Steve Jobs or CNET’s Don Reisinger: Who Ya Got?

I’ve got Steve Jobs. Even if he’s got health problems and isn’t 100%. Even if he has serious health problems and isn’t even 75% I have Jobs. Mr. Reisinger does a nice job of working Apple haters into a lather, but his article on why Apple is wrong for extending its exclusive deal with AT&T misses several key points.

1. The iPhone as a very cool (but admittedly, still limited for some usages) device with a great browser and operating system would not exist as we know it had it not originally done an exclusive deal.
2. Working with Telcos is a pain in the ass
3. Most of you have never heard of the honchos at the telcos, but they have every bit as much hubris as Mr. Jobs
4. When you try to satisfy alllll the telephone companies out of the gate, what do you get? You get the craptastic Microsoft mobile platform. I’m not saying that the reason that the Microsoft platform stinks is exclusively for this reason, but I am saying that if Microsoft had said, “look, we need an OS that’s around 1GB to do our thing, take it or leave it” the telcos overwhelmingly would’ve told Microsoft to pound sound.
5. As already mentioned, the telco moguls have much hubris. They believe their iPhone clones will do just fine and so they’re not ready to admit that iPhone will dominate the smartphone market even with AT&T as its only carrier. A year and a half more where they’re not getting any traction with their half-assed iPhone knock-offs will humble them at least a little and give Apple better leverage in their negotiations with the various telcos.

I would love it if the iPhone was available via any service – especially Verizon because here in San Francisco, Verizon is the much better phone company (at least in terms of quality/reliability of voice calls). But I still understand why Apple is going about it as it is and it makes perfect sense to me. Steve Jobs and Apple aren’t idiots.

There may be much to not like about Jobs personally or Apple’s approach to business. But at the end of the day, it produces great products. Often, the best products.