You might notice that the main Easy WiFi application is not currently available in Apple’s app store.  We actually removed availability of the app a few days back because the behavior wasn’t quite right on some devices and networks and we wanted to ready a new version.  Ironically, we got hit in the much reported “WiFi scanner” purge that Apple did yesterday, so Apple removed our already unavailable app!

Now, the Network version of Easy WiFi isn’t a WiFi scanner, although it does try to do smart stuff with WiFi on the iPhone OS, and this may have triggered Apple’s action.  Nonetheless, we’re working on a new version which should calm their concerns and it should be in process within the next few hours.  All being well, we’ll have a new app approved and available soon.  Watch this space.

As part of our continuing goal to improve Easy WiFi we’re running a survey.   If you’re a user of the Easy WiFi app on your device, or the web portal at easywifi.com, this is a good chance to tell us what you think!

The survey is brief and should take 5 minutes or less to complete.  We’ll post the results here in early March, but you can be assured we’ll take your input to heart.

Click here to access the survey!

Many thanks in advance,

Dave

The Easy Wi-Fi multi network application (white icon) is temporarily unavailable in the Apple App Store.    It will be restored on or around October 20th.

So, why is it unavailable?  Well, we’re working on a big new release, version 4.  Due to the odd behavior of the App Store we can’t have the old version available while we also have a newer version with restricted availability.  We’re not quite ready for prime time on the new app so we want to get it out to our partners and friends who will check it out and give us great suggestions.  This forces us to halt broad availability and control access via Apple’s “promo codes.”

Sorry for the delay.  Meantime you could use another version of Easy Wi-Fi (they’re all extensible to any hotspot provider).

What does version 4 contain?  Well, it’s a secret!  But we’re quite excited as it adds a revolutionary capability that many of you have asked for.  Here’s a graphic from the app to tickle your imagination.  Can you guess?

Want to be among the select reviewers of the new app?  Send us an email request.  We have 10 promo codes available and we’ll allocate them based on the inventiveness of your guess on what’s in version 4 and the sincerity of your plea

We’re happy to announce that Easy Wi-Fi works fine in the latest 3.1 firmware for the iPhone and iPod touch.  Yay!  Thanks to our friends at Apple for helping accommodate us.

Having got that out the way, there are a couple of things you might need to know.  First of all, Apple’s special support only applies to the original Easy Wi-Fi multi-network application (the one with the white icon).  If you’re using any of the other Easy Wi-Fi apps, like the AT&T or T-Mobile version, you’ll need to install the original version too.  It’s free in the AppStore.  You don’t need to use it: just the act of installing it has the effect of telling the iPhone OS not to do “smart” stuff with your Wi-Fi connection in hotspots.

Finally, if you’re one of the many iPod touch users who never upgraded from 2.x firmware, ignore all of this.  You’re fine.  The issue only occurs with iPhone OS 3.0, and if you upgrade you’ll be jumping past that version from now on.

We’re relieved to be back working better on the iPhone and iPod, although it’s clear that Apple hotspot support is still a work in progress.  They did a great job by automating the operator’s Wi-Fi so that sign-in on AT&T (in the US) is seamless.   But their support for other hotspots is really poor and we’re glad that we can help a little with an automated solution.

We’re finding out a little more now, especially the reason why some people are not seeing any problem running the Easy Wi-Fi apps under iPhone OS 3.0. [Check out the MacWorld article about the new login capabilities of iPhone OS 3.0.]

We’ve also found a case where the app can still be useful even without that workaround, so several of the Easy Wi-Fi apps will be returning to the store today as free apps!

We’ll try to keep this blog updated with what we learn, as we learn it (within the limitations of any non-disclosure agreements).

Re-authentication

On the AT&T network we have noticed that depending on what you do once connected, you can be pretty quickly timed-out. In that case, when you try to access the web you’ll get the regular login form, and, of course, other apps like email just fail. You can make the built-in authentication work again by turning Wi-Fi off and back on, but you can also just launch Easy Wi-Fi to handle the re-authentication for you.

We’re assuming that this will also be true on other networks where the access controller times out the client devices when they’re idle without actually forcing them to disconnect from the Wi-Fi layer. Please let us know your experiences.

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:

1. Automated login to any carrier provided Wi-Fi networks (e.g. all of AT&T’s Wi-Fi locations here in the US);
2. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Here at Devicescape HQ, we’re hard at work preparing our next software release for S60 handsets.  We’re not quite ready to share it with the whole world yet, but we’d like to show it to some of our more technical users to get their feedback and suggestions.  If you’re interested in helping us design new features and make our product better, leave us a comment and we’ll email you back with setup instructions.

Devicescape is proud to announce that we’re now offering technical support contracts for any developers working with the open source wpa_supplicant software. As a developer, you know that there are times in a project when it is too late to switch from open source to a commercial product, but you are facing problems you just cannot resolve. The open source community is a great resource, and there are a lot of people out there who are very willing to help when they can, but sometimes you want a guaranteed response (or you don’t want to let your competitors know you’re working on a Wi-Fi device).

Or maybe you just don’t need any of our advanced features (Wi-Fi Protected Setup, Cisco Compatible Extensions or remote management) in your current project, but would prefer the security of knowing that you had a place to turn for technical support should you hit a problem integrating the open source supplicant with your system.

That’s where our WPA Supplicant Support comes in!

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Those who visit here regularly (that’s all of you, no?), might notice that we’ve added three big buttons to the sidebar inviting you to connect with Devicescape through three popular social networking tools: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. So, if you’re already a member of one or more of those services, why not click the link(s) and connect with us.

Of course, you can still communicate with us through the comments right here in the blog, or for more technical questions through our support forum. We’re just trying to make it as simple as possible for you to keep up with all the exciting things we’re working on, and to be able to get us feedback on our products and service.

Having a user base in excess of one million enthusiastic members gives us a great opportunity to query the habits, desires, and problems facing Wi-Fi users today.  With that in mind, we’ve decided to conduct regular surveys of our membership, where we can ask insightful questions of this leading-edge community.  We plan to conduct the survey quarterly, and publish the results in a piece of original research that we call “The Devicescape Wi-Fi Report”.  Catchy huh?

We conducted our first survey in January and have now published the first Devicescape Wi-Fi report for Q1, 2009.  Some of the things we learned were quite surprising, while others simply confirmed what we already knew.  Here’s a sample of what we learned:

• Most users want Muni Wi-Fi and (surprise!) they’d be willing to pay for it like a utility
• Most users prefer Wi-Fi to 3G and want it built into all phones and bundled with cellular plans
• People like iPhone Wi-Fi best while on the road (no surprise!)

Now that the first one is done, we’re working hard on the Q2 report.  We plan on probing more deeply and hope to invite our friends in the industry to participate through crafting good questions and help promote Wi-Fi issues exposed in the report.  Anyone can make use of the Report, provided that they refer back to Devicescape and don’t sell the data.

If you’re interested in reading more, check out the Devicescape Wi-Fi report at devicescape.com/wifi_report …and do get in touch if you’re interested in participating in future reports.