iPhone 3.0 - Tethering is OK! W007

[Aphinity]

As of 3.0 firmware, Apple and Rogers now allow iPhone 3G and 3GS owners to use their phones for tethering.  While many people (including myself) had hacked their phones to allow this feature in the past, it is now allowed and supported by Rogers.  The only limitation is that you must be paying for 1GB or more of data service in order for it to be permitted.

This is something people in the US are NOT PERMITTED TO DO, so be sure to rub it in your american friends' faces a little if you can.

It works through both bluetooth and direct USB.  It shows up as a network interface, just like you had plugged in a wireless card to your mac or PC.  It works damn well.

[Silvermink]

Haven't had occasion to use this yet, but I'm sure it'll be handy sometime. :)

[Vanilla Skunk]

I've been doing that since sometime last year on my Nokia.  Choose your phone wisely, people. :P

[Kithop]

And of course I have a jailbroken/unlocked 1st-gen, and for some reason they disabled tethering in the 1st-gen firmware.

The more I use this stuff, the more I hate Apple's phone/iPod division and plan to jump ship to Android or Palm. >.<  I just wish the FOSS *NIXes would catch up to OS X, too.

[Silvermink]

The more I use this stuff, the more I hate Apple's phone/iPod division and plan to jump ship to Android or Palm. >.<  I just wish the FOSS *NIXes would catch up to OS X, too.

I just wish someone else had Apple's interface-design panache.

[Acco]

Android totally gets the notification system down right. Drag top down to see incoming texts/IMs. Apple needs something like that on their phone.

Also... the tethering thing is only free until December, then it's going to be a paid for feature. HOWEVER... there seems to be a way around this using help.benm.at where you download your carrier's APN settings and tether as such... and don't have to pay a fee. Whether this is true or not, I cannot verify. However, I can say that iphone tethering works well enough, having used 3.0 betas since the march announcement.

[Silvermink]

I just wish the FOSS *NIXes would catch up to OS X, too.

Didn't notice this the first time - yeah, don't we all. Open-source OS usability in general is still a joke, though, and the geeks either don't notice or don't care that the Great Unwashed still find *nix hard to use.

[Acco]

I dunno. I think it's more that GNOME/KDE design paradigms are nonstandard compared to other OS's. But if you grow up using them, you find them perfectly logical.

I'm a fan of the GNOME desktop. It's sleek, fast, and easy to use, most of the time.

Then again, I also consider myself a techie, so it's not like I'm a good source of information. ;p

[Silvermink]

I dunno. I think it's more that GNOME/KDE design paradigms are nonstandard compared to other OS's. But if you grow up using them, you find them perfectly logical.

I'm a fan of the GNOME desktop. It's sleek, fast, and easy to use, most of the time.

Then again, I also consider myself a techie, so it's not like I'm a good source of information. ;p

Well, it's not even just GNOME or KDE. Some of it's the fact that there's still so much stuff you need to do in a terminal. It's getting better, but was distinctly still not there yet last time I tried.

I mean, I'm a techie too, so it was stuff I could figure out easily enough, but I don't want to be hacking a config file every time I want to make a simple change to something - and if I find it tedious, Joe Average User is throwing his hands up at that point and going back to Windows or OS X.

And beyond the OS, there are still plenty of apps where the author would look at you blankly and say, "what's a yoozability?" Not that Windows doesn't have its share of baroque apps, too (*cough*Adobe*cough*), but at least usability seems to be a going concern for many larger vendors.

I've considered getting involved more in FOSS usability, I'm just not quite sure where to start. Too many people think usability's something you tack on at the end rather than building usable software from the ground up.