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So Skype comes out with an iPhone client yesterday and of course the buzz was everywhere. Skype is arguably the biggest VOIP provider out there, and is HUGE overseas. It’s really become a inexpensive means for people to communicate for either free, or just this side of free.
However, much as I would have guessed they are only allowing the calling portion of the application to work over WiFi. The reason that they give is that “Due to the effect it may have on your data plan, this feature is currently disabled.” Which is a complete load of crap.
The real message should read “Due to the effect of seriously pissing off AT&T and going into a lengthy court battle, Apple told us no way in hell, and hung up on us when we asked.”
The issue here is that just about everyone here in the US has an unlimited data plan, and if there was a way to make long distance calls that we only had to pay pennies to call London for, we would probably use it, thus cutting AT&T out of that revenue.
Now I am sure they could also bring up that your “Unlimited Data Plan” is also not really unlimited, but Apple doesn’t like to talk about that either, so the end result is we get what looks to be an amazing application, that’s been nerfed.
For those of you who are not gamers, the term “nerfed” is often used to describe what happens when a gaming company decides something is to powerful and purposefully weakens it to be fair to other players, in this case the other players are Apple and AT&T and I am guessing it wasn’t to be fair, it was to avoid everyone getting lawyered up and going at it with machetes.
