Great Wired Article about the Apple vs AT&T relationship

[Ken Sp.]

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/07/ff_att_fail/all/1

[Jack D.]

Great article! I liked this part:

"For Apple, the idea of restricting the iPhone was akin to asking Steve Jobs to ditch the black turtleneck. “They tried to have that conversation with us a number of times,” says someone from Apple who was in the meetings. “We consistently said ‘No, we are not going to mess up the consumer experience on the iPhone to make your network tenable.’ They’d always end up saying, ‘We’re going to have to escalate this to senior AT&T executives,’ and we always said, ‘Fine, we’ll escalate it to Steve and see who wins.’ "

[GGD]

This part too:

When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”

[graylocks]

GGD wrote:
This part too:

When an AT&T representative suggested to one of Jobs’ deputies that the Apple CEO wear a suit to meet with AT&T’s board of directors, he was told, “We’re Apple. We don’t wear suits. We don’t even own suits.”

i love that! was just going to post it myself!

[deckeda]

"In a fate that will soon befall the rest of the wireless carriers, AT&T has become a mere toll-taker on the digital highway, an operator of dumb pipes that cost a fortune to maintain but garner no credit for innovation or customer service."

No, they aren't there yet. If all the carriers would simply get out of the business of selling phones and instead concentrate on providing network service we might get somewhere faster.

[neophyte]

"No, they aren't there yet. If all the carriers would simply get out of the business of selling phones and instead concentrate on providing network service we might get somewhere faster."

You mean like VerizonWireless does network service: 3G data network coverage nearly identical to voice network coverage in the US?

[N-OS X-tasy!]

Jack D. wrote:
They’d always end up saying, ‘We’re going to have to escalate this to senior AT&T executives,’

I've had the misfortune of working with AT&T on past projects. If I had a dollar for every time one of their people said this to us...