June 10, 2009, 3:04 PM — One thing you learn when following tech developments is that people are whiny. Well, you probably learn that just by interacting with human beings generally, but the class of people who are especially attuned to the latest and greatest tech advances are especially whiny if things don't go their way. Though people with money to burn on gadgets are more or less by definition among the most well-off inhabitants in the most well-off societies in the world, when any new gizmos come down the pipe, a certain subset will react with outrage, suddenly discovering anew that the companies that manufacture the things are in it to make money. You get lots of anguished cries of "crippled" and "screwed" and "slap in the face." You'd think that the stuff sucker-punches you in the gut when it comes out of the box.
If you're inside the cult like me, you generally feel compelled to not launch these attacks at Apple (well, except when they come out with a new laptop RIGHT AFTER you bought yours SPECIFICALLY TO MAKE YOU MISERABLE, but you feel bad about complaining afterwards). But Apple fans feel no compunctions about channeling their ire at AT&T for everything annoying about the iPhone experience in the U.S. At WWDC Monday, Apple practically encouraged it, showcasing the fact that the MMS and tethering features built into iPhone OS 3.0 will be available immediately in many countries, but "at the end of the summer" and "when we get around to it" here in Apple's home base.
And in truth, AT&T ought to be slammed on these points. The MMS delay is kind of unfathomable, as multimedia messaging ought by rights to be a cash cow; the tethering thing is something that users have wanted for years -- and which has been possible with jailbroken iPhones pretty much from the beginning -- and so the delay on that is particularly galling. I'm willing to bet that AT&T's foot-dragging here is largely due to their creaking network. They probably need to do some last-minute jiggering to get MMS to work properly without overwhelming the works with endless 300 KB pics of cute kitties or whatever. When it comes to tethering, well, I have bad news for you: it's going to cost you. I know linear geek logic says "I have unlimited Internet access through the phone now, therefore I should be able to use that unlimited access how I choose"; but it's only possible for AT&T to offer you that unlimited access on its current network because it knows you won't use it the way you would if, say, you had a computer with unlimited access. Charging for tethering serves multiple purposes: it makes them money which they can (if they're smart) reinvest in their network, and it cuts down on the number of people using said network, until that network is spruced up. The real thing to whine about here is that it isn't ready now; surely Apple let AT&T know well in advance that tethering was coming, and it would have been smart to have pricing plans good to go on June 19th.
But the whining that really baffles my mind involves pricing, and long-term contracts. My wife and I got our iPhones last September; since I'm a normal, lazy human with a life, I obviously didn't read the fine print on the contract, but I came away pretty firm in the knowledge that I was locked into AT&T and my phone for two years. I did this in full knowledge that a newer, shinier gadget would come down the pike during that time. And so, on Monday, when I saw the new 3GS demoed, I shook my head ruefully and vowed to find someone who had one and ask to play with it, some day.
You know what I didn't do? Start a thread on the AT&T support forums demanding that I get a discount price on the 3GS! That's because, when I plopped down $199 apiece for those phones, I knew that AT&T was giving Apple substantially more than that; in return I agreed to be locked in for the next 24 months. It's a pretty straightforward transaction, if not entirely transparent. Expecting a large multinational publicly traded corporation to sell me another phone at subsidized prices a few months later because I'm "loyal" is the height of lunacy, and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of How The World Works.
Don't take this to mean that I'm thrilled with AT&T; come September 2010, the possibility of, say, Verizon support for the iPhone to come might give me pause. But my lust for an iPhone 3GS is just that -- standard-issued gadget lust. It is not embittered by outrage over corporate injustice.
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