Everyone knows that when the IPhone comes out that it will sell faster than they can be supplied. However in the long run being tied to AT&T exclusively is going to hurt Apple because AT&T’s service sucks.

A friend of mine from Missouri came to visit me here in the San Francisco area a few weeks ago. He has AT&T and I have Verizon. I used to have AT&T in 2003 but I switched because the service sucked. But I had wondered if 4 years later if it was as bad as it was then. it was.

Everywhere we went I had signal and Phil didn’t I remember that I used to have trouble getting calls in my apartment and he had the exact same problem. I can drive from san Francisco to San Jose down 280 and not lose the call. He can’t. We even hiked in Yosemite and for 2/3rds of the hike I has signal. He only had signal when he was at Yosemite Lodge. Town after town I could make calls and he couldn’t.

So even if the IPhone is great it’s only going to be as great as AT&T. If they can’t get signal then they can’t make calls or surf the web. IPhone users migh find that all they have is a fat calculator. It will be interesting to see if people are actually happy with it once they buy it.