The trackpad is glass and doesn't have a button; instead it is a button itself and it is bigger and allows for much more multitouch support
- The NVIDIA graphics cards are confirmed so the graphics are going to be a lot better on the new MacBooks and especially the MacBook Pros which incorporate not only one graphics card, but two so that it can use one for lower power consumption and one for better performance.
- The screen are all LED and this means less power consumption and thinner brighter screens.
- The ports are all on one side and the disc drive is on one side so plugging cords in only mean manuevering the notebook to one side and the DVD will eject more easily if the notebook is in my lap



There are plenty of other great features that I have not mentioned here just because of course it will be better explained at Apple and with more pictures and videos; get it from the source if you really want to know everything there is to know. Now there is one great thing and one bad thing about the notebooks. The bad thing is that they appear to only include DVD drives and not blu-ray support; bummer, I was really looking for the blu-ray. The great news is that these puppies are available tomorrow, so check em out and order it now.

New MacBook and MacBook Pros Coming Soon

I always get excited about new Apple products coming out and new notebooks are long overdue in my opinion.  I love my MacBook Pro and I got it when they first came out (yes I am one of those crazy people).  Sometimes you just have to have it I guess.  That exciting time for new notebooks has finally come again though.  Apple will announce the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models on Tuesday the 14th and will likely explain all of the new exciting features.  I have been checking out the rumors and general rumors and photos indicate a few things about the new laptops:

 - There is going to be an aluminum version of the MacBook now and not just the Pro

 - The new notebooks will be using a dedicated NVIDIA graphics cards to provide higher quality graphics 

 - The larger trackpads that are included on the MacBook Air are going to be on the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros

There are other rumors surfacing about possible LCD HDTVs made by Apple that would include the Apple TV functionality right out of the box.  I am not so sure about the HDTVs, but most of the notebook stuff seems to be feasible.  the other thing is the possible inclusion of Blu-ray drives in the notebooks rather than the DVD drives included now.  We will have to see on Tuesday how it pans out.  In  the mean time take a look at these pictures at Mac Rumors; they should wet your appetite for the new all aluminum notebooks. 

iPhone 3G New 2.1 Software Update

After the "Let's Rock" special Apple announcement, we have found out that Apple is going to release a new software update for the iPhone 3G. This new software, 2.1, is supposed to be the answer to all of our 3G problems and battery life complaints. Although I find it hard to believe that Apple can really do much about AT&T's poor 3G network, it will be interesting to see if anything gets better. The other promise is the battery life being significantly improved. Well, that seems like a hard thing to do unless they are really getting those push updates and such working. Hopefully it will really work and end up improving the iPhone 3G's battery life. Only time will tell. Actually, we will know these answers shortly after Friday as that is when the new update is being released.

In light of this update, I will take a few days and see what improvements are in store before I continue the full review of the iPhone 3G.

iPhone 3G Review: A Rough Start

When I started writing out the review of the iPhone 3G I realized that I really had a lot to say about it. This made the simple task of writing a review seem like a much more daunting task. So instead of trying to write out the entire thing and post it all at the same time I have decided to go through the review in multiple posts. The first of which will be this one covering the initial attempt to get an iPhone 3G and the horrible AT&T experience.

The lines were of course quite expected for the launch of a previously $400 phone that was now only $200. Half the price was something that made it hard for a lot of people to pass up (even though we will pay more in the long run than we did for the original iPhone). With lines already formed outside of the most popular stores the night before the launch, I could not help myself from being excited. I wanted the new iPhone just like everyone else and I even had the original already. This got me excited about making a game plan. At this point I had already figured out that I could sell my iPhone on eBay for more than it would cost to buy a new one that was better, so it was a no brainer to make the upgrade.

This left me to figuring out how I was going to make it work this time since the AT&T stores were opening early just for the launch and they were supposedly not going to be doing the excellent buy the phone and then take it home and activate it deal like they had for the first iPhone. This time around it was all about the control that AT&T wanted to have and for them to make sure that people were not unlocking phones or getting phones and not activating them on AT&T. This was the first ingredient in their recipe or disaster.


The next problem the launch had was poor decision to launch in so many countries at the same time. The demand was simply to high for the product now that the price was right and this made the launch an absolute mad house everywhere it was being sold. So first thing is first, my wife, daughter, and I went to the AT&T store near my work so that we could hopefully score two iPhones. We were in it for the 16GB Black model and we wanted it right then (I seem to have a hard time with patience when it comes to the latest gadget). We got there early, but there was already a line of about 50 in front of us. I started to sweat a little knowing that there could surely not be enough iPhones for everyone, but just a few minutes after we arrived the manager of the store came out and assured everyone that there were plenty of iPhones for everyone and they were going to try and make it as quick as possible. *Note: we already knew that it was going to be a long process because AT&T is stupid and decided to make everyone activate in store upon purchase.


So after waiting about 90 minutes for the phones to go on sale, we finally were in a moving line. This whole time we had to feed our baby girl and even had to change her once. It was a lot of work and certainly not the funnest thing to do, but we felt ok knowing that we were definitely going to get an iPhone for our trouble. Then the worst thing that could have happened did; the manager came back out and told us that they were running out of product. The man is lucky to be alive today after he had already told everyone that there were plenty of iPhones and now went back on his word. I wanted to kill him and so did the others around me. I know exactly why he lied to us, but the fact that he lied to us will prevent me from ever shopping at his store again.

This manager had the bright idea of making everyone wait there long enough so that they would have no choice but to stick it out just to preorder the iPhone for when it came back into stock. He wanted his employees and his store to get the sale and not to risk loosing the sale to another store. Talk about the wrong way to go about it. If he had simply said that from the beginning we could have made informed decisions. What’s worse, we had to wait for about 5 hours in total to simply order a phone with no guarantee of when it would come. The least he could have done is actually count the phones and start to hand out numbers to people so that we could go do something more useful with our time. AT&T is still my least favorite company.


Three weeks later we finally received notification that our phones were in the store and ready for pick up. The excitement had long since worn off and I just wanted my phone so that I would have GPS and 3G. It turns out they are not the greatest things, but we will get to that later. In the end it simply reassured me of one thing: I hate AT&T and the first opportunity I have to have an iPhone on another network, I will jump ship. Down with AT&T.

iPhone 3G Full Review Coming Soon

I finally got my hands on an iPhone 3G and have had a month to really test it out and I can honestly say that it was worth the wait. I will have a full review up soon.