This one came directly from a friend and fellow iPhone user I met in Columbus, Ohio last weekend. At the moment, AT&T doesn’t officially support tethering. They have a seperate 3G USB adapter product that costs an extra $60/month. However, with the latest 3.0 OS release, somebody over at BenM.at figured out a way to modify the default carrier profile to enable the feature (already built into the new OS).

It doesn’t require jailbreaking or a funky SIM/Service hack, it’s 100% reversable and on U.S. carriers, doesn’t seem to affect IMs. You can turn it on/off via a config interface under Settings -> General -> Network -> Internet Tethering.  It supports both USB and BlueTooth connections (after pairing with your laptop, look for a new network adapter).

Of course at some point, I’m sure AT&T will try to squash this hack. We already pay for “unlimited” data service via the iPhone interface so I assume that as long as people keep their tethering usage to a minimum, not much will happen until AT&T figures out how to trap and charge people for the service.

After some AT&T account juggling I was finally able to secure a discounted iPhone. It arrived yesterday (8 day direct fullfillment order) and after waiting in line at the local AT&T store for 90 minutes last night, I got my paws on this marvelous little piece of technology.

24 hours later and I’m still pretty impressed with it. I had a bit of trouble getting it to authenticate with the 3G network but a SIM card swap-out this morning fixed whatever was causing the problem. I obviously haven’t had a chance to really dig into it but there are a few things I’ve noticed immediately:

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So I’m hooked. I gotta get the new [iPhone 2.0]. Problem is, every store in Atlanta is sold out and nobody has a clue when the next shipment will arrive. I had a shot on Saturday but missed the last one by 15 minutes so now I’m going crazy from [instant gratification withdrawl].

My buddy [David] had a similar experience this weekend but managed to squeak in under wire. I think my next best shot will be tomorrow at 9am – one of the local store reps swears the shipment that didn’t arrive this morning will be available for tomorrow.

Fingers crossed.

Update:

Well, my quest for a new iPhone is over. I’m not eligible for the iPhone “upgrade” until Dec. 18th, 2008. Sure, I can still buy one – I’ll just have to pay the full $399 price for the 8GB model.

Now I’m bummed.

Update 2:

David just suggested I head down to the local Apple store and buy one there. Apparently, they’ll sell me an 8GB iPhone for the $199 price and activate my service – this might bypass the contract “eligibility issue” the AT&T store claims I have. I’ve got another way around this if the Apple Store Bypass doesn’t work but I can’t attempt my hypothesis until Mel & I move back to Florida.

Now I have a glimmer of hope.

About a year ago as the first iPhone was coming online and it seemed like the entire world was standing in line to get one, I made a decision to wait. Partly because I couldn’t afford ~$400+ of my own money on a new phone no matter how frickin’ cool it looked or how revolutionary everybody claimed it would be. Yea it had a really slick user interface, and it rolled your iPod, cell phone, video player, web broswer, and picture frame all into an uber-thin package but it was new. Not new like a new car new but new like “nothing Apple or anybody else has ever done before so it’s really new“. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned supporting new technology these last few years – no matter what the manufacturer claims, you’ll always run into ver. 1.0 problems.

Needless to say, I’m glad I waited. Almost within the first week, users starting reporting some very interesting issues with the new iPhone: battery failures (non-user replaceable btw), sign-up difficulties (not to mention locking yourself into a two year contract with AT&T), defective units right out of the box, zero SDK support and no third party software apps, security flaws within the [iPhone Safari browser], etc. The list just seemed to go on and on as more people dug into it. Hell, within a month of release somebody had already [cracked] it so you could use it on other networks (Apple retaliated by [bricking] your iPhone if you tried to run any future updates on it via iTunes).

Well a week or two ago and the release of ver 2.0 finally arrived – [the 3G iPhone] will hit stores on July 11th. At ~$200 for the 8GB version, it’s got me interested all over again. The only decision now is, is it still [new] or just improved?