(via Daring Fireball)

Best Buy selling these is going to help bring them into the mainstream.

AT&T announced last week that they are changing their data plans. A key part of this is that they finally enable tethering for US iPhone users, for $20 a month.

I was as excited as anyone about tethering when it was announced last year at WWDC. I was definitely one of those people who seemed to recall AT&T saying it would be coming by the end of last year, but apparently they claim to have never said that. My in-laws don’t have broadband, so when I am there my only internet access is my iPhone. I have thought about getting a MiFi or something similar countless times but decided it ultimately wasn’t worth the investment. I always assumed tethering would be pricey (somewhere in the $30-$60 range) but always assumed that it would include more data and hopefully be something you could turn on and off at will.

The sad part is that in order to get tethering you must switch to one of the new plans, most like the DataPro which does drop in price from $30 to $25, but also drops the data cap from 5 GB to 2 GB. In order to add tethering an additional $20 fee must be incurred. This means it will cost $55 a month for 2 GB of share data. It is completely inexcusable that AT&T would change users for a feature to be enabled on their account. The data cap stays at 2GB even with tethering, so you are literally paying $20 for them flip a switch.

I also don’t think 2 GB is enough for a shared tethering plan. 2 GB won’t go very far on a laptop and I use between 500 MB and 1 GB on my phone alone. If there is one blessing, it’s that each additional GB will only cost $10. So for example, if you have the current iPhone 5 GB plan and a Verizon MiFi, you are basically paying $90 for 5 GB of phone and 5 GB of laptop data. $90 on the new AT&T plan gets you 6 GB of shared data for $85. If you assume that you can get by with 1 GB of data on your phone (and most people can) you get the same 5 GB on your laptop for $5 less. As much as I hate AT&T for what they are doing, this isn’t a bad deal.

Part of me wants to boycott this just because it’s so ridiculous that they would charge you $20 more without giving you any extra data. Part of me wants to jailbreak just so that I can use my data without the $20 fee. But honestly, if they allow you to add it and remove it as needed I could see myself taking advantage of it the few times a year I need it. I realize that if people still pay for it AT&T will have no reason to change it, but when you look at the big picture, it’s not a horrible deal.

I also did some math on the tethering option. Right now to have an iPhone and a MiFi it would cost you $90/month in data fees for 5 GB on each. For $85 under AT&T’s new system you can get 6 GB of share data. The fact that you can turn tethering on and off at will is nice. There is a good chance I will take advantage of this at some point.

I suspect they will ponder this for the rest of the year and give an explanation before they actually start charging people.

My take on this is that it officially kills any chance of a Verizon iPhone being announced next week unless AT&T really has no idea that it’s coming. This would kill their iPhone sales for sure.

I don’t really agree with the concept of taking things away without a significant price reduction, but it seems like telco companies do this a lot.

If the rumor of apps makes it basically a TV connected iPad is true, it’s interesting. This could be step one in phasing out the Mac as we know it.

To the right of the orientation lock is a set of three controls for play/pause and track skipping in the iPod app, as well as a dedicated icon for the app itself. It seems likely this will replace the current “notification window” method for accessing iPod controls via a double-tap of the Home button.

I figured they would have to do something in regards to iPod controls. Presently, you double-tap the home button to bring this up, but now double tapping will bring up the multitasking dock.

Three years into the iPhone’s life and AT&T is still unable to promise good performance. I know it’s been said before, but I am sure Apple regrets the decision to pick AT&T over say T-Mobile. This is completely unacceptable. No one knows the terms of Apple’s agreement with AT&T. It it were ending this year I think we would have heard by now, so I suspect we have at least one more iPhone left before it ends. Meanwhile, people are switching left and right just to avoid AT&T.

A lot of people are reading into this that either, A) Apple is going to announce on WWDC that the Mac is changing to a more iPhone-like OS or B) OS X is staying the same but desktop application distribution will only be available through the App store.

Based on previous history we would expect 10.7 to be announced in June for release sometime next year.

(via Lifehacker)

In the end, engineering constraints led Apple to stay with Core 2 Duo processors in the 13″ MacBook Pro for now. Cramming an i5 CPU into the chassis would have been possible, but it would have required sacrificing either graphics performance or taking a huge hit to battery life. Instead, graphics performance for the 13″ MacBook Pro has improved by as much as 1.8x the performance of the 2009 model, and the 10-hour battery life is on par with the iPad, which is pretty stellar performance for a traditional notebook computer.

This makes sense to me. Chris Rawson goes on to say that it’s very likely the 13 inch with get the i5 with the next update.

Macs, like any other complex bit of electronics, aren’t free from problems. Sturdy as they are, they do tend to break, and when they do, the repair costs can be astronomical. If you luck out and get a perfect, worry-free machine, then AppleCare may not seem worth it. But if you wind up with a problem child Mac like the one my wife got, AppleCare may be the difference between having a working Mac, or falling back on an abacus.

AppleCare extends your warranty from 1 year to 3 years and you have until your 1 year warranty ends to purchase it so you don’t have to decide right away. In the case of Chris Rawson’s wife, it’s apparent she got her moneys worth. I think it ultimately comes down to how long you plan to have the machine. I just upgraded my MacBook Pro in October even though my previous model was less than three years old. I think if you know you are going to replace your machine in about 3 years, save your money and put it towards your next computer in 3 years. If you are planning to have it for 5 or more, it’s definitely worth making sure you can make it through the first three years.