iPhone4idiots

So someone asked me why would you want to tether your iPhone? My reply was why wouldn’t you? Maybe your Comcast connection goes dead at home or you are on a five hour car trip with kids – its good to have options. And its sooooo easy that its perfect for idiots. Tethering is essentially using your iPhone as a modem. You plug it into a PC or Mac via USB and as long as you have a 3G connection, you have internet. All you need is OS 3.0 or higher on your iPhone, iTunes 8.2 or higher, Windows XP with at least Service Pack 2 (or Mac OS 10.5 or higher), and about 5 minutes to install one file. Update! This does not work with firmware 3.1.2 unless you patched commcenter file. This is more advanced to do. I’m looking into another idiot way and will let you know. In meantime the advanced way is here.We explain it all here with a video at the end showing how. OK, so your PC or Mac meets the minimum requirements I just mentioned. Heck, you’re almost done. Open Safari on your iPhone (not your Mac or PC) and goto http://help.benm.at 

You should be taken the screen shown here on the right. Scroll down until you see Mobileconfigs download > and go ahead and click on download. Once you do this you are taken to a Country screen where you select where you reside – USA most likely (maybe Canada). After clicking on your country, the next screen ask you to choose your carrier (AT&T or T-Mobile most likely). After that it installs the Mobileconfigs file. Reboot your iPhone and navigate to Settings – General – Network – and you should see Internet Tethering. Turn it on. For a PC you should see a new Local Area Connection titled Apple Mobile Device. For a Mac, you should see a network called iPhone. If you don’t see it, reboot your iPhone one time and also open up iTunes and connect your iPhone to iTunes one time.  The first thing I tethered to was my Mac at home. You’ll know its working when your iPhone turns blue at the top like in the picture on the left. The download speed over 3G was respectable 100K while the upload was painfully slow 17K. Thus, I’m not going to run out and cancel my Comcast and try to save $40 per month. The speed isn’t quite there yet and big brother (AT&T in this case) could cut you off if they figured out what you were doing. That said, it is good to have the ability to tether cause you never know when you might need it. I’ve started a thread in the Forum about tethering for anyone who has questions.