Multimedia messaging wasn't available at press time, but we're looking forward to testing it once AT&T gets its act together.
At the June 2009 WWDC keynote address announcing 3.0’s imminent release, nothing was more groan-inducing than the announcement that AT&T wasn’t ready to roll out long-overdue MMS messaging to iPhone users. Try as he might, Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software, simply couldn’t put a positive spin on AT&T dropping the ball when it came to MMS, and the crowd at Moscone West certainly let their displeasure be known. And really--can you blame them? Either AT&T consists of the only people in the known universe who didn’t know 3.0 was launching in June, or they never read anything on the Internet and were just unaware that we’ve been waiting for MMS since--well, since June 29, 2007, the day the original iPhone launched.
MMS allows users to send photos, audio, and video content to mobile phones, similar to the way that text messages (SMS, or simple messaging service) work. AT&T has supported MMS on its other handsets for years now, and given that the iPhone is kind of a big deal, we’ve always been at a loss trying to come up with the reasons AT&T is shutting out iPhone users. Sure, AT&T attempted to make up for the lack of native support for MMS with that “View my message” site (score one for unintuitive, hard-to-remember URLs), but you couldn’t save content through that website, and thanks to incomprehensible message URLs and AT&T’s passwords that used both the number one and the lowercase letter L’s, as well as lowercase O’s and zeros--which aren’t exactly easy to tell apart--most iPhone users just ignored MMS messages because of the difficulties accessing the content via the Web.
AT&T claimed that delayed MMS rollout had to do not with the network itself, but with needing to remove an “MMS opt-out” block on everyone’s accounts, which automatically got placed on iPhone accounts when the phones were activated (“MMS Opt Out” was even listed on your AT&T bill, as if it were a feature). We can only guess at what sort of convoluted account management software AT&T is using, but whatever it is, modifying everybody’s accounts took a while. At press time, MMS hadn’t launched, but by the time you read this, hopefully AT&T’s “late summer” launch date will have come and gone, although first-gen iPhone owners who haven’t upgraded to at least a 3G model are still out of luck.
Aside from amusing photos of cats, babies, and other family members, MMS on the iPhone promises to let you send audio, contacts, and locations as MMS messages. Noticeably absent for iPhone 3GS owners, however, was support for sending video clips via MMS. The ability to quickly zap contact info to a friend or colleague reminds us of the old Beam feature on Palm Pilots, partially negating some of our complaints about the difficulty of using copy-and-paste in Contacts. And we love the idea of being able to quickly send location information to another user, handy at outdoor festivals, sporting events, college campuses, or anywhere you need to quickly gather your crew. Gone are the days of trying to yell driving directions to a friend over the din of a good party--now you’ll be able to use your iPhone to quickly fire off your location via an MMS message.
