Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

MacRumors · Mar 9, 2012

Tether, the company behind the iTether iOS app that Apple approved and then quickly removed from the App Store, has a new tethering solution. This time, it's HTML5 based and doesn't require downloading anything from the App Store.

"It was clear from our initial application iTether, there was enormous demand within the iPhone ecosystem," says Tim Burke, CEO of Tether. "It was unfortunate that Apple decided to remove our application, only 20 hours after we launched. However, this caused us to innovate. Our underlying patent-pending technology behind Tether for iPhone is unlike anything on the market."

Tether's new version for the iPhone is purely based on HTML5 and creates a completely wireless connection over AdHoc. This circumvents the need of buying the application directly from Apple's App Store and allows any iPhone or iPad with a data connection to allow tethering.

The service costs $30 per year and can be ordered through Tether's website.

Article Link: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

striker33 · Mar 9, 2012

And now my WiFi only iPad purchase has been justified!

TallGuy1970 · Mar 9, 2012

This is what happens when companies are too restrictive. Others find a way to go around them. I said the same thing about OnLive's service and Microsoft, and it applies here. It's also why we have jailbreaks for iPhones.

Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products, but you squeeze your fists too tightly and things are bound to slip through the cracks.

Joshwawilson · Mar 9, 2012

I wish I snagged up iTether when it was on the app store!

The Economist · Mar 9, 2012

Give the middle finger to the carriers!

TallGuy1970 said:
This is what happens when companies are too restrictive. Others find a way to go around them. I said the same thing about OnLive's service and Microsoft, and it applies here. It's also why we have jailbreaks for iPhones.

Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products, but you squeeze your fists too tightly and things are bound to slip through the cracks.

Wrong. Blame the carriers, not Apple.

Caliber26 · Mar 9, 2012

striker33 said:
And now my WiFi only iPad purchase has been justified!

Not so fast...

The original version required USB. Has this changed, or does it continue to require a USB connection? Nothing in the article says this has changed.

EDIT: Never mind, I just re-read it and I see that it does create a wireless connection.

Michael Scrip · Mar 9, 2012

Can the carriers shut this down?

w00master · Mar 9, 2012

TallGuy1970 said:
This is what happens when companies are too restrictive. Others find a way to go around them. I said the same thing about OnLive's service and Microsoft, and it applies here. It's also why we have jailbreaks for iPhones.

Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products, but you squeeze your fists too tightly and things are bound to slip through the cracks.

To be fair, this isn't really Apple but the carriers.

w00master

the-oz-man · Mar 9, 2012

TallGuy1970 said:
This is what happens when companies are too restrictive. Others find a way to go around them. I said the same thing about OnLive's service and Microsoft, and it applies here. It's also why we have jailbreaks for iPhones.

Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products, but you squeeze your fists too tightly and things are bound to slip through the cracks.

Your blame is clearly in the wrong place. The carriers are at fault here. You can tether any time with a current iDevice. You just have to pay insane amounts of money to use data that you have already paid for in the first place.

bgtrack · Mar 9, 2012

Sucks to suck AT&T.

djrod · Mar 9, 2012

TallGuy1970 said:
This is what happens when companies are too restrictive. Others find a way to go around them. I said the same thing about OnLive's service and Microsoft, and it applies here. It's also why we have jailbreaks for iPhones.

Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products, but you squeeze your fists too tightly and things are bound to slip through the cracks.

Blame your carriers, I have free tether with my data plan of 10($13)/month for 500mb of data.

macbook pro i5 · Mar 9, 2012

TallGuy1970 said:
This is what happens when companies are too restrictive. Others find a way to go around them. I said the same thing about OnLive's service and Microsoft, and it applies here. It's also why we have jailbreaks for iPhones.

Don't get me wrong. I love Apple products, but you squeeze your fists too tightly and things are bound to slip through the cracks.

Couldn't have said it better myself!!!!

outphase · Mar 9, 2012

striker33 said:
And now my WiFi only iPad purchase has been justified!

You can't run tether.com's client-side software on the iPad

EBSkater · Mar 9, 2012

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B179)

striker33 said:
And now my WiFi only iPad purchase has been justified!

Uh, the original tether app streamed data from the device, not the laptop. A wifi only device doesn't supply its own data, so your comment is moronic.

outphase · Mar 9, 2012

EBSkater said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9B179)

Uh, the original tether app streamed data from the device, not the laptop. A wifi only device doesn't supply its own data, so your comment is moronic.

I think he meant tether your WiFi iPad to your 3G/"4G" iPhone.

w00master · Mar 9, 2012

macbook pro i5 said:
Couldn't have said it better myself!!!!

Again... explain how this is Apple's fault?

Normally, I'm with many on Apple's restrictions in the App store, but in this instance it's entirely the carrier's doing.

w00master

nikhsub1 · Mar 9, 2012

striker33 said:
And now my WiFi only iPad purchase has been justified!

It won't work the way you think. Rewatch the video. You have to create an ad-hoc network ON YOUR PC or MAC (you can't do this on an ipad), connect the 2 and they your PC or MAC (not your iPad) can surf via your iphones connection. You can substitute the iphone for an LTE ipad as well. Short story, you can not tether a wifi iPad and an iPhone.

nilk · Mar 9, 2012

This is actually really brilliant. I imagine they are basically creating a webapp that acts as a relay. There's not much Apple can do to stop this, especially you involve a proxy server. Do it over SSL, and AT&T may have a hard time detecting it.

Downside, I dont' think this will work on an iPad, because I think you need special software on tethered device. Though, in theory a jailbroken iOS device or Android device could do it if they wrote the software for this.

magiic · Mar 9, 2012

djrod said:
Blame your carriers, I have free tether with my data plan of 10($13)/month for 500mb of data.

I've got 6GB of tetherable data for $30 here in Canada! It's great to have.

macbook pro i5 · Mar 9, 2012

w00master said:
Again... explain how this is Apple's fault?

Normally, I'm with many on Apple's restrictions in the App store, but in this instance it's entirely the carrier's doing.

w00master

Well our carriers dont charge us for tethering if we get 500MB we get 500 MB for whatever we want but apple removed the app from the app store so i would blame them. they could have left it in the other countries you know?

WannaGoMac · Mar 9, 2012

Tetherme still better

Jailbreak for the win and Tetherme... far simpler and easier to do tethering since it enables the hotspot feature built into iOS.

AriX · Mar 9, 2012

Brilliant. I wonder if this reroutes stuff through their server? If not, it's probably TCP-only with WebSockets?

nanotlj · Mar 9, 2012

I think it is absolutely absurd for the carriers to double dip for tethering for tiered data plans.
It may be okay to disable it for unlimited plan to avoid abuse. But it just does not make sense for tiered data plans. We simply use what we paid and pay what we used.

Nothlit · Mar 9, 2012

striker33 said:
And now my WiFi only iPad purchase has been justified!

Not so fast. If you watch the video, you'll see that even though it only uses HTML5 technology on the iPhone, it requires active software running on the PC in order for the PC to use the iPhone's data connection. So it doesn't look like this will work with an iPad in place of the PC.

w00master · Mar 9, 2012

macbook pro i5 said:
Well our carriers dont charge us for tethering if we get 500MB we get 500 MB for whatever we want but apple removed the app from the app store so i would blame them. they could have left it in the other countries you know?

I think Apple did this for simplicity, but totally get what your saying.

w00master

Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

macrumors bot

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors regular

Suspended

macrumors 68020

macrumors 604

macrumors 65816

macrumors 6502

macrumors regular

macrumors 65816

macrumors 65816

macrumors 65816

macrumors member

macrumors 65816

macrumors 65816

macrumors 68030

macrumors 6502a

macrumors regular

macrumors 65816

macrumors 68030

macrumors 6502

macrumors regular

macrumors regular

macrumors 65816

Our Staff