Speculation: Apple tires of wireless industry

a new line of iPods. They’re thinking that Steve Jobs doesn’t care much for the mobile industry, even though he joined its ranks just over two months ago with the inception of the iPhone. The honeymoon seems over…that is, if you think CrunchGear is correctly reading between the lines.

Perhaps he is merely sharing the frustrations of millions of Americans fed up with carrier-locked phones, draconian contracts, poor customer service, and ludicrous fees, but it would appear that, a little more than two months after bringing Apple into the cell phone game, he is already sick of it.
This comes after Jobs’s keynote speech regarding the iPod release. Say those in attendance, he didn’t once mention AT&T when announcing the iPhone price cut, and didn’t mention T-Mobile, operator of Starbucks’s hotspots, when talking about iTunes music being available at the popular coffee shops. The kicker, however, was the song he demoed on the iPod Touch: “Cellphone’s Dead” by Beck (which, incidentally, is a kickass song). The iPod touch, so they say, is a kick in the family jewels to AT&T. Now everyone can get their touch-screen multimedia device, no matter what their carrier. The only drawback is carrying around two devices, which we all do anyway (iPod in the left pocket, cell phone in the right). Plus, it comes in a 16-gig version, which is double the maximum capacity of an iPhone. So what do you think? Backhanded attempts by Jobs and Apple, or are they just being a typical, egotistical American company, focusing on their product and not that of another. After all, there was no need to mention T-Mobile along with Starbucks…though we can see mentioning AT&T with the iPhone cut, since the two have been tied together since earlier this year. [CrunchGear]]]>

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