If you would have asked me a few weeks ago whether or not I was going to get an iPhone, I would have laughed and said absolutely not. The original plans offered by Rogers wireless in Canada were, in a word, pathetic. Not only were they asking customers to lock into a three year contract, but they also didn’t offer an unlimited data plan, something nearly every carrier in the entire world has offered with the iPhone.

Rogers received an incredible amount of negative publicity regarding their price plans, and was covered by most of the major news outlets (only those, of course, that weren’t owned by Rogers Communications). An online petition quickly formed that received over 50,000 signatures, all protesting the price gouging by Rogers. And thankfully, at nearly the 11th hour, Rogers caved in to pressure and decided to offer a 6GB/month data plan for $30/mo, which for all intents and purposes, is unlimited.

Understand that the iPhone is not a typical cell phone. If anything, it is a powerful internet device that just happens to have a phone on it. That is why having a reasonable data plan with the phone was absolutely necessary.

Shortly after Roger’s change of heart, I found myself in a line in front of the Rogers store on Davie street last Friday. Truthfully, I actually only swung by so I could grab a few photos of all the crazies standing in line for my Flickr account. But once I realized they actually had enough units for everyone in the line, I decided to join the party.

The iPhone launch that day was a worldwide debacle. Not only did Apple’s activation servers go offline for the better part of the day, but Roger’s entire computer backbone also fell down dead due to the sheer volume of people trying to activate their new iPhones. In addition, the free breakfast that Rogers promised everyone at their Broadway store in Vancouver turned out to be Presidents Choice drink boxes along with a bin of granola bars. Way to go all out for the launch, Rogers.

It only took me 45 minutes or so to get from the back of the line and into the store, but I spent another four and a half hours on a chair waiting for the computers to come back online long enough to activate my phone.

For those of you wondering about the specifics of the iPhone 3G, here they are. Rogers originally offered a few plans that started at $60/mo. These plans had very few airtime minutes for phone calls, and offered only a measly 400MB of data transfer a month. After their change of heart the other day, they decided that you could pick and choose any plan from their current repertoire (most of which are reasonable), and simply couple it with the $30/mo 6GB/mo data plan, which is basically what every single person in the line-up ended up doing.

The 6GB/mo data plan is only available up until August 31st, after which (presumably) it will disappear, leaving only the original (insufficient) data plans that Rogers originally offered. For those of you on existing Rogers plans, you should be able to simply add the $30/mo plan to your phone and keep your current telephone rates and packages. For new users, you can walk into a store and choose which plan and extras (voice mail, caller ID, etc). you want, and then add the data package to it. One thing I’d recommend is splurging the extra $4/month and getting the visual voice mail. Most voice mail systems work by having you call in to receive a message. The visual voice mail system on the iPhone actually just has an icon on the phone that shows when you have a voice mail. If you click it, you can see a full listing of every voice mail you have right on your iPhone, and simply click the desired entry to listen to a MP3 of the call. No more calling in to retrieve a message.

I’ve been using my iPhone 3G since Friday, and it’s truly an amazing device. It’s a strange thing to be able to access the internet from basically anywhere. I was at the beach the other day wondering if the tide was coming in or out. Instead of wondering, I simply fired up the iPhone and a did a quick Google search in Safari for the appropriate tide chart. Thirty seconds later I knew exactly when high and low tide would occur.

Also released at the same time is Apple’s new Mobile Me service. It effectively replaces the old .Mac service, and adds a host of features (Email, Calendar, Contacts, etc) similar to Google’s Gmail and Calendar offerings. The coolest part about it in my opinion is that it supports PUSH email. Most email systems (IMAP, POP, etc) all use polling to figure out when a new message arrives. For example, I have my iPhone configured to access my Gmail account. To determine whether or not I have a new message, my iPhone will access Gmail every 15 minutes and check. With Mobile Me, the service actually contacts your phone the moment a new message comes in. So you basically get new mail the very instant it’s sent to you. I tested this a few times, and it takes about three seconds from the time I click send in gmail until the time my iPhone chirps letting me know there’s a new Mobile Me message on it. In addition, Mobile Me will also synchronize your contacts and data between all your Apple computers and devices, using PUSH when it can.

There’s also built in GPS on the unit, so you can simply press a button to see exactly where you are using Google maps. It sure makes navigating a breeze. Once a few more applications are released, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can simply SMS your GPS coordinates to a friend, and have them magically show up for a beer at the bar you are at. No more having to explain to someone how to find you.

So, while it’s not the cheapest toy in the world, it really is a revolutionary device. I’ve only just scratched the surface with what it can do, but I think it’s a fairly good primer for those of you looking to get one. I picked one up on Friday, and Dale got his today. Hopefully Matt’s not far behind.

I‘ve been messing around with the iPhone 3G pretty much non-stop for the last 24 hours. For the most part, it has exceeded my expectations.

First, being able to check your email or surf the web from any location is a pretty awesome feature. For example, today I was at the beach with some friends and we noticed that the tide was slowly creeping up the shore. I quickly fired up Safari, did a Google search for “Vancouver Tide Table”, and determined that high tide was in about two hours.

As most people know, the iPhone 2.0 firmware brings with it the iPhone application store. I’ve already purchased two applications, the premium Twitterific app and the Flickr app. The Twitterific app is a bit more polished, but the Flickr app is fully functional and will probably make life with Flickr that much easier.

One application that is notably missing is something to share your current location with your friends. The AGPS system in the iPhone works surprisingly well with the Google maps application, but I have yet to have it work well with anything else. I updated my location in Twitter today using the Twitterific application, only to realize that it was about 2 or 3 miles off when someone viewed the location from my Twitter profile. Ideally, I want a way to send my GPS coordinates to someone so they can find me. I was trying to tell John Biehler how to get to the beach we were at today, when I really should have been able to fire him off a URL of where I was and have him walk right up to me. Perhaps that functionality is buried in the iPhone somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet.

I was pretty worried with the battery life yesterday after I picked it up. It was 50% full when I purchased it, and I nearly ran it down to 0 by the time I got home. I gave it a full charge overnight, and was relieved when I got home tonight and it was still nearly full. So battery life seems to at least be good enough to do a full day or random calling and surfing.

One disappointing aspect is that the iPhone 3G doesn’t appear to work with my iPod dock. The current dock I have has worked for three generations of iPods (the original, the nano and the touch), so I was disappointed when I plugged it into my stereo dock as night only to be told by the iPhone that it wasn’t compatible. I can’t really imagine a scenario where Apple couldn’t make it work with the old dock if they wanted to (the pin configurations are the same), so I can only conclude that the purposefully broke it so people would be forced to buy new docks for the iPhone 3G.

I also signed up for a trial Mobile Me account tonight. Mobile Me is Apple’s new web-based service that can synchronize content between Mac devices in real-time. One nice thing about the Mobile Me service is that it operates off a PUSH delivery system, which means that it automatically sends data to all devices immediately after the data is changed. The opposite of that is a PULL system (often called polling or fetching), where each device periodically checks for updates, even if none exist. The PUSH system is obviously far more efficient, and ultimately uses less battery life (since no data is transferred when no updates are available). I have to say, it’s pretty cool seeing your iPhone chirp about 3 seconds after you send an email to your Mobile Me address. I also updated a pile of contacts on my Laptop to see what would happen on my iPhone. Without any intervention, the contacts on my iPhone automatically changed as well within about 15 seconds of finishing synchronizing them on my laptop. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately, the Mobile Me website seems borked right now, and it won’t let me log in using my credentials. Until then, I won’t be able to see how it compares against Google’s suite of products.

In terms of data usage, it would seem I haven’t used all that much. In the 36 hours or so that I’ve had the device, I’ve only used 40MB worth of data. I would consider myself in the “power user” category, and I’m actually a bit surprised that it’s so low. I imagine once I start uploading photos routinely it will climb, but at my current rate I’ll barely hit 1GB worth of data this month.

One thing I have noticed however is that the user interface seems a bit sluggist on the iPhone 3G compared to my iPod touch. I played around with John Biehler’s device today, and although it seemed slightly snappier, you can see a slight delay when bouncing between contacts or adding new ones. I’ve been told that the original iPhone firmwares also had speed issues, and slowly improved with each iteration. So hopefully the next version of the 3G firmware will make the UI a bit peppier.

All in all, I’m extremely happy with my purchase, and would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a mobile computing device. Surprisingly, I haven’t really made that many calls with it since I’ve gotten it. In fact, I consider the ability to surf and interact wirelessly over 3G the device’s main selling point.

** Update – Also, the iPhone 3G doesn’t appear to support the 802.11n. That’s pretty disappointing considering every Mac product in my house is using it, including my new Airport base station. The only way I can make my iPod touch work with it is to reconfigure my router to do a+b as well as n, but that means I can’t use the 802.11n in wide mode. Maybe I’ll bridge my router at home with another 802.11b router I have, but that’s a huge pain in the ass. I’m really surprised 802.11n isn’t supported on the iPhone 3G.

Most of us have been waiting patiently for Rogers to finally release their data rates for the iPhone 3G that is coming to Canada on July 11th. The good news is that the wait is finally over… Rogers just released full information about their plans.

Unfortunately, Rogers completely missed the boat on this one. They had the chance to bring Canada to the forefront of the wireless world, but instead felt compelled to keep us locked up in our draconian past. There are no unlimited data rates for the new plans, and anything approaching 1GB will cost you $100 or more per month (plus, I’m sure, the 9/11 fee and the system access fee, bringing your bill to $120 or more).

To be honest, it’s exactly what I expected, but I can’t honestly say I didn’t dare to hope that things might be better. On my recent trip down south I walked into a Best Buy and bought a pay as you go plan, including a free phone, for $15. No contract, no nothing. The same deal up here will run about $80, and you need your own phone. In addition, Jason lent me a little USB dongle for my laptop that took a GSM SIM card and provided unlimited internet access anywhere in the US for only $60/mo. We’re so far behind here it’s not even funny.

The iPhone is a revolutionary invention, but it really needs to be augmented with an unlimited data plan to bring it to fruition. Given that Rogers is adamant about a 3 year contract (I can’t think of a single other carrier that wants a 3 year contract), and that their data rates leave much to be desired, I’m probably going to pass on getting the iPhone, and spend the next few days reflecting on the wireless dream that never was.

Wireless networking, especially when it’s done right, can be a beautiful thing. For the average home wireless network user things have improved over the last few years with regard to ease of setup, security, and quality, but there still remains the cold hard truth that unless you do your research, you’re likely going to end up with less than optimal conditions, and in some cases experience times where it appears your wireless network doesn’t work at all.

THIS IS NOT AN ARS TECHNICA ARTICLE

No, but it’s long though! Without going into explicit, verbose waxing on the origins of wireless networks and computing, and sparing you the nerdy details about ‘how all this stuff works’ I thought I’d throw a couple of handy bits of knowledge I’ve gained over the years of working with wireless networks, and hopefully it helps you juice up your own configuration.

APPLE DOES IT RIGHT

First of all, recognition need to go to Apple, whose Airport & Airport Extreme home networking products have pushed wireless networking as a standard in the consumer realm since day one. Apple was first to the market with the original grey 802.11b UFO-shaped Airport Base Station, and they’ve led the way ever since, including today, where their 802.11n products (Airport Extreme Base Station, Airport Express) were among the first to work on the newly ratified protocol, and they smartly sold Macs to the public whose internal wireless capabilities would work with n before it was finished, allowing for a software upgrade to enable the capability.

Apple’s implementation of the n spec is at current one of (if not the) best implementations, and users configured properly to take advantage of n‘s benefits achieve close to the theoretical maximum in data transmissions.

But n only really shows its stripes when it’s running in 5GHz-only mode with wide channels enabled. For those of foreign this jargon, basically there’s one way to get n working smoothly, with high performance (5x faster than g): have the network as n-only.

But it doesn’t have to. That’s what we’re here to learn today kids.

QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS

The types of questions that people pose with regard to learning about n often revolve around what they can expect in terms of performance, and what they will have to do to get existing wireless hardware to play nice with n. Seems that despite the push by manufacturers of 802.11n products for early adoption, most potential buyers have figured out that upgrading a wireless network costs a good chunk of money, and they want to know they’ll get bandwidth-for-the-buck if so.

And wouldn’t you know it, the damn bastards at the IEEE (who ratify these wireless standards) had to go and make the usage of n something that would conform to backwards-compatibility standards, something previously done when 802.11g hit the market. What this means is that you have the option to run n devices alongside 802.11b/g device on a network.

“That’s good, isn’t it” Well, in terms of feats of marginalization- yes… but in terms of performance No, totally not good.

Of course when you setup things the everyone-get-along way, you don’t really see the benefits of n at all. In my testing, you actually make performance on a b and g-compatible network worse when the n-guy joins the picture.

The IEEE as a standards group is totally necessary, and we all should be thankful for the fact that there is a Wi-Fi standard at all, and not some wishy-washy sea of proprietary devices and networks. But when it comes to the differences between 802.11n and the older b-and-g networks, there was no need to have backwards-compatibility at all. In fact, there was more of an opportunity in my opinion for establish it as significantly better and worthy of existing on the 5GHz band alone, which would have created a market for a new breed of wireless devices: dual-band routers. More on this later.

CAN I SUPPORT THEM ALL, WITHOUT SACRIFICING NETWORK SPEED

Yes you can, totally. In my home network setup, I need support for all four network types: a,b,g and n. Between our Wii, iPhone, Core Duo MacBook, MacBook Air, Core 2 Duo iMac, and Apple TV, there’s a lot of wireless traffic coming and going. We don’t require the oldest 802.11b network support, but when you factor in guests and their devices, it’s just easier to have it so that anyone can get online easily.

For the purpose of my example I’ll be using Apple’s devices, but any routers with the capabilities they have and more will do this fine.

What we want to do to get all four networks supported in an efficient, speedy way is to setup what’s called a dual-band network. Basically, it’s two routers working together to create one network that supports all four 802.11 protocols.

The first router should be the n-router, or the one which has the most features (likely this will be the n- router in most cases). This way your second router will serve the network in terms of connecting b/g wireless clients only, and the main n-router will configure both wired and wireless clients, including those that are connecting through the second router.

This is also what’s called a bridged network, where the clients from the second router are ‘bridged’ to the network created by the n-router. This ensures only one DHCP server, which in turn helps with the ease of sharing network resources like printers and drives, seeing devices on the network, and file sharing between them.

In my case I’ve got an Apple Airport Extreme & Airport Express (the older b/g model). I have the Extreme configured in 5GHz 802.11n/a-compatible mode, with wide-channels enabled and 24mbps multicasting enabled. This ensures that my MacBook Air, iMac, AppleTV and even Sara’s MacBook (with 802.11a) can work on one fast, high video/audio throughput network.

Next, I have the Airport Express configured in the 2.4GHz 802.11b/g mode, setup as a bridge for the Extreme connected by ethernet to it. This means that the wireless clients (iPhone, Wii) will connect to the express and then be bridged over ethernet to the Extreme.

And that’s it, two networks which don’t interfere with each other and serve connections and transmissions fast.

I mentioned the possibility of a market for dual-band routers, and I think it’s something worth mentioning again. If Apple were to release such a router, I would surely snap it up. To have our router capable of broadcasting two or more networks would be really handy. I think it’s a worthwhile concept to explore for wireless manufacturers, and a worthy endeavor to inform the public with regards to the significant performance gain for all devices when a proper dual-band bridged network is setup.

SOLVING INTERFERENCE

In terms of external considerations, remember that microwave ovens and 2.4/5Ghz cordless phones cause interference with wireless networks. We use a 900Mhz phone and it works great with our dual-band WiFi setup, but they’re harder and harder to find. If you can pick one up second hand at a garage sale it’ll be worth it.

When it comes to b/g networks, have a look at the channels of competing networks around you. In my condominium there are over 100 units, and my laptop reports over 20 networks nearby. Using wifi-scanner tools, have a look at the most popular channels (usually 6 and 11), and choose a channel for your network as far away from them, hopefully on it’s own channel. This will help decrease the noise levels in your network connections, and increase your range.

It goes without saying (or should, anyways) that you should always secure your network with at least WPA security, and for added measure you can employ MAC address filtering. Happy networking.