[Timothy Maxwell]

I am trying to pair my iPhone with my Mac Book Pro. I am unable to add the iPhone in the Bluetooth setup in Preferences. I called Apple Tech Support and they said that, because of a deal that they have setup with AT&T, they do not support the Bluetooth Pairing with the iPhone. They said, however, that it is easy to do and suggested that I check the message boards to find out how. But, they wouldn't tell me how to do it. I am using Dialectic to dial my phone. Does anyone know how to pair the iPhone with a MAC?

[analogika]

There was an application in the App Store called NetShare that allowed you to do that. It was available for one day, and then pulled due to the agreement with AT&T (nevermind that the rest of the planet doesn't give a flying **** about AT&T's backwards policies - T-Mobile in Germany certainly has no objections whatsoever to tethering, but the app still isn't available here anymore, either).

The only way to do this currently involves jailbreaking (hacking) your iPhone.

Jobs has said that they know this policy sucks, and they're in talks with AT&T to provide a solution. Who knows what that means.

[mduell]

Bluetooth pairing and tethering are sort of two different concepts. Yes, you can tether over a Bluetooth pair, but you can also tether over USB or wifi and you can also use a Bluetooth pair for other things like object exchange and presence detection. Tethering is prohibited by AT&T on the iPhone data plans (and all other data plans except for one Blackberry with tethering plan, AFAIK), but AT&T generally leaves Bluetooth pairing for other purposes unmolested (unlike Verizon, who always cripples it to push their stupid syncing services). My guess is Apple crippled Bluetooth (to mono headsets only) on the iPhone so they could push their MobileMe service for wireless contact/calendar/email syncing.

AFAIK there are apps out their for jailbroken iPhones to tether via wifi, but not via Bluetooth.