In keeping with my observation on the Kevin MD post about Google and their health advisors, I notice this observation regarding the iPhone:

It is in some ways astonishing that AT&T and Apple are partners at all. AT&T is the oldest of the old school—the most ancient major high-tech firm in the United States, founded in 1878. Unfazed by spending the last 23 years in suspended animation (after the great breakup of 1984), AT&T is back to its classic business model: own the largest networks and everything on them. Apple, meanwhile, is the original hippie computer company, a child of the 1970s, not the 1870s. At least in its origins, Apple is an ideological foe of IBM and AT&T. (Remember that 1984 ad?) Considering that these firms were born on the opposite sides of the tech Kulturkampf, the iPhone cannot help but be a little strange.

Is it strange or is it ubiquitous? The revolutionary envisions a new society and marginalizes himself in the old one to advocate the new. But, whatever his vision, personal eschatology trumps the cosmic. He can envision no better vindication for himself than to have the approval and acceptance of the ancien regime.

That said, I’m still hoping that AT&T will truly want Apple to change them and/or that the Slate writer’s optimistic scenario is true:

If you’re an optimist, the more intriguing possibility is that Apple’s iPhone is a Trojan Horse. The iPhone is fatally attractive to AT&T, since it gives the firm a chance to steal tens of thousands of new customers from rivals like Verizon. But Apple may be betting that, once it has its customers, they’ll be more loyal to Apple than AT&T. With its foothold in the wireless world, Apple may be planning to slowly but inexorably demand more room. If iPhone 2.0 is a 3G phone that works with any carrier and supports third-party apps, then industry power will begin to move away from the carrier oligopoly and toward Apple and other Silicon Valley firms. Now, that would be a revolution.

(Hat tip: Reformed Chicks Blabbing)