finally the Missing Messaging Services comes to the iphone (see what I did with the capitalization there?)

Finally the iPhone, which is an amazing piece of technology, has caught up with phones from the early 2000s. It can now send pictures and videos… woooo… Ok it has a ton of other awesome features, but till today (September 25, 2009) whenever a non-iPhone user sent a picture text message the iPhone user was given a really hard to use link to go to and retrieve the picture, so basically no iPhone user has ever seen any pictures sent to them.


AT&T claims that they were nervous that the iPhone users would send loads of pictures to everyone and it would make the already unreliable network more unreliable. I have heard, though never seen, that the iPhone is practically unusable in places like the Bay Area and NY City where there are a really high concentrations of iPhones. Ok maybe they have a point. If the current iPhone users basically lock up the network with their current use and features, then adding more features will probably cause even more issues, now that they are sending all those pictures they take with the built in camera to everyone in their contact lists.

The iPhone has built in email and its possible to send pictures via email, which would be a great alternative to MMS if everyone out there also had an emailing phone. This is not always the case - either the phone has no email at all or the email is not really that accessible, like it is on my Verizon Voyager. So using the practically ancient technology called MMS - which most phones have had access too since its launch in March of 2002 - makes more sense, as it is basically standard.

The iPhone update came out today, and requires the owner to hook up their phone to iTunes and download the update. I am told it is small and should be quick. I am glad for this; finally my friends can see all those hilarious pictures I have wanted to send them. Let the drunken MMSing commence!