Category: Apple

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AT&T Pulls a Switcheroony – New Data Plans, no longer unlimited!

It seemed like only last week when I shared my 1st month of iPad data use with you all. I started out with the 250MB/month iPad plan knowing that I could always upgrade to the unlimited data plan if I needed to. Now it looks as if the unlimited plan is going away unless you act TODAY! Starting today, AT&T will start NEW data plans for ALL Smart phone devices (including iPad/iPhone). So if you already bought an iPad 3G and thought that you might some day want to go "UNLIMITED" for $29.99/month, then you better do it now, because starting today that plan goes away for NEW subscribers. Here's the break down:

 

The OLD Plans (prior to 6/7/2010) iPad – 250 MB/month $14.99/month Unlimited Data Plan $29.99/month
The OLD iPhone Plans iPhone 2G UNLIMITED+200 SMS  Data  $20/month iPhone 3G/3GS Unlimited Data $30/month (+$5/month for 200 SMS)
The NEW Data Plans starting TODAY for NEW accounts (iPhones too) DataPlus 200MB/month $15/month DataPro 2GB/month $25/month
Tethering your SmartPhone (iPhone with 4.0 software)   DataPro plan $25 + Tethering $20 = $45/month

 

 

While the prices are technically cheaper, Unlimited goes away! 2GB's sounds like a lot and it probably is for MOST people, but if you plan to stream video on your device 2GB in a month can be eaten up pretty quickly. These new plans now make it so that you have to monitor your usage closely. Luckily if you do go over, you're not charged a per kilobyte fee. Instead you'll be able to add on another block of usage for a set price (another 200MB for $15 or if you're on the DataPro plan you get another 1GB for $10). So again if you do a lot of streaming, your bill could be quite high. I should also mention that all of these NEW plans do come with FREE access to any AT&T WiFi hotspots.

No iPad to iPhone tethering, yet – According to AT&T, they have no problem with you tethering your iPad to your iPhone to share the iPhone's data connection. However, currently the iPad doesn't support it in it's OS and Apple says that the 4.0 OS update isn't coming to the iPad until the fall. So we may have to wait til then to see if the iPad will tether to the iPhone.

See the AT&T Plan details here on their site.

 

How much Data have I used on my iPhone or other smartphone?

Although you can look this info up on your device, I find the most accurate way is to dial *3282# from your phone and you'll get a text message with the break down of your current usage.

 

Don't think you're going to use that much data?

Maybe you won't, but here's some food for thought. If you're just doing normal surfing, email, etc. then you're probably fine. However, let's not forget that iTunes sells and rents MOVIES! The average movie size is 1.5GB. So if you rent a movie over 3G, you could quickly hit the limit of the DataPro plan and then start having to pay for additional 1GB blocks at $10 a pop before your next billing cycle. I know it's easy to say, "well don't do that. Download your movies while you're on WiFi." However, this wasn't an issue yesterday and now somehow makes the mobile platforms seem a little less fun.

 

What do you think of these New Plans?

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One Day Sale: Magellan Premium iPhone/iPod touch Car Kit

While I still think that these car kits cost more than they should, I must admit that the Magellan Car Kit (and Navigon App for iPhone AND iPod touch) is now my preferred Travel GPS! Amazon has the Magellan Premium Car Kit ON SALE for $99.99 (List Price $129.99). You can get it here for that price.

Speaking of Navigon Apps, Navigon still has their "MyRegion" Apps on sale for $15!!! Regular price is $29.99 so grab them here while you can. The Navigon GPS navigation Apps work great with the Magellan Car Kit and since they have the maps BUILT-IN, they don't require a data connection to use.

You can also check out my original video review of the Magellan Kit here:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTP34pSA6LU

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I only used 171MBs of 3G data in the first month of iPad use

When I got my iPad WiFi+3G back on April 30th, I resisted signing up for the Unlimited 3G Data Plan ($29.99/month). Since there is no contract and you can upgrade or downgrade at any time I wanted to see if I could get by on the 250MB/month Plan ($14.99/month). My thought was "why pay more up front when you're not sure how much you're really going to use?". I was right! In the first month I used my iPad as much as I needed to/wanted to on 3G. The rest of the time I was on WiFi or traveling abroad and using it on WiFi. I only used 171MB in the first month. So technically I saved $14.99 by NOT doing the impulse thing and signing up for the Unlimited Plan right off the bat. Now that's not to say that I wan't have some months where I need more 3G data and if I do, I'll purchase more at that time. However, today I feel like I just saved $14.99 by not giving it to AT&T up front.

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Apple iPad Review: WiFi+3G Model

When the Apple iPad WiFi model shipped I did a pretty in-depth review of it, which you can see here. Therefore the purpose of today's review is focus primarily on the 3G capabilities. (and yes that's a custom Gelaskin on the back because that's just how I roll 🙂 )

 

Which model did I go with?

I had planned all along to go with the 16GB WiFi model for testing and reviewing and then get the 64GB WiFi+3G model for my own use. That's exactly what I did. Although I don't "need" 64GB's of space for my info and media content, I do plan to use the iPad for field backup of my photos and instant touch up and sharing using the iPad Camera Connection Kit. I typically shoot to either 8GB or 16GB memory cards and almost never fill them up in one day. After loading everything on the iPad that I wanted to have on it  (including a couple of movies), I still had over 32GBs of free space. That will be plenty for photo backup each day of shooting. My wife claimed the 16GB WiFi version in case you were wondering.

 

What's different on the outside?

Not much. The only two visual differences on the outer case are the black bar across the top for the antennas/GPS support and the MicroSIM tray on the left side. Otherwise it's visually identical to the WiFi model. 

 

What's different on the inside?

The obvious and biggest difference on the inside is that the WiFi+3G models include 3G wireless technology to allow you to connect to the internet pretty much anywhere there is GSM cell service. The other difference is that these models also include a real GPS chip. So while the WiFi mode can detect your location based on available WiFi signals, the WiFi+3G model can do so based on GPS satellites, cell towers AND WiFi signals. This also means that it's capable of running turn-by-turn GPS navigation apps although it may be a bit conspicuous on your dashboard. 🙂

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iPad Camera Connection Kit Review

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFtx9HzM-lE

 

As a photographer one of the iPad accessories I was most anticipating was the iPad Camera Connection Kit. This kit consists of TWO adapters that connect right to the iPad's Dock connector. The first one is a standard SD (SDHC) Memory Card reader. You connect it to your iPad and then insert a memory card with images/videos on it and transfer those images to your iPad. No software to install because the iPad already has this ability built-in to the Photos App. The second adapter has a standard USB port on the oppositie end of the Dock connector. With this one you can not only connect your camera via USB and transfer images directly, but as my video above shows you can even use a Card Reader with it! This overcomes (although not as elegantly) the problem of wanting to use Compact Flash or other card formats. 

 

How does it work?

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Creating My 1st iBook for the iPad with Adobe InDesign CS5

These are exciting times in the publishing industry! The tools have never been better to get your word out. With the introduction of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and in particular InDesign CS5, my head is spinning thinking about all the possibilities. I can use one industry standard app to publish for Print, for the Web with NEW Interactive features and now more easily than ever to standard eBook Reader formats such as ePUB. There’s also a lot of excitement around the Apple iPad. The beauty here is that I can use my new found publishing power and Apple’s popular device to get my content in front of more eyeballs than ever.

 

The Project

As you may know I co-authored one of the best selling books for the iPhone, “The iPhone Book”. I’ve been very happy with the success of that book and of course as soon as the iPad was introduced, many eyes turned towards me to question if I was going to write a book for this new device. While the project seemed interesting (and still is), I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted the iPad Book to be an iBook on the actual iPad. All of my books are already being laid out in Adobe InDesign. So there’s nothing new there, except there is something new there in terms of capabilities. The enhanced capabilities around the ePUB format and Interactive Document publishing beyond PDF. So I wanted to do two things: I wanted to get a sample out there of what an iPad book on the iPad and I wanted to experience first hand what it was like to create one from scratch using InDesign CS5. So I enlisted the help of my colleague at Adobe, Colin Fleming (eBOOK guru) and Colin gave me the inside scope and even some sample demo documents that he had put together. This was a great jump start and helped me avoid some stumbling blocks. Yesterday, I started my sample “25 iPad Tips” and today I have a FREE iBook that you can download right here.

 

The Making of my 1st iBook (ePUB)

The iBooks App on the iPad reads standard ePUB documents and Adobe InDesign CS5 just so happens to export them out directly. Great! There are some limitations that you have to be mindful in your document itself. These are limitations on the standard more so than of InDesign. For example, InDesign is an amazingly powerful page layout application that pretty much allows you do do anything you want on the page. However, ePUB has limitations on how the content has to flow to make it possible to have this single document on a multitude of different devices. I recorded this video to walk you through some of those things to look out for:

 

 

Downloading and Installing my FREE “25 iPad Tips” Book

The first step is to download my ePUB file here. Once you download the ZIP file, unzip it and you’ll have a short readme.txt file and the actual “25 iPad Tips.epub” document. Open iTunes 9.1 and higher and simply drag the ePUB into the Library area of iTunes on the left side. It should now appear in the Books Area of iTunes and once you plug in your iPad via the USB cable, you can select it as a book to sync in the Books Tab in iTunes. Enjoy!

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Sprint Reminds Me of AT&T’s Broken Promises

Sprint says come on over and use our 4G data card with your iPad. Now I get that this is just Sprints way of trying to get in on a good thing with their newly introduced 4G Case for iPad. Clever! However, it reminds of one of the biggest broken promises of 2009.

Last year (June 18, 2009) AT&T told us that iPhone tethering (the ability to use your iPhone as a data connection for your laptop or in theory iPad) was "coming soon". By soon most of us assumed that meant by the end of the year. Well 2009 has come and gone and now it's the later part of April 2010 and official iPhone data tethering support is no where to be seen. To make matters worse or to give us more of a rub, Apple announced and is about to ship the iPad WiFi+3G model, which again runs data on AT&T's network!

 

So AT&T let me get this straight…

You can provide unlimited data to iPhones. You can provide tethering support to every other smart phone you make. You can provide 3G data cards for laptops to anyone that wants them. You can even bring a relatively low cost, contract free data plan to Apple's NEW iPad, but you can't provide tethering support for iPhones yet? I don't get it! No one is asking for FREE tethering support. So chances are you're going to charge for it and because you're going to charge for it, it means that not everyone is going to use it. Is your "improved" network still that fragile? Really?

I have no love or hatred for AT&T. For the most part my service has been fine and I travel all over. I just wonder what's really going on here?

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