Screw the iPhone. And AT&T.

I'm a big fan of Apple computers. I absolutely love the Macbook and iMac that we got over this past year. And the wireless network is flawless. But nobody is perfect. Even a handsome prince has to lay a turd now and then.

I'm not saying that Apple's iPhone is not an advanced techie toy. There are some shortcomings in it, such as the assisted GPS, the lack of voice commands, the shorter battery life, the lack of a video camera, among a few others.

Sure, it's "cool," but I'm sorry, I'm not the kind of person that's going to wait in line for hours (or days?!) for something like this. Just to get screwed?

AT&T jacked up the price of unlimited net use by $10/month from the old iPhone. And if that is not bad enough....

Our current wireless phone contract is up for renewal in mid-July. We love the provider, CREDO, affiliated with Working Assets, but they piggyback on the Sprint network, which sucks. We can't even make a mobile call from our office desks. We have to go stand next to a window or go freakin' OUTSIDE to make a call! Absurd! Especially when co-workers, using other networks like AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon have no problem with reception. And that's not even mentioning all the dropped calls.

We saw that the new iPhone was going to be released around the same time our contract expired, so, hey, why not go with AT&T and get the newest toy, the iPhone? After all, we love the Apple computers, right? It's gotta be good...

We looked over the market some, though, visiting a Verizon store, a T-Mobile store and two AT&T stores in the weeks leading up to our expiration, since I get a corp discount at all of them. A 16-19% discount off your total bill each month is nothing to turn up your nose at. At least there's some actual, apparent competition in the world of mobile phones.

(On a side note, all of these companies collaborated with Bush and his warrantless wiretapping program, which is pathetic. We have no real choice here. CREDO bragged that they would never co-operate with Bush like that, but, again, they piggyback on Sprint, and Sprint cooperated. The only company that did NOT cooperate with Bush was Quest, and Bush got so pissed they trumped up charges on Quests CEO Joseph Nacchio and that sucker is sitting in jail right now. See what happens when you don't cooperate? You vill. You vill!)

It wasn't until we'd decided to go ahead with the iPhone and went to one of the AT&T stores to sign up that I learned a pretty important piece of info that no one had bothered to mention before. Namely, if I wanted to use my corp discount, I could not have an iPhone on the contract. In other words, if I want an iPhone, there's no corp discount.

Why would that be? Do I want to pay an extra $240 over the life of a typical two-year contract just for the privilege of having an iPhone? I don't think so. With those shortcomings I'd heard about? Yeah, sure, 3rd party developers are going to fill all the gaps. Uh-huh. And why are there gaps in the first place, that need to be filled?

Now, the fact that I would have to come back to the AT&T store to stand in line for an iPhone was just going to add insult to injury. They also could not guarantee how many each store was going to get, and they might not have enough, and so it was actually unclear exactly WHEN you might actually GET it...Now, all that, combined with the extra 16% that I would have to pay, just pissed me off.

More incompetence with AT&T personnel. It wasn't until the fourth visit to an AT&T store that I was finally told about the financial disincentive.

So, we marched out of the AT&T store and drove over to a Verizon store.

There, we picked up two of the new LG "Dare" model, what some are calling the "iPhone killer." It has everything that the iPhone was lacking: a better camera, better battery life, real GPS, voice commands, a videocamera with zoom and nice features, was priced significantly less than an iPhone (after my corporate discount on the actual equipment purchase itself, something that AT&T, or Apple, did not offer), and was available to take home NOW.

After a few days of using the Dare, my wife absolutely loves it, so that's worth something right there. She even used it while she was driving in Central Texas to navigate around a bad traffic accident, saving herself an hour or more of travel time.

Maybe it was Apple that mandated no corporate discounts while using an iPhone. Maybe it is AT&T's doing. Regardless, it is an unholy alliance, designed to extract as much revenue from you as they can get. Only allowing one provider (AT&T) to carry the iPhone, when most other systems can use just about any other device also smacks of snobbish elitism, and I am not interested, fuck you very much.

But I love those Apple computers.