Here's hoping this starts a vibrant community of HackenPad enthusiasts. Void your warranty, lose a bit of bass from your sound, and you've got Verizon for your iPad!
But, but, but --<p>Why not simply use the iPad's wifi via the MiFi as a hotspot?<p>(Yes, I get it; pure hack value. But honestly, other than the hack value, why chop up a piece of kit like the MiFi and void the warranty on the iPad in order to do ... less?)
It would be pretty slick if someone built CDMA 3G (EVDO? Is that what it's called?) or WiMax board that just plugged into the jack on the iPad's motherboard.<p>But I wouldn't be at all surprised if that somebody turned out to be Apple in a year or two.
This is an incredible hack, kudos!<p>And for the Apple fans who might consider this a dangerous act of hardware sacrilege, I hear ya! But please consider this as not so much of a practical hack, but rather as a protest hack against the stupid, continued exclusive hardware lock-in to the low quality, over priced phone service of the <i>Death Star Orifice</i>—AT&T.<p>Everyone knows AT&T simply can't provide the same high level of innovation, service and quality as Apple. It has ceased making sense for AT&T to get exclusive bottom line say-so on what Apple can and can't do with the mobile platform.
Apple needs to embrace polygamy because AT&T represents the antithesis of Apple's core mission: beautiful software.<p>All AT&T can do is fuck up software. (Bell Labs doesn't count.) And it's usually done by imposing stupid, consumer-unfriendly restrictions on the hardware so they can stick to their old telco monopolist business model of nickel and diming all of their customers.<p>Apple needed AT&T to get a toe in the door to the telco's monopoly. But now that iPads and iPhone are spreading all over the place like a blown out BP oil well, and the entire mobile industry is playing catch up to reach or emulate Apple's tight UI & design in software, it's time for Apple to throw AT&T to the Feds over something. (As much as I despise AT&T, I recognize they are so entrenched that the only way to change them will be another Federal breakup of their monopoly).