“According to a pretty legitimate-looking email thread from one of our readers, Steve Jobs may have responded to complaints that, since the pulling of NetShare from the App Store, iPhone-to-laptop tethering is impossible without jailbreaking one’s phone,” Mark Wilson reports for Gizmodo.
MacDailyNews Note (added: 9:52am): Tethering in this case means using your iPhone as a modem to connect your Mac – or heaven help you, Windows PC – to the Internet.
According to the rumor, an iPhone user sent Apple an email stating that since AT&T offers data plans for BlackBerry that include tethering for an additional $30 per month, he’d be willing to pay for such a service for his iPhone. And, supposedly, Steve Jobs responded via email, “We agree, and are discussing it with ATT.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Roger’s already offers iPhone tethering in Canada, so it’s possible that AT&T wants to add tethering in the U.S. Perhaps AT&T first wanted to work on getting their network more optimized for the millions upon millions of iPhones hitting it before they will add an official iPhone tethering plan?
Well, there goes NetShare’s functionality.
$30 for occasional tethering while traveling is excessive.
The up coming Mac tablet may have 3G built in and Apple and AT&T;are getting ready for the “Just one more thing”.
OK, I’m not up to speed on this, what exactly is tethering?
scottm4321
Tethering is when your phone acts as a hub for WiFi. Of course, this uses the cellular network in this case.
It’s letting your laptop (or whatever) use the iPhone as a wireless internet point.
@scottm
Tethering means using a chellphone’s data connection to provide internet access for a computer. Typically, the cellphone appears to the computer as a modem and the connection process is similar to using a modem. Bluetooth can be used for the phone-computer link, although sometimes carriers limit the connection to cables.
Another way to think of tethering is that it allows a cellphone to act as a data modem rather than requiring a dedicated ExpressCard device.
@scottm4321, puhleez,
Double click the word “thethering”, then right click and select “Look Up in Dictionary”, or go directly to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethering
OK… but what does acting as a hub for WiFi mean?????
John, don’t worry your pretty little head about it…
just know that I invented it.
Oh, and tomorrow the world will be engulfed in a flood. That is, unless we all stop breathing… and start eating tofu & kelp… and use $50,000 windmills to power our houses. Yeh, that’s the ticket.
@ vanfruniken,
I don’t know what your native tongue is, but “thethering” isn’t in any dictionary I own.
Its a good thing I have NetShare… I will use it only in an event of an emergency, and I currently have the enterprise data plan so my cap is much higher than the “retail” user.
I can do this in a pinch, or I can use VPN and Teleport to log into a secondary desktop in my office. Either way I’m covered…
Tethering is knocking your ball around your pole until it’s so tight it can’t move and then you win. Or you lose depending on which ball and which pole.
That’s because our VanFruniken misspelt the word; it is tethering.
Acting as a hub for WiFi means that with a special app, such as the now no longer available NetShare, yout iPhone can be turned into a WiFi hotspot. Essentially, it shares its 3G internet connection over WiFi, much like what you could do on your iMac by sharing your wired (Ethernet) connection over AirPort.
I am still trying to understand why a user would have to pay extra for tethering from AT&T;. This reasoning used to make some economic sense from the carriers’ point of view; users were using little to none of their data plan with their cellphone/smartphone, and when they tether their laptop to the phone, data usage suddenly goes to the roof. However, with iPhone the data usage with a laptop won’t make much of a difference on their network.
Once again, carriers’ greed rears its ugly head.
Tethering OK here, easy to do with the NetShare app. Use it all the time when I am at the summer cottage …. that is, if I even use my computer.
Sixvodkas, this is from the Oxford English Dictionary:
tether |ˈteðər|
noun
a rope or chain with which an animal is tied to restrict its movement.
verb [ trans. ]
tie (an animal) with a rope or chain so as to restrict its movement : the horse had been tethered to a post.
PHRASES
the end of one’s tether see end .
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old Norse tjóthr, from a Germanic base meaning ‘fasten.’
Heck, they can’t even get the low-throughput iPhone 3G’s native traffic to work right on 3G, much less the higher-throughput thethered (that’s a soft tethering) traffic of a laptop. With AT$T’s current network I don’t know that thethering would work well. (AT$T doesn’t cause havok with semi-colons and HTML codes like AT&T;plus it seems more appropriate considering $5 extra a month for 200 SMS messages and now $30 extra a month to thether. So I recommend typing AT$T on here rather than AT&T;.)
Wow…
Try to help a guy.
Even though tether is ok by Rogers here in Canada. The NetShare app is not available to us through the App Store. Kinda frustrating!
I wouldn’t want to pay extra for it and won’t take it as option if is offered.
ATT is making enough money off me and other iPhone users as it is.
If I am elected president, tethering will be provided free of charge to everyone.
And I will raise your taxes 50% to pay for it and all the other stuff I promised already.
I’m Barak Obama and I approved this message.
Obama: I want to bring change to tethering . . . . . . and socialize it
McCain: I have the experience necessary to tether; I was tethered in Vietnam for years
Hillary: Women can tether too!
Bush: Tethernating is essential to stop nuk-u-lar proliferation
Cheney: Lets rebuild NetShare (contracts)
Gore: I invented tethering
Clinton: I did not have sexual tethering with that woman
41: Read my lips: no new tethering!
should be offered as part of the $45 enterprise plan. no extra charges if you have that.
To Bunsen Honeydew:
Ralph Nader: Tethering belongs to the people not special interest groups.
Bob Barr: I said tethering is good for America. I meant it’s bad. No wait, it’s good. It’s good to be bad. Are we still on the air?
Praise be to Allah!
Change you can believe in, infidel.