Why I like the iPhone (Reason #139)
So I’m still taking screenshots for my iPhone book. I’m at the point where I need both WiFi access and a strong signal from AT&T (the latter I lack at my home office). I hop in the car, drive to Starbucks, purchase my dose of caffeine, connect the iPhone to my MacBook Pro, pull up Terminal and… damn, I need network access for both my Mac and the iPhone for this to work.
Log onto T-Mobile to purchase an hour’s broadband pass. Wait, I guess I need two passes—one of the phone and one for the laptop. Okay. Attempt to get a pass on the iPhone. It repeatedly asks for the same credit card information. Damn, the keyboard obscures the log-in field and I can’t see what I’m typing. The place is going to close soon. When every Mom-and-Pop coffee house is now offering free WiFi (presumably to lure me away from this franchise) why does Starbucks stick with this usurious T-Mobile mess?
Oh, forget it. Out the door I go.
I live in a small town and the sidewalks often roll up before the sun has set. What am I going to do? [Editor: Make friends with people who don’t live in the boonies? Chris: Shaddup.]
And then I look at what I’m holding in my hand. Of course, the iPhone! Tap Settings -> WiFi and look, under Choose a Network, there’s Norma Jean’s Coffee Shop, a coffeeteria that I’d previously overlooked. Closed though Norma Jean’s may have been, the iPhone indicated that its network was open. Wide open.
Hop in the car, drive across the street to park in front of Norma Jean’s (a shop I will visit exclusively from now on), connect to the free juicy WiFi service, and spend an hour taking screen shots.
iPhone: Good phone, cool iPod, portable email client and web browser and, best of all for my immediate purposes, handy WiFi finder.
Category: Tips & Troubleshooting
ABOUT iPHONE CENTRAL
Get the latest news, reviews, and opinion about Apple's groundbreaking iPhone from the Apple experts at Macworld.
Want more information? Be sure to check out our complete iPhone coverage.
iPHONE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?
Send your iPhone thoughts:
via e-mail
via voicemail
and we may use them on the site.
BLOG ARCHIVE
- July 2008 (1)
- June 2008 (1)
- May 2008 (39)
- April 2008 (34)
- March 2008 (33)
- February 2008 (50)
- January 2008 (34)
- December 2007 (33)
- November 2007 (42)
- October 2007 (45)
- September 2007 (53)
- August 2007 (67)
- July 2007 (111)
- June 2007 (82)
CATEGORIES
- Accessories (39)
- AT&T (47)
- Hacking (31)
- Hardware (26)
- Musings (102)
- News (217)
- Reader Experiences (5)
- Reviews (51)
- Software (139)
- Tips & Troubleshooting (79)
- Videos (9)
- Wi-Fi (15)
Comments (2)
Careful Chris. I read a news article about some guy in Michigan (IIRC) that did that. Sat in his car outside a café that had an open network. Someone who worked across the street in a beauty salon called the cops on him, thinking he was stalking one of their good looking females that worked there (had happened before). Cops arrive… question the guy, find out he’s using wi-fi from the café. They search their lists of crimes to see if they can charge him with anything, and find out they can charge the guy with wi-fi stealing because he wasn’t inside the cafe, so they did. I don’t know what ever happened to him in the end. He said he was going to pay the fine rather than fight it. The café owner didn’t press the charges, it was the DA. The café owner said she would have let him use it anyway.
Posted by Walt | August 15, 2007 1:25 PM
A lesson to the rest of us. From now on don't admit to being the web frantic wifi stealing criminal, but rather the responsible samaritan who pulled over to the side of the road to use his phone.
Posted by Derek | August 16, 2007 3:58 PM