This morning’s Observer column…

It’s an odd way to start a revolution, to put it mildly. The iPhone is a lovely piece of kit – in effect, a sleek, powerful personal computer running an industrial-grade operating system. It has the capability to be a really disruptive device in an industry that badly needs disruption. But it comes shackled to an unpopular, low-tech mobile network. So acquiring one is like buying a Porsche engine and fitting it to your lawnmower. People figured out quickly that you could cancel AT&T’s internet service to get its browser to work only via wi-fi; but you couldn’t use it on any other mobile phone/data network. (And still had to pay the 18-month AT&T subscription.) This was not a fundamental technical limitation of the device, but a technological shackle designed by Apple to drive business to AT&T…