
Wi-Fi Assist: a $5M Mess - shawndumas
https://medium.com/@istumbler/wi-fi-assist-a-5-million-mess-f10c4c65f2f#.jsfsc0o9v
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ghaff
This piece seems to have very little to do with Wi-Fi Assist at the end of the
day--at least the way I read it. In my experience, there are indeed all sorts
of reasons why I need to failover from Wi-Fi to cellular. I'm out at my car
trying to download a podcast but I'm just a little too far away from my house
for Wi-Fi to work properly even though it's still visible. I'm at a conference
with Wi-Fi but the Wi-Fi isn't reliable.

The problem with the generally sensible idea of having a fallback mode is that
a lot of people have limited cellular data plans and overages can get very
expensive in a hurry. However, I have a feeling that Apple engineers are not
generally in that "lot of people" bucket.

~~~
lstamour
Part of it is that Apple doesn't make it easy to set a data cap on your
device, or warn as you approach it. Another part is that this feature was
bungled: the first time it takes effect, it should track when more than 10-20
MB are downloaded and then pop up a warning. Alternatively, the wifi symbol
could perhaps become dashed to reflect that there are temporary connectivity
issues. Even if all it did was flicker between wifi and cellular as data was
used, it would encourage users to investigate during the occurrence-- at
minimum a note in Settings, under Wi-Fi, could alert the user a day later to
the bandwidth use.

This was just poorly thought out, and will need to be improved in future
incremental releases. I think the article further indicates how Apple opposes
Google-esque thinking around networking and Internet services, but it's
something they need to fix before they put a 4G chip in a MacBook. And while
the UI I have confidence on, I'm less certain of the infrastructure. On a
perfectly fine network connection, Apple Trailers is the one app that doesn't
stream well for me--I figure no one at Apple knows this since they outsourced
delivery to Akamai, or whoever.

~~~
Animats
Users with spending limits are not Apple's target demographic. If you have to
ask how much data costs, you can't afford an Apple product.

~~~
gh02t
I don't think so. I don't have an iPhone (at least, not in a long time), but
my grandma does. And my neighbor, the driver of the taxi I was in yesterday,
the mailman... I might buy that argument for their laptops and desktops, but
not the iPhone.

Part of their appeal is making a phone that make the average person _feel_
like a high-roller, but those people are just as much part of the target
market as the wealthy and fashionable. Since the iPod, Apple has been pretty
savvy about leveraging the appeal of their actual high-end products to
increase the appeal of their more affordable offerings. At least, that's the
only way I can explain the ridiculous gold Apple Watch.

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billiam
Very interested in this problem and this guy's story, as a network engineer
and a user of the discussed products, BUT I really can't take a blog post
seriously that has a spelling or grammatical error in every other sentence as
this one does.

~~~
istumbler
Ok ok ok. I've updated the article a few times to fix copy errors, if you have
specific suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. It's very hard for most people
to copy-edit their own text when it's still fresh.

~~~
pritambaral
Not GP, but:

> If the executives their

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mschuster91
For me the worst problem with OS X and especially iOS is that neither supports
WPS-PBC.

Typing a 32 char WPA passphrase sucks hard, and Linux, Android and Windows
have solved the problem. Just Apple does not.

~~~
mangix
WPS leaves you vulnerable to reaver/pixie dust. No idea if it's possible to
disable the pin method.

~~~
lstamour
The push button method means it's not constantly enabled, and in Apple's case,
the PIN method has a uniquely generated PIN on every time-limited use, thus
again protecting you from reaver-style attacks. But I agree, it's not
something I want on 24/7 since WPS can be used to recover any WPA password
including the fancy 32-character ones ;-)

