Back in 1984, oh, all of 25 years ago (which is about the age of many iPhone users), Stewart Brand, at the first Hacker’s Convention, said, information wants to be free.
That truism has continued to be borne out over the intervening years, as company after company struggling to monetize their information and web sites. The foamy successes of some web-based successes (I will include Google, FaceBook, Wall Street Journal here) lord it over the wet troughs filled with so many failures (just too many to list).
So what about that lovely iPhone, the newly classical kouros of mobile phones?
Why is it stilled tied to one carrier? Because that was the deal that Apple made with AT&T.
Now consider the irony here:
Part of the marvelous success of the iPhone is its software architecture that allows so many applications to be created for it. The monetized Apple store is a cornucopia of creative uses digitized to mobile broad band.
But the iPhone itself? Tied to one carrier in the US. (But not overseas).
Where are the FTC and FCC when you really need them?
Capitalism is a wonderful thing in that here some manufacturers can decide what they want to sell and how they want to sell it.
I am sure that Apple knows it will sell more devices if it adds additional carriers like say my carrier, Verizon (hint, hint).
Mobile broadband will be the Next Big Thing. And if mobile broadband devices are to be truly successful than they need to be free to follow the airwaves like a bird.
(Come to think of it, how come there are now mobile phones named after birds?)
If the US government can own General Motors, why doesn’t it just take over Apple and free the iPhone? Oh yeah, Apple is making money. Well, then what are the FTC and FCC good for? What about Supreme Court decisions on Interstate Commerce?
I just got Sonia Sotomayor’s iPhone cell number. I think I will give her a ring just before her hearings.
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