The iPhone, AT&T and the battle to control the Internet

Innovation through

Innovation through implementation is what matters, and Apple is just doing that. If they would ever stop doing so, Apple will go down and an other star will rise. And who's the judge of this: you the consumer. Academic innovation is nice, but for your practical life useless if it's not implemented. Concern about the überpower of big corporations is since a 100 years a lost battle. It's fact of live that we live in such a world. With it many disadvantages, and many advantages as well. One of them is internet. And iPhone is just a little piece in that.

Regarding patents and

Regarding patents and inventions... the iPhone is revolutionary because of it's implementation as opposed to it's first to market status. Microsoft has been marketing n different versions of it's Pocket PC phone, all of which have a full touch interface. Sadly enough, the Microsoft philosophy on products failed to evaluate the target user experience. As a result, the Pocket PC phones were feature rich devices that were simply put unelegant and hard to use. As far as the whole touch screen phone interface "idea" being revolutionary, I think it's not; the "implementation" by Apple is revolutionary though. Prior to the internet browsers, given the state of technology, any geek with a passion for technology could have extrapolated on the whole iPhone featureset.

Regarding controlling the iPhone and it's services... Everyone who complained about monopolies and consumer choice and innovation... and then went on to embrace Apple's products with loyalty; this is as dirty as it get's with big corps controlling innovation and throttling consumer choice. The iPhone is an awesome device; I fell in love with it just after playing around for 5 minutes. However, after reading up a little more on the agreement between Apple and AT&T, I decided to hold off. Apple is not only making a killing per device, but also get's a cut from the cell phone service subscription charges. Unfortunate for us, this device is soooo awesome that a lot of us are willing to succumb to their plan to pay a monthly donation for using it. Before the Apple loyalists lash out saying that it's okay because it's their work and they deserve to be paid, I say that this is going to be no different than MS and Windows. Apple is on the brink of _owning_ the iPod platform as "the" defacto platform for devices... If the DOJ and the public gave Microsoft enough grief for creating and owning a platform that is fairly open ended for the hardware underneath as well as the software that runs on top of it, I would think Apple is an even worse offender considering that their platform is tightly closed. The difference is that Apple want you to believe that they are the good guys and sadly enough have had a great degree of success in doing that.

On that note, this article hits the very point. Apple and AT&T are riding it... real high and probably having a great laugh at our expense... and most of us don't even realize what we are getting into.

Quote "I hate you apple I

Quote "I hate you apple I wish you will lose this battle to other companies like Nokia. I am sure
nokia is already working on something like ipod which ha no buttons and only touch screen. All of you know Nokia has good experience and in mobile industry. They already made something simular to Razr v3 its N series and has way better functions then Motorola. Apple you made a big mistake by chosing AT&T most hated in my opinion. And Apple common your saying Iphone is
going to change mobile industry?"

...The authors' understanding of the American consumer as well as the western business place is as limited as his knowledge of English.

If the features are four years old, why then have they not yet appeared in the product lines of other companies. The simple answer is "lack of vision". Apple is to be lauded for their vision of what products can be, not in trying to duplicate that which already exists in the market place. Let competition reign! The competition the iPhone spurs will ensure that fantastic new products will appear in this market. That is to be applauded!

I welcome constructive criticism of this and all devices. My critique of this post is that it is ill-informed and based purely on prejudice.

I hate you apple I wish you

I hate you apple I wish you will lose this battle to other companies like Nokia. I am sure
nokia is already working on something like ipod which ha no buttons and only touch screen. All of you know Nokia has good experience and in mobile industry. They already made something simular to Razr v3 its N series and has way better functions then Motorola. Apple you made a big mistake by chosing AT&T most hated in my opinion. And Apple common your saying Iphone is
going to change mobile industry? Hahahaha
Well Apple I am not going to buy a 500 or 600 dollar iphone with a full price when it doent have flah camera, video recorder, flash, no instatnt mesage? hahahaha in our days you can get free phone with instant message. I know why u did that way you wanted to make big buck and blind people by buying one of you good looking phones but with a 4 year old features.

...and that device, my

...and that device, my friends, is the Surface Computer. Stay tuned.

...and that device, my

...and that device, my friends, is the Surface Computer. Stay tuned.

Just look at your title: "

Just look at your title:

" The iPhone, AT&T and the battle to control the Internet"

The theme was similar back during the browser wars in the 1990's.

What else did you say?

"The iPhone is a lynch pin in AT&T’s strategy to gain critical mass for the new wireless gateway."

PRECISELY! You hit the nail on the head!

I am a journalism student who assisted a journalist in investigating a story, which was killed by the powers that be because of two reasons:

(a) pure, good old fashioned racism

(b) top brass owns Apple stock

But those of us who saw the "data" are convinced that this story is going to percolate out to the public, no matter who tries to suppress it.

Steve Jobs "borrowed" the designs for "his" iPhone from a little known MIT engineer who was also being "borrowed" from by Bill Gates. That is also why the iPhone clones were ready to roll so quickly, in spite of Apple's top secret product development operations, and why all of the clones "coincidentally" run Microsoft Mobile OS's.

These people also conspired to obstruct justice in a federal lawsuit referred to as "Eolas versus Microsoft". The reason they did that was because neither Apple nor Microsoft could afford to have the court, and then subsequently the public, learn of the MIT engineer whose work they were both "borrowing", which would have happened had they invoked that engineer's work and patents as prior art against Eolas. This meant that Microsoft would stand to lose hundreds of millions in the interim, but they would more than make it back in the long term if they could manage to market all of the "borrowed" technologies without being caught.

Bill Gates, being the son of a lawyer, played it carefully. That left him waffling with having to tell the public that the Tablet PC is "just the greatest thing", "the look of computing devices of the future", yet without actually delivering on it.

Steve Jobs, unable to confide in anybody other than (well we won't mention their names)...but without being able to get sound legal advice without divulging his little caper to people who could easily use the info to blackmail him or derail his plans by blowing the whistle to the Feds, chose to plunge right in and build and market what is now the iPhone. The iPhone --IS-- Bill Gates' Tablet PC. The difference in size only relates to the fact that it is a variation on the same theme, with larger format versions inevitably to follow.

This left Steve Ballmer ready to throw another chair, as John Dvorak knows from January. Afterall, that "dirty little rat" down in Cupertino just stole what Microsoft had stolen years earlier, fair and square.

Fortunately for Ballmer and his buddy Bill, something lucky happened for them in May. And as anybody who has seen Bill Gates' beaming face since that time frame knows, Bill ain't worried about the iPhone succeeeding at what this news story and the unsuspecting public thinks will happen. We have reason to believe that Lowell McAdam has the same info Bill is gloating over. Though alas, poor Ed Zander over at Motorola is in the dark.

That victimized engineer created a rather substantial family of inventions for precisely what the author of this story points out, controlling the Internet. He apparently did it so early that many who know find it an obscene affront to their macho male egos. Men & their egos. The basis for the iPhone, called "revolutionary" by the media, and by that "genius CEO of Apple himself", Steve Jobs, was all invented before Netscape was founded. And back when only scattered businessmen carried cell phones. The patent literature corroborates this. Touch sensitive screens, "Visual Voice Mail", a GUI that makes placing a call or sending an email only a matter of touching a name, all illustrated before even the advent of Netscape. We are told that the inventor attempted to donate the inventions to the W3C believing they were important enough to belong to such an organization. If the iPhone is "so significant" that Congress needs to holds hearings on its impact, then the inventor's reasoning may have been well founded.

.....gotta go.

Apple and ATT do NOT control what the public has been led to believe it does, via the iPhone. We are not the only people who know this little secret. David Pogue, Brian Ross, Karen Haslam, Net Neutrality guru Professor Tim Wu, and a lengthy list of others, so we are told, know as well. So the question is, in this high stakes game of pull the wool over the public's eye while whining over the impact of the iPhone on society, and "God we hate Bill Gates" so let's just keep quiet and hopefully Bill Gates will be so sluggish Steve Jobs will have enough time to kill off Microsoft...the question is: which version of history will we be writing 2 years hence?????

I have never been a texter

I have never been a texter with my previous phones/pda's even when they had a qwerty keyboard. For some reason the iphone keyboard is so much easier to use. I initially did not buy the unlimited texting but after I got to using the phone i love it and I still saved money monthly because the plan was cheaper than the PDA plan I already had with AT&T even when I added the additional $20.00 to upgrade to unlimited texting.