Apple FAIL, or why friends shouldn't let friends use iPhones or AT&T

Even though I've been using Apple kit in the form of a MacBook Pro for the last year (almost) without complaint I've always resisted the lure of the iPhone. I was estatic that the Google Android powered G1 materialized as an option exactly as the iPhone appeared to be my logical destiny (about 90% or more of my co-workers use the iPhone). Appart from the obvious limitations of the iPhone at the time (no background processes, closed application environment, no compass, no focusing camera, no keyboard) and the complimentary advantages of the G1 the real killer, if I could ever discount all the aforementioned problems, was that the iPhone is married to AT&T in the USA and clearly Apple and AT&T were in deep together.

So it seems now that relationship, and the limitations of it, has come home to roost now that Apple has been caught red-handed doing the bidding of AT&T to kill the Google Voice application on the iPhone (not to mention Google Latitude although that probably had less to do with AT&T and more Apple). Because I have not been blogging here for some while you will not have heard my thoughts on Google Voice - but being lucky enough to have scored a GV account in recent weeks I can tell you Goggle Voice is quite simply "telephony done right".

Now I know that Google scored the GV technology from another party in this case (Grand Central), just as they scored Google Earth technology from a 3rd party (Keyhole). But believe me Google is making it even better and in bringing it to the masses (or at least trying to) they are poised to revolutionize telephony just as Google Maps and Google Earth have revolutionized mapping. So I guess we should hardly be surprised that AT&T executives are (no doubt) screaming bloody murder and peeing their pants as SMS, call revenue, massive profits and lets be honest all they really care about - executive bonuses - look to be ready to fly out of the window. But boo to Apple for ever chaining themselves to such anti-revolutionary forces for the sake of some guaranteed kickbacks. No matter how lucrative they were, and no matter how convenient, don't such cozy arrangements just fly right in the face of that whole Apple "were just an amiable little guy, not a big dumb PC" persona they keep trying to project. Believe me Apple, if people love to hate any company more than Microsoft it is usually their cellphone carrier so chaining yourself to AT&T wasn't such a smart move.

Now my own theory is that Apple will find this as a convenient PR disaster to ride the back of as they decline to renew their AT&T exclusive next year. And yet at the same time make it conveniently known that they are no-carriers bitch - and yes they will be open to Google Voice and any other legacy communications company killer technology that cares to come to the iPhone, including their own probably. Indeed if there is any conspiracy theory more likely it is that Apple just doesn't want Google to get a free boost to dominance before Apple has a chance to launch their own carrier-killer-telphony solution.