Quote:
Originally Posted by
dfiler 
It is astounding that attitude that some people take toward MMS...
Some feel that simply because they don't use it, it must not be very popular. Others are waging a dogmatic and political smear campaign because they feel the business model is unjust. Then there is the crowd that offers up hopelessly cumbersome workarounds. Finally there are the theoretical arguments which take the long term view, wanting to replace MMS with something better.
None of that addresses the fact that MMS is the most convenient and popular way to send pictures to other phones. While apple may eventually replace it with something just as easy to use and superior in other ways as well, that doesn't help in the here and now. It doesn't help people who actually want to send and receive pictures to their friends and coworkers... today.
Yes, much the same argument was made regarding Compuserve and AOL not needing email gateways to the general internet. Today we regard those people as having been hopelessly backwards and limited.
Quote:
Please don't reply by suggesting workarounds involving email and gateways and etc... While I have degrees in CS and manage server rooms, none of the people I'm communicating with have those credentials. Their expertise is elsewhere. If I were to send any of them a MMS, they'd receive and view it with no training or difficulty. It is unfortunate that is impossible without wasting a bunch of time. If I were to email a picture, they wouldn't see it until later in the day or even later in the week. If they were to send me an MMS, i'd have to use a pencil and paper to view it.
You again missed the point. iPhone email -> SMS. You email, they get it *ON THEIR PHONE*, and they get immediately. From their end, reception of an SMS looks *EXACTLY THE SAME*. There is no difference. There is no CS degree required. I send my brother 140char emails to his phone all the time - he never knows the difference, other than the sending number isn't mine. Just select their phone email address and send. It's just like regular email from your end, just like regular SMS from theirs. If that's too complicated for anyone... I dunno, perhaps they shouldn't be using SMS. "OMG! It's just like before! It's *blowing my mind*!"
For them to send you an email, show them how to do it from their phone - hell, just teach them how to send an email to anyone. I have yet to meet someone who didn't think it wasn't the slickest thing. "You mean I can *do that*?" Show them how to save a template with your email address, and use that as the seed instead of your phone number. (Who punches in a phone number? Almost no one - you save it, you look it up. Looking up a pre-saved gateway address is just as simple.)
No one has to do anything different to receive anything from you.
To send to you, they just have to select a different phone number entry from your contact.
Hmm, maybe you're right, that's *entirely* too complicated for people.
Quote:
Lack of MMS is a huge shortcoming. It may pay off in the long run if apple succeeds in switching the industry over to something better. That is a quite debatable subject. But what can't be argued is that the lack of this functionality is preventing iPhone users from joining the rest of mobile phone users in conveniently sharing pictures with each other.
No, it's not. Lack of information about how to use send email to an SMS account is the problem. The phone is fine. MMS is not. It's a horrible kludge that is being used as a scam.
Quote:
This isn't a theoretical assertion. It is the way things are today, not tomorrow, but today. iPhone users are not sending pictures to other phones.
Bollocks. I send them from my Mac, through email. I get them on my Mac, through email. An email client is an email client.
Only ignorance of how to append the carrier domain to the recipient's phone number is preventing iPhone users from doing so. Ignorance is easy to fix, as long as it's not willful ignorance.
And yes, I've heard the "ZOMG, I have to ask them their carrier *too*?" response. Uh, yes, just like you have to ask them their domain for the email. How ever do we survive doing that, I wonder?
Here's a quick solution: set up some email templates that massage your email address into the form needed for various carriers. (What's the most there, half a dozen for most people?) When someone asks you for your phone #, send it and the template for their carrier. (After all, you did ask for their carrier, right?) They save the info just like they would any other phone #, and voila. Their work is done. Now they have all the info to MMS to you, and they had to do no more than they would otherwise. You sent it, they saved it, they use it. Done.
Quote:
iPhone users aren't jumping through the hoops to receive pictures from other phones.
Because no hoops are needed to be jumped through. It's right there in your email.
Quote:
I still love my iPhone. But let's be honest about this shortcoming.
It's only a shortcoming if you refuse to recognize that there's really little difference other than how you look up the address for an email, or a phone number, from an address book. This isn't complicated, it's not some arcane workaround. It's simple, straightforward, and turns the knife just that little bit more on SMS.
Hell, who's up for writing a tiny little app for the iPhone that hooks into the Contacts DB and lets you select the carrier when you enter a phone number, so you get the corresponding email gateway info entered in as an email address marked 'SMS/MMS', automatically? Couldn't be simpler in that case - ask them for their phone #, ask them for their carrier, pick from the pop-up list, it creates the entry *and* creates the proper return template for that carrier, and sends to them. They save, and you're both done.
Anyway, it's obvious you're never going to convince me that MMS is a necessary feature, and I'm never going to convince you that there are alternatives that don't require advanced technical skills... the carrier marketing is apparently pretty good. How about we skip this topic, and get back to the iPhone 2.1 update?
