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Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is one of those people in the world of blogging who elicits strong opinions, many people either love him or hate him and he is always at the heart of some controversy or another.

He has also been an early and ardent admirer of Apple’s iPhone. That has changed however, and he has decided to abandon the iPhone? Why? He has had his fill of the way that Apple limits and hamstrings it’s own system and the flashpoint has been Apple’s refusal to get on the Google Voice one-number bandwagon.

As he explains…

Apple and AT&T are now blocking the iPhone version of the Google Voice app. Why? Because they absolutely don’t want people doing exactly what I’m doing – moving their phone number to Google and using the carrier as a dumb pipe.

So I have to choose between the iPhone and Google Voice. It’s not an easy decision. Except, it sort of is. Google isn’t forcing the decision on me, Apple and AT&T are. So I choose to work with the company that isn’t forcing me to do things their way. And in this case, that’s Google.

So what handset did he switch to? His preference was a Palm Pre but the WebOS Google Voice app is still in development, so for now he is using the myTouch running Android and will move over to a Pre as soon as he can. After all, his Google based phone number will travel with him. That is the beauty of freedom and a lack of device orthodoxy.

While the iPhone is still the phone to beat and has many rabid followers, more and more the drawbacks of Apple’s (and AT&T’s) draconic business practices are beginning to show (and getting mainstream press). Some high-profile users are defecting to other smartphones, or expressing dissatisfaction. Since Apple’s standard response to customer complaints or upset is that the customers are using their technology wrong or improperly, this CAN’T be a good thing for Cupertino in the long term.

(Photo Credit: TechCrunch)

Zealot (473 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).