Serious... I don't get why everyone is into the Jesus Phone when it seems like Steve the Father likes to ram his adherents up the keister....

I must've really missed something because I wouldn't be caught dead buying some sort of crippled device like that.

(The penguin because it's Open!)

It's Schrödinger's bandwidth. It's unlimited, until you actually try to use it.

I kind of like this way of thinking about things, actually...I've actually got unlimited money, so long as I don't try to spend it. Awesome.

This isn't really a story about Apple. Its the telephone operators who impose the restrictions on traffic. At the end of the day if the operators stood by their "unlimited" tariffs then there wouldn't be an issue and Apple would care less.

But then any excuse to yet again slag the iPhone and Apple is happily pounced upon.

It hurts me to say it, but things like this make me strangely grateful that Microsoft won the PC Wars rather than Apple. Sure, Gates has exploited his Windows monopoly somewhat, but I dread to think what Jobs would have done with a Mac monopoly.

I hope Apple get sued for this anti competitive nonsense.

Too right, I just got "Unlimited ** " texts on my new orange contract

** Subject to a fair usage policy of a maximum of 3000 texts per month.

Now I dont send anywhere near that amount of texts and I didnt even buy into the contract on the basis of unlimited texting but is it right that operators can sell an "unlimited" package which, is quite clearly, limited? I dont know but trading standards and OFCOM are going to come back to me shortly............

You just wait.

People will start defending Apple's action here.

I'm surprised they even submitted an app which uses the cellular network for streaming radio, that's just asking for trouble and I'm surprised Apple failed to refer it back in the first place. The cellular network isn't really suitable for this and I wouldn't want my prices to go up and performance to go down because of it.

Steve announces that the store will have a new Apple internet radio app featuring some of the features that castcatcher had. Please keep emptying your wallets for the pleasure of the uberlord.

WTF does it have to do with Apple how much data is being carried anyway? What gives them the right to dictate how I use MY device on MY contract with a completely different company? Should Nokia have the right to ban apps because they cause too much traffic on O2? Or Samsung because of too much traffic for Vodafone?

Remember fruity lovers - you are the ones who have been happy to let Steve keep dictating to you what to buy, what to use, how much it will cost and what you cannot do. With every year that goes by he becomes more draconian and you lot lap it up like he is the next Jesus. You have no-one to blame but yourselves.

What a surprise. Yet another company realises (particuarly via the app store) than Apple aren't as good as they make themselves out to be. Annoyingly they make good hardware (ipods etc) but as a company they are shocking. How they get away with so many things that other companies would have been slapped for I dont know. Perhaps these in consistencies in handling things stem up to above management too for beating other companies down with things like 'you cant force media player onto people, you must make it available without that' but 'oh, its ok for you to push safari on any itunes user apple. Go ahead, make it a defaulted on tick box' and 'by all means make it so people can only use your batteries in your products and if they want it changing they have to send it back to you, rather than most other devices where users can change it themselves.'

.. if Apple got big enough, that they'd turn into as big b'stards as M$, guess I have an answer.

Paris, because I'd prefer to be ..

So you guys have tested 1.3 and found there to be no difference in network traffic usage from 1.2?

Coz I'm thinking Apple have done this and have found that there is a difference.

In the absence of any investigation more thorough than printing the developer's "new features" list, I'm siding with Apple.

I think there's deeper conspiracies at work here. It's quite likely that there's a clause in the Apple <-> AT&T/O2 contracts that restricts them from allowing bandwidth hogs out there. Something Apple is contractually obliged to enforce on the App Store.

However, I'm sure there's changes they could make to allow these. For example someone has mentioned that using Wifi would have been acceptable. Sounds like the BBC iPlayer set up to me - it only works over Wifi, not cellular networks.

Presumably you could build a "feature" into the SDK that would allow you to specify that it's Wifi use only - shirley can't be that difficult?

Companies crowing about "Come and live the 21st Century Dream! You can have the world at your finger tips, unlimited access to media anywhere, anytime!"

( Ooops sorry, our ad people put that in there sell the damn thing, you can't really it's just a phone/mp3 player/PC. No we never spoke to the comms people running the show, we knew wouldn't agree with us and anyway once you've bought the product you're locked in! )

I love my iPhone but hate Apple's Jobsian logic they use to decide what to approve and what to refuse.

Allow everything, competition is good!

The cellular network is not suitable for streaming relatively low bitrate audio?! Better tell that to all the people using Youtube on their phones then, oh and T-Mobile UK with the mobile IPTV streaming services. If it can't handle audio it definitely can't do video.

What was once a respected name is very very fast becoming a name known for stupid legal actions, rules, lockdowns, restrictions and bollox.

I'll stick with being a M$ fanboy, at least I know what I'm getting, and can build my own PC to use with their software.

> What gives them the right to dictate how I use MY device on MY contract

Ha ha! I can't believe there are people out there who actually believe that, just because they dropped nearly £1000 on an iPhone, they actually own it.

The naivety is almost touching.

Part of the deal with the phone carriers is that Apple would be the face of the store - so it is up to them to do the banning, but if you think they didn't have a push in that decision then you are shockingly naive in matters of business partnership and primary corporate goals.

Apple's primary goal is to sell hardware, and every action they do is to promote that goal.

The Wireless Company's primary goal is to sell bits as they travel back and forth between devices and radio towers. Everything they do is to promote that goal.

With this in mind, every decision that has ever come out about the iPhone makes perfect sense.

(Many things still suck - but they make sense)

It's amazing to me that not only the OP, but every commenter holds the belief that Apple cares how much bandwidth you use on the cellular network.

Apple makes it's money selling you physical tangible objects. Restricting what you can do with that object is only done at the behest of partners. The RIAA imposes DRM in the iTunes stores, and the Wireless Companies impose bandwidth restrictions.

The only thing that Apple digs it's claws into is the OS, and that's because they believe the OS belongs to the hardware - not to the end user. It's Mac OS X, not End User OS X. (That's why software is licensed but hardware is sold.) ...and doing so promotes the primary goal of selling hardware.

Apple developed an OS to sell hardware, and they lock it down for the same reason.

How much bandwidth you use on a cell network doesn't affect Apple's goal either way.

Guess who's goal it DOES affect?

Traffic management has to be done in the network. Seeing as,at least in Germany, you can use the same SIM on the same contract connected to a PC with no download restriction this can only be a dead herring related to the fact that the network can't properly distinguish between internet "radio" and VoIP.

I like Mac OS but some of the comments from the dullards on this are starting to make me feel ashamed.

O2 can and do monitor bandwidth usage. I use my Sony Ericsson phone as a 3G modem (rather than buying a separate dongle). I managed to get myself a letter from their "Head of Risk Management" complete with a real signature (shock, horror), accusing me of using the service "excessively".

Fun times.