Little known fact: Steve Jobs has a time machine. No, not the OS X 10.5 “Time Machine” backup system. An actual Sherman-and-Mr.Peabody time machine. He doesn’t use it often, because he kind of considers it cheating. The last time he used it was right before the launch of the original iPhone. He traveled forward 30 years, only to find that no one used picture messaging on their super awesome space phones. That, he decided, was the future; a world without MMS. He rushed back through the space-time continuum. Upon arrival, Steve declared to his engineers that, for the sake of making the future come faster (thus allowing all off their current product models to become obsolete even sooner), they must remove MMS functionality from the iPhone.
Juice Wireless, the folks behind JuiceCaster, have a different vision for the future – one where MMS functionality is provided for all. Even iPhone users.
That’s why they’ve gone and made Flutter, a free iPhone application which provides MMS-esque capabilities. Snap a picture, and you can send it to any number in your contact list. It’s not without its flaws: you still can’t receive MMS, and any shots you send out are received on the end as a web-browser-launching link rather than the standard MMS format. The upsides? It gets the job done, it can do fancy-pants stuff like geotagging, and best of all: it’s free.
If all this service lets you do is send a browserlink to your picture – then why not use standard e-mail?
Only reason for using MMS instead of e-mail in the first place, is that the receiver needs to have an internet connection. If the receiver have internet in some form via his phone – he can check his mail, thus making MMS unnecessary.
I want real MMS on the iPhone. How hard can it be?
Agreed, this is not real MMS. The vast majority of people own “normal” handsets without internet access. That being the case, this is useless.
I want MMS because if I send a picture to someone without internet access they wont get it until they log onto their computer. Who knows when that will be? Sometimes I want a response about a picture right away…..
COME ON!
Actually Jason,
even MMS requires you to have GPRS on your phone.
In most cases – both sender & receiver have MMS enabled on their handsets but due to operator & device incompatibilities MMS from one phone never reaches the other device. This where services like Flutter prove to be a real boon.