Duke Arrington Has Left the Bandwagon
Attention everyone! Attention!
Michael Arrington, fanboy #1 of Apple’s hallowed iPhone, has decided to drop the device in leiu of Palm’s Pre. The reason? Apple and partner AT&T’s not so polite refusal to allow Google Voice.
Still, there have to be more deep-seated reasons for anyone, including the Tech Duke, to abandon a phone platform than a single tiff between Google and Apple. And when it comes to the iPhone, which has oft been called the holy grail of personal communications devices.
So what kind of perfect storm would need to occur in order to de-throne the anointed Apple iPhone and back up Arrington’s dramatic switch? The list is as follows.
The Palm Pre. Having launched in June to very little fanfare, the Pre was originally seen as an expensive alternative to the iPhone that had little in the way of versatility due to it’s teeny application base when compared to the iPhone ecosystem. But when looking at the total cost of ownership, the Pre comes in at more than $1000.00 less than it’s Apple counterpart over the lifetime of the contract, AND it cannot be stressed enough that the lower price of the Pre includes much more peak talk time through Sprint’s Simply Everything Plan. Infinite talk time in fact, compared to AT&T’s iPhone plan which allows for a little less than three hours of talk time per month, with the ability to roll-over unused talk time throughout a 24 month period. The AT&T plan does not include any text messaging. Customers have to purchase a separate plan in addition to the phone and data plan for that service.
And then there are AT&T based Apple restrictions. There is no doubt that Apple’s awesome smartphone has vaulted AT&T to the top of the phone carrier game, but there have been serious drawbacks.
- AT&T does not allow the iPhone to tether.
- AT&T has halted the iPhone’s ability to send MMS messages and will only enable the feature next year.
- Most recently AT&T, along with Apple, have done all they could to stop users from taking advantage of Google’s new Voice technology. Why? Worries of call function control (Apple doesn’t like when someone duplicates native iPhone functionality) and, for AT&T, becoming a carrier that does not have control over the voice data flowing over its network, or becoming “dumb pipes target=”_blank”.”
Earlier this year he decided to step away from his favourite baby tech crunch citing death threats he was receiving from the geeks of the world for the sensationalist rhetoric he’s use the site to promote. Far from being a legitimate outlet for news and information on tech, TechCrunch has often been seen as Arrington’s soap box. So maybe, just maybe, the Duke is just using Apple as a punching bag to vay for attention.
The lesson learned here? Arrington’s too spoiled to deal with Apple’s restrictions; AT&T’s too worried about turning its phone service into a commodity; and Apple’s playing double duty: They don’t want Google taking over key functions of their native iPhone applications and they’ve got to deal with AT&T’s inability to deliver, through their network, the types of services that Apple’s consumers are pining for.
Something’s got to give.
