iPhone 3GS tethered over Bluetooth to Mac PowerBook G4

My computer just meets the specs for Internet Tethering over Bluetooth: I have Mac OS X 10.4.11 and Bluetooth 2.0 (the minimum specs) on my PowerBook G4.

The tethering process is a bit different from what is described in the Bluetooth tethering troubleshooting (see section "If Internet tethering using Bluetooth does not work, follow these troubleshooting steps") - I don't see any option to "Use device as a network port" in my Bluetooth config when I pair with the phone.  Just click "Continue" to get to the end of the pairing setup and at the end (on the last screen) it just says it has set up "Use as a Personal Area Network" (which is a bit confusing as a PAN can mean a lot of different things, not necessarily Internet access.

Once I paired with the phone (I selected "Mobile Phone" as the type), I turned on Internet Tethering on the phone, and selected the Bluetooth menubar item "Join Network on (phone name)".  Works fine.

Phone has to be quite near my aluminum PowerBook for pairing, and the speed is less than over USB, but still quite usable: 790 down, 260 up.  Rogers Canada, downtown Ottawa.

UPDATE: I removed the SpeedTest graphic that was here because I'm not seeing consistent numbers.  It looks like roughly a megabit (1000 kbps to maybe 1.4 Mbps) down, and about 250 up (this represents some speed loss as over USB I saw about 1.8 or on the iPhone directly it's about 2 Mbps down).  Also I found that the tethered connection used cellular data - 3G (or EDGE if 3G was disabled) ONLY, even if the iPhone has a wireless (wifi) connection active.

Summary - fastest connection to the net on iPhone itself, next fastest tethered over USB, some reduction (but still over a megabit) tethered over Bluetooth (note this will depend how "noisy" your environment is - if there's a lot of interference you will get less Bluetooth bandwidth).  I recommend you keep your phone reasonably close to the laptop - it will still be able to send data over the tether even from metres away, but the connection will be much slower.  END UPDATE

Note that this process will work a bit differently if you're using Bluetooth on OS X 10.5, and that you need OS X 10.5.7 to tether over USB.  You also need Bluetooth 2.0 and Win XP SP2 or later Windows OS in order to do Bluetooth pairing on Windows.  See the Internet Tethering system requirements for more info.

Previously:
June 20, 2009  tethering iPhone 3GS with Windows XP over USB

Comments

[tom henesy]

Thanks, this post was extremely helpful to me.

I got the iphone tethering working with a mac powerbook G4/OS 10.4.11/bluetooth 1.9.5

It's pretty fast, youtube plays OK but not some HD video

Tom
Toronto

[France]

I have been attempting to connect to the internet using bluetooth for the past hour or so and it isn't working. My carrier is Fido (Canada) and I've updated iTunes and the carrier update has been done, I didn't get any message stating that my carrier was blocking this. I am using a Powerbook G4 running 10.4.11 as well, Bluetooth 2.0 - iPhone 3G running iPhone 3.0. I've unpaired both and rebooted and repaired them... I can connect to my phone as explained above but when trying to access a webpage it loads for 10 minutes to no avail and times out. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Help?

[doug sjostrom]

It looks like 10.4 is NOT supported. I can't get it to work on my MacBook either.

[Richard Akerman]

10.4.11 is supported for Bluetooth for sure. Lower versions of 10.4 probably won't work.

You need 10.5.7 or above for USB tethering.

[rino]

ive got my powerbook g4 OSX 10.4.11 to tether with my fido dataplan on iphone 3g but can't do it via usb... any ideas?