J.T. vs AT&T/Apple

Wow, it's been a really long time since I posted. However, and unfortunate new circumstance has arisen, and I didn't feel like I could be silent on it.

First of all, how've you been? It's been a while, I know. How are the wife and kids? Me? I've been fine. Thanks for asking.

Okay, now that we're caught up...

I recently bought an iPhone. It arrived July 13th with all the pomp and circumstance I would expect of an Apple product. Now, I typically hate Apple as a company; their locked down development process and authoritarian control principles are legendary, and they've somehow managed to downright lie their way into exactly the opposite public image. However, I was impressed with the iPhone, and I felt like it made sound financial sense to purchase one. I have never said that about an Apple product before. One of the things I was most excited about, however, was using Google Voice on the phone.

As it turns out, the AT&T/Apple two-assed monster didn't see this as a good thing. Google submitted such an app, and it was rejected. While that was ridiculous enough to begin with, they then pulled several apps that had already been approved and available for months. Many people are blaming AT&T solely for this, but that doesn't seem like a very likely scenario; to use your Google Voice phone number you still have to make a call, so you still use AT&T minutes. There may have been an increase of data that goes along with it, but not much. There are free texts to be considered, and that is no small source of income for wireless carriers (though it should be). No, this move was as much an Apple shutdown as AT&T. Google is the anti-Apple, you see; they have one of the most open and communicative relationships with their users of any company their size. It is a direct threat to Apple's process, and having Google in their phone was simply unacceptable for Apple. The reason they gave developers for pulling their apps was "duplicating features that the iPhone comes with." This is about as honest as you're ever going to get from Apple, but it needs to be combed just a bit more for the truth. It wasn't just for duplicating features, as there are many apps that already do so and remain available, it was for improving on iPhone features. Apple decided to shutdown the competition when it realized that it might simply not be good enough to compete on it's own product. This is within their rights, I suppose, but I'm a little pissed about it since I now have this two-year contract tying me to this device when I knew better than to deal with Apple in the first place.

Well, that's how it goes, I suppose. But Apple and AT&T are in this together, so I have a simple proposition: punish them. There's not much I can do to Apple, as I already dislike the company and they seem to have ruined the only chance they had at getting into my good graces. AT&T, though...

As I mentioned before, I've had my iPhone since July 13th. That's 18 days. In those 18 days, I've used 202.4 MB on Cellular Network Data, according to my iPhone stats. I imagine that's rather typical of most users. AT&T, however, is very sensitive about the amount of data that is transferred over it's data connection. It's a poorly-kept secret that AT&T allows up to 5 GB of data a month before it starts getting upset, so I will now using my full capacity. Every day, I will make sure to download at least 150 MB of data over my iPhone. While it normally takes me about a week and half to do so, it'll now happen every single day. I'll make sure to do it during the day, too, during peak hours. Why check email on my computer when I can use my phone? Why listen to Pandora on my computer, when I can use my phone? I will do my little part to drown them in their own greed until they relent. I'd like to suggest you do the same.

For those of you wanting to participate, might I interest you in this 2 MB Bitmap of an iPhone: http://bit.ly/11Vogh . I remind you that the little round arrow in your browser is the refresh button...