RetroBBS - alt.internet.wireless - Re: Is there an iOS app similar to the Android WiFi Analyzer app?

RabidHussar <rabid@huss.ar> asked
>> In my neighborhood in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, we don't have
>> cable service yet so we're all on WISP and our properties are 40 acre zoned
>> (that means you can't put two houses on 79 acres - you can only put one).
>
> That honesty sounds awesome to me. I would love to be so isolated from
> everyone else around me. :)

It's good and bad being up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere.
(Jeff is nearby so he knows what it's like to have all this fresh air.)

We're 16 miles from the nearest gas station, and about 30 miles from the
Costco cheap ones, so we have to plan ahead on groceries. We all have our
own water wells and septic and propane and WISP utilities, since nothing
comes to us over the ground but power and telephone (just like in the
50s'!).

Speaking of power on the poles, our PG&E electric power goes out once a
month for about a day each over a period of five or six years, but lately
it's gone out twice a week for the entire month of August, so we have to get
good at dealing with spikes and backups and switching to the generators,
etc.

Luckily, our carrier gives all of us free cellular repeaters and/or
femtocells, so we can get cellular signal even with towers rather far away
although I must say that with 5G, we've had _fantastic_ signal up here!
https://i.postimg.cc/zf9w1tGZ/speedtest07.jpg

Also we get a _lot_ of tourists, bikers, hikers, and sightseers, who can't
seem to stay on their side of the road (there are no stripes as the roads
are legally too narrow for such amenities). Every once in a while we get to
watch the helicopters pull out the pot farm produce and we get to see the
big trucks winch a car back up from deep in the chaparral.

The good news is the airplanes fly _below_ us when they come in to land, and
the clouds are often below us too, so we get a lot of clean air & sunlight.

One thing we have in mountains is clear line of sight for hundreds of miles,
so we can "see" oh, maybe a thousand or two thousand access points with the
right equipment, and where my own access point is about 3 miles away or so.
https://i.postimg.cc/VvqLKQtQ/wifi.jpg
(Jeff can tell ua why it says 6 miles.)

Given we have to get our Internet over the air somehow, we're all very good
at debugging our radios, where I don't know anyone on Android who doesn't
use these wifi debuggers a lot.
https://i.postimg.cc/4xgmTTgm/wifi01.jpg

And since we all have our own cellular towers inside our homes (I have two
of them since I have a big house), we also get good at cellular signal
debugging.
https://i.postimg.cc/Hn05bQwG/wifi02.jpg

With Cellular-Z, for example, I can see EXACTLY which cell I'm on:
https://i.postimg.cc/Gtywwn8f/signal01.jpg

And when I move around my two internal in-home towers, I can adjust things:
https://i.postimg.cc/xCbVQ2pj/signal02.jpg

None of this is possible with the crippled Apple iPhone ecosystem.
It's a toy OS that only people who play games seem to love.

>> This means we have antennas everywhere, to the barn, the stable, the shed,
>> the pool, the driveway gate, the road gate, etc. where debuggers are useful.
>
> I'll just assume that your OTA television reception isn't too good,
> being surrounded by mountains and all.

What we do is use the Internet and often "sticks" such as a Roku to get
whatever we want, although most of us had satellite TV & Dish TV in the
past.

At this point, with our Ubiquiti equipment, we have the full legal limit on
transmit and we have fantastic receiver sensitivity so we're doing OK for
now (we also have all the free noise waterfall curves that no phone has).
https://www.google.com/search?q=ubiquiti+waterfall+curve+images

>> It's not a question of whether the iPhone is a crippled platform or not.
>> The main question is what or who is it that cripples the iPhone so much?
>
> I've already determined that I'm not a fan of Apple's walled garden even
> though I admire the way that they push innovation compared to everyone
> else.

You're joking right?
Apple? Innovation?

What? Removing the headphone jack? That's innovation?
<https://youtu.be/oJZuSVl5wjM>

Never having an sd card slot? That's innovation?
No FM radio? That's innovation?

The iPhone is a cripple (yes, I have plenty of iOS devices).
With iOS, you can't do even the simplest of the most basic things.

Like organize your homescreen the way _you_ want it organized.
https://i.postimg.cc/WpM4FM5t/web01.jpg

But more to the point, basic debugging with iOS doesn't even exist!
https://i.postimg.cc/3r0yNRcT/network02.jpg

The Apple iphone ecosystem will _always_ be crippled compared to Android.
The reason is very simple and has nothing to do with "innovation".

Apple drastically limits what the iPhone can do; Google can't.
It's that simple.

Apple doesn't innovate - Apple _advertises_ that they do.
But Apple has _never_ made a chip that wasn't unfixably flawed too.
https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+unfixable+chip+flaws

The _market_ determines the app functionality, not Apple or Google.
And the market _provides_ the innovation - not Apple or Google.

Hell, Apple has _never_ made an SOC that was even close to best in class.
Apple can't even make a simple modem for heavens sake.

And Apple can't even _integrate_ a modem into the rest of their SOC.
https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+can%27t+integrate+modem

Don't talk about innovation if you're getting it from a Jony Ive commercial.
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.internet.wireless/c/G72EDGvUiuE

Apple bullshits like nobody else can - so that's where you get "innovation".

*Nobody spends _less_ percentagewise than Apple in R&D* by the way. Nobody.
https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+spends+less+R%26D

That's "Apple's" bullshit innovation for you.
All _marketing_ and almost nothing in actual R&D.

Please don't use the word "innovation" please, when you're discussing what
amounts to a crippled device which can't do even the simplest of the most
basic stuff (such as debug wifi and cellular radios, which is the topic here
and which I do all the time but it can't be done on the crippled iPhones).

Try to do _any_ of that debugging with the crippled iPhone.

Subject	Author
Re: Is there an iOS app similar to the Android WiFi Analyzer app?	Robin Goodfellow

Live Free or Live in Massachusetts.

computers / alt.internet.wireless / Re: Is there an iOS app similar to the Android WiFi Analyzer app?