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Also, the ios over-the-air update refused to download over 3g even though it was only 10mb. I couldn't even manually update until I got back home much later :-/

(Last time I tethered to a friend's android phone!)

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I hook iPhone via cable and turn on Personal Hotspot, and then on OS X I do Internet Sharing via WiFi back to iPhone.

It shouldn't be like this; my main source of bandwidth _is_ 3G.

I am kind of amazed that that works. What's going on - does the baseband have its own IP stack, which it somehow shares to the computer, which then declares its own mini-lan and lets the iPhone on at a higher level such that iOS uses that preferentially?

That's bizarre; I'm tempted to try it out when I get back to a country in which I have mobile data.

"More happening in this iPhone, I feel, than has been revealed"

You can do that with a routing/forwarding table in any OS [that provides access to routing/chains]. Forward+NAT the cable tether to the 3G network, but keep the default gateway to WiFi, so the local applications will not use the 3G.

you don't need separate stacks to do this. each machine is the other's gateway, on separate ip addresses.

> Personal Hotspot

I always giggle at it being called that.

This is the stupidest limitation of iOS. Why I can't update or download big apps on 3G? I just don't get it.

Walled gardens are great... until you run into the wall.

It's just silly stupid. But you can get social with a friend, then turn on your personal hotspots and connect your iPhones to install security update. Sort of like a LAN party.

Blame limitations to wireless air delivery on telcos. They have it at 100MB now limit but before it was 50MB and before that it was 20MB. They telcos prevented files/apps over that size from being transmitted over their wireless networks.

Yep, but Apple really should have increased the limit for updates to match the limit for app sizes. It's pretty ridiculous that you can download as many 99mb app installs and updates as you want, but be denied a 10mb critical security patch over 3g.

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