Hotspot Login, Easy Wi-Fi & iPhone OS 3.0
June 17th, 2009 by John
The Good News
Today’s release of the iPhone OS 3.0 has added what is really two new features that will benefit public Wi-Fi users:
- Automated login to any carrier provided Wi-Fi networks (e.g. all of AT&T’s Wi-Fi locations here in the US);
- An integrated mechanism for logging in to other public Wi-Fi networks via a web form.
Obviously, iPod touch users don’t benefit from the carrier network feature (they don’t have a carrier!), but they do get the integrated web form login mechanism.
The Bad News
As with the good news above, there are two bits of bad news here too:
- The integrated mechanism, at least for me, does not remember what I entered, forcing me to retype the information each time. The new autofill button is always unavailable even though I have the feature turned on in the Safari settings.
- When this form fails, or when you tap cancel to skip it, rather than leaving you connected the OS disconnects from the Wi-Fi network. That prevents you from using a third party smart-client like Devicescape’s Easy Wi-Fi.
Disappointed
Given that our apps are unable to serve their purpose in this new version of the OS, we took the difficult decision to remove them from sale in the App Store last night. That’s very disappointing for us as we’ve been ardent supporters of the iPhone platform since the beginning. We had a version of our app for jailbroken phones long before the SDK was ever announced. We even demoed that version to the iPhone management team at Apple to illustrate how important we felt public Wi-Fi access would become for the iPhone and iPod touch devices.
While we are obviously disappointed that our apps have been disabled by this new release, we’re also hopeful that the message about the importance of public Wi-Fi has been understood at Apple. Hotspot login clients are not as simple to write as one might think at first glance, especially not ones that must support thousands of different networks. It has taken us several years to get to the point where we can connect to that many networks, and even now there are still some networks that surprise us with a new trick.
The Future
For Devicescape, the fact that we don’t have an opportunity to help our valued users connect to their preferred hotspots effortlessly is frustrating. But, we’re not giving up on the iPhone platform! Far from it in fact. We have been working very hard since we discovered the problem to find out how we can re-enable our apps, and as soon as we can make them valuable again they will come back onto the store. We also have new features in the works, ironically enabled by the 3.0 version of the OS, that will make them even better.
In closing, we’d like to thank our iPhone and iPod touch users for their support to date, and ask you to hang on to your apps while we sort out what we can and cannot do in this new 3.0 world. We have big plans for our applications on all our platforms, and while we’re temporarily out of the App Store, we will be back. We’d also love to hear from you about your experiences with the Wi-Fi in the new OS, either via the comments here on the blog or through our forum.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Hi,
Why do you continue to sale the wifi track on appstore, since they don’t work with the 3.o firmware. Is it hoonest?
June 18th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Hello Claude,
WiFi Track is not our app, so we have no control over that being available or not, nor whether it works on 3.0 or not (I don’t actually have the app installed even).
Rgds,
John…
June 18th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I am curious to see what happens on my iphone. I loved this app as a workaround for a problem I had with my iphone where, at Starbucks, it recognized the phone as a laptop instead of an iphone and asked me for info I did not have. Neither Apple, no ATT were able to fix the problem; at one point ATT CS suggested I ask for help from someone at Starbucks! Many people had this problem and easy wi-fi fixed it perfectly.
June 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
How about Serrengeti will that work at all
June 19th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Why did you wait until now to tell us. Certainly you must have known for some quite some time. The 3.0 SDK has been out there for months. You should have warned us beforehand - we might not have jumped into 3.0 so rapidly.
June 19th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Thank you for notifying us about this problem in such a timely manner.
I rely on this app at work. Our WiFi kicks us off after just a minute of inactivity and it is frustrating to keep retyping my login on the iPod keyboard. I will probably wait to update my OS until this problem is resolved.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Hi,
Sorry to hear that. Your software is really helpful. I hope you will resolve the problem sooner or later. Keep trying, please!
June 20th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Disappointed, hope things work out. What about Serengeti, is it also useless at this point?
June 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am
Kudos to Devicescape for Clarity, Honesty, Brevity and informing its customers about the change. If only more businesses would take this simple route to producing happy customers. Even bad news is easier when communicated. Thank you.
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Hello all,
No, Serengeti is affected the same way as the Easy Wi-Fi apps. Sorry for not making that clearer in the post.
Ralph: we didn’t see the problem until the final pre-release, and even then we only saw it on one test device. The reason is explained in this MacWorld article. Something we’d never have expected!
Rgds,
John…
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:09 am
i got this app. almost when it first came out, but i have never been able to use it. So can someone break it down for me into lamis terms so i can. i have the iphone.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 am
Christopher,
Have you had a look at the user guide for the app online? It might help explain how to use the app. If that doesn’t help, and you have specific questions about how to set it up, or how to use the app in a hotspot, feel free to ask them in our forum too (we can answer them more easily there as the forum will notify you automatically when somebody replies to your thread, and we have an offline mechanism for sharing information you might not want in public too).
HTH,
John…
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
This application was one of the few apps that I actually used with my ipod touch. I loved it. Hope you can fix it. It way very very handy.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
This sucks, the new login system barely works and is infinitely worse than using easy wifi at my local starbucks.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Thanks for the info. I hope you can get Easy Wifi for AT&T working again soon. I used it every day.
June 26th, 2009 at 1:51 am
I received an update to 3.0.78, but didn’t see any announcements. Not had a chance to try it yet. Does this mean it now works fine?
June 29th, 2009 at 9:01 am
I have a Touch 2g and Easy Wi-Fi is great. I am waiting to upgrade to the new iPhone OS 3.0 in hopes that you will be able to get the incompatibility issue resolved quickly. Easy Wi-Fi has been a fast, dependable app that’s easy to work with.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I love your software so much and can’t even found any other’s software to replace. I wish the new version will release very soon.