AT&T activates MMS for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS users

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  • Reply 141 of 176
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Lol I just received this from AT&T over 1 day late!:



    Quote:

    AT&T Free Msg: Picture and video messaging (MMS) is now available for iPhone. Your existing messaging plan includes unlimited send and receipt of text, picture & video messages. To enable MMS, connect your iPhone to your computer and click "Check for Update" in iTunes, then restart your iPhone.





    AT&T is so late!!!
  • Reply 142 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post


    Not only is MMS unpopular now, it was never popular. It was never a must have feature.

    Apple should not have caved in to the disingenuous MMS pressure; they should have applied pressure on the industry to kill it and free people to use the technology in their phones without undo restrictions.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post


    No one used it in 2002 and no one uses it in 2009. It has never been a popular feature. Now, in the age of Facebook, Flicker, and MobileMe, there are easier and better ways to share pictures and videos with friends and the world at large.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by KingKuei View Post


    Actually, you're wrong. http://www.macworld.com/article/1429...ms_iphone.html The research from ABI is a paid-for publication, but the MacWorld article cites the relevant numbers.



    Global usage of MMS comprised only 2.5% of all messages sent worldwide. That's not exactly "heavy usage" as you so described for a technology that is 6-7 years old.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    MMS isn't popular. It's unpopular. People who like it are using the myth that it's popular to get adoption.. The numbers are known. Very small percentage.



    http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...s_network.html





    It's hard to know where to start. First of all, some of you need to have a better understanding of what a statistically significant number is. 2.5% of several billion is a very significant number. Yes, it's a small percentage of the total number of texts but that's b/c you don't include a photo with every sentence of a conversation. The ratio of photos to words in a textbook is very small so does that make the pictures insignificant? In 2005/2006 the percentage of the world population that had HIV/AIDS was 0.9%. Would you call that insignificant? The examples go on and on.



    One last thing to consider is that sometimes girls like to share photos with lucky guys like myself that they wouldn't want to post on a social networking site, if you catch my drift... and when they do that it is usually via MMS. It has been rather annoying that for the past couple years I had to reply with "could you email that instead?" Kind of a mood killer, you know?
  • Reply 143 of 176
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    Well, then you'd get a more fapulous rendition.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oneaburns View Post


    One last thing to consider is that sometimes girls like to share photos with lucky guys like myself that they wouldn't want to post on a social networking site, if you catch my drift... and when they do that it is usually via MMS. It has been rather annoying that for the past couple years I had to reply with "could you email that instead?" Kind of a mood killer, you know?



    btw they don't have to email it as you can send an MMS to an email address.
  • Reply 144 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by View Post


    Mel, you should know better. That article provides no context and quotes worldwide instead of figures in places like the U.S.



    This would be like me claiming the iPhone isn't popular because WORLDWIDE it sells a very small percentage of phones compared to countries where people are using $15 candybar phones while herding sheep.



    A text message is 160 bytes. A MMS message can be 300k+. Even if it were 1% of total messages the data differences would be huge but the state itself provides no context. How does knowing what percentage of total messaging it represents show how it is unpopular? It is just hand waving.



    Someone else showed it was just .7% of messages in the UK.



    Even if the figure doesn't spec the USA itself, so what?Are the only people who use iPhones in the USA? I don't think so.



    The only place where it seems to be really popular is Japan, so far at least. That would swing these figures even further downwards if the Japanese numbers were excluded.



    Your comparison has no meaning, because IT has no context. The iPhone sells against other smartphones. It doesn't sell against $15 dollar phones, though the $99 dollar model might be compelling enough for some of those low baller buyers. So Apple's got a 12.8% marketshare worldwide in smartphones, which is the proper context. In the US, as you want some numbers from here, the iPhone is 30% of smartphones. More context.



    It doesn't matter how much data is being sent. The popularity is the number of messages sent. These numbers are related to the number of messages, not the amount of data. If it meant data, then the number of MMS's sent would be far fewer. So I don't understand why you brought that up.



    If something is just 4.5% of the total, its unpopular. Like the Mac's percentage around the world. What does that tell us? It just tells us that most people don't think they want to do that, or use it. It doesn't meant that they won't in the future. But we can just go by todays numbers.



    Also, I can't find useful information about USA usage that's recent. The problem with the USA articles is that while some say that MMS usage is increasing by large amounts, it's so low in the USA that those large increases are expected. But the increases in the EU have been slowing down. Last year it was 16%, and while that sounds really good, that's on the downslope.



    So worldwide figures are here for us, and they do have meaning.



    If you can provide some new USA percentages of use, then please do so. It isn't that I haven't been looking.
  • Reply 145 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by teckstud View Post


    Thanks for that. You've finally explain what no one else here could. The speed is due in part of the size of the SMS vs email equivalent.



    Where did he mention e-mail? He didn't. He clearly compared the 160 character SMS to a 300KB MMS message.
  • Reply 146 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Davidslaton View Post


    The new iPhone update has limited mass texting to 10 people!! This is the worst possible thing to do.. I'm sure it was done to counter balance the mms rollout.. So upset about this!



    A lot of this is common on all networks.



    The purpose is to prevent spam.



    This is no different than mail servers turning mass e-mail messages back.



    It's also the same reason why some web site forums won't allow you to send another post for a specified time. Try to post successive posts on an Anandtech forum. You can't.
  • Reply 147 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oneaburns View Post


    It's hard to know where to start. First of all, some of you need to have a better understanding of what a statistically significant number is. 2.5% of several billion is a very significant number. Yes, it's a small percentage of the total number of texts but that's b/c you don't include a photo with every sentence of a conversation. The ratio of photos to words in a textbook is very small so does that make the pictures insignificant? In 2005/2006 the percentage of the world population that had HIV/AIDS was 0.9%. Would you call that insignificant? The examples go on and on.



    One last thing to consider is that sometimes girls like to share photos with lucky guys like myself that they wouldn't want to post on a social networking site, if you catch my drift... and when they do that it is usually via MMS. It has been rather annoying that for the past couple years I had to reply with "could you email that instead?" Kind of a mood killer, you know?



    It's your misunderstanding. Popularity is measured by percentage, not just absolute numbers.



    If Apple sold 70% of all digital media players, and the sold a million a year, and MS sold ten thousand, the neither of them would be popular when compared to other players perhaps, such as possibly a still popular Walkman.



    But if just talking about digital media players, the iPod would be popular, and the Zune would be unpopular.



    But if Apple sold 50 million a year, and the Zune sold a million, then the iPod would be popular in an absolute sense, and when compared to that, the Zune would be unpopular, even though MS sold the same million that I had in my first scenario.



    MMS is unpopular, very few of the messages sent as a percentage of all messages sent are MMS. That averages less than one MMS per smartphone, and far less than that when compared to all phones that can send them. That's pretty unpopular when compared to the number of SMS's sent by the same number of phones.
  • Reply 148 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    It's your misunderstanding. Popularity is measured by percentage, not just absolute numbers.



    If Apple sold 70% of all digital media players, and the sold a million a year, and MS sold ten thousand, the neither of them would be popular when compared to other players perhaps, such as possibly a still popular Walkman.



    But if just talking about digital media players, the iPod would be popular, and the Zune would be unpopular.



    But if Apple sold 50 million a year, and the Zune sold a million, then the iPod would be popular in an absolute sense, and when compared to that, the Zune would be unpopular, even though MS sold the same million that I had in my first scenario.



    MMS is unpopular, very few of the messages sent as a percentage of all messages sent are MMS. That averages less than one MMS per smartphone, and far less than that when compared to all phones that can send them. That's pretty unpopular when compared to the number of SMS's sent by the same number of phones.



    I am understanding just fine. You're still not seeing that you can't compare the number of SMS to MMS to arrive at an outcome of "popularity". They are two different things the same way that an email and an email with an attachment are different things. 98% of emails probably don't contain a picture attachment. I guess picture attachments in email aren't popular then. Oh, but wait...they're are extremely popular. Anyway, who are you to make a blanket statement like "MMS is unpopular" - like it's a definite thing. It's just your opinion and one you're trying to support it with numbers that don't relate.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    ...If something is just 4.5% of the total, its unpopular. Like the Mac's percentage around the world.

    ...



    Where do you get this stuff? Mac's only have 11% market share (estimated). Would you say that Mac's aren't popular? iPhones...by your data...are only 30% of the smartphone market. That means 70% are something else. Are iPhones not popular? Or do you have some magic percentage where you feel something is popular. If so, please share it with us.
  • Reply 149 of 176
    hill60hill60 Posts: 6,992member
    MMS is very popular among a very small group of people.



    There does that sound better, or a very small percentage of phone users send MMS.



    Which is borne out by the figures showing MMS usage as a part of total message usage is a very small number.



    The most popular use of MMS in recent years, seems to be as something to whine about the iPhone lacking.



    Coming next video calls which is also hugely popular amongst an even smaller percentage of phone users.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oneaburns View Post


    I am understanding just fine. You're still not seeing that you can't compare the number of SMS to MMS to arrive at an outcome of "popularity". They are two different things the same way that an email and an email with an attachment are different things. 98% of emails probably don't contain a picture attachment. I guess picture attachments in email aren't popular then. Oh, but wait...they're are extremely popular. Anyway, who are you to make a blanket statement like "MMS is unpopular" - like it's a definite thing. It's just your opinion and one you're trying to support it with numbers that don't relate.



  • Reply 150 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oneaburns View Post


    I am understanding just fine. You're still not seeing that you can't compare the number of SMS to MMS to arrive at an outcome of "popularity". They are two different things the same way that an email and an email with an attachment are different things. 98% of emails probably don't contain a picture attachment. I guess picture attachments in email aren't popular then. Oh, but wait...they're are extremely popular. Anyway, who are you to make a blanket statement like "MMS is unpopular" - like it's a definite thing. It's just your opinion and one you're trying to support it with numbers that don't relate.



    They are both messages. MMS has been out for a while in a number of places, and it's not being used that much.



    If there are 100 million smartphones out there and there is less than .5 MMS per smartphone sent a year, you call that popular? That's not including, as I said before, all the other phones that can do MMS. Meanwhile, the iPhone is the most popular camera on Facebook. Those pics aren't being sent by MMS. I don't know more than a small handful of people who have used MMS to send pics anywhere. They use e-mail for that because it's better, and you know it will work, which is more than can be said for MMS.



    Meanwhile SMS has been getting more popular, and it's used a lot these days, surprisingly for me, the US included, so far, MORE than e-mail.



    So yes, they can be compared.



    Quote:

    Where do you get this stuff? Mac's only have 11% market share (estimated). Would you say that Mac's aren't popular? iPhones...by your data...are only 30% of the smartphone market. That means 70% are something else. Are iPhones not popular? Or do you have some magic percentage where you feel something is popular. If so, please share it with us.



    Macs have a 4% worldwide marketshare. And even though I'm a very big Mac user, as everyone who has been here for a while knows very well, I'm not going to deny the truth. Around the world, they are just not popular.



    A 30% rate, in the USA, for the iPhone, is pretty popular, because it's one of the most purchased smartphones. Around the world, it's 12.8%, not as popular.



    Are these numbers too much for you to understand?
  • Reply 151 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by hill60 View Post


    The most popular use of MMS in recent years, seems to be as something to whine about the iPhone lacking.



    That's it, exactly. The people who complained about the iPhone lacking it were not iPhone proponents hoping to make the platform better. They were mostly journalists with a bone to pick against Apple and everything they do. Does anyone really think Molly Wood from cNet will start speaking well of the iPhone now? No! Now they say that the iPhone is pathetic for being so late to the game. The beat goes on: same rhythm, different drum.



    I'm surprised no one has bashed the iPhone for not having a redial button. At least that is a feature people actually use.
  • Reply 152 of 176
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by oneaburns View Post


    I am understanding just fine. You're still not seeing that you can't compare the number of SMS to MMS to arrive at an outcome of "popularity". They are two different things the same way that an email and an email with an attachment are different things. 98% of emails probably don't contain a picture attachment. I guess picture attachments in email aren't popular then. Oh, but wait...they're are extremely popular. Anyway, who are you to make a blanket statement like "MMS is unpopular" - like it's a definite thing. It's just your opinion and one you're trying to support it with numbers that don't relate.







    Where do you get this stuff? Mac's only have 11% market share (estimated). Would you say that Mac's aren't popular? iPhones...by your data...are only 30% of the smartphone market. That means 70% are something else. Are iPhones not popular? Or do you have some magic percentage where you feel something is popular. If so, please share it with us.



    He's grasping at straws. Firstly he can't explian why it's faster which is likethe number 1 reason people use it. Thenhe fails to explain why Apple would provit it alo g with EVERY OTHER cellphone on the market. I think it's a generational thing- he'll never get it.
  • Reply 153 of 176
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    Where did he mention e-mail? He didn't. He clearly compared the 160 character SMS to a 300KB MMS message.



    See my reply above
  • Reply 154 of 176
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post




    I'm surprised no one has bashed the iPhone for not having a redial button. At least that is a feature people actually use.



    that would be nice actually- you think we'll get it in 4.0?
  • Reply 155 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by teckstud View Post


    He's grasping at straws. Firstly he can't explian why it's faster which is likethe number 1 reason people use it. Then he fails to explain why Apple would provide it along with EVERY OTHER cellphone on the market. I think it's a generational thing- he'll never get it.



    You're probably right.
  • Reply 156 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mac Voyer View Post


    Not only is MMS unpopular now, it was never popular. It was never a must have feature. Does anyone remember when cameras first started appearing on phones. The carriers almost killed it as a useful feature by limiting the way pictures were shared. You had to pay money to upload the pictures to a website and look at them. Even so, you could not necessarily download them to your computer. Taking pictures was a chore and getting them off the phone was nearly impossible. Camera phones were useless and expensive. People were looking for phones that did not have cameras in them.



    It was only then that carriers introduced MMS. It was a way that people could send those pictures to other mobile users and double pay the carrier for the privilege. The iPhone was one of the first phones with a camera that you could actually use as a camera. You could take pictures with it and sync them to your computer without hassle. Suddenly, people didn't have to be locked in by the carrier's schemes to charge for you using the pictures you took on your phone. The iPhone was freedom from MMS. MMS was never more than a half-baked money grab by the carriers to further abuse the consumer and cripple their hardware.



    Apple should not have caved in to the disingenuous MMS pressure; they should have applied pressure on the industry to kill it and free people to use the technology in their phones without undo restrictions.



    Well said.
  • Reply 157 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JustFrozen View Post


    so if u already have 3.1, its just a harmless carrier update similar to the tethering hack, right?



    my wife's 3G gets screwed up (basically bricked for days) every time we do an OS update, but it's currently at 3.1



    What you need to do is update it with the same os that u set up the iPhone. I get that with my iPod touch because I set it up on a Macbook and every time I updated it on a xp machine it goes into rescue mode. I think it is how the memory is formatted (fat vs hfs).
  • Reply 158 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by teckstud View Post


    See my reply above



    I don't see how that answers the question.
  • Reply 159 of 176
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,600member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by teckstud View Post


    that would be nice actually- you think we'll get it in 4.0?



    It's in Recents. Don't you know that?



    When in phone mode, go to the second from the left menu item on the bottom that says "recents".



    Then you can choose from the list of outgoing calls and incoming calls there and it will dial it.



    It's far better than a simple "redial" button.



    Are either of you guys actually using the phone, because this is one of the more obvious, and well done features.
  • Reply 160 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    It's in Recents. Don't you know that?



    When in phone mode, go to the second from the left menu item on the bottom that says "recents".



    Then you can choose from the list of outgoing calls and incoming calls there and it will dial it.



    It's far better than a simple "redial" button.



    Are either of you guys actually using the phone, because this is one of the more obvious, and well done features.



    I've been using the iPhone since the 4GB model. The "recents" list is not the same as a no look redial. On my last few dumb phones, redial was handled by double tapping the call button. It can also be done easily on BT headsets. I agree that Apple's implementation is more complete and makes perfect sense for a touchscreen device. My point was that those comparing dumb phone features to the iPhone feature list like MMS have at least one more thing to complain about if they were so inclined.
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