Doonesbury Say What?

"I'd like to see the Obama administration willing to do anything to be done to protect the American people, and we want to know that."
-- Sarah Palin

I wonder if, long-term, Palin will be a better source for quotes than our previous president.

AT&T to lose iPhone exclusivity this week?!

"An inside source over at HotHardware reports that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on 1/27, coincident with Apple's upcoming press event next week, though it's not yet clear what other carriers will be stepping in to pick up the iPhone. For anyone who has followed the saga, you may notice that you haven't seen AT&T fighting to extend their original exclusive agreement as of late. In fact, they have spent most of their time fighting Verizon's negative ad campaigns. This may not be all that surprising. Inside of AT&T, word is that the iPhone is causing more trouble than ever before. On some level, having the iPhone is hurting AT&T's image. Do you remember hearing about AT&T's 'horrible network' before the iPhone? The iPhone itself doesn't really handle the switch from 3G to EDGE very gracefully, so calls that are in-progress tend to fail whenever 3G connections aren't optimal and the phone attempts to step down to EDGE. It seems that AT&T may finally be tired of taking the heat."

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/10/01/24/1227217/Rumor-mdash-ATampT-Losing-iPhone-Exclusivity-Next-Week?art_pos=1

I had heard that AT&T's exclusive contract in the US was up this year and that it was likely someone else, or perhaps multiple carriers, would gain access to the iPhone. This is a VERY good thing, as AT&T has lousy/no service in my area.

I bought an iPod Touch last year as a PDA as it was obvious that Palm had ceded the PDA market to Microsoft (they have since dropped all PDAs and only make cell phones). I was doubtful at first because of unfamiliarity with the device, but the description of programs available made it look like it might be a good replacement for my Palm, and $190 for a factory refurb unit from Apple (which has a longer warranty than the one you buy at Best Buy) seemed like a reasonable amount of money to experiment with, especially compared to the price of a new HP/Compaq PDA.

I have been extremely happy with it. In fact, I'm on my second Touch. I bought an 8 gig, then my wife was playing with it and found her favorite card game, Set, was available for it. So I ceded my 8 gig and bought a refurb 32 gig.

Depending on who picks up the iPhone and their coverage in my area, I'll seriously consider getting one in a few months. There's no way I'm going to immediately jump on the band wagon considering all of the problems AT&T has had with their network capacity and the iPhone. I saw an article recently that said AT&T needs to spend $5 billion to bring their network up to where it needs to be to cope with iPhone traffic, that ain't gonna happen.