subzero.eu Blog Information on subzero.eu Productions

I’ve been getting emails from customers and have been following postings in forums and on blogs who are writing to me about problems with OS 3.0. So, here are the details for what’s going on with AutoWiFi. Get some coffee, this will be a long read. For those of you who aren’t interested, here is a quick status of AutoWiFi, others, hit “read the rest of this entry”.

Status:

OS 2: AutoWiFi works

OS 3.0 iPod Touch: You need Boingo WiFi (free) installed and AutoWiFi will work

OS 3.0 iPhone: You need Boingo WiFi (free) installed and you need to launch for a second or two before launching AutoWiFi, then AutoWiFi works.

OS 3.1: Once this is released, and once Apple approves the 1.0.127 AutoWiFi update, AutoWiFi works.

A little history lesson:

With OS 3.0 Apple introduced its own Auto-WiFi login system. It shows you the login screen from any application and tries to log in with your data. If it works it saves your data and will use the same login data next time. If it fails or you press the cancel button it disables your WiFi connection and enables your 3G connection so that you aren’t left in a state where your internet connection isn’t working. On paper, a great solution.

In practice however things look differently. Their system has problems, and fails to work with a great number of hotspots, I’ve tested it with 10 hotspots here in Vienna, and it failed on 8 of them. And as their system disables the WiFi connection if it fails you cannot log in manually via Safari, locking you out of said hotspot, forcing you to use 3G (not sure what happens on an iPod Touch).

During the beta testing of OS 3, I warned Apple via bug reports and emails about this problem but got no answer (until I opened a DTS ticket). Apparently so did the other companies that provide WiFi login solutions.  Apple’s solution was to disable their own system when it sees a WiFi login program installed. So, if you have Boingo WiFi installed (there are other programs too), Apple’s login system is off and you can manually connect again, or  use AutoWiFi.

Unfortunately by the time Apple had informed me about this solution (I had to open a DTS ticket and wait a while as the devs were all busy heading off to the WWDC) the gold master of OS 3.0 was out and AutoWiFi was not on the list of programs where Apple’s system is disabled. I guess having over 10000 customers isn’t enough for Apple to inform you of such things on time. At the same time though I must say that once you have contact with the DTS team, they are very competent and will find you code level solutions.

The state of things today:

Two things need to be done for AutoWiFi to work with OS 3: 1) AutoWiFi needs a slight modification to force the enabling of WiFi on phones. 2) AutoWiFI needs to be on the list of Apps where Apple’s built in system is disabled.

Issue 1) causes the problem where you need to launch Boingo or Safari first before launching AutoWiFi (iPhone issue only)  and is present in the current AutoWiFi (1.0.124) version in the App Store. Version 1.0.127 solves this issue. Version 1.0.127 was submitted to Apple end of July and is still in review (thats over a month now).

Issue 2) has been solved by Apple. Once Apple releases OS 3.1 you no longer need the Boingo WiFi app on your device for AutoWiFi to work. Yeay!

The future:

There is a plan for AutoWiFi in the long run, but I can’t discuss this at the moment. Once I can disclose more you’ll probably read it here first .

Share