Wi-Fi on the Apple iPhone and iPad will never be the same again…
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013 Tom Truong, Product Manager
“Your app status is Ready for Sale.”
As any iOS app developer knows, there is an indeterminate mixture of excitement and relief when these words show up in your inbox. It’s often the culmination of weeks and months of friends, colleagues, and customers asking when the app will be available. It feels like you cannot get to the next phase until this notice of approval.
And getting approval isn’t a one-time event, as we start all over again for every upgrade or bug fix. The anxiety for a major upgrade can be incredibly high–one that our merry band at iPass had just survived with the arrival of iPass Open Mobile v3.0 for iOS.
So what’s the big deal with v3.0? For iPad and iPhone users, the basic matter of knowing which networks to use is almost the entire user experience. With v3.0, iPass networks are now labeled in the standard iOS Wi-Fi network list.
The new world for our users is simply this:
- Get iPass on your iOS device.
- The iOS Wi-Fi network list will now tell you which networks are iPass and will log you with a single tap.
- Now every time your device sees the same networks, it will automatically connect you just like at home and on corporate networks.
Other than finding more hotspots and checking on your data usage, our users no longer even have to launch iPass Open Mobile to get online at any of our hotspots.
At over one million hotspots, our users can now expect a seamless auto-connect experience across Windows, Mac, Android, and now, iOS operating systems.
Being able to guide our users to the iPass service by integrating right into the normal user experience on Wi-Fi is a huge win for the end-user and a fantastic milestone for our team. Well done team, and happy connections to everyone in 2013!
Tags: iOS, iPad, iPhone, wi-fi access
I don’t – just that it is being addressed.
Do you have any estimates on when this will be fixed? Thanks!
Hi Sameer – We realize that this is an issue and it’s a priority to fix.
I have recently run into a problem. I spend a lot of time at Starbucks, which has free “attwifi” for iPhone users. However, iPass now asks me login before it will allow me to use attwifi. Since attwifi is supposed to be free, I don’t want to login and be paying for something I don’t need to (iPass is billed to my employer who pays per usage).
How can I get around this, and be able to use attwifi at Starbucks without having to login to iPass?
Hi Isaac–thanks for the feedback. Hope this addresses your questions.
1. The capability for auto-connect in the background is available if it is enabled for the profile activated on your Open Mobile client. If this was a new install, the activation code you used may not have auto-connect enabled. If you’re getting the iPass service from your company, they may have chosen to not enable auto-connect for iOS.
2. In most cases, you shouldn’t see the label “An iPass network” underneath your home network name listed in the Wi-Fi network list unless your home network had the same name as one of the iPass networks you’re registered to use. Even if your home network did share the same name with an iPass network, Open Mobile wouldn’t detect any iPass authentication and your normal security/login wouldn’t be affected. One possibility is that you live close to an iPass hotspot (that’s when the login notification would appear) and your iOS device is actually prompting you to connect to that hotspot rather than your home network.
Thanks for using iPass, and let me know if that helps clear things up.
Tom
Thanks Isaac – I will have Tom take a look at this. There are some immediate fixes in the works.
I liked a lot what Tom Truong wrote and was very happy to install the new Version 3.0 of iPass Open Mobile on my iOS devices. But there is several side effects to what Tom described.
1. Automatically connect is only partially true. Despite I’ve checked this option I get the prompt to open iPass and start the connection. This is as if my setting is simply ignored.
2. At home where my iOS devices used to automatically connect to my WLAN I get now the same dialog as well. Beside the fact that my home network is listed as iPass network, which is absolutely not the case.
Finally the new iPass connects faster than the previous version but it is worse, e.g. at home when it wouldn’t be needed at all. On the road it doesn’t hold the promise to automatically login, despite it is set to do so.
I mean I can cope with all of that, because finally will I get connected. But it IS now more complicated that it was before and there is no way back to V2.