my question is where the hell is MSN for iphone or trillian for iphone or something shesh

phantam

I know I would LOVE a delicious gift set of Spam...

Salted Pork product can be fried and placed on a sesame bun, or perhaps a bagel...with a slice of Pepper Jack, some onion, tomatoes, and a bit of honey mustard...

Chromeo is typing this on his iPhone 3G

@jcrockerman: Unlimited in the US only - outside is 25 cents per txt, unless you add the $10 for 100 world texts.

Yay ATT. :|

Dunny0, ELE Hopeful

Is it true that users receiving SMS this way will get charged even if they are paying for unlimited SMS?

mrnako

Thous shalt not spam Jesus

(one of the lesser known commandments)

sansovino

just fork over 20 bucks for unlimited text.

cheap bastards.

jcrockerman

come on, if you can afford an iPhone...

nutbastard

@Ichinisan:

The DEVICE is affordable - still ~$2k over a two year period for service.

200 texts and 450 minutes adds up to $1975 over two years.

[gizmodo.com]

In case you couldn't tell, no i'm not kidding.

nutbastard

@nutbastard:
Are you kidding? The new iPhone is actually pretty affordable.

Ichinisan

The thing that I think I don't like about this workaround (I haven't tried it recently) is that their telephone number ends up being their username in your buddy list, so you end up with this long list of telephone numbers, and, I don't know about you, but I don't actually have many people's numbers memorized. It gets confusing and it's kind of messy.

itchytooth

@phantam:
Hopefully, the Adium team is working on an iPhone port. Either that, or someone is doing something with libpurple for the iPhone.

ConstyXIV

@phantam:

MSN for iPhone is like jelly on hot dogs.

I'd expect an Adium for iPhone that'll handle MSN long before a proper MSN client.

Then again - they might try to stay relevant?

We'll see.

nosebleed

Does it cost to receive SMS texts? B/c I often send SMS's that don't require a response. if I could skirt SMS usages on my iPhone this way, I would do it all the time.

Yes, I've got the 200/month package. Yes, I can easily afford their unlimited plans. No, I will NOT pay more for unlimited texting. The per kb charge of SMS is outrageously beyond obscene and I will not fuel that market. But, I will game the hell out of it using my AIM app if I can.

ludwigk

@ConstyXIV: The libpurple clients that were available pre-2.0 were not very good. They all had clunky interfaces and crashed. Often. I am more interested in seeing AgileMobile get updated to the official SDK using the background messaging. The official AIM client is pretty good, and much better than any AOL software I've used on an actual computer, but AgileMobile had some really nice features (namely, picture messaging).

rjp

@nutbastard: I think it's mostly the people who were getting 200 texts included in their $20 plan with the first iPhone who are annoyed with having to pay for them now, in addition to the data hike. Also, technically, I can't really "afford" an iPhone, I just have messed up priorities.

itchytooth

This is nice but not practical. In general people you want to SMS have your phone # in their address book so they can SMS you or know it's you when you write them. THis screws up that whole system. Nice effort but keep trying.

ramman345

I'm not sure if people know this, or if I got totally raped when it happened to me... but AT&T charges their standard price for SMS messages even through AIM. How do I know? Because for one month, I decided to use my AIM a lot on my phone. Come that month's bill, and I was hit with a whopping 250 dollar bill. My monthly charges were never more then 70. When I called to find out why it was so high... customer service informed me that I was sending "texts" through AIM, which i was charged for sending AND RECEIVING. So, I don't now if gizmodo and engadget for that matter have their info mixed up.

I had a co worker try to tell me he was getting the 200 message pack and do the rest of his messaging on AIM. When I told him of my ordeal with that, he called AT&T and confirmed what I told him and all of you in this post. So please be wary of using AIM for texts without a message plan.

WizardlyLou

@ WizardlyLou: not on the iPhone.

nappleheaded

@WizardlyLou: It depends on the phone/AIM client. A lot of phones use aim via actual text messages. Others connect to the AIM system the same way as a computer would through the data service/plan.

0150r

the other interesting piece to this is the part "iPhone gets background messaging in September." Was there a software upgrade announced already?

pholey

@jcrockerman: I don't believe unlimited text works with international texts.

Does this mean that the person in Spain won't get hit with international texting charges, too, if he responds?

bkchosun

background messaging? buh?

robotleawesome

@ramman345: I believe that when you text somebody from AIM it includes your screenname.

All in all, this is exactly what I planned to do when I got my iPhone in the next couple of weeks.. $20 x 24 months is an extra $480 wasted on drunk texts received. AT&T, bring back free receipt of text!!

jhuang