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iPhone - suggestions as to why no MMS?

I think if it wasn't included in the initial setup, it won't ever be part of the iPhone. its such a basic thing, that to have left it out from the offset, must mean that it was a conscious descision by apple.
i just dont understand why! why even have a camera in the first place? its not good enough to take serious photos with.
 
gceo said:
First off, I think that Apple is working on this, and I think it has something to do with backing up SMS, and MMS conversations with Mail in Leopard. That's my last hope. When you restore a iPhone, you loose all your SMS, and to me (and probably Apple) that's unacceptable. That's my thought on why they are waiting... now...

<rant>
I am so SICK and TIRED of people saying that just use email!!!!! That's a bandaid, workaround, and IT IS NOT A MMS REPLACEMENT. Most all of the phones in the world can't do email with attachments. My old piece of crap Motorola did it!!!!!!!!!! arg.
</rant>

<sorry>
Really.
</sorry>
Click to expand...

Completely agree, especially considering that "use email" is entirely useless for receiving MMS messages. Nor to mention the sheer idiocy of having to grab a pen and paper, writing down a convoluted message ID and password, and having to go to a web site in order to view them. They got AT&T to do MMS....it'd have been nice if they could get AT&T to maybe work on some sort of method that it would get an MMS, convert it to an email, and email it to the iPhone....or something!

Also, the restore as a matter of course will wipe out your SMS messages...it is completely wiping the phone's memory. Just sync the phone with iTunes beforehand, and sync afterwards and all is good. I've still got messages on my phone from the day I bought it, and I've restored it several times.

Honestly, I hope that they're not going to tie the phone more to Leopard or .mac.....the iPhone as it is for the most part is an excellent cross platform device, and there'd be a LOTTA hollering from the not so small Windows based iPhone user demographic. But I guess we'll see. Honestly, I don't see them as doing anything with MMS...my guess is that bug fixing and newish features like iTunes wifi and the Starbucks thing are a LOT more important to them right now than writing an MMS app.
 
benfilan said:
I think if it wasn't included in the initial setup, it won't ever be part of the iPhone. its such a basic thing, that to have left it out from the offset, must mean that it was a conscious descision by apple.
i just dont understand why! why even have a camera in the first place? its not good enough to take serious photos with.
Click to expand...

Why have a camera... because it's a basic feature now... so why not have mms since it is also a basic feature.
 
pipesterdp said:
For the past hour I have been trying to think if this could be solved by a 3rd party... but I think its a network thing too... the network has to know that the iphone doenst do mms (since we get the awesome veiwmymessage.com). So it doenst look like 3rd party is the solution.
Click to expand...
I know I'm old Samsung P207, before I added the media package to my SMS I would receive the viewmymessage.com texts. After adding it, they showed up as images from within the SMS.
 
benfilan said:
apple, not in touch? they spent sooooo long planning and developing the iPhone. it just seems like such an obvious thing.
Click to expand...

Talks started in Feb 2005, but Apple only really got going on the iPhone in January 2006. A year later, Jobs showed it off.

From a Jan 2007 Herald Tribune interview: "They considered an Apple-branded mobile phone service that would piggyback on the Cingular network, but rejected the idea. Then, a year ago, they settled on the final concept, an Apple- made phone for subscribers to Cingular, which is owned by AT&T."

So they haven't had much time to work on it. And they spent effort on the high-glitz items such as YouTube instead of generic stuff like Contacts search, MMS, etc.

Also, Jobs is almost as old as I am. And statistics show that most of us older folk prefer email, far and away over instant messaging. (Perhaps the idea that you'll spend more time editing it.)
 
kdarling said:
Talks started in Feb 2005, but Apple only really got going on the iPhone in January 2006. A year later, Jobs showed it off.

From a Jan 2007 Herald Tribune interview: "They considered an Apple-branded mobile phone service that would piggyback on the Cingular network, but rejected the idea. Then, a year ago, they settled on the final concept, an Apple- made phone for subscribers to Cingular, which is owned by AT&T."

So they haven't had much time to work on it. And they spent effort on the high-glitz items such as YouTube instead of generic stuff like Contacts search, MMS, etc.

Also, Jobs is almost as old as I am. And statistics show that most of us older folk prefer email, far and away over instant messaging. (Perhaps the idea that you'll spend more time editing it.)
Click to expand...
Whatever the case is, it's certainly NOT because Jobs is targeting Apple products, ESPECIALLY the iPhone to his age group.
 
hard-case said:
Also, the restore as a matter of course will wipe out your SMS messages...it is completely wiping the phone's memory. Just sync the phone with iTunes beforehand, and sync afterwards and all is good. I've still got messages on my phone from the day I bought it, and I've restored it several times.
Click to expand...

My reference was more that it might be a feature in Leopard. All other data on the iPhone is accessible on your desktop. Photos are in iPhoto, email is in Mail, music is in iTunes, calendar in iCal, bookmarks in Safari, contacts are in Address Book, etc.. etc... all the data in the phone is accessible on the synced machine, except SMS conversations, and Notes. You can't access them on the Desktop. We know Notes will be syncable via Leopard. Perhaps MMS/SMS will have the same fate.... We can only hope.
 
In my opinion it does suck there is no MMS. I also don't think it's coming either. It is a shame, because it is a highly used service. Email is not a solution to MMS contrary to what some posters think, (oh I guess i should stop bitching now) however it is a band aid for some situations in the meantime if the receiving device supports it.
 
hard-case said:
Completely agree, especially considering that "use email" is entirely useless for receiving MMS messages. Nor to mention the sheer idiocy of having to grab a pen and paper, writing down a convoluted message ID and password, and having to go to a web site in order to view them. They got AT&T to do MMS....it'd have been nice if they could get AT&T to maybe work on some sort of method that it would get an MMS, convert it to an email, and email it to the iPhone....or something!

Also, the restore as a matter of course will wipe out your SMS messages...it is completely wiping the phone's memory. Just sync the phone with iTunes beforehand, and sync afterwards and all is good. I've still got messages on my phone from the day I bought it, and I've restored it several times.

Honestly, I hope that they're not going to tie the phone more to Leopard or .mac.....the iPhone as it is for the most part is an excellent cross platform device, and there'd be a LOTTA hollering from the not so small Windows based iPhone user demographic. But I guess we'll see. Honestly, I don't see them as doing anything with MMS...my guess is that bug fixing and newish features like iTunes wifi and the Starbucks thing are a LOT more important to them right now than writing an MMS app.
Click to expand...

This is great point and unfortunately I think Steve Jobs is going that way. Linking it to .mac and Leopard means more dough for him.
 
overcast said:
Not to mention that site is entirely in FLASH!
Click to expand...

I'm positive that I have actually used that site on my iPhone and was able to view the picture.

Anyway, I was thinking: Maybe the reason Apple didn't include some of these "basic" features, like MMS & cut/paste, is so that they can continually keep trickling in new features here and there, that people want bad enough to accept the update, thereby giving Apple more opportunities to break any new hacks that may come out.
 
BulkHedd said:
I'm positive that I have actually used that site on my iPhone and was able to view the picture.

Anyway, I was thinking: Maybe the reason Apple didn't include some of these "basic" features, like MMS & cut/paste, is so that they can continually keep trickling in new features here and there, that people want bad enough to accept the update, thereby giving Apple more opportunities to break any new hacks that may come out.
Click to expand...

I'm 100% positive I could not get it to work. The picture and username/password is in Flash only. :confused:
 
I would be very surprised to find out that none of the Apple software engineers working on the iphone since its conception has made an MMS app. I a sure that they have more than one perfectly acceptable MMS app ready to go. And I can only agree (at the risk of getting called a vinegar bag) that Steve simply didn't want to include it. Don't know why not though, it's more profit for the cellular providers that Apple could demand a share of.
another posibility is that they will introduce it when sales are falling, or maybe with officially approved 3rd party apps. They might even charge you extra for apps like they do for iPod games now. I'd prob pay for extra apps.
Another glaring omission is being able to use an iPhone as a modem, especially with all the hassles we have been used to using phones designed for a windows world.
 
I've received a bunch of MMS messages via the website.

It sucks and it's stupid and we deserve MMS, but it does work (occasionally).

There have been a few times where the site would simply not accept my user/pass - and when I contacted customer service, they said the site/service may be down and to try again in a few hours.

I tried the next day and it worked.

I've accessed the site from my both phone and from my macbook pro.

The end.


overcast said:
I'm 100% positive I could not get it to work. The picture and username/password is in Flash only. :confused:
Click to expand...
 
knowing how the features are laid out on the iphone att end, this is something that would need to be switched on by att IN ADDITION to having the app. So, i dunno... the situation just kind of sucks...
 
G4R2 said:
Also, MMS doesn't have the same value on the iPhone as it does on other handsets, even lesser ones, that feature both video and voice recording. I would hope that if MMS does come to the iPhone it would come bundled with both video and voice recording applets. I'm curious how useable MMS would be over ATT's 2.5 g EDGE network.
Click to expand...


Couldn't be any worse than Sprint was, and I had no problems with it. A minute or two, tops, to send or receive a typical MMS.

I want it, along with cut-n-paste. A real speakerphone. A ringtone tool for royalty-free sounds. A decent camera that doesn't look like I have Parkinson's (apologies to those that do, but I can't tolerate the photos I get with it). You know, nothing earth-shaking, but relatively common and accepted for a multi-purpose phone, and not massively difficult or expensive to implement. Also, nothing that should require any changes to the hardware.

Software Update, anyone?
 
G4R2 said:
Also, MMS doesn't have the same value on the iPhone as it does on other handsets, even lesser ones, that feature both video and voice recording. I would hope that if MMS does come to the iPhone it would come bundled with both video and voice recording applets. I'm curious how useable MMS would be over ATT's 2.5 g EDGE network.
Click to expand...

You do know that MMS has been on ATT/Cingular's Edge network for at least 3 years right?

3G isn't all its cracked up to be (Here in the US, yet anyway). I will take an edge phone over a 3G anyday of the week right now. As I mentioned in a forum before, 3G isn't widespread in the US yet. So, a 3G iPhone would be more useless than 1.1.1!!!
 
overcast said:
Whatever the case is, it's certainly NOT because Jobs is targeting Apple products, ESPECIALLY the iPhone to his age group.
Click to expand...

And why not? The whole concept is an easy-to-use phone, with minimal features so as not to confuse anyone. Just what your Grandma needs.

Then throw in YouTube at the last second as a bone for the teenage crowd.

Hey, if it was meant for younger people, it would've had blogging capabilities, MMS, and so forth from the outset. (There are in fact other phones that are designed just for that.)

gd&r, Kev

:D
 
kdarling said:
And why not? The whole concept is an easy-to-use phone, with minimal features so as not to confuse anyone. Just what your Grandma needs.

Then throw in YouTube at the last second as a bone for the teenage crowd.

Hey, if it was meant for younger people, it would've had blogging capabilities, MMS, and so forth from the outset. (There are in fact other phones that are designed just for that.)

gd&r, Kev

:D
Click to expand...

Hehehe, don't be too sure?

Strange but true story. When I showed my iPhone to my 63 year old retired mom, she loved it. Thought it was nice, easy use use, and loved the button size for the dialer. I was actually thinking of maybe getting her one as a gift, but when she found out it has neither video nor MMS, she handed it back and said "No, thanks. You can keep it". She and her friends and family love taking pics/videos and sending them to each other. Usually their of their children/grandchildren. Hell, my 3-400 text messages a month is about 1/3 of what she sends....and that's on a light month (yeah, she's on unlimited)....

Which, all in all, sucks for me, cause I'd rather spend $400 on getting her an iPhone than $1100 getting her a Macbook for Christmas!


pipesterdp, is there any way you could expand on the comment about things on the AT&T side? Is it something to do with the way the iPhone works design-wise, or was it maybe something mandated by Apple? Might give some insight into what's going on here.
 
hard-case said:
pipesterdp, is there any way you could expand on the comment about things on the AT&T side? Is it something to do with the way the iPhone works design-wise, or was it maybe something mandated by Apple? Might give some insight into what's going on here.
Click to expand...

Look at your account in the online account manager and look at the features attached on the account.

The feature is IPHONE DATA + 200 (1500 or UNL)

Before I had an iPhone MMS was a specified feature. Do you see any specified info?

I know someone who works for ATT and they verified for me.
 
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