Apple iCloud: Manage App Data Backup and Storage. This is a helpful way to manage the data and storage you are using on Apple iCloud. I haven’t used iCloud much since MobileMe was such a disaster. I turned it on, but a month later it had a problem so I turned it off and haven’t used it since. Not a good start to the service.

Ron Guest fixed it. This is a generally good idea to delete and re-add email accounts. It fixes many mysterious issues. The next upgrade is just to delete his MobileMe account.

OK. I self-solved this one. I deleted the MobileMe account on the MacBook Air, quit Mail, then started it up again and re-added the MobileMe account in Mail. Now I can send just fine.

via Unable to send mail using MobileMe…: Apple Support Communities.

IPad2 backup session fails consistently…: Apple Support Communities. Turns out that uninstalling and reinstalling the iTunes 10.3 program fixed it for the poster. Great work!

It can be frustrating to those of us who don’t work at Apple to support Apple products. Here are the top 3 weakness of Apple and how to deal with them.

Secrets – This is deadly for enterprise support. How can a company invest in Apple products like the Xserve/Xraid array and they are EOL (end of life) with no transition? Too many times, Apple ends software/hardware support with no migration strategy. This is very difficult for everyone. While other companies end support, they often can be replaced by other vendors. However how can you replace something like the Xraid? Sure you can buy other equipment, but what happens when what you have breaks? Third-party market is unreliable and not a good idea for any company.

More generally its more than the roadmap for products that prevent Apple adoption. It is that using Apple services like MobileMe has no kind of management for legal or compliance issues. Apple can’t compete when there is no transparency about what it does and doesn’t do with its services. Yes there is a competitive advantage to not being transparent, but it also means that they lose business that they could have had. I have never seen any kind of information if MobileMe could be SOX/Hippa/PCI compliant. If they said they were, I bet they would see a huge surge of customers. Apple misses opportunities when they aren’t honest with the limitations of their services.

What is more surprising is that when Google and Facebook are being investigated for anti-consumer practices, Apple isn’t proactive about this possibility. It is almost axiomatic that the larger a company grows the more likely it will be investigated. It seems clear to me that Apple will be investigated in the future. So this is the choice they are making. I think they are trading on the goodwill generated by their products that they won’t be investigated. I don’t think this will happen.

How to deal with them: Don’t promise future support for investments, don’t beta-test new services on individuals, don’t be afraid to use third-party stuff when it is better.

Design – Apple gets compliments for its design so how could that be a weakness? Well it is a weakness because often they make right decisions, they just as often make wrong ones. Apple tends to drop support for technologies way more aggressively than their typical customer is ready to. This can be very costly and disruptive.

List of design choices that were mistakes: No support of Blu-Ray, lack of basic I/O devices like the cheapest PC’s have, odd and questionable ideas like the Apple Cube, puck mouse, Apple III, iWeb/Galleries. Why didn’t they just buy WordPress and Flickr? Those are applications that have serious market respect, and yet Apple choose to compete instead. Apple forgets what Steve Jobs himself said. “It is a mistake to think that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose.” Apple has a design opportunity to include web-based services as part of its OS yet it focus on its own attempt to ape those winning products.

It is curious isn’t it? Apple clearly has many successful products, but they continuously try to reinvent the wheel. While that sometimes results in new products like the iPhone, sometimes you only have to integrate, not reinvent. Apple is so creative, that I believe it blinds them to the opportunities that are so plentiful. To make the services on the web integrate in a manner that is beneficial to their customers and those of other Operating systems. For example, Xmarks syncs passwords across browsers. How wonderful that would be if Safari/Chrome/Firefox bookmarks/favorites were able to be shared no matter what their source? This is something that Apple could easily and clearly do. This would be a fantastic service that they are missing because they are focused on competing on too many fronts like Google.

Every design choice says volumes about their priorities as a company. Jobs have said that they have to say “no” to good projects to focus on great ones. Well I would submit that many products/projects are not great and their current success does not guarantee future success. I think that Apple is drifting away from its customers when customers are ok with not buying Apple products. If you don’t create a product people miss, then you haven’t created a magical product. I have met many Apple customers who had an Apple failure and then start using a pc product. If using a mac is more difficult than easy, people will avoid it. Apple still is more difficult to use than a PC in many ways, and better design would fix this.

For example, I don’t understand why Apple didn’t buy VMware or Parallels and incorporate their product into the OS. For the average person to just be able to install and use a VM image, or their older Windows software would have been incredible. In many places in the US there is not a close Apple store, so until Apple stores are on every corner, they need to work in a Windows-centric world. Apple needs to think about how their machines can have even more feature parity with Windows machines, and do everything they can to allow people to have options. They need to realize that people may not want to have multiple machines just to have them. That they might one like machine that can do everything. Having the ability to have PC I/O ports and software would effectively let people buy a mac with total security. That was what was so awesome when they had a PC card in their machines in the past. Having two machines in one is a fantastic value. I think that if they did this, they would put the writing on the wall for PC vendors.

How to deal with them: Don’t use the default Apple programs just because they are free, look at the track record of third-party companies, consider the goal of your organization and find ways to simplify and centralize.

Black/white thinking – This manifests itself in so many ways. Everyone has a right to make choices. The problem is that when you are a company, your choices have real consequences to others. I shared earlier my problem with one of Gmails features that was embarrassing for me.

Apple has this arrogance that many people have commented on that their way is the best way. Every company believes this, but Apple is in a unique position. It used to be that Apple was more proprietary and too often they took advantage of that. I remember reading that a famous writer invested thousands of dollars in equipment and needed a simple printer cable. When he called Apple they charged him $50 for it. He was so upset that he had no choice but to pay it, because no one else made that cable. Too many times I see customers who are in this position. Their computer fails, and the repair cost is sometimes more expensive than a new one is worth. That kind of policy is not only unfair, but results in a loss of future business.

Also this manifests in trying to deny reality. Apple sometimes has had to be sued into admitting that their products have defects, and should be repaired under warranty. Too often Apple has tried to deny and cover up a problem, when it would have been better to just admit it up front. Their employees seem more concerned about preserving the reputation of Apple, than in fixing issues it is responsible for. These things are not forgotten by the Apple community and the more this happens, the closer to the breaking point people become and consider other options to use.

The recent moisture sensor is another sign of this kind of unhelpful thinking. It was put in to see if their products were being abused and I understand that. The problem is that when people did not abuse their system and the sensor showed moisture, what happened. Rather than believe their customer (can really everyone be lying), they denied repairs when they showed the sensor that showed moisture. Any kind of new technology will have bugs, so there should be a “trial” period to give people the benefit of the doubt until a system is established beyond any doubt. Your customers are not your enemies but your friends.

How to deal with them: Don’t depend on Macs for critical infrastructure without a dedicated mac support, don’t take what Apple employees say at face value (Genius are instructed to not tell the whole truth on some issues), get Applecare if you buy any Apple product, find a Mac genius you can trust.

Conclusion – Apple isn’t perfect, but of the competition is the best for me at the present time. If it could address these situations then it would truly be “magical”.

Apple Blocks Emails for Objectionable Content. This is concerning. So using MobileMe for business purposes has another reason to avoid. I like Apple, but its quiet censorship alarms me sometimes.

I used to have a MobileMe account until last year. It was just too slow and prone to problems to be useful even for personal use. I have Gmail now which is more useful, but now I wonder what spam messages are blocked that I don’t know about. Perhaps it is time to get a dedicated email system for my domain and setup my own filter.

I stopped using MobileMe more than a year ago. I wrote about it earlier. Rather then repeat myself, lets just say that other services do it better.

I have been using Gmail and Google Documents since then, which works great for the most part. Not crazy about the advertising, but there aren’t good free options. I had tried using Dropbox but had to stop that due to its recent security breach. I looked at some other options, but right now SugarSync seems to be working the best.

What I like about it, is that it is offers great performance and features. It is what MobileMe should have been. I love the local client file manager, and the immediate synchronization of the most common folders. Last night I uploaded a 300 MB file, and it took about 20 minutes. I would have never attempted that with iDisk. I was thrilled with its functionality.

Gallery – Flickr is great and is a much nicer way to view and share your photos with others.

iWeb/Hosting – WordPress or other CMS like Posterous or Tumblr are good as well.

iDisk – Almost everything is better for file storage. Google Documents, Dropbox (if you don’t care about security), SugarSync.

Email – Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo. I have a Yahoo account, but only really use it for Flickr.

Calender – Gmail calender is great and sometimes works with Gmail as well.

Synchronization of bookmarks – Xmarks allows you to share your browser bookmarks between multiple computers. Works great! I don’t use it, but I have supported people who do and it is super easy.

Synchronization of your passwords – Lastpass, 1pass work well for many people. I don’t believe that synchronization of passwords is a good idea, but other people like this. For me, with the problems with security on the web mean that mixing passwords with a third-party is nothing but problems.

Synchronization of mobile devices – SugarSync and Audiogalaxy work great. I love how Audiogalaxy scans your music and then allows you to stream it to other devices. Much faster than other methods of uploading or sharing your music to the world.

Backup Protection – SugarSync and Google Docs is working great for me. However if I had more data I would probably have NAS device that also replicated in the cloud. For that storage I would probably pay for SugarSync. I am actually considering exporting my documents from Google Docs and putting them in SugarSync. I would love to go wholly away from Google.

Resume – Currently mine is in Google Docs, but it is more effective on LinkedIn. I have been a member of LinkedIn for probably 5 years and it is a tremendous value for networking and sharing opportunities with friends.

Sharing videos – I have enjoyed YouTube and VodPod. It is a great way to share videos with those you think might enjoy them. It is great to put videos out there instead of just having them on your hard drive. I think the only things that should not be shared are things like medical information, or psychological issues. Things that might embarrass or have no business being known. Everyone has issues, and the people who make peace with those issues are stronger and more able to help others.

How I Became (Mostly) Google-free in About a Day | zen habits – StumbleUpon. Some good research about options compared to Google. I used to use MobileMe but it had too many issues with email, and iDisk was unusable. Apple does great at some things, but it really has problems with others. Such is life. No one company is skilled and experienced enough to do it all.

Five Best Email Clients – Lifehacker. This is a nice list of e-mail software. If you master one of these you will probably be very happy. Outlook 2011 for Mac review sometimes looses data, but generally works well.

Xee.This is a free source alternative to iPhoto for handling photos. Much faster and almost immediate load. I used a folder full of photos and it loaded them instantly and allowed me to easily page through.

When Steve Jobs isn\’t happy, he really isn\’t happy – Digg. Disappointing that so many people who are successful treat others so badly. Is there anyone who ever became rich or famous without being a jerk?

Apple – Support – Discussions – Error -41 work-around? …. This person solved their own problem. They changed the permissions and propagated them through the folders and it fixed the problem. This is a good general first step if you get these kind of errors.

Seths Blog: Working with Apple Tech Support. Nice set of instructions that could give you better service if Applecare is still in force.

Apple – Support – Discussions – hello.connectivity.m …. Nice instructions. drbeez has it figured out.

I finally got a Senior Advisor, Taylor, at Apple to answer this. Three previous technicians claimed they’d never heard of this issue.
APACSD is Apple Wide Area Connectivity Service Daemon. It is a function of MobileMe. It doesn’t pertain to BTMM only, but to a world of connections such as Calendar, Contacts, Synch, iWeb, etc.
Taylor explained that this a a form of handshaking between MobileMe and your Mac. If the connection is disabled by your firewall protection, you will see many malfunctions in anything MobileMe-related.
hello.connectivity.me.com is a platform established in OSX 10.6.6 that will later support other added services.
Funny. The third technician thought I was worried about the government seeking contact with my computer (“just who do you believe is trying to access your computer?”) and treated me like a weirdo until I explained the research time I’d spent on this and told him I knew this was an Apple connection. Only then did he pass me along to his superior. At least he learned something.
And maybe this helps someone else who’s bugged by these repeated requests for access. Allow the connection and it’s over with.

MobileMe has had plenty of issues. Read about them here, here, here, here. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. I don’t know why I waited with MobileMe for 10 years. I guess I am slow to learn some things.

If I understand this post correctly he is disappointed of the workaround to create ringtones for his iPhone. Which is kind of interesting because 10 years ago I believe the forerunner to iTunes was a $40 product. Apple excels at giving away the razors and then getting you with the razor blades. It is a difficult balance to work with content producers. What is a fair amount for the work/costs invested in music creation?

I understand how silly it seems to buy a ringtone when you can get music for free. I don’t believe in getting things for free unless there is a legal way to do so. For example libraries often have music/video that you can check out. That is not “getting it” to keep, but certainly the same effect as downloading it from the Internet.

What does Apple charge for? Hardware, software, entertainment from others. This all seems fair to me. When I had the means I was a big iTunes store customer. It is a great way to get entertainment, and Apple deserves their success. Of course with limited incomes it is hard for stressed people to afford entertainment options. Does that mean that we can adopt a “Robin Hood” mentality? I don’t think so.

We have to be creative and find ways to share what we have with others. We have to think and act critically and not support business that are not socially responsible. We have to live with ourselves and not do what is easy, but do what takes character and wisdom. Everything that I have I have purchased, and I have no fear of my past actions. What is the use of enjoying something in the short-term if it destroys you in the long-term?

It is hard sometimes not to have things you need, but its even harder to not be the person you know yourself are.

Now that I have my new iPhone, I’m thrilled to have it and using it is wonderful. While I’ve been working with it I’ve run into a strange oddity and a workaround for it. The oddity came when I tried to create my iPhone-compatible ringtones. The creation of iPhone custom ringtones are in themselves needlessly fussy procedure. First you find the music you want, trim it to 40 seconds, then convert it to AAC format. Then you tear it out of iTunes … Read More

via Bluedepth’s Journal

Turns out it has to do with MobileMe and out of control synchronization.  Here is Damien-007 solution.

I solved this problem a few days ago, after spending close to two hours with Apple Care. All time very well spent since I learned a lot, but more importantly, I thoroughly solved the problem.

Mind you, this was happening to me on my three different computers, 2 iMacs and a Mac Mini, all under 10.6.4
And through solving this problem, I learned that MobilMe also had a sync file on a Windows XP and a Windows 7 machine, neither of which I had booted up, since last spring.

First, the symptoms:
1) your dock changes the icon content before your eyes
2) the dock won’t hold an icon in its place, no matter how you put it there, or what settings or methods you choose to ‘Keep In Dock’
3) you are currently, or have previously used MobileMe, to sync your settings

The cause of these symptoms/problem:
Your MobileMe syncing with the cloud (the Apple servers where they store your sync data and your sync settings) has been corrupted.

Why unchecking Synchronize with MobileMe doesn’t fix it:
Because even on your local machine, the dock is “calling home” to verify it’s settings. When you turn off syncing, it’s inability to call the cloud, continues the problem.

The only guaranteed solution:
You have to Unregister all computer(s) from the MobileMe cloud and start your MobileMe sync fresh (as in brand new settings, NOT Reset settings) on all your computer(s). This applies even if you only sync one computer, and even if you have turned off syncing with MobileMe.

Before beginning, Turn off Synchronize with MobileMe on all computers in your MobileMe cloud.

The steps:
1) Backup everything and take note of all your settings, for which MobileMe has syncing powers over. Specifically, this includes, Bookmarks, iCal, Address Book, Mail Accounts, Mail Rules, Notes, Preferences and Entourage Notes. For Keychains, make sure you scrub that list and delete duplicates. A symptom of corrupt syncing is multiple entries in your key-chain for the same passwords. It’s OK to over delete here since the worst case scenario is you will have to reenter passwords

2) Now you will erase all the data in the MobileMe cloud, 100%.
Go to the Apple (top left corner)/System Preferences/MobileMe/Sync

• click the Advanced button lower right
• click on each computer listed in the pull down window
• to the right of each computer listed, click Stop Syncing Computer
• if you have multiple computers (I had five), each stop will take some time and may produce the beach ball. Be patient and hang in there. Still, all 5 of my computers, only to me about 20 minutes total.
• After the last or ONLY computer has been thoroughly “stopped syncing”,

a NEW pull down window will drop down, listing all the data that lives in the MobileMe cloud

• check mark each file and confirm that you want all that data/entries deleted.

3) Now you need to set up a new dock:

• Delete the dock preferences and database files mentioned by macjack above

“Go to /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences and delete these 2 files /com.apple.dock.plist and com.apple.dock.db.plist Then restart. This will give you the default Dock, so you’ll have to reset yours the way you like.”

Also, make sure your entire computer data is as you expect it. Address Book, iCal etc. Restore from backups if necessary and basically get your Mac to the way you like it.

NOW,
You can set up MobileMe fresh BUT this time do it with the more Advanced method by going back to the Advance Button under
Go to the Apple (top left corner)/System Preferences/MobileMe/Sync

• click the Advanced button lower right

And Register your/each computer: This will automatically start a MobileMe sync.

When asked, tell MobileMe that you want to keep the data on your freshly set up computer and replace the data on Mobile me.

You are done.

Do the above for each computer, for which you use mobileMe with the one variation that you should replace the data on each successive computer, with the sync data on the MobileMe cloud. (after your primary/main computer has thoroughly populated the New MobilMe data in the cloud.

matmug115 has the answer.  It worked for some people.  Others still have the issue.

Found the culprit, I had also installed an app called menumeters, when I uninstalled, the error message disappeared.

via Apple – Support – Discussions – Error 256 when doing a backup ….

Apple – Support – Discussions – Apple script to locate and assign ….  Old Toad’s logic is impeccable.  Thanks.

You can easily find photos that are not in any albums by using a Smart Album with the criteria:

Album is not Any

From there you’ll have to manually drag them to their destination album.

However, once you move photos to another album you’ll have to leave it and then go back to it to see the changes you’ve made. It doesn’t automatically update changes while you’re viewing it.

Christos M. found a solution.

Turning mobile me sync off and then on again did nothing to fix the issue so I assumed it was an error in the dock sync preferences. Here is what I tried and it seems to have worked. I hope I havent done anything that may have changed anything else.I went to this path macbook HD>system folder>library>SyncServices>AutoRegistration>Cients>com.apple.Dock and highlighted the DOCK file and pressed command to show original. I then deleted the original. I had to enter the administrative password to do this, but everything seems to be working as it should now.

via Apple – Support – Discussions – Disappearing System App icons in Dock ….

MobileMe: Supported system requirements.  Nice list of Operating systems that work.  Of course they prefer Windows 7 which is understandable.

eddieb figured it out: (It makes sense that it wouldn’t understand two different accounts)

I figured out the problem on accident. Very long story short here. I use a MobileMe email account. When I set up the iPad, it set the account up automatically for me based on my email address, etc. But I just ran across the fact that when it set up the account automatically, it used the “@me.com” suffix on the email address. I use the “@mac.com” suffix instead. For those not familiar with MobileMe, you can use either interchangeably in the email address.

But when doing a reply all, since the email address I normally use and the one in my account settings is different, it didn’t eliminate my email from “Reply All”. So I changed the account email address (actually had to delete and recreate the account) and all is well.

Although your stabs at the problem didn’t help me Doug, the one about the alias is similar to what the problem was and should have helped me, so I’ll mark that down as “Helpful”. Thanks!

via Apple – Support – Discussions – When I.

Apple – Support – Discussions – SafariErrorDomain error 1, invalid ….  Turned out to be a problem with Comcast and their network.  Nothing for you to fix.

It turns out that this error will occur when you don’t have as much free space as the space your home folder occupies.  Either delete things or clone to a bigger disk.  Thanks WZZZ.

via Apple – Support – Discussions – FileVault ….

Sync Services: Advanced troubleshooting for contact and calendar syncing.  This only applies if:

Please try the steps below if any of the following are true:

• Your sync issue does not involve MobileMe.
• You’ve reset your MobileMe sync data.
• You’ve already performed a reset sync history.

MobileMe: Data may be removed from Outlook when upgrading MobileMe Control Panel.  Yikes.  They have a solution to fixing that problem in the link above.

Some MobileMe.  Seems like Apple enforced higher security without letting anyone know.  You may need to reset your password if you have a simple password.

Hold down the option key. The groups will highlight in yellow.

MobileMe: Unable to browse more than one year of Events in the Calendar List view.  So the solution is to use the Month, Week or Day view.

Several peoples experiences using MobileMe.  Most of them didn’t have a happy ending.  It is unfortunate this occurs.

Apple – Support – Discussions – Problem during delivery processing ….  So if you have Mobileme then this problem should be resolved for you like it was for others.  Looks like a configuration issue.

Apple – Support – Discussions – Alternatives to iCal / MM for 2 PCs 2 ….  Some good suggestions John P makes here.  Most people use Google and it works well for them.

According to chochos: (this fixed the issue)

I was getting the “CRL was not found” error as well. I thought it had something to do with DNS but changing DNS didn’t help. Finally I solved it by opening Keychain Access, and changing the Preferences forCertificates, setting the CRL preference from “Require” to “Best Attempt”, and after that I could install the packages just fine.

Another option is to type this:

run the terminal and wrote
sudo chflags -R nouchg /

(thanks Gislalom)

via Apple – Support – Discussions – Cant install 10.6.5 ….

Apple – Support – Discussions – Is MobileMe down? ….  Apparently this has been an ongoing problem for 3 days.  Disappointing isn’t it?

Sync data using MobileMe or Google Business Center Working Mac Macworld.  The link above is a detailed how to by Joe Kissell.  Its a nice summary of some of the advantages and disadvantages as well.

Apple Rainbow Mac Happy Background-622793

Originally uploaded by tr3v0r22

Great if you are a Mac painter.

Apple – Support – Discussions -.  This has been an ongoing problem for a long time.  I used to have MobileMe but stopped paying for it because of problems.  Many of the users on this thread moved to Dropbox.  Others found that copying all the data to their desktop and then back fixed the issue.  I would not rely on iDisk for a primary backup.

With the latest release of iWork on iPad, sharing files across your local Wi-Fi network is now possible. Using WebDAV, files can be shared between iWork on your Mac and iWork on your iPad. All you need to do is enable WebDAV on your Mac. But how do you do that? What is WebDAV? WebDAV stand for “Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol”, and it works over HTTP. WebDAV was designed for read/write access on web servers, which is great … Read More

via TheAppleBlog

Cloud2go brings integrated file sharing to iPhone, iPod touch Utilities iOS Central Macworld.  This seems useful.  You might also want to compare this to what MobileMe offers.

How to Get Your Address Book Birthday Calendar on Your iPad Using MobileMe – wikiHow.  Nice site with good content!

Someone who you would expect would get more time spend on to solve this issue. Syncing on the mac can be frustrating.  The most reliable way seems to be to sync to Google, and let that be the master copy for all email/contacts.

My father has 6 Mac Laptops. So I thought it would make sense to use MobileMe to synchronize the addresses between the different machines, his iPhone and his iPad. But what happens was a total disaster. MobileMe kept doubling the address book entries and even worse: They started adding up and mixing address book entries from different people. Do not ask me how that happend but it did. I deactivated MobileMe. My father also went to the Apple Store … Read More

via Open Source Teddy Bears

Okay, I solved it. If anyone is interested, here’s how.

Turn off the devices whose names you want to refresh. On a real computer, log on to me.com/find and sign in. The service will attempt to find the powered-down phones. Give it a while to get tired of looking, then click on the blue arrow (or the red clock) on the tag for the device. If you have waited long enough, there will be a Remove Device or such link. Click it and, ignoring any dire warnings, confirm deletion. When the tag goes away, turn the device back on. It will reappear on the Find service map under its new name.

So where’s the problem? Steve couldn’t have made it any simpler.

via Apple – Support – Discussions – How to refresh device names in MobileMe ….

The iPad isn’t enough in its current incarnation to interest me.  I was discussing with a friend what could be added to make me buy and here is my list.

1. Speech Recognition.  How can the Mac go from its lead in speech, to not being able to be controlled fully by it?  They should buy Nuance and integrate this feature.  This would be a killer in productivity for so many users.  Plus it would allow voice recognition on the iPhone to at least be useable.
2. Mac OS X.  Yes I know this would tax the poor processor, but how can Windows tablets do this and not Apple?  Certainly the wide range of applications on this would be a wonderful thing.  Offer the iOS4 as well.  Don’t force people into a certain OS because its easiest for developers.  Don’t be so willing to throw away all your customers investments so quickly.
3. Synchronization.  If this is synced with the cloud and MobileMe was given away as part of the package, this would be unstoppable.  People have problems syncing with Google or Exchange, and this would further differ ate the offerings from the competition.
4. Compatibility with every wireless network protocol.  If you are selling wireless service, don’t limit it to just the telephone networks you prefer.  If it is wireless, allow it to send through it and come up with your own encoding that makes it possible.  Seriously if you are selling iTunes and the cloud, then why not even use a Citizens Band radio signal if thats all that is available?  Truckers would love that!  Make it so that it can travel internationally and not have to use werid workarounds or closely and complex pricing/planning.  People travel.  Why not make this an ideal travel companion?
5. Ability to plug into iPhone or any other mobile hotspot/phone for tethering.  Who cares if AT&T doesn’t support it?  It is ridiculous to expect your customer to pay for every device for data they aren’t using.  Why can’t there be a global policy for 250 mb, no matter how many idevices (iPad/iPhone) you have?