Testing Facebook Messenger as a texting alternative (4 and 3G)

AT&T has significantly increased the effective cost of our family plan, partly through a covert and possibly illegal 2009 contractual change. It's effectively a 20% increase that's come due now.

I'm looking at alternatives. The most promising two are PAYG SIMs and, paradoxically, buying new iPhones on contract and selling them to China to fund use of the kids' old out-of-contract-but-forever-carrier-locked iPhones with the mandated $15/month AT&T smartphone tax.

Another option is to replace texting use. For example, we could sell the old 3Gs, buy iPhone 4s, have AT&T turn off texting (they will do that, albeit reluctantly), use iOS iMessage [1] among us, and use Google Voice for SMS as needed [2]. Dropping our $30 text and mobile-to-mobile plan would cover the cost of AT&T's covert rate increase.

Facebook Messenger is a cheaper option, particularly if one is going to use Google Voice for texting and disable texting on all phones.

So I ran some tests on my 4 and my son's 3G. (I'm still on iOS 4, waiting for at least iOS 5.01 and for all my apps to get settled in). Alas, Messenger needs work.

It's a slow app that takes a while to load. Messages are very fast (WiFi), but one message got stuck in the queue for a minute (!). It took only a few minutes of use to turn up bugs and performance issues.

So initial impressions are mixed, but we'll keep testing. I'm also researching alternatives. It's too bad Google is famously incompetent at iOS development (where did all their smart people go? Has any company flamed out so quickly?)

See also:

• Top 10 Clever Google Voice Tricks (this is an older article, but it's brilliant. Deserves a post of its own).
• Free alternatives may cut into text messaging profits - Los Angeles Times 8/2011 (Facebook, iMessage, TextPlus, Google Voice)
• textPlus – Free text messaging and group texting

[1] $30/month + fees ($36) texting plan over two years is $864, enough to pay for two iPhone 4s and $15/month data plans assuming we make some money from selling the 3Gs and of course the 4s have higher resale values.
[2] We have a (free) family Google Apps domain, every user has Google Voice.

AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless is almost worthless

AT&T promotes their "smart limits for wireless" $5/month service to limit phone use for family plans.

It includes limits on texting -- except AT&T no longer cells a limited texting plan. It's only unlimited or .25/message. So this is really only useful if you want to disable texting, but you can call AT&T customer service and say you want administrative texting only -- for no charge.

The "smart limits" includes limits on data use -- except they don't work on a phone that might really use data:

Does Smart Limits for Wireless work for restricting all web browsing / data usage?We’re sorry, but Browsing Limits and Time of Day Restrictions will not block or restrict data usage through non-Media™ Net internet browsers. Certain data-centric devices such as BlackBerry® devices offer non-Media Net browsers. In addition, Browsing Limits will not block or restrict a user’s data usage if the user is also subscribed to DataConnect, LaptopConnect, Tethering (connecting a wireless device to a laptop) or Blackberry services, while the user is in WiFi mode, or while the user is using iPhone 3.0 software or later.

It also includes number blocking (could be useful) and "parental controls" which, I suspect, don't work on smartphones.

This service must be a money spinner, but, really, its obsolete. Not coincidentally, it's very hard to actually locate the link that allows one to configure this plan. We had it leftover from when it made sense; I was keeping it in part for the data limitation issues. Turns out that was a mistake.

Since this plan doesn't limit iPhone data, it means if you're purchasing a minimal 200MB/month data plan for a child with an inherited smartphone you have no way to prevent them going over their data limit and running up major fees. The best you can do is disable access to Safari, YouTube and the AppStore (AppStore allows video views). Note when App Store is disabled you can't install or update Apps!

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Giving your old iPhone to your kid: working around AT&T's mandatory data plan
• Gordon's Notes: AT&T and the mandatory iPhone tax - even out of contract phones must pay

XWiki - Open source, LGPL, WYSIWYG

A colleague pointed me to XWIKI. I really want to know how I missed this, version 1 was 2008 but it has roots back to 2003. I've been looking for an open source wiki with rich text editing. In some ways it's the OpenOffice replacement for Sharepoint.

It's LGPL, and sold into the enterprise. Good wikipedia discussion.

Giving your old iPhone to your kid: working around AT&T's mandatory data plan

This is the season for corporate evil. First Google nukes my memory, then AT&T Wireless messes with our family mobile phone plan.

So I'm replacing Google Reader share and my kids phone plan at the same time. So much for my cognitive surplus.

The boys iPhone use had been working out well. They've been using battered old iPhone 3G and 3GSs inherited from Emily and I. Added to our family plan each kid costs us are $12/month with no data and $7.50/month text [2]. The phones are parental controlled - so no browser access, but when there's wifi they get email. They also get Navigon for GPS (no data needed), lots of apps [3], music, tv shows [4], movies, etc.

That just changed. AT&T whacked us with an automatic $30/month mandatory data plan on a phone that has never used cellular data [5]. (and, coincidentally, knocked out the texting service when cellular data was disabled). I won't go through the sordid details here, but do follow the link if you're interested. If you're in MN, feel free to do like me and submit a complaint to our AG.

Supposedly the fee has been reversed [6]. Now I need a plan B.

We can rule out paying a monthly data fee in the absence of a contract. That's what AT&T is lusting after. With a subsidized iPhone they have to send part of that fee to Apple, with an 'bring-your-own-iPhone' (BYOI) they keep the whole thing. This is what they live for.

So the options are some combination of:

1. Sell the old 3Gs/3GS and use the money to buy two refurbished iPod Touchs. Buy cheap dumbphones for the kids. One guy uses his voice/text so little we could drop his coverage.
2. Study other vendors and see what their BYOI policy is. Consider switching next summer/fall and pay the exit cost for Emily's 4S.
3. Get an iPhone 4s and an iPhone 4 under contract. I take the 4s. Sell my iPhone 4 and the brand new iPhone 4 and accept the minimal AT&T data fee $15/month. Dump the text plan, have AT&T turn off texting for the kids, and use Facebook messenger. (since Emily and I can use Apple's messenger service).
4. Drop our family plan altogether. Kids use Paygo SIMs, maybe with jailbreaking. Emily and I go single with separate discounts and cheaper LOS. Could save significantly.
5. We're paying $30/month for family messaging unlimited with mobile-to-mobile calling. I think AT&T snuck that one in during a recent service change. They're good at being bad. If we do a minimal data plan for the kids, and I put iOS 5 on my phone, we can drop this money sucking item.
6. Jailbreak and use with T-mobile paygo

Hmm. There are some good options in here. I might start with #5 for now -- since the costs are about the same. Then I'll look at the other options.

Maybe I can make AT&T pay for making me think about this. And if I can help others, then they'll pay some more.

- fn-

[1] List $10/month plus another $2 in unlisted fees. In general true base charges from AT&T are 20% higher than listed charges. [2] Unlimited family plan/4.  [3] Because FairPlay allows kids apps and any media to be shared, and iPhone games are inexpensive, an iPhone is the world's cheapest game console by a large margin. [4] The 12yo spends his chore money on Dilbert cartoons for $2/apiece.  [5] Curiously when they did this they also disabled SMS/MMS. So SMS/MMS works without a data plan, but when a data plan exists it is used. Feels like a bit of a scam.  [6] AT&T gets about $5,500 from our family every two years. In other words, our mobile plan costs rival the costs of operating a car. That may be why they reversed. Or not; we are small in their eyes.

See also:

• Dear Aunt TUAW: What is this cheap iPhone data plan you speak of? An easy option for the 3GS and possibly a very good fit for the kid that has the 3GS. This deserves careful study.
• PwnageTool - Wikipedia
• Use an iPhone on T-Mobile with Jailbreak - 2010/9/22
• Port your number into Google Voice FAQ - Google Voice Help: it costs $20 to port a number, but local numbers are hard to get. Plus losing numbers is very expensive for AT&T. So this is a cheap bit of revenge.
• Gordon's Tech: AT&T Smart Limits for Wireless is almost worthless: This makes a paygo plan particularly appealing. There's nothing to stop a young person from running up huge fees.
• H2O Wireless Unlimited - Prepaid Wireless SIM Card (Best Buy): sometimes these work in some iPhones in some regions - voice and text only. Worth an experiment

Update 11/4/2011: I bought a $15 data plan for one child, put the other's SIM in a dumbphone and discontinued worthless SmartLimits. So I'm behind $10/month for now. I'm concerned about tracking data usage even with YouTube, Safari and iTunes locked out. I'm planning to test a H2O Wireless SIM Card (no jailbreak or unlocking for AT&T phones, voice/text only) then test an AT&T PAYG SIM (voice/text). I'm also testing Facebook Messenger and looking to SMS alternatives. If I take the boys off the family plan I'll port their numbers to Google Voice (take that AT&T!).

Although the H2O website doesn't say anything at all about iPhone users, there's a MyH2O app on the App Store. However the H2O wireless cards expire after 30 days, so they're better suited to a heavy voice/data user than to our guys; there's really no saving over our family plan.

I still don't understand the AT&T PAYG plans. Their web site isn't too helpful. Is it really $30/month minimum, or is that somehow an initial payment with an expiration > 30 days? Consumer Reports tells us ... "AT&T's prepaid Go Phone service was among the lowest-scoring no-contract services in our Ratings."

BTW, Google search is a complete failure on this topic. The spammers have won.

Update 11/30/2011: How it ended. Victory! Lots of links to related strategies.

Fixing OS X Cmd-H problem (hide windows)

In OS X the keyboard shortcut Command + H (Cmd-H) hides the current app windows.

Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts: "Command-H Hide the windows of the currently running application"

This is a very old behavior. It made sense in Multifinder days; it's worse than useless in Snow Leopard -- it is inconsistent with Expose and Spaces. In Lion it's not quite so bad, but my fingers long ago mapped Cmd-H to "show history" in all browers.

I'm always hiding Safari, and having to unhide.

Grrr.

Today I realized I could do something about this. In keyboard shortcuts I mapped Cmd-H to Help, a system wide command. That's still a problem, but at least I don't hide my windows when I try to access history.

Next I'll try to remap the Safari shortcut for history to cmd-H, but even this is a big help.

Update: If I map Cmd-H to a system action like help file, it trumps mapping it to an app-specific menu item like Safari history. I decided to go with cmd-H for Safari, but outside of Safari it doesn't currently do anything. I might be able to use it for other app-specific menu actions. This will help!

After the fall of Google Reader: Posterous, Tumblr and Zootool with Twitter on the side

When a character in Charles Stross' Accelerando loses his prosthetic brain he's almost helpless; effectively amnestic. It's the future equivalent of not knowing anyone's number because it's all in your iPhone.

That's how I feel after Google amputated my Google Reader shares. I've got phantom prosthetic memory syndrome -- I keep trying to access a store that no longer exists.

On the bright side, it turns out I have 3 children, 1 wife and 1 dog. Who knew?

On the dark side, for a tech company being stupid is worse than being evil, but being evil AND stupid is even worser. (See, Google really has lobotomized me.)

Bad stuff, but it is time to move on. I've written my Dear Google letter, deleted the G+.app from my iPhone, switched my default search engine to Bing, and installed Firefox on my work machine. I'll work on remembering what was good about Google; we had some good times in Google's glory days.

So what replaces Google Reader social? [1]

At first, I thought it would be Twitter. So I stared using Twitter.

Wow. Martin is right - Twitter is a big step down from GR Shares. I'm sure I'll figure ways to use Twitter, especially after I go to iOS 5.0+, but it's no GR Share.

So what is out there to replace GR? Candidates include Posterous, Tumblr, and Zootool - though none of those seem to be true Reader Share contenders. The original GR team was wonderful.

I'll be looking around in future posts. I'll end this post with a list of what I'm looking for ...

1. Bookmarklet that generates posts with title, url, excerpt and annotation.
2. Must have an RSS feed.
3. Must have a business model that involves me paying for services received.
4. Either I have control over the data store or there's a way to create a read-only repository I can keep.
5. Reeder.app support, so I can use Reeder.app for IOS and Reeder.app for Mac, avoid Google's miserable UI, and prepare for migration to another OPML store.
6. Twitter integration so it tweets shares for those who are good with Twitter's limitations.

See also:

• Posterous vs. Tumblr: A Head to Head

[1] I just bought Reeder.app for Mac to reduce the pain of Google's mangling of the GR's most basic feed reader functions.

Update: Curiously, the GR shares still exist. My old share page is up: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jfaughnan, it still has a feed, and items shared in 3rd party apps (Reeder.app, etc) are added there. The share links is simply missing in the redesigned GR UI. I can't consume this feed in GR because it hides it from me, but other people can subscribe to it.

Update 11/3/11: This is a hot topic on, ironically, G+. That's the best source for non-google ideas. Tumblr w/ secondary Twitter reposts seems to be the default choice (more on that to come), but other that are showing up ...

• Netvibes - Dashboard Everything: aimed at megacorp, but has a free option (freemium)
• Ditching Google Reader after the changes? This site makes it easy to use Twitter instead - The Next Web: Go hard to Twitter
• A Parallel Universe In Which Google+ Enhances Google Reader: Ok, so this isn't a fix. Barring brane traversal.

Former Google product manager on the trashing of Google Reader

A former Product Manager for Google Reader shares my feelings about Google's act of mass data destruction (emphases mine. I resisted the impulse to use blinking bold fonts the color of arterial blood.) ...

Reader redesign: Terrible decision, or worst decision?

Google released the previously announced set of changes around G+ integration and UI updates today, and boy is it a disaster. Since the general changes were pre-announced last week, most of us were prepared for the letdown, but actually seeing how it works end to end has made several flaws abundantly clear. Let's start with the obvious...

... When you log into Reader, what the hell do you think your primary objective is? Did you answer "stare at a giant header bar with no real estate saved for actual reading"? Congrats, here's your prize:

Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows.

The only thing left with any color of consequence it the obscenely red subscribe button in the top left, which in keeping with the spirit of prioritizing the exactly wrong thing -- you don't even need to use very often.

Ok, before we get started - let me be very clear about one thing. I think integration with G+ should happen. Reader friends should be managed in the same place you manage G+, with the same metaphors (whether you think they're flawed or not). Sharing should utilize the same infrastructure and plumbing that G+ does. I am not objecting to any of these things. Google has clearly made its bets with G+, and Reader should be part of those plans.

The frustrating thing is that these pitfalls could have been avoided through a more thought out integration. As Kevin Fox has already pointed out, Google could have easily made it so that sharing was pushed through G+ (therefore giving providing content on G+, and gaining all the benefits of an integration), but also replaced shared items from People You Follow with a Reader-specific Circle.

It's almost as if Google wants to demonstrate that, yes, they don't really get platforms. Instead of improving the G+ API to support Reader as a fully functional 3rd party client (a la Twitter), they've instead crippled the product under the guise of improvements.

Google has long neglected Reader as a product. (Hey can someone fix Recommended Items? Please?) Reader was fortunate to have a passionate team that was trying to do the right thing for their users by continuing to innovate and build on the experience, but it's not hard to tell from the official blog that core updates died down a long time ago.

Reader never achieved the massively popular status of Gmail or Google News. But it did develop a fanatical following of users, and was one of the few places that Google was able to experiment with and learn about social features.

After I left Google in July, I heard that there was renewed effort around the project and that a new team was bringing some much-needed attention to the product. I expected them to give the product a facelift, and integrate G+ -- both things that needed to happen.

But killing off functionality that could have easily been built on top of G+, and missing the mark by so much on the UI... and then releasing them under the guise of improvements?...

The comment on "Google doesn't get platforms" is a reference to a famous "we don't get platforms" internal Google rant that was accidentally shared worldwide.

It's just astounding. It as though Google is trying to be a bizarro version of Apple. They're now making some of the mistakes Apple makes, but they've vastly uglier and the mistakes are much bigger. It reminds me of Windows 7 ridiculous imitation of OS X Spotlight replacing the imperfect but superior Windows Search 4 interface. Except this is much worse.

I had all the same reactions as Brian Shih, so I appreciate his doing the posting work for me. Google did need to integrate Reader with G+, but they chose an almost perfectly disastrous route. Their culture is broken.

This Google decision does have an upside. I'm learning Twitter, Posterous, Bing, Firefox ...

PS. Did I mention that the Blogger redesign is almost as bad? Label selection is one bad aspect among many.

Update 11/2/11: A former Google senior designer has offered to help salvage GR.

The end of Google Reader shares and the rebirth Gordon's twitter feed

(cross posted to Gordon's Notes and Gordon's Tech)

Google Reader shares are gone.

I'm not going to switch to sharing via G+.

I will, however, be sharing via Twitter: John Gordon (jgordonshare) on Twitter.

That Twitter stream used to consist of feed-generated tweets from GR shares. Now it's the closest thing I have to an archive of those shares.

Now it will be the primary place I share -- with the help of the Twitter share bookmarklet.

Components of a knowledge share solution

Both at work and at home i've been studying our current toolkit for sharing knowledge. At work I'm supporting our software development, at home I'm looking at a ways to share knowledge to support lifelong education of persons with cognitive disabilities, including formal public education and home schooling. Naturally I'm looking at similar technologies in both environments.

I've summarized a few of the components I'm thinking about in a table. I compared best of breed solutions to the best (not free!) suite I know of and to Google's offerings.

Function	Best of breed	Atlassian Confluence	Google
commentary, notices	Wordpress	yes	Blogger
Q&A	StackExchange	no	no
collaborative hypertext document	TWiki?	yes	Sites
PDF, other	FTP/HTTP server	yes	Docs, Share
Calendar/event	Google Calendar	no	Google Calendar
Social, networking	Facebook	no	G+
Subscribe/notify	RSS	RSS	?

Looking at this solution set it's clear that each has its advantages and weaknesses.

Atlassian Confluence is the best integrated knowledge sharing and collaboration solution I know of. It's not at all free, but it's inexpensive for 10 or fewer users and anonymous users can have read only access. I give Atlassian extra marks for actually publishing an easily discoverable price list. Unfortunately I don't think I can get Confluence running at Dreamhost, my net hosting provider.

Google, like Atlassian, is free for a small number of users and provides high performance anonymous access. Sadly, Sites is a great disappointment. On the other hand, I'm not impressed with any of the currently available open source wiki solutions. In many ways FrontPage 98 was better.

Lastly the best of breed solutions have advantages in terms of data freedom and ease of switching providers or changing knowledge base ownership. An integrated approach can also leverage StackExchange -- the net's best technology for question/answer based information sharing. Likewise a Facebook Page can engage customers and provide a secondary notification solution in addition to RSS/Twitter.

Any thoughts? Comments are most welcome.

PS. I've been looking at collaboration technologies for about 20 years -- starting with BBS software and a long string of innovative solutions. The functional list would have had answers 20 years ago. What's different is that the audience today is vastly larger.

Managing Apple Community email: where to unsubscribe

In the old days it was easy to unsubscribe from Apple Community Support emails. Every email had an unsubscribe link.

That's the right way to do it.

Somehow, that got forgotten when Apple made their support community "Social". I'm getting emails from every thread I've commented on, and I couldn't see how to stop them.

This stuff isn't hard, but Apple blows it every time. Something about their culture.

Anyway, this page seems to be the trick. It was a bit hard to find:

• https://discussions.apple.com/people/jgordon?view=watches

It lists all the items I'm (unwittingly) "watching". I clicked each one and removed it. You might be able to find it in in Apple Support Communities> People.

A dead MacBook Air power adapter is magically restored. SMC problem?

The power adapter for my 6 week old 11" MacBook Air failed overnight (45W MagSafe power adapter with "L" style connector $80!). No glowing LED, no charging. Happily a friend's works, so I know the Air is ok.

Still, it's most annoying -- especially since today's lunch trip to a nearby Apple store ran into their Jobs memorial closure.

Naturally I'm inclined to believe this is a national disaster, but this isn't a trending topic anywhere. So it's probably just bad luck.

Researching this did lead me to a related topic of interest. It's safe to use a higher wattage adapter with the Air, specifically the current MacBook and MacBook Pro adapters ...

Intel-Based Apple Portables: Identifying the right power adapter and power cord--US: 

... Power adapters for Intel-based Apple portables are available in 45W, 60W, and 85W varieties. Although you should always use the proper wattage adapter for your Apple portable, you can use an adapter of a higher wattage without issue.

For instance If you have a MacBook (13-inch Late 2009) that normally uses a 60W adapter, you can also use an 85W adapter with that computer. You would not use a 45W adapter with that computer; it would not provide enough power for that MacBook...

I've read elsewhere that using a lower power adapter might allow the machine to function, but not to charge.

The article, incidentally, tells us the removable AC plug on Apple's power supplies is a "Duckhead". Who knew?

Update: On the advice of Dan Swift (see comments), I tried a fix that I thought was 90% crazy. First I confirmed I didn't have a 'stuck pin' problem. I checked all connector pins were moving and out. Then I charged it for 30-45 minutes on a friend's 'good' charger. Then I tried my charger. Now it works again.

This is the weirdest thing I have seen in years. I assume there's no OS in the (bloody $80) charger, so I assume this is a MacBook PMU glitch that will need a firmware update to fix.

Thanks Dan. I've changed my post title to make this easier to find.

I've posted on this to Apple Discussions.

Update: It's back to not working, which feels saner to me. I did reset the SMC, which may help when "The MagSafe power adaptor LED doesn't appear to indicate the correct activity". So it's to the Apple Store sometime soon.

I did find an article on a similar problem from 2008 that tells me that firmware issues can alter charging behavior: "In certain situations when you connect a new 60W or 85W MagSafe power adapter to the MagSafe port of an older MacBook or MacBook Pro computer, the adapter may not charge the computer and the LED indicator light on the MagSafe connector of the adapter may not illuminate."

What happened to Google calculator?

I entered an arithmetic expression into Google -- and I got back a search result!

For years Google interpreted and solved the expression.

It's been a while since I've done this, but not that long.

Is it really gone?

I can't find anyone else who's noticed ...

Update: Ok, it's working again. Phew. That was weird.

 

iPhone 4S battery life is half of what it should be

Emily's new iPhone 4S can't make it through a day of light use.

I suspect a software issue with either IMAP or MobileMe or ActiveSync polling. Otherwise, hardware. I posted a question to Apple Discussion: iPhone 4S battery life is half of what to solicit ideas.

I'll see if a software notice appears in the next few days, and I'll post updates here.

Update 10/16/11: This post has a likely cause. It's apparently a longstanding iOS bug. Restored accounts may have problems with IMAP/POP accounts resulting in high server polling rates. The fix is to delete and restore the account. I did that on Emily's account, and on my first try with the restored account Mail.app crashed. On the 2nd try I had to reenter her password but it's working now. She is getting new email, but I didn't notice a problem before.

The missing iPhone and iOS 5 PDFs - found

Pay phones. Fax machines. Printers. All vanishing.

Documentation too!

I went looking today for PDF documentation on the iPhone 4S and iOS5. I didn't find much, and what I did find was out of date or incomplete. The "User Guide" Safari bookmark in Emily's 4S pointed to a web site that didn't describe use of the camera controls on a locked phone [1],[4].

I found the iPhone User Guide For iOS 5 by Apple as an iBook, but it's ePub only. There's no Apple ePub/iBook reader for OS X [1]. Kindle, sure. iBook, not so much.[3]

Google failed me, but old fashioned clicking found support.apple.com/manuals and the iPhone User Guide for iOS 5 (pdf) and iPhone 4S Finger Tips. The Finger Tips PDF and physical handout do describe how to use the camera from a lock screen.

- fn -

[1] Double click the home button from the lock screen. Brings up sound and camera controls against lock screen background. Camera response time is now faster than most dedicated cameras; about 3000% faster than my iPhone 4. I figured this out on my own, but later found it in the user guides I located. Because we restored from backup I suspect we wiped out the URL that is part of the default iOS 5 install.

[2] Many recommend http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions. This is, obviously, an Adobe product. I try hard to avoid Adobe's sofware. With the exception of Lightroom the quality is poor and the installers are insulting.

[3] Yes, Apple's missing OS X EPUB reader is ... astounding. My response has been to only get Kindle books.

Update 10/16/11: In the 24 hours since I posted Apple has updated their manuals site and added links from the support page. Guess they were just catching up post launch. [4] The URL for iPhone help that I couldn't find is: help.apple.com/iphone.

Warning: iPhone 4 cases may not fit 4S

Just got the AT&T 4S. I'm seeing the same problem with Speck Pixelskin reviewer had with a Verizon 4:

Speck Products | Speck Products PixelSkin HD iPhone Case | TPU iPhone Case

... I bought this cover for a Verizon iPhone 4 and the cut out for the ring/vibrate switch does not fit. It may be fine for the ATT phone, but not Verizon. It is advertised as fitting both, but it makes it look like the cover doesn't go with the phone...

On our new 4S the mute switch slot is too high. I wonder if the AT&T 4S more closely resembles the Verizon 4. Many cases will have similar issues.

I'm disappointed that Speck is marketing their cases as 4 and 4S.