The iTunes Wi-Fi Store is undeniably the biggest upgrade in the iPhone's 1.1.1 software. The ability to buy music from your phone is quite possibly a killer app for the phone, and one that I've been looking forward to since its announcement at the iPod event earlier this month. But how does it work?
The answer: pretty great. I've already browsed and bought from the store, and I've got to say that the experience is as smooth—if not, in some cases, smoother—than the iTunes Store experience we've had for the past four and a half years. For one thing, formatting the store for the iPhone means removing a lot of the extraneous information you get in the full-blown version. Gone are the recommendation lists, the comments, the artist bios. Instead you merely get the option to browse featured songs and top ten lists. That's great, but the key for the mobile iTunes Store is unquestionably search—the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is all about the impulse buy, and in that, Apple has succeeded. Searching the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is fast and it's smart. I didn't have to type more than a few letters to find what I was looking for, and saving me finger taps means I'm less likely to be frustrated in my attempt to lay down some money.
Once you've found what you're looking for, it's a snap to preview any track by tapping it. Buying is easy too; just hit the price and it'll turn into a Buy Now link. Tap that, and you'll be prompted for your iTunes account password. Once you've entered that, the track or album will be queued for download; you can easily se your queue by hitting the Download button on the bar at the bottom.
But there are limitations. First off, as the title implies, this is the iTunes Wi-Fi Music store. You won't find music videos, movies, TV shows, or—sad to say—podcasts. This is a little tricky, since some albums include non-music items. For example, I downloaded the extended version of Motion City Soundtrack's new Even If It Kills Me, which has both a video and a digital booklet. Neither of these items were downloaded to my iPhone, and it took me a while to figure out how to get them on my computer (originally I missed the note on the album page in the Wi-Fi Store that read: "If you purchase this album, the next time you connect to the iTunes Store on your computer, you will also receive..."). If it doesn't prompt you immediately, you can also go to your account page on your Mac/PC, where you'll see a message about pending downloads. Hit the button there, and the missing files will be transferred to your computer. Pretty seamless, though I find it silly that I can't download music videos directly, since I'll probably just end up syncing them over later.
Furthermore, as again suggested by the name of the game, this is the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. Wanna browse and buy over EDGE? Tough luck. You'll see an error telling you that you can only access the store when you're on Wi-Fi. I'd prefer being able to at least browse and bookmark things to download later, but maybe we'll see that in a future update.
Also, the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store doesn't handle pre-orders. Mostly, it seems as though albums available for pre-order don't even show up in searching, though the one time I came across a pre-order album, which currently has a single track available (Jimmy Eat World's forthcoming Big Casino), iTunes popped up an error message saying "The item you've requested is not available." That's little surprise, though: as I said, this is about the impulse buy—you probably aren't going to find yourself pre-ordering a lot of songs from your iPhone, though, again, it would be nice if there was some sort of wishlist feature.
Other than wanting to see some other types of media available, the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store does pretty much what it says on the tin. It's not likely to provide a substantial chunk of iTunes sales in the near future, but it does open the door to making the consumption of digital media a far more pervasive experience than it's been to date.
My favorite part of Apple's announcement this morning of the UK version of the iPhone? (No, it's not the charming accents or the fact that the iPhone will now be available in the home of Doctor Who.)
It's the fact that UK cellular service from O2 comes bundled with The Cloud. The Cloud is a Europe-wide network of Wi-Fi access points, over 7500 of them. According to my Macworld UK counterpart Mark Hattersley, that includes whole areas such as Torchwood Tower, er, Canary Wharf, and the entire City Of London business area. Football club venues, including Arsenal and Chelsea, hotels, cafes, and restaurants, including McDonald's.
So basically, in addition to having a phone that will provide access to EDGE networks, UK buyers get access to high-speed Wi-Fi at more than 7500 different access points, all included. Perfect for a Wi-Fi-bearing phone like the iPhone.
So what about U.S. iPhone users? Right now, we've got bupkis. (Although soon we'll get free access to iTunes in many Starbucks locations, so we can spend more money...) The sad thing is, AT&T has a Wi-Fi network with hotspots all over the country. But right now it's only available as an add-on for AT&T broadband customers or via a standalone monthly fee.
Hmm, AT&T Wireless, have you met AT&T Wi-Fi? You guys should get together... and offer your iPhone customers a low-cost (or dare I suggest free?) way to access your Wi-Fi network.
The iPhone's Wi-Fi feature is great for getting a high-speed connection whenever you're in range of a wireless network. However, if that network is secure (closed), it's a bit of a hassle to type usernames, passwords, and/or authentication keys using the iPhone's onscreen keyboard. According to a TidBITS scoop by Macworld contributor Glenn Fleishman, making such connections just got easier.
Devicescape is a new service that combines a Web-based account with a real iPhone application. First you install that application, Connect, on your iPhone using Nullriver's Installer. You then create an account on the Devicescape Web site and enter--using your computer or your iPhone--the information and passwords/keys for frequently-used wireless networks and hot-spot services (Devicescape supports such services as T-Mobile HotSpot, AT&T WiFi, Fon, Boingo, and iPass).
From then on, whenever you want to connect to one of your favorite Wi-Fi networks or a wireless hot spot that's part of a service, you just tap the Connect app on your iPhone and then tap Login. (Yes, it should be Log In, but I digress.) Devicescape automatically logs you in to the network. According to Glenn, the system even knows which button to "click" for the Web-based login pages used by free wireless networks.
Check out Glenn's article for all the details. I haven't tried the service yet, but I just installed Connect on my iPhone and signed up for an account on the Devicescape Web site. If it works as advertised, Connect will be a handy addition to my iPhone's illicit-application list.
Planning on doing some traveling in August? If you're doing a fair amount of flying in and out of airports, and you happen to be carrying your iPhone around with you, you may be able to reap the benefits of some free Wi-Fi. Wireless provider Boingo, who run a network of hotspots around the country, are providing free wireless access in thirteen airports nationwide to iPhone users for the month of August. If you happen to find yourself in one of the participating airports, just look for the wireless network named "concourse." Hop on, enter your email, and you'll be all set.
The airports include:
Normally, Boingo's plans start for around $22 a month for unlimited access in the United States, or $39 for global access; daily plans are also available. I myself will be flying in and out of Midway next week, so maybe I'll get a chance to give it a try.
Something strange is afoot in Durham, North Carolina. The wireless network of Duke University has been having issues in the past few days, with routers being barraged by repeated requests for IP addresses—up to 18,000 per second. And that problem has been laid squarely at the feet of iPhones on campus.
Capture of network packets revealed that the iPhones appeared to be the culprit, with, in some cases as few as two of them making enough requests to take routers offline for ten or fifteen minutes.
The oddity of this circumstance is its uniqueness. By this point, there are tens of thousands of iPhones around the country, and no other institution has reported the same issue. Is it something particular to Duke's setup, or is it just an extremely rare problem that happened to crop up there?
Duke's network team has reported the issue to Apple, who's apparently busy investigating, though they have not yet responded to the query. If I might be so bold to suggest, perhaps they should seek the culprits to the southwest.
So you've got an iPhone (we're talking future tense here, obviously) and you're not thrilled with the speed of EDGE. Well, no problem! Wi-Fi is much faster. Only... where's the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot?
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld contributor and Wi-Fi expert, has a good rundown of the options, from free hotspots to paid monthly access to large networks.
The strangest thing? AT&T has its own Wi-Fi network, yet there seems to be no synergy with the iPhone:
AT&T's blandly named AT&T WiFi network-formerly the more brand-y FreedomLink-has 10,000 locations in its network, although 8,000 of those are McDonald's stores. Don't laugh! Even if you're not a McDonald's aficionado, they're everywhere, and the network signals may be strong enough you don't have to purchase a Big Mac to get close enough to the transmitter. The locations also include a few thousand stores in other chains: The UPS Store, Barnes and Noble, and Coffee Bean & Tea. AT&T's DSL customers pay just $1.99 per month for unlimited use; others, $19.99 per month.
Read the rest at Macworld.com.
