“Apple co-founder Steve Jobs loved to walk around his neighborhood in Palo Alto, California. And after his pride and joy, the iPhone, was born, he naturally took it along with him on walks,” Walt Mossbrg writes for Re/code. “The first iPhone had a lousy, sluggish, cellular-data network, but it also had a much faster data option: Wi-Fi. It even had a feature (still present, but much less touted) that popped up a list of nearby Wi-Fi networks on the screen, so you could always find one in range.”
“But, he once told me, there was a big problem with that technique, one that he wanted to fix: Most of the Wi-Fi networks that popped up on his screen couldn’t be used, because they were secured with passwords,” Mossberg writes. “Jobs said he understood the need for security, but he was determined to figure out a way to make free, safe, Wi-Fi sharing from homes and small local businesses not only possible, but common. He even told me that he planned to get other companies involved, in a sort of consortium, to make this happen.”
“No such big public consortium for home Wi-Fi sharing ever emerged. But Apple and other wireless router makers did wind up building a guest network option into their products. (I have no idea whether this stemmed from Steve Jobs’s idea or whether it was just a logical move),” Mossberg writes. “There’s got to be a way to make it happen, so people needn’t rely on expensive cellular-data plans all the time, so cellular networks can be less congested, and so people can remain connected when there just isn’t decent cellular reception — even good enough for portable Wi-Fi hotspots.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.