Filed under: Portables, Odds and ends, iPhone

Sometimes I feel sorry for you poor iPhone users in the US. Sure, the telecommunications landscape in New Zealand isn't exactly perfect, but our small nation has the US beat on at least one very significant point: unlike AT&T, our wireless providers let us tether our iPhones as much as we want (within our monthly broadband limits, anyway). Sure, there are workarounds that let you do iPhone tethering in the States, but nothing beats the pure simplicity of officially supported tethering: flip a couple switches in your iPhone's settings, then either pair over Bluetooth or dock your iPhone, and boom, your Mac runs off your iPhone's data connection.

I've been using iPhone tethering since it became available in iPhone OS 3.0, and it's saved my geek bacon many times. On a recent monthlong vacation where my wife, my mother-in-law, and I hopped all over both the North and South Islands of New Zealand, using my iPhone's data connection on my MacBook Pro was often the only feasible way of connecting to the world beyond our campsite.

Many of the places we stayed had Wi-Fi available, but the prices were pretty astonishing; some places wanted $10 for 20 minutes of internet access. In towns where we had a decent 3G connection, we were able to watch videos in Safari (No Flash? No problem), look up tourist information, get access to Google Maps, download music and apps from the iTunes Store, and keep an eye on the notoriously fickle weather. All these things are possible to an extent using the iPhone by itself, but things went much faster and more smoothly on my MacBook Pro, where multitasking, multiple downloads, and a 17" screen are all big improvements over the browsing experience on the iPhone.

Read on to find out what else iPhone tethering can do for you, and why AT&T's excuses for not letting you have it are totally disingenuous.

Continue reading An ode to iPhone tethering

An ode to iPhone tethering originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

An ode to iPhone tethering originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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