There are a number of articles today about AT&T’s new data plans.  Good-bye unlimited data, hello capped limits.  I have no problem whatsoever with capped limits, as long as they are documented to the end-user. There are rumors that the current unlimited plan is secretly capped at 5GB/month, so honest disclosure of 2GB/month is a step forward.

The problem I have is with $20/month for tethering.  This is COMPLETELY ridiculous with a capped limit.  Why should I pay for tethering when I’m also paying for every single byte that comes from AT&T. You can only use tethering with the the DataPro plan. They should give away tethering and hope that people go over the limit, especially on the more limited cap of the DataPlus plan!

I refuse to pay for tethering on top of a capped data plan. In fact, I want to start an open-source project to create router software for the iPhone. This software will NOT be released through the official app store, and it will not be released via Cydia. This will use every undocumented API we can find to enable full wifi tethering.  It will create a Mi-Fi like device via software that you can run on your iPhone, then share with your laptop, iPad, iPod touch, whatever you want.

The first baby step is to buy your own iPhone SDK membership, then download iProxy (see below), then install it on your iPhone and configure your iPhone and laptop to be on the same wireless network and use this socks proxy to browse the web.

http://wiki.github.com/tcurdt/iProxy/

We are looking for coders to help out. Contact us to participate!

Our iPads arrived yesterday. Very fun. Much better than I was expecting. With Pages and Numbers, it’s a fully-functioning computer.

There’s a dirty little secret out there about iPad apps. Almost no developers received devices to test their apps with. As a result, apps have been rejected by apple because simulator performance does match real-devices. Here’s a Cringley article about it.

http://www.cringely.com/2010/04/why-your-favorite-app-isnt-yet-available-on-the-ipad/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ICringely+%28I%2C+Cringely%29

Luckily, we did not submit our apps, because real-world performance is disappointing. Not horrible, but not we saw on the simulator at all.

One more thing… We’ve found that ALL iPad apps crash. Wordpress updated their app for the iPad, but we found some problems with it as well. It would not allow me to upload the local copy of this post.

The bottom line, I’m still very excited about this device. I’m certain that every app is fighting with Apple to get updates released. And I’m sure the next round of apps will be much better–Can’t wait!

We received an email121112111211 from Apple’s iPhone Developer Program, stating that all  submissions to the App store (for both existing applications and new) must be compatible with iPhone 3.0 SDK.  We have done some testing of the 3.0 SDK, now it’s time to take the betas seriously.  I think this could mean Apple could release iPhone OS 3.0 without additional heads-up to the developers, giving Apple the surprise announcement they like so much.

All apps must be compatible with iPhone OS 3.0
Millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers will move to iPhone OS 3.0 this summer. Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved.