Yep. It falls right in line with Apple's normal secrecy and their poor experience with the ROKR in letting anyone else have a say in the design of the phone. To say that Jobs is an anally-retentive control freak is an understatement.
Just how do you test hardware that has to connect to AT&T’s equipment without hooking it up to AT&T’s equipment ?
Did you even read the article or my post where I quoted it?
You can bet
No I can't, given how much AT&T has had to bend over backwards in order to get the exclusive deal for the iPhone. And they were the only carrier willing to do it. 500,000-700,000 signed up in the first weekend alone, looks like a good deal for AT&T.
“Did you even read the article or my post where I quoted it?”
I read where they said they did, but no tech in their right mind would sign off on “testing” that leads to tens of millions of dollars of investment based on “testing” in the showman’s facility alone.
But to get back on point ... Since you think that AT&T had NO input on the decision to leave out streaming audio, VOIP or IM why do you think Job made the decision to leave these out of a so-called “breakthrough” consumer-oriented device ?
BTW - Early reports say 50% of people switched to at&t, more recent ones are saying 25%, so these were mostly not new customers.