Thursday, Apple and AT&T announced that they were going to extend their “exclusive partnership to sell the iPhone” by 12 more months. Now, what does this mean for you? Well, it means that consumers will still have 2 choices, even 2 years from now! Choice number one, stick with AT&T and get barraged by an average of $100 USD a month of cellphone bills courtesy of AT&T. Or, you can take door number two, hope that the IPhone Dev Team still exists and can unlock the iPhone with your GSM carrier. (In the US that means T-Mobile) Now, this doesn’t seem very fair right? Wasn’t it Apple who said that “if you buy it, we believe that it is yours to keep…once you buy it, it is yours to do as you please…”? Think about it people. Now, why has Apple chosen this path? Well, it all started in 2002, when initial plans started about a little project codenamed “Purple”, now Project Purple was an abandoned iPod + phone project.

So, project purple was started in 2002 shortly after the first iPod was announced in October of 2001. Apple started going into this field because, Steve Jobs knew that the mobile phone industry would be so great that it would force Apple to go into the mobile phone business. So, their plans started in 2002, where they had a partnership with Motorola to sell the ill-fated ROKR iTunes phone. Now, Steve knew from the start that this was a dud, so they abandoned this project and moved on to the future. So eventually, Apple resumed their iPod + phone quest. Until one day, they began a project called “P2”, short for “Purple 2”. Now, Project Purple 2 is what we now know as “iPhone”. Now, this time, Steve Jobs knew hat Apple was on to something so they decided to talk to Cingular Wireless in secret meetings back in February of 2005. So, this was where the trouble started for the iPhone consumer. Apple and Cingular + AT&T’s “exclusive partnership”.

Their “exclusive partnership” would result in many people trying to unlock the iPhone so that they could have their choice of wireless carrier, and break free of Apple and AT&T’s very costly 2 year contracts. So, why did I say this much? Why am I telling you guys this? Well, I’m just telling you the facts, this is unfortunately the truth and the future for everyone interested in the iPhone. They will have to deal with this sort of stuff until at least December of 2010. And in the U.K, it’s worse, until 2012, reports indicate. So what do you think now? Do you think that Apple and AT&T should continue their way of doing business? Or should they listen to their customers? Please feel free to leave a comment and tell me what you think.

-Alan Vazquez