Apple fan quits iPhone

A self proclaimed long standing iPhone fan, Michael Arrington at techcrunch, has finally had enough of Apple's drm and excess control mode of doing business and is giving up his iPhone even at the expense of paying a $175 termination fee to AT&T.

"What finally put me over the edge? It wasn’t the routinely dropped calls, something you can only truly understand once you have owned an iPhone (and which drove my friend Om Malik to bail). I’ve lived with that for two years. It’s not the lack of AT&T coverage at home. I’ve lived with that for two years, too. It certainly isn’t the lack of a physical keyboard, that has never bothered me. No, what finally put me over the edge is the Google Voice debacle...

Google is planning on rolling out number portability, so I can move my mobile phone number to Google. None of my friends, family or contacts have to store a new number...

Or so I thought. Apple and AT&T are now blocking the iPhone version of the Google Voice app. Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing - moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google."

I was explaining Apple's blocking of the iTunes sync feature on Palm Pre recently to my 11 year old and he said "You know dad, I hate all this drm stuff. Apple are really stupid and annoying. People should be able to play the music they've bought on any device they want." Spot on son and people should be able to use their phone on any network with any app they want too.