Skip to main content

Apple Nearly Dumped AT&T over iPhone Disputes

at&t apple iphoneAll the iPhone faithful who have cursed AT&T’s poor reception, dropped calls and shoddy customer service, take heed: Apple feels your pain. And were it not for the gobs of money the company collected from its seemingly incompetent but well-heeled spouse, the two would have divorced years ago.

Like a techie version of an E! True Hollywood Story, a new article in Wired details the uneasy relationship behind the scenes at both AT&T and Apple. Apple CEO Steve Jobs plays the tyrannical Type A wife, AT&T CEO Ralph De La Vega the hapless buffoon of a husband, and the iPhone – the young Hollywood starlet of a child that kept the odd couple paired together in a relentless quest for cash.

According to Wired, Apple considering splitting from AT&T several times, going so far as to send reps to Qualcomm to feel out the possibility of a CDMA iPhone on Verizon. Ultimately, the prospects of a costly hardware redesign from the ground up and legal action from AT&T over its exclusivity agreement kept Apple from ever penning its goodbye note and slipping out into the night.

But there have been some spectacular blowouts.

For instance, after the success of the very first iPhone model began to tax AT&T’s network, carrier reps approached Apple with the prospect of switching YouTube to a Wi-Fi-only feature to ease up the load on the network. Apple’s response: It’s not our problem, and we’re not crippling our product to fix it for you.

The early disagreement seemed to set the every-man-for-himself tone of future battles. Other disagreements have stemmed from Ralph De La Vega’s premature announcement of tethering, Apple’s choice of broadband chips for the iPhone, which hadn’t been proven in the United States, and even how the iPhone should be displayed in the AT&T store (it deserved its own pedestal, Apple insisted).

According to Wired, neither company would say a bad thing about the other through its PR channels for the story, and neither has made an official comment in its wake.

Editors' Recommendations

Nick Mokey
As Digital Trends’ Managing Editor, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team delivering definitive reviews, enlightening…
The most common iPhone 15 problems and how to solve them
The iPhone 5 and iPhone 15 Pro Max volume buttons.

Apple iPhone 15 Plus (left) and Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

You rely on your iPhone 15 for everything. That includes music, movie, and TV show streaming, banking, smart home controls, calendars, reminders, and timers — which is only scratching the surface. Apple’s iOS namesake is faster, more durable, and packed with plenty of power, but that doesn’t mean it can’t run into trouble now and then. Not to worry though: for when a smartphone presents an issue, there’s usually a way to fix it. 

Read more
How to reverse image search on Android or iPhone

A reverse image search is a handy way to figure out the origin of an image, locate similar images, or fact check an image. There are a multitude of ways to perform a reverse image search on your mobile device, whether you're using an Android phone or an iPhone.

For example, here's how to do a reverse image search via Google lens on Android:

Read more
iOS 18 could add a customization feature I’ve waited years for
iOS 17 interactive widgets on an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

iOS 18 is coming later this year, and all signs point to it being a dramatic iPhone update. Now, thanks to one new report, it looks like iOS 18 could add a customization feature I've been waiting years and years and years for: better home screen customization.

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, iOS 18 will introduce a "more customizable" home screen. More specifically, iOS 18 will allow you to place app icons and widgets anywhere you want. If you want a space or break between an app icon or your widget, welcome to the future: iOS 18 may finally let you do that. MacRumors corroborated this report with its own sources, too.

Read more