Apple: Inside the cult

iPhone-themed anti-AT&T whining: Some justified, some not

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.

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