I never quite got why iPhone users were so hell-bent for MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). Just send an email, for chrissakes. More characters, send pictures or whatever else you want (though, on an iPhone, the flexibility to send anything as an attachment is admittedly more limited than at a desktop). While you presumably add a bit more potential latency into the transaction, you’re not guaranteed instant delivery on a text anyway. Likewise, if you’re that concerned, email to a text gateway (though, with AT&T, that just about guarantees a many-hour holding time for said message). Jeff Carlson hits the nail on the head in this TidBITS article:
While MMS has many of the same properties as and more limitations than a rich, HTML email message, there’s less friction in using MMS. This is intentional, as MMS is a huge boon for carriers in terms of profit margins, which are very high. A 1 MB email message containing several photos would cost nothing to send on an iPhone (included in the flat-rate data plan), whereas a 100 KB MMS message requires a messaging subscription plan or incurs the $0.30 fee without. You can see which the carriers would prefer.
MMS seems utterly designed to:
a) make money for the carriers
2) shoe-horn something more akin to email onto older, crappier phones
-and-
iii) make money for the carriers
What’s the rumpus, iPhone owners? I understand the belly-aching over tethering. But MMS? Who cares. It will only serve to degrade an already tottering network. Stick it to The Man. Send an email.
Lemkin 