Steve Wozniak: use a MiFi as backup for your iPhone 4

Henk van Ess, (Twitter:@henkvaness) a Dutch born investigative journalist and accidental entrepreneur talks with “Woz” about data plans, the MiFi and the new iPhone 4. Read all about the antenna tests Wozniak did with the iPhone 4, his $7000 bill from AT&T and why is the luckiest man on earth.

WOZNIAK  HAS BACKUP FOR FAILING IPHONE 4

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple and tv-dancer, acknowledges the reception problems with the new iPhone 4. His advice: “If you can afford it, carry a second Verizon phone for backup”.  Another option is to “carry a MiFi and rely on Skype on your iPhone”

Henk van Ess: How did you find out about the antenna problems?

Steve Wozniak: The first time I tried I was able to duplicate the problem. My wife was driving me to the airport and as soon as I got a short distance from my home, and no longer on wifi, I tried it by accessing a web page (using Safari on my iPhone 4) and observing the progress bar.

As the bar started to proceed I lightly (‘lightly’) touched a couple of fingers to the trouble area and the progress bar froze. When I lifted my fingers the progress bar continued it’s rapid progress. Putting my finger[s] back down halted the progress bar again. Lifting my fingers another time allowed the web page to finish loading.

I tried it again with one more web page I was in a moving car in the hills near my home. Currently I maintain cell phone calls fine there with my iPhones and with other cell phones, although this exact area used to drop AT&T calls reliably, a few years ago.

I was in a moving car in the hills near my home. Currently I maintain cell phone calls fine there with my iPhones and with other cell phones, although this exact area used to drop AT&T calls reliably, a few years ago.

I tried to repeat this experiment somewhere else a second time, I think in a San Jose restaurant, and I only had partial success. That time I could only slow the progress bar a little and only if I squeezed my iPhone 4 tightly. I concluded that the effect only occurs in some places. It’s like the AT&T dead zone has been extended with this new phone.

If you can afford it, carry a second Verizon phone for backup. Another option is to carry a Verizon mifi and rely on Skype on your iPhone. I have used this mifi technique to rescue my own, and others’, iPhones on occasion. If you buy a Verizon Palm Pre, you get free mifi on it so that is possible the best ‘compromise’ solution, to carry a Verizon Palm Pre along with your AT&T iPhone 4.

Sometimes when I’m back home I’d like to try this experimentation with an iPhone on the T-Mobile network. I don’t know if the iPhone 4 has been unlocked yet by the dev comunity.

Needless to say, the AT&T microcell in your home is another good solution if you live in one of the marginal AT&T areas.

Henk van Ess: Has the antenna thingy gone wild?

Steve Wozniak: It doesn’t bother me. The iPhone works well enough and its beauty is worth the care in holding it.

Henk van Ess: You will probably use the Mifi 2352 in Europe.  Did you know that you can save big on data costs thanks to a loophole @vodafone?

Only Vodafone Ireland offers a prepaid internet sim card that can be refilled by credit card and is cheap outside Europe too.

You are allowed to use 50 Mb a day wherever you are in Europe for 1 euro each time you decide to use it. It saved me money on many
occasions (www.linkedin.com/in/searchbistro is my bio). It will do fine for mail checking and web browsing. You only pay 1 euro for the
day you use it – on other days you don’t pay a thing. The Vodafone card has to be activated in Ireland. But poor students
will do that for you – check Ebay and search for simireland or irish sim.

Steve Wozniak: No, I did not know that.

Great plan and cost – very reasonable unless you are downloading huge files to your computer.

I was in Germany 1 year ago for the World Segway Polo championships and after half a day got notified that I had a $7000 bill for data. I called AT&T’s customer support and told them that I always had an international plan as I travel a lot and it must have accidentally been removed when I bought my iPhone (3 GS ?). Thankfully, AT&T let me [re]purchase an interational data plan, retroactive. After 2 or 3 months they did return my $7000 too.

Henk van Ess: Did you charge 2-3% over 2-3 months?

Steve Wozniak: I didn’t worry about the lost interest.

The plans I bought then for 2 of my iPhones were the unlimited international data plans that I have today.

2 weeks later my daughter and assistant were going on a vacation to Europe and I called to get them unlimited international data plans and found out that it was no longer offered. So I had just barely gotten mine in time.

Henk van Ess: Since the Vodafone-loophole only allows 50 Mb, I have two other MiFi’s, check http://twitter.com/henkvaness/status/18443244185, for the countries I visit most often. French and German dataplan (sim only) allow me to user 500 Mb for a reasonable price.

Btw, did you know that the SD-card in the MiFi finally makes some sense for an iPad? As you know the file management is so-so and needs Air HD or Good Reader. With the MiFi you can read most filetypes straight from the SD-Card. If you type www.mifi , don’t log in, but click on Micro SD FIle Management. It’s great to have some PDF’s with you like that.

Steve Wozniak: I am glad to hear about that. I’ll have to try it.

I’m thinking that this card is made by Novatel. (it is, Henk van Ess) Their CDMA mifi in the States allows 5 parties to connect, and you enter www.mifi in your browser or point it to a certain address in order to administer it.

I am one of the luckiest persons alive. I have 2 iPhones with unlimited data plans for $64 a month. They don’t offer unlimited plans anymore. They offer plans like 100 MB per month for $150. The most they offer is 200 MB per month.

They keep trying to take my unlimited plans back when they think I’m not looking. I was expecting them to do this when I bought my new iPhone 4′s. So, in line the night before, I had a friend go to the AT&T store in the mall and they told him I would not lose my unlimited international data plans. I then asked the friend to go back and get it in writing or on video. My friend came back and said that they couldn’t tell him if I even had the plans, that I had to go down myself. So I went to the AT&T store and they swore up and down that I would not lose my plans and they knew what they were talking about.

The next morning I refused to give my credit card for payment until the Apple Store sales person and his supervisor assured me that I would not lose my unlimited plans.

After purchasing my iPhone 4′s I went to the AT&T store and they still showed me having the unlimited plans on their computer. The next evening I went back to the AT&T store and they checked my account and I still had the unlimited international data plans.

The next day I flew to Bogota and when I arrived I discovered that I no longer had an international data plan at all.

Henk van Ess: Geez, that’s Kafka. And so typical. I wanted to CANCEL an unlimited plan (T-Mobile sucks in Europe) and they kept charging me. Even after a written testimony of the shop containing a. yes we cancelled your plan on April 1, 2009 b. We owe you 1600 euro. Still pending.

Steve Wozniak: I’ve heard of that sort of problem countless times, from friends and in the press. I had done everything a person could have done to be safe about this, but they still tried to take my plan away behind my back, figuring I wouldn’t notice it for months. I dealt with a few level of AT&T people on the phone and eventually it hit a ‘media’ person, meaning PR. She told me I would still have the plans.

Of course AT&T would never accidentally remove one of the expensive plans, right?

I did get one iPhone with a 2 GB tethering plan and I tested it recently in Korea and it did indeed work internationally. But the tethering plan is via USB or bluetooth only, not wifi. I have U.S. mifi devices (CDMA, Verizon, the better network in the States) and that’s what I wanted. The best I could come up with was to tether my iPhone to an AirBook and then share it over wifi (it worked). But I really want a mifi version of it.

In Barbados a month ago I felt like jailbreaking one of my 2 iPhones with the unlimited international data plans and running miwi on it to make the iPhone a mifi. But I didn’t get this completed to test it there.

Here in Germany I plan to take the SIM from my unlimited data iPhone and put it in my tethering iPhone to see if I wind up with tethering without a limit. That would be a partial success, but not as sharable as a mifi.

Oh, by the way, I also have a Palm Pre with Verizon. At first they charged but then they made free a built-in mifi ability (Mobile Hotspot).

I plan to use a friend’s GSM mifi here (the type I tried to order from you) with my unlimited data micro-SIM installed. I expect it to work. That’s a good step forward for me. And back home it’s an unlimited data mifi with my unlimited domestic data iPhone plans. Except that these unlimited plans do get cut off at some amount, like 5 GB.

Of my Verizon CDMA mifi cards in the States, one of them has an old unlimited data plan. The other one had an unlimited plan but I switched the number to Google Voice and when I changed the mifi number, minutes later, I had lost my unlimited plan and found out it was no longer available. They got me good on that one.

Henk van Ess: Currently I’m working on an niche app “3GJUICE’S FLYING PICTURES” for the MiFi and Eye-Fi (Ziv Gillat allowed me to import the cards in Europe). Here’s the workflow: you make a picture at the Segway Polo or in Boliva, the MiFI transmits it to FTP-server or Picassa / Flickr etc. and relatives/friends at home get either an alert that you just made a photo or if they have the app working, they will see the new picture as soon as it arrives. It’s place shifting photo’s. Oh well, guess I’m the only one who thinks it’s a nice app

Steve Wozniak: I use the eye-fi cards though…although none of my friends do.

Ziv Gillat (CEO Eye-Fi), one day later: The article is totally awesome. Once I can reference it online, I’ll broadcast it too. It’s super awesome that Steve uses our cards.Woz is my hero. I have one of his first signed Apple II GS.  BTW, I’m not sure why he’s saying that his friends are not using it. Andy Herzfeld is the first angel investor we secured  Guy Kawasaki uses it and loves it.
I’d love an intro to Woz, if you can do it.

Henk van Ess: Steve, the CEO of Eye-Fi, Ziv Gillat, would love to contact you.  He saw our little conversation online. Can he contact you?

Steve Wozniak: Sure!

How this story started

Did Steve Wozniak order a MiFi 2352 from me? I had serious doubts after PayPal nagged me that a certain Wozniak doesn’t use PayPal yet:

An experienced tech guru uses eCheck as payment? No way.

I dropped a note and he replied: yup, it’s me. Wozniak:  ”I ordered one MiFi and got confusion as to acceptance of my credit card, and I couldn’t find an easy way to complete the transaction with PayPal.”  (That’s a polite way to tell somebody that his web shop sucks)

Anyway, we mailed back and forth  14 messages.  In the end  I asked him if I could quote from our conversation.

Henk van Ess: Can I quote from this conversation?

Steve Wozniak: Sure.

So thats what I did.

About

Henk van Ess, is according to the New York Times 'a technology expert' and 'accidental entrepreneur'. He is speaker, writer, investigative journalist, internet trainer and internet consultant for radio, TV and newspapers. If you believe the recommendations at Linkedin, he has a deep knowledge of the web. He loves to spot new gadgets and sell them to fellow nerds.