Well even your soul may not be enough to get you an iPhone from AT&T, apparently souls aren’t worth that much anymore. Especially if you’re dealing with what essentially, is a monopoly. One of our good friends, Jack Cook posted an article @ Experience Mobility, and it highlights the flaws in the union between Apple and AT&T, it also brings to the forefront, the lack of understanding that most mobile users have of the contracts they submit themselves to when they sign up for a service from any provider. I’m really astounded that AT&T have policies like this in place, but it’s the nature of the game at this point, isn’t it?

Mike Elgin over at ComputerWorld, came across a hurdle with his service provider, that well, makes my blood curdle. A loyal user, that has committed his whole family to the service provider, made to jump through hoops, for a new device.

After months of cajoling, I finally convinced my wife to buy an iPhone. She went to the local AT&T store today, and was actually turned down. She is, apparently, "upgrade ineligible." She asked if there was any price at which should could buy it, and they said no.

In a lot of ways, we are manipulated, by our mobile dependency, and our lack of understanding of what we sign up for. The conundrum is “I can’t afford to not be connected” and the price you’ll pay to be connected. Then it becomes a little more complicated. Human error is a factor, I recently went through something similair. In a way we are, somehow compliant with our service providers, in a way that only denotes a submissive  relationship, that only demonstrates our lack of understanding of what we sign up for, let’s face it we are not all lawyers.

It begs the question are we addicted to connectivity, can we do without an internet connection, not device based.

• Apple and/or AT&T act like everyone is a rabid fanboy. But many people, like my wife, are current Windows and BlackBerry users who are merely toying with the idea of becoming Apple customers. When these fence-sitters finally muster up the interest to go give an Apple product a try, and are met with resistance, incompetence and something that feels like Apple snobbery, much more is being lost than a single iPhone purchase. My wife needs a new laptop, too, and might have loved the iPhone and made a total, lifelong conversion to iPhone, and Macs, too. Now she’s got a broken phone and needs to upgrade and will probably just get another BlackBerry because she harbors ill will toward Apple. We’re also now thinking about switching carriers. We’ll have to file this one in the "FAIL" category.

In really simple ways, the iPhone has changed the mobile environment, some good (well lot’s good) and some bad. Maybe one of the good things is a heads up about looking into your contract a little bit further.