Wi-Fi Assist: a $5M Mess | Hacker News Reader

Wi-Fi Assist: a $5M Mess

medium.com

41 pointsshawndumas15 comments

This piece seems to have very little to do with Wi-Fi Assist at the end of the day--at least the way I read it. In my experience, there are indeed all sorts of reasons why I need to failover from Wi-Fi to cellular. I'm out at my car trying to download a podcast but I'm just a little too far away from my house for Wi-Fi to work properly even though it's still visible. I'm at a conference with Wi-Fi but the Wi-Fi isn't reliable.

The problem with the generally sensible idea of having a fallback mode is that a lot of people have limited cellular data plans and overages can get very expensive in a hurry. However, I have a feeling that Apple engineers are not generally in that "lot of people" bucket.

Part of it is that Apple doesn't make it easy to set a data cap on your device, or warn as you approach it. Another part is that this feature was bungled: the first time it takes effect, it should track when more than 10-20 MB are downloaded and then pop up a warning. Alternatively, the wifi symbol could perhaps become dashed to reflect that there are temporary connectivity issues. Even if all it did was flicker between wifi and cellular as data was used, it would encourage users to investigate during the occurrence-- at minimum a note in Settings, under Wi-Fi, could alert the user a day later to the bandwidth use.

This was just poorly thought out, and will need to be improved in future incremental releases. I think the article further indicates how Apple opposes Google-esque thinking around networking and Internet services, but it's something they need to fix before they put a 4G chip in a MacBook. And while the UI I have confidence on, I'm less certain of the infrastructure. On a perfectly fine network connection, Apple Trailers is the one app that doesn't stream well for me--I figure no one at Apple knows this since they outsourced delivery to Akamai, or whoever.

Apparently the wifi icon is greyed out when it switches to cellular data according to Gizmodo. I don't have an iOS device ATM so I can't confirm.

I agree with your points. I understand the thinking behind the feature and I also understand Apple wanting to keep it simple but it really does seem as if it simply never occurred to anyone at Apple that data caps and overage charges were a thing. And it's also true that there's this largely artificial distinction between "computer networking" and "telco networking" today where everything changes when you transition from WiFi to cellular. That distinction isn't of Apple's doing but it's something that they, among others, are going to need to deal with at some point.

Users with spending limits are not Apple's target demographic. If you have to ask how much data costs, you can't afford an Apple product.

I don't think so. I don't have an iPhone (at least, not in a long time), but my grandma does. And my neighbor, the driver of the taxi I was in yesterday, the mailman... I might buy that argument for their laptops and desktops, but not the iPhone.

Part of their appeal is making a phone that make the average person feel like a high-roller, but those people are just as much part of the target market as the wealthy and fashionable. Since the iPod, Apple has been pretty savvy about leveraging the appeal of their actual high-end products to increase the appeal of their more affordable offerings. At least, that's the only way I can explain the ridiculous gold Apple Watch.

Very interested in this problem and this guy's story, as a network engineer and a user of the discussed products, BUT I really can't take a blog post seriously that has a spelling or grammatical error in every other sentence as this one does.

Ok ok ok. I've updated the article a few times to fix copy errors, if you have specific suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. It's very hard for most people to copy-edit their own text when it's still fresh.

Not GP, but:

> If the executives their

leeks -> leaks, salves -> saves

For me the worst problem with OS X and especially iOS is that neither supports WPS-PBC.

Typing a 32 char WPA passphrase sucks hard, and Linux, Android and Windows have solved the problem. Just Apple does not.

WPS leaves you vulnerable to reaver/pixie dust. No idea if it's possible to disable the pin method.

The push button method means it's not constantly enabled, and in Apple's case, the PIN method has a uniquely generated PIN on every time-limited use, thus again protecting you from reaver-style attacks. But I agree, it's not something I want on 24/7 since WPS can be used to recover any WPA password including the fancy 32-character ones ;-)

AirPort router software does support WPS, primarily as a method to add AirPort Extenders to the network. To quote @joconor on Apple Community forums:

> Apple doesn't call it WPS, apparently preferring to use what I guess they think is more user-friendly terminology. They have a whole page in Airport Utility Help on "Adding a wireless client to your 802.11n network" that discusses the use of WPS, even though they never say "WPS". Airport Utility handles both Push Button and PIN methods of WPS. Apple refers to Push Button as "First Attempt".

An alternative to typing wifi passwords: http://michael.stapelberg.de/Artikel/yubikey_wifi_password/

I recently added an NFC tag to the QR code with wifi credentials. For devices that support NFC, this makes it even quicker to get into the wifi :).

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