So you may have heard that the next version of the iPhone operating system will allow users to tether their phones to laptops and other computers, thus turning your phone into a sort of portable 3G modem. Sure, you’ll have to pay $20 per month to AT&T for the privilege, and the wireless carrier will make you stick to the same 2GB per month data transfer cap you would have if you weren’t tethering or paying an extra $20 per month. But leaving that all aside for a moment, it turns out there’s something you can’t do with an iPhone: Tether it to an iPad.
That’s because iPhone OS 4.0 will only support tethering via USB or Bluetooth. You can’t share an internet connection over WiFi. And while the iPad has Bluetooth, it doesn’t support sharing an internet connection over Bluetooth. There also aren’t any USB ports on an iPad.
TechFlash and AppleInsider have confirmed that the limitation comes straight from the folks at Apple, not AT&T.
Of course, there is still one way to share your phone’s internet connection with an iPad — use a Google Android phone which will have a portable WiFi hotspot feature once Android 2.2 Froyo becomes more widely available.
via Gizmodo
Hmm, that means the iPad is a bluetooth stack optimization away from having this feature, but for now it’s crippled by Apple… Oh well. I’d love to own an iPhone but AT&T was a non-starter before all this 2GB cap stuff, so even if I do get an iPad (and honestly I’d love to buy one, and I will the second I have a million dollars sitting in my bank account not doing anything) it would be tethered to a less restricted service provider… As long as no one else follows AT&T’s example.
Thank you for not repeating the sensationalist nonsense that Gizmodo wrote. This is clearly an Apple “feature” (just as you said) not an AT&T failing as Gizmodo characterized it.