AT&T gives time frame for Friday's iPhone MMS launch
It's already known that AT&T is activating MMS for the iPhone on Friday, but the company has now narrowed the time frame to within a few hours.
(Credit:
Apple)
As reported by AppleInsider, AT&T's official Facebook page said the service will be activated late morning Pacific time Friday. That's not exactly definitive, but at least no one will need to sit around all morning wondering if it's on yet.
The iPhone's multimedia messaging service will allow the transmission of photos, contacts, audio files, and locations with the Messages app, according to Apple.
In order to get the service, you will need to download a "new carrier settings update enabling MMS," according to AT&T. The update will be available through iTunes, the company said.
It seems odd that an update is needed when some users have been reporting for the last 10 days that MMS has been activated on their iPhones.
Despite AT&T bringing one of the most requested services to the iPhone, comments on AT&T's Facebook page could be described as sarcastic at best.
"Welcome to 2003 AT&T!" one comment read.
"I hope it crashes badly....this will make them spend all that money they charged us for something that we could not even use for months!" wrote another.
While some people scorned AT&T's delay in delivering MMS, others echoed the recent sentiments of CNET News' Elinor Mills and suggested the company improve its network.
"I rarely use the network at all. I pay...every month for a handheld mac. I only get enough service at my home to text, we don't have 3G anyway so I use my own wi fi...I am paying twice for the Internet. I could care less about MMS because I'd rather get signal and make calls (than) send picture messages," one person commented on AT&T's Facebook page.
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. A guitar player for 20 years, Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to write and record songs on a Macintosh with Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Jim is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. 
Also CNET why are you so bent on bashing AT&T, I have only seen one positive article on AT&T on cnet since the Iphone came out and countless bashing them plus CNET TV. It seems you are getting money from Verizon and other companies to bad mouth AT&T when you should be championing them they had the guts to take on the Iphone when no other provider did, they took the chance and I think they are doing an impressive job when you think about the 16 million Iphones they now have on their network always downloading massive amounts of data over their network, if this happened on any other network in the country that network would crash and burn pretty quickly. CNET you should be advocating innovation and trying to get more companies to take new chances like AT&T did with the Iphone, sure it has some issues but they are fixing them and I cannot say that about the technical stifling of Verizon, what innovation have they ever brought anyone, they are the luddites in this situation and as a technical news organization who should be advocating the innovators and early adopters not the laggards which you have been doing. Did CBS destroy the once great CNET?
1st, lets get some credence to your little Verizon dig. Verizon is well heralded for having the strongest, widest network. Your Verizon claim is baseless, moving on.
2nd. Why are you sticking up for AT&T, they are months behind MMS, charged people for MMS for months, for a service THEY DIDN'T provide. European carriers are not having nearly as much trouble. AT&T's woes do not start and end with the iPhone, their coverage is awful no matter the hardware you use. AT&T will lose their exclusivity deal, you can count on it, they are mismanaging their resources every day.
Also verizon claims this but it is not true, i live in Northern California and the Verizon network is the worst. I had major problems when I was on their network in the east and west coast. Cant say anything about the midwest never lived there and dont travel there, but everywhere else my Iphone has a far superior signal then either of my crappy verizon phones I had. This is a rumor about verizon and if you look at 3G data tests the two fastests networks are Sprint with downloads and ATT with uploads.
If AT&T is having frequent and serious network issues, dropped calls, and general performance problems, then it's unlikely that any media, including CNET, are likely to talk much about when the system *is* working and will instead focus on the problems that are all too apparent. In short, they report the news.
Your right man, they arent months behind on the MMS thing. I for one agree with you totally on that... because they are YEARS behind on it.
The god-all-mighty Iphone, with amazing interface, touchscreen, and who-gives-a-sh*t what else it has, couldnt do 2 simple things at launch (3 years or more ago) and it finally has overcome one of them...well almost, tomorrow it will overcome the MMS limitation. Wow, YEARS late, not months late like you say. And I dont care that Apple or ATT said it will be available in a few months at the beginning of 2009, that doesnt excuse the fact its been missing for YEARS!
The second is multi-taksing. But I think thats enough of that...
the iphone is not the #1 phone in the US, blackberry owns 3 of the top 5 positions, including 1"
Well you are partly correct. The Blackberry is the #1 phone, the iPhone is the #1 smart phone :)
As for the lack of MMS, I totally agree. I have an iphone 3GS and it's a POS. It's so crippled that it's ridiculous. Why not have MMS? Why not allow tethering? Oh ya, ATT network sucks and Apple is catering to it. That's right.
Again, iphone is not #1. It's #1 in being overhyped.
And yet you not only try to take a cheap shot at the Republican party (which is uncalled for and lame for that matter), but you also don't know what the word hypocritical means. I believe the word you're looking for is "oxymoronic".
So if anything, dyrerl=fail.
BS
I don't have that much trouble with AT&T but the network could definitely be improved. That's the most important thing in my book.
*** is email??
To me, it's like complaining that your phone doesn't have Snake on it because "phone since the year 2000 have had Snake!"
Which ironically, the iPhone has probably 20 versions of Snake. But anyway...
See, people think AT&T and Apple need to get with the year 2003. But I say the phone manufacturers that don't have email need to get with 2009. For God's sake, email is the #1 method of communication these days! Get with it!
MMS is outdated in my opinion... and completely useless.
There are many people who have dumbphones that do not handle e-mail nor e-mail attachments gracefully. Apple thought that people would be fine e-mailing photos instead of using archaic MMS, but they were wrong.
Whether or not any given individual here thinks that MMS is outdated is irrelevant. It's not about you, it's about the marketplace in its entirety.
The fact of the matter is that many people on this planet have cellphones that do not handle e-mailed photos and videos.
It took over 6 hours for the other party to receive the MMS both times I tried.
It is clearly an ATT problem here, not an iPhone problem or Sony problem or whatever. So because of the huge expected surge in MMS by iPhone users going MMS crazy because it will be so EASY to do, ATT wisely, and yes I say wisely, upgraded their network first before enabling it.
Now, will it actually be enough of a system upgrade to handle the load? I doubt it. This is ATT we are talking about, after all.
I don't care about MMS or for that matter even Texting. I Tweet instead of Text and upload to Facebook/Flickr instead of MMS.
What do you mean by "expansion"? Do you mean that each year they will make you buy new hardware because everyone has that expansion. You can't upgrade the memory, or replace the battery, or even tweak performance without voiding your warranty (among other things).
Isn't it silly how they made the video software only run on the latest hardware? If expansion was so limitless why do something like that?
If you are talking about apps... why not make the switch to Android then. There is an Android phone announced for Verizon, tmobile, and Sprint here in the US so far. Don't quote the extra 20,000 apps the iphone has... we've long passed saturation point. As long as innovation shows up on both we're covered.
What will this cost?
I somehow doubt AT&T will offer this as included in the iPhone service data plan. Since they charge for this on other phones, then I can easily see that they will want to monetize this service as an extra fee. The problem being that it's unlikely that people will buy it when they can get the same functionality through other services that are on the phone now.
If it's free, then it will be popular. If they charge for it, it may be yet another nail in the coffin of customer satisfaction for AT&T customers.
Disclosure: I'm an AT&T iPhone user myself.
Oh, and for the few entertainment writers who spend a lot of time in hollywood, well, 3G coverage stinks there too. Good most of the rest of LA, but not in Hollywood (and spotty in North Hollywood).
Recently, I've been looking at the MicroCell femtocell that AT&T has come out with. While I'm not crazy about the idea of paying to fix THEIR problem, I've almost talked myself into getting one--if the one-time charge for the hardware isn't exorbitant (say approx. $100).
I'm sure that if a satisfaction poll were taken of ANY carrier, you could come up with horror stories about their coverage. Don't think AT&T is the Lone Ranger!
The problem is AT&T's service.
- by McPlot September 25, 2009 4:23 AM PDT
- While I think the iPhone is OK, and I do think it is overhyped. Apple does a great job of making people think their products are flawless and the best ever, when they are not.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (75 Comments)That aside, it was never the iPhone that could not MMS. It was AT&T not allowing the iPhone to MMS. I USED to have AT&T. I left it for many reasons. I even got out of my contract because of those reasons. Rather you think the iPhone is worth it or not, it has the "Cool" factor going so people are buying it. If it was offered another network, AT&T would lose a lot of customers as those customers only went with AT&T to get the "Cool" factor of the iPhone.