“Personal Hotspot” (or “Tethering”) is Apple’s silly name for using your iPhone to share a limited Internet connection to other devices, with the primary connectivity being provided to the phone by your carrier. With the “Personal Hotspot” feature, your iPhone broadcasts a wireless signal that your other devices can connect with, much as you do home Wi-Fi. Options also exist for using Bluetooth PAN (which still has its uses on devices that have support for it) or a USB cable. It is very similar to, but not the same as, using your phone as a modem, because the iPhone shares your connection with all the computers and devices connected to it. You are really better off buying a dedicated device for this function though, because the feature has restrictions imposed on it by Apple and/or the carriers that make it pretty useless for anything but travel situations.
I don’t know about your network, but down here in the UK the “Unlimited” plans distinguish tethered and non-tethered usage. You usually pay extra for the feature to be switched on as part of your plan, and then there is typically a separate cap just for tethering that is distinct from the unlimited phone usage. Pretty stupid, really, when you realise that you can easily hook up your phone to a TV an enjoy a full 1080P HD movie just using the phone. Clearly, “Unlimited” is a deception, but our neoliberal advertising authority is just fine with it, seemingly because everybody in the industry is doing it and they don’t regard it as false advertising so long as only a small number of potential buyers are inconvenienced. Rant rant rant, etc. -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
