So after the release of iPhone OS 3.0 I found this guide about enabling tethering in countries where it is disabled by the carrier’s default configuration, and it has worked really well (I have an unlimited data plan, by the way).

With the release of iPhone OS 3.1 yesterday, rumors and early adopters say the firmware update would disable Internet Tethering on iPhones where the carrier doesn’t officially supports it.

I updated to iPhone OS 3.1 with certain precautions, and Internet Tethering is still functional for me.

So if you want to update to 3.1 without loosing the tethering capacity, this is what you should do:

DISCLAIMER FIRST: This worked for me, but I don’t have any way to know if it will work for you. Proceed at your own risk. If you already have enabled Internet Tethering and it is critical for you, I would recommend you to not follow any unsupported method like this.

Before updating to iTunes 9 make sure you have the last version of your carrier’s provisioning bundle:

1. On your iPhone go to Settings / General / About, and look for Carrier version. Take note of the version number. Mine was Telcel 4.4.
2. Download the list of iPhone OS updates from here, and find your carrier’s latest provisioning bundle available.
   My Carrier is Telcel México, so I found their last provisioning bundle is this:
   Telcel_mx 3.0 BuildVersion 4.4 BundleURL http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iPhone/CarrierBundles/061-6937.20090803.3er5t/Telcel_mx.ipcc

   So, I’m up to date.

If you have the latest version of your carrier’s provisioning bundle you’re free to go; if not, you should first update it while you have iTunes 8.2, and possibly re-enable tethering using the aforementioned guide.

To install the iPhone OS 3.1 update:

1. Download and install iTunes 9.
2. Connect your iPhone, so iTunes 9 can search for updates. When iTunes says there’s an update for your iPhone DON’T UPDATE, choose to ONLY download the new firmware, but don’t install it just yet.
3. Sync your iPhone, so it is ready for upgrading (the backup can take several minutes sometimes). Then disconnect it from your computer.
4. Wait for iTunes to finish downloading your firmware update.
5. When the download finishes, enable Airplane Mode on your iPhone (first option of Settings). This will disconnect your iPhone from your cellphone network and WiFi.
6. Reconnect your iPhone and update your firmware (the one iTunes just downloaded). The operating system will be upgraded and your iPhone will restart. Don’t disconnect your iPhone until it shows up in iTunes, and you are sure it has upgraded to 3.1.
7. Disconnect your iPhone from your computer, disable Airplane mode and wait for your iPhone to reconnect to network.
8. Go and check in Settings if you still have Internet Tethering available as an option.

I have done this in two iPhones: First in my wife’s (she doesn’t use tethering, so I taught it was a good idea to test first on her iPhone) and later in mine.

Both iPhones showed the same carrier version after the firmware upgrade, but after a restart mine shows a different one (5.0). Anyway, tethering is still functional.

I suppose Internet Tethering option may disappear one of these days (when Telcel sends a new carrier configuration file to Apple), or they will start charging extra money, but in the mean time it is working well.

Good luck if you decide to upgrade.

DISCLAIMER: This information is provided AS IS, use it under your own risk. I’m not responsible if you broke your iPhone, or if your carrier charges you a lot of money, or if someone sues you.

• The email sent to your main email address (using your own domain, not me.com) automatically pushed to your iPhone via MobileMe.
• The email sent from your iPhone (using the MobileMe account) delivered from your main email address (your own domain, not me.com).
• Additional benefit: Your email, address book and calendars via web on the same place (the MobileMe web application).
• You won’t need an account hosted on an Exchange Server, the only other alternative for iPhone push email with your own domain.

The bad:

• All the email sent from the MobileMe web application will be addressed from your MobileMe email (me.com, not your own domain). This is not a problem if you always send mail from your computer or your iPhone.
• All your mail sent from the iPhone will have a Sender header; in some mail clients, that makes an “on behalf of” appendix to the From header.

What will you need:

• MobileMe account (this does the push-email magic).
• Gmail or Google Applications for domains account (will be used as a gateway to send email).
• Your main email account on your own domain. This is optional; you won’t need it if your Gmail is your main email account (typical case for Google Apps).
• iPhone with 2.0 operating system (as 3G).

First: Configure your email accounts on the iPhone

1. Configure your MobileMe account on the iPhone.
2. Edit your recently created MobileMe account; open the Settings application, and go to Mail, Contacts, Calendars / your MobileMe account (usually named MobileMe) / Account info / SMTP (in the Outgoing mail server section) / Add server…
3. Enter smtp.gmail.com as hostname, and specify your full Gmail address as username, and your Gmail password.
4. Touch Save, and go back to the SMTP screen.
5. Set the primary server (smtp.me.com) to Off.
6. Set the newly created server (smtp.gmail.com, it appears in Other SMTP servers) to On.
7. Now you can exit the Settings application and go back to your iPhone’s main screen.

Second: Configure your Gmail account

1. Login to your Gmail account, and go to Settings / Forwarding and POP-IMAP.
2. In the Forwarding section, enable Forward a copy of incoming mail to, and specify your MobileMe email address (your_username@me.com).
3. In the IMAP Access section, enable IMAP and save your changes.
4. If your Gmail account is not in your own domain (you have another email account), you also will need to follow these steps:
   1. In your Gmail account, go to Settings / Accounts.
   2. Configure your other email account; click Add another email address, and provide your full name and your main email address. Click Next step and then click Send verification.
   3. Gmail will send you a verification email to your main email address; wait for it and follow the instructions to verify it.
   4. When you are done with verification, return to your Gmail account, Settings / Accounts and click the Make default link next to your main email address.
   5. Configure your main email address to forward all your mail to your Gmail account (this is a different process for each email provider; consult with your mail administrator if you have no idea about how to do it).
5. Save your changes, and exit Gmail.

How it works

• When somebody sends you an email to your main email address, it is forwarded to Gmail and then to your MobileMe account. MobileMe pushes the email to your iPhone.
• When you send mail using Gmail’s SMTP server, you need to authenticate using your Gmail account. If your message comes from an address distinct to the address registered with Gmail, it will be replaced with the Gmail address in the From header, and the original address of the message (the one with me.com) will be placed in a special Sender header.

Enjoy.

Via Mac OS X Hints.

The application is really simple but useful, you can create new posts and edit the old ones, include images taken with the iPhone cammera or in the local library and preview the posts without leaving WordPress. There’s full support for tags and cattegories, posts timestamp and passwords. You can even locally store drafts of your mobile posts!

I can’t find a way to manage comments, but I suppose it is a feature that will come soon.

I had to upgrade my blogs to WordPress 2.6 to use it. You can read more here.

Great application; it has a privileged place on my home screen now.

(Picture taken from my workplace window attached.)

The switch from WiFi to cellular network data is automatic, as long as you have WiFi activated. In the default behavior, the iPhone will constantly look for new WiFi networks while the device is not in standby, and will ask if you want to join when it finds one. You can easily turn off this feature to save battery (and to avoid nagging dialogs about unfamiliar WiFi spots).

When you get home (or your office, or any other place with a familiar WiFi network) the iPhone will join the WiFi and turn off the cellular data connection. You will only notice the iPhone is using WiFi and not GPRS/EDGE/3G by the icon next to the carrier name; there’s no notification dialog to confirm. If you daily visit 4, 10 or 20 distinct places and you have joined the WiFi networks of all of them, the iPhone will jump from cellular data to WiFi to cellular data to WiFi again each time you get to a different location (Try this, Windows Mobile!).

You can also turn WiFi off completely to save battery, and turn it on only when you know you are near an accessible WiFi spot; in that case, when you turn on WiFi the iPhone will look for familiar networks and if found, it will connect automatically (and turn off cellular data). Turning on/off WiFi is not so problematic, as the switch control is just 2 taps away from the home screen.

Another concern of Victor are the iPhone capabilities as a music player and voice recorder.

The iPhone is also an iPod, and the best iPod: I could say it is more an iTunes mobile (an extension to your iTunes library that goes with you). It can host your albums, music videos, movies, tv shows and classify everything in playlists, the same way iTunes does it.

There’s a downside for the iPod functions here, and is that you must control the play/pause/previous/next functions from the touchscreen (as any other application on the iPhone). That means when you are walking in the street and want to skip the current track, you must take the iPhone out of your pocket, unlock the screen and tap the “next” icon, then push the standby hard button (to lock the iPhone again) and return the device to your pocket.

However, the volume control of the iPhone is managed by a pair of hard buttons on the left border of the device; you change the volume here for a call, the ringer or the music, earphones or speaker. No unlock needed.

As for the voice recorder: There is no such thing on the iPhone. I remember a 3rd party application released last year for jailbroken/unlocked iPhones, but I don’t think I would try this. Maybe in the meantime somebody will release a voice recorder application developed with the official iPhone SDK. (UPDATE) Actually, there are various voice recorder / voice memo applications in the App Store; some of them are free (Thanks for clarification, Christian).

Hope this helps.

First the bad stuff:

1. The Contacts application is kind of… slow when starting up. Maybe this is because of my 367 contacts.
2. The keyboard is not much reliable at the first impression. You need to use this keyboard some time before you feel comfortable with it and start typing at a decent speed. One good thing is the keyboard learns from what you type, so theoretically after some weeks of use, it will start suggesting me every word as soon as I type the first 2 letters. We’ll see.
3. Really miss Copy & Paste. There’s no copy & paste. I understand it is not an easy thing to do, mainly because of the user interface paradigm (How would you select text with one finger? And how would you send it to the clipboard when selected with one finger too? Now the same, but without breaking the UI?).
4. There’s no week view in the iPhone Calendar. It would be great to have a 5-day week view when in landscape mode.
5. The iPhone can’t show subscribed calendars. This is a big problem; some partners and I share our calendars by publishing them as “.ics” in some web hosting, or by setting the calendars as public in Google Calendar. At home, my wife and I are sharing our personal calendars to know about future compromises with the family more dynamically. By now this is available only at the computer, and not in the handheld device.
6. The birthdays calendar doesn’t show in the iPhone. The fact that it is not synced via Mobile Me is not a bad thing, as the Birthdays calendar on iCal and on the web calendar of Mobile Me is just a view generated “on the fly” with the information taken from the birthday field in Address Book. This it is just a feature that has not been implemented in the Calendar application of the iPhone OS.

The good news is, the good things about the iPhone are by far more important than the mentioned bad things, so I can live with them. The good stuff:

1. It feels solid and trusty. The phone has the right size and the right weight. It feels well in your hand, you never think it will slip. The back is made of plastic, but it is hard and doesn’t scratch. The glass of the front face (and the screen) feels smooth to your fingers.
2. It is glossy. Yeah, the entire device is some kind of fingerprint magnet, but when it’s clean, looks awesome.
3. It just works. The software is very responsive, very fast; whit the exception of the Contacts application (a bit slow on startup, as mentioned earlier) the entire OS reacts at your command. Everything behaves as advertised; every button and link takes you to the expected place. The scrolling, zooming and panning works very natural. The A-GPS is very precise, and Google Maps updates in real time.
4. It feels so familiar. Sometimes I just think the iPhone is an extension of my MacBook. I have my appointments on my calendar, which feels just like iCal, the Address Book makes me think is the same program, NetNewsWire shows the same information in the phone and in the computer, not to mention Safari is a great browser with the only limitation of the screen size; the overall interface is very Leopard. This is what a PDA or a mobile computer must be.

There is one more bad thing: In Mobile Me, you are forced to use the “@me.com” email account; there’s no way to configure your own domain (as in Google Applications for Domains). This is very bad for us who want to keep our email address. This is what keeps the overall experience not to be perfect; a 9 of 10.

This is by far the best phone I’ve ever had, and no doubt is the most powerful mobile computer in the market today.

I only hope they bring the rumored 3G version of the smartphone, ’cause my Treo can do 3G.

We’ll see as soon as June.

Via AppleWeblog.

There are some users (myself included) on the consumer side with necessities from the corporate world: Instant push email and instant calendar and address book sync, who surely would be jumping to the iPhone and leaving Windows Mobile devices and Blackberries back.

The only missing piece for the corporate ecosystem on the Mac side, is truly and reliable iCal and Exchange integration. Some dreamers think Apple could bring Exchange support to iCal, just as they did with iPhone, but I think this is less than improbable because:

1. There’s already an Exchange client on the Mac: Microsoft Entourage.
2. Apple said they licensed ActiveSync technology from Microsoft, and that makes me think they are paying a royalty to Microsoft on each iPhone sold. I don’t think they want to do the same for every Mac.

So we’ll have to stick to our current solutions and wait (Groupcal: Will you work someday on Leopard? Will you do it right?), and who knows, maybe I’m wrong; some days ago nobody thought the iPhone would replicate Windows Mobile devices’ friendship with Exchange.

Maybe it’s about time for my Treo 750 to prepare for an early retirement. Well, of course I have to wait for the iPhone to come to México in a legitimate way… and with 3G… and with bluetooth network sharing… and… bah.