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Comment by FireBeyond | Hacker News Reader

It may be seen as complexity, but it's something I loved in Windows. The ability to flag any connection as metered.

- I used it for my AT&T LTE USB modem.

- I used it in my car, which has a wireless access point connected to LTE.

Apple's "solution" seems to be (and I can't recall if it was even directly described as such) "we're moving to a world where cellular data will be the same as Wifi, so..."

Except here's a fun fact for you. Did you know the same amount of money will buy you _less than half_ the data package in 2016 from AT&T and Verizon as it would have bought you in 2012? Data is twice as expensive now over cellular, not half.

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And the average web page size is double that of 2012 ... at least we have ad blockers in iOS now.

In iOS if device > iPhone 5.

My iPhone 5 won't let me install Ad blockers. Which is kind of funny. I can't think of a good reason why this feature depends on the hardware.

Also, it makes Apple's statement that they care about their users' privacy quite hypocritical.

Off topic, but you can side load ad blockers on iPhone 5 if you can find open source ones. So, it's an artificial restriction.

The first 10 minutes searching didn't yield any results. Needs jailbroken device and then you can fiddle with your device's host file is what a lot of comments say.

Adblockers on iOS require the 64 bit A7 SoC which was released with the 5S. I'm not sure if there's a valid reason why they couldn't make it work on 32 bit too, whether it was just extra effort or whether they'd have had to make technical concessions, but the way they implemented ad blocking within Safari is different to other solutions (e.g. the side-loaded ad blockers that 05 mentioned) so it's hard to be sure.

For more information on WebKit content blockers: https://webkit.org/blog/3476/content-blockers-first-look/

Update: performance is the reason that it's 64 bit only https://twitter.com/awfulben/status/638526406805229568

Thanks, that explains a lot.

>> _less than half_ the data package in 2016 from AT&T and Verizon as it would have bought you in 2012?

I pay the same price and I'm getting 6GB instead of a measly 2GB

Is that bit about data costs true? I recall paying about $70/month for a 4GB plan at that time. I'm currently paying about $100/month for 12GB shared across two lines. If I were to get a 5GB plan today (they don't offer 4GB), it would cost $75/month. And it would include unlimited talk and SMS, where my old plan had something like 500 minutes of talk and cost an outrageous amount for each SMS.

See my sister reply, it's definitely not twice as much now (but was 18 months ago), but is still higher. (For example going from 2GB to 5GB in 2014 would cost you $20 more, and now costs $30 more).

How much would the starting level of 2GB cost then, though? Your other post seems to ignore the mandatory voice service, which I think has become a bit cheaper. It certainly has if you want unlimited, but not as much if you're like me and 500 minutes was fine.

Unlimited texting & voice was also not standard back then though. They charge more for data now to make up for having to give voice & sms away basically for free.

It's not really free, nor are they losing money on it. It's just that's texts are no loner cost as more then sending a msg to the International Space Station. You know, back when you were paying 10 cents for a 160 bytes.

> Apple's "solution" seems to be (and I can't recall if it was even directly described as such) "we're moving to a world where cellular data will be the same as Wifi, so..."

Seems like a good assumption. In fact, an increasing number of lower income households have no household wifi and instead use only LTE on their phones. Not sure how they could use an Xbox this way.

> Except here's a fun fact for you. Did you know the same amount of money will buy you _less than half_ the data package in 2016 from AT&T and Verizon as it would have bought you in 2012?

Why I have kept my unlimited data skag on AT&T even though I have to forego tethering.

And even if the metered offer would be cheaper per my actual usage, I know that usage is trending inexorably upwards.

>Seems like a good assumption

So, they're making an OS for the remote future? A laudable endeavor! In the meantime, I'll stick with an OS made for the present. (posted over a temporary LTE connection where basically every byte is being paid for.)

Why did you call it a remote future? I noted in my comment that the number of WiFiless-LTE-only households in on the rise.

Because there are still people, such as myself, that occasionally use heavily metered connections, and the percentage of people to whom this applies will not drop to zero in any foreseeable future.

So I suppose the real question is: even though there are users that need this, will they soon be few enough to justify ignoring ignoring them? Is this already the case? (I'll admit my snark was unnecessary, but Apple's position on this is completely incompatible with the way I and many other people use computers.)

I'm in China right now... 1GB of prepaid 4G costs about $0.40. Crazy.

Really? I thought it was a lot more expensive than that when I was there.

Do you happen to have any articles or data to back up that claim?

I don't disagree, but I'd love to see the rate changes over time.

I can't speak for the US, but here in Canada prices have gone through the roof. When the iPhone first came out you could get a 6GB plan for $55/month with Rogers. Now for 5GB you're looking at $105/month, bring your own device.

It depends on where you live.

In Saskatchewan, for example, there is a public sector telco (Sasktel) that provides the same services that the big three national telcos (Rogers, Bell, Telus) provide. As a result, the prices in Saskatchewan are significantly cheaper than in neighbouring Alberta (where there are only the big three).

It's very eye-opening to go to the Rogers site and flip between AB and SK to see how the prices change.

I'm deliberately excluding the smaller players like Wind because they don't provide the same service, the smaller players lack the geographical coverage that the big three have.

I'm from Saskatchewan, and I can say that Sasktel is quite a good ISP and telco. Despite the relatively small, sparse population of SK, the prices are quite low, and I think Sasktel is the major reason for competitive pricing.

As a direct example of the Rogers pricing difference, the 10 GB "share everything" plan (unlimited talk/text) costs $65/mo in SK but over twice that, $135/mo in AB!

Awesome to see so many Saskatchewan folks here! For comparison-sake, I'm on the 13GB Sasktel plan, and tax-in my bill comes to $102.

I'm Canadian, currently in Morocco.

$10 (USD) for 10GB here, fast 3G basically everywhere. It's blowing my mind compared to the costs back in Canada

Are you including voice in that? I'm still on the original promo plan (gotten when I didn't even have an iPhone, since it didn't do tethering yet and my Moto RAZR2 did), and it's $30/mo for the data alone.

- https://brooksreview.net/2010/06/att-caps-phone-data-usage-w...

- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-att-wireless-plan-caps-phone...

2GB for $25/mo with AT&T, $10/GB overage.

Now?

- https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html

$30/mo for 2GB, with $15/GB overage.

From my original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9110720

Data prices do seem to have gotten better:

http://about.att.com/story/att_offers_its_best_ever_pricing_...

where they reduced the plan from $80 to $65 for voice+2GB data.

Indeed, last year to go from 2GB to 5GB cost $20, and now costs $25.

- http://www.att.com/att/planner/

From the CBS article, "With that plan and voice service, a smart phone could cost as little as $55 per month before taxes and add-on fees, down from $70 per month."

According to AT&T's planner, that means in SIX YEARS, costs haven't changed at all, overall.

We have 32GB a month from Verizon on two iPhones (family plan) and we pay roughly $200/month for that.

I paid about $350/month for three phones from AT&T on the old Unlimited plans before I switched in mid 2013. Granted I dropped a line but Verizon has been a better provider and I hardly ever exceed the 32GB a month.

As an AT&T data point, I pay $162 a month for 3 iPhones on a 25 Gig data family share plan, which I think is still too expensive, but not that bad.

C'mon, how much do you really use? I kept my Sprint plan for 10 years "because unlimited data FTW!" There were occasional months where I would use 10, 15, even 20GB on a single phone. But hey, we paid $176/month for 2 phones.

Then I switched to Ting 6 months ago. The highest bill I've had since: $42 If I have a month where I use 10GB, my bill might reach $200 for that one month. I still come out WAY ahead in the long run.

> Did you know the same amount of money will buy you _less than half_ the data package in 2016 from AT&T and Verizon as it would have bought you in 2012? Data is twice as expensive now over cellular, not half.

Going back to 2007 (when I switched to ATT to use the original iPhone), data was unlimited. Of course, it was so slow that they really had no concern that you would want to use much of it unless it was necessary or you were especially patient.

Get off AT&T/VZ then. T-Mobile has been great for me (10 lines with 2.5GB/mo each for $160/mo, with tax/fees = $200/mo).

If you stand behind a paper, you won't have signal with T-mobile.

I'm exaggerating, but I tried getting T-mobile 2x so far.

Once in SF in 2015 where I didn't have connection anywhere in my apartment on the second floor in a non-hilly area. Also I got randomly dropped phone calls/missed 20+ seconds of conversation as I walked around.

Another time it was in NYC in 2013 and it consistently periodically cut off in the same areas while driving on one of the city's highways.

Verizon generally has worse voice quality, but the connection never cuts out in urban areas.

As someone who pays 2€ per month for mobile internet, american mobile phone prices always seem ridiculously high to me.

It's very slow after 100MB, but it's still good enough for sending texts and looking up the train connections then.

Is surfing in the internet away from home really worth 2000$ a year?

Depends on where you are.

If you're in Eastern or Southern Europe (as the 2€ would indicate), they might pay 2000 USD per year for phone, but they also probably make five or ten times your salary.

I can understand why service prices are tied to locale. If a person in the Bay Area chooses to be a plumber or a chef instead of a software engineer, they need to be paid much more than plumber or a chef in Slovakia. But the cost of providing cell service is largely infrastructure and hardware which is the same everywhere. It seems the reason why prices in the US are so high is government failure to foster competition.

The 2€ are in Germany, and mobile internet is actually cheaper in some more expensive countries like Sweden.

Unfortunately that only works for WiFi connections for me. My USB modem presents itself as LAN connection so I can't mark that. I also couldn't mark my tethered phone connection as metered.

There's a registry hack to set all Ethernet connections as metered.

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