Steve Jobs wanted to build a wireless carrier. Steve Jobs spoke to wireless industry veteran and venture capital firm Trilogy Chairman John Stanton at length about creating a brand new network based on unused WiFi spectrum, reports Nancy Gohring for Computerworld. Apparently Jobs wanted to ‘replace the carriers’. “He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum,” said Stanton. “That was part of his vision.” The discussion about the carrier happened between 2005 and 2007, while Jobs and Apple were working on bringing the iPhone to market.
The iPhone has heralded a massive shift in the way that the dynastic carrier system operates. Before the iPhone, the carriers were the gate keepers and manufacturers kowtowed to them in a big way. It is so popular, in fact, that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has said that it is the ‘number one’ reason that people switch from one carrier to another. Simple plans, simple pricing, autonomy from the archaic text-messaging and voice pricing system. A letter from Tim Cook on Maps. The New Apple: It Doesn't Just Work. Boycotting Apple Won't Help the Rioting Foxconn Workers Who Built Your iPhone. Here's Apple's e-mail thread about a 7-inch iPad | Apple. SAN JOSE, Calif. -- One of the highlights of Apple and Samsung's day in court today was the release of an internal e-mail in which top Apple executives discussed interest in a smaller version of the .
This made up just a very small part of a cross-examination of Scott Forstall, Apple's head of iOS software at Apple, but it was enough to get the attention of just about everyone here. At the heart of it is proof that some of the top executives at Apple were pursuing an alternate, smaller tablet -- something controversial given late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' acerbic, on-the-record comments about smaller tablets following the release of the company's first iPad. Jobs was known to flip-flop on major ideas, and misdirect about potential business avenues, though his comments about smaller tablets suggested the company would never go that direction.
Having used a Samsung Galaxy, I tend to agree with many of the comments below (except moving off the iPad).