Microsoft- cool?!

"It seems not long ago that Microsoft was cool: fighting the good fight against the Big Blue (IBM) to free our desktops from restriction."

When?! Microsoft got where they are today by providing IBM with the operating system for the PC. The first version of PC-DOS/MS-DOS was a bought-in, unremarkable CP/M-workalike (some would say ripoff) that gained the prominence it did almost entirely because it was running on IBM's PC, not on technical merit.

(The IBM PC was in turn an unremarkable machine that sold primarily because it was made by IBM.)

Meanwhile, Gates and MS were antagonising the hacker community almost since they started, with Gates' mid-70s "Open Letter to Hobbyists".

Ma Bell, The mum from Hell

In spite of years of deregulation, AT&T continues to operate like a monopoly, abusing that position whenever it can.

In general, it uses its big guns to silence competition, but frequently shoots itself in the foot.

We can safely bet that Clear ( http://clear.com ) will eat Ma Bell's shorts in the mobile Internet arena. They Are now in Las Vegas, and offer two fast connections, one for your house, and one mobile, via WIMAX, for $45 a month. They just announced ten additional cities.

With no mobile voice cash cow ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H infrastructure to protect, they will certainly welcome voice and email users as customers.

In my never to be written book "Bean Counters Spoil the Soup" i recount how AT&T invented local wireless broadband, invested $200 mil, launched a very successful test market. In the USA, where due to divestiture, they no longer owned last mile, it would have given them access to every home and business at a fraction of the price of laying copper or glass. However, they were forced to kill the product because the $30 a month Internet service was seen as a threat to their $1200 a month T-1 business.

@AC

"Hope this is obly the beginning of the trouble for Apple and their monopoly on certain items."

- What items do they have a monopoly on? I can't see any monopoly anywhere. A majority market share does not equal a monopoly.

I have an iPod touch and a MacBook Pro yet Apples policies are so restrictive and prices are so outrageous that I wouldnt recommend them for anyone short of graphic artist or something. And yes before you say Apple dont have a monopoly why dont you rethink that and consider what they 'dont' have a monopoly on."

- What exactly is restrictive? You are big on generalities, but short on specifics. And stop with the pricing BS, Apple kit is usually within $100 of similarly spec'd Windows machines. It's been shown time and time again.

Your last sentence I can't make sense out of at all. Are you asking me to consider what Apple doesn't have a monopoly on and use that as an argument that they have a monopoly on something? Soooo, they don't have a monopoly on chewing gum, but that means they have a monopoly on iPods? I honestly don't get what intricate train of logic you were trying to drive there, but it failed badly.

Clear, the confused broadband provider

Despite thinking that Clear would embrace VOIP since they don't have a phone carrier affiliation, they seem to do their best to choke all VOIP clients bandwidth through filtering.

As far as the debates that I've seen have been able to figure out, it's due to the high bandwidth requirements if all the users were well *using* VOIP. They would be required to have enough infrastructure and bandwidth to support it, rather than having enough to sell a service and hope that everyone doesn't try to use it at the speed that they sold it, simultaneously.

That being said, I have a Clear modem, and it's nice for a no-install fee service wherever, as long as you're in the coverage area.

If I were staying put more, cable modem all the way. (And I do have one, at home, where the clear modem never used due to lack of speed.)

@Bill Ray

What about if there's a fault with the application then Apple have pulled it from their tat shopfront for other reasons. That way you can't get a replacement and Apple are bastards about a refund - this is more the area I was getting at.

Blame AT&T

AT&T is actually rebranded SBC, and they are a terrible company. Always have been. When they took over Ameritech, service went into the tank. It was so bad that the FCC got involved, and, under deposition, blamed all the complaints on Ameritech (ie Midwest) customers who actually expected them to do what they promised on the dates they promised. Selfish Midwesterners.