Of course Gruber will quote the parts where AT&T is asking Apple to tweak the iphone (trying to shift more blame on AT&T for their network) and now all the parts about how Apple is extremely hard to work with or where the iphone's baseband radio is incredibly buggy and is arguably one of the main reasons for the constant dropped calls.
Gruber is nothing but a hack who's trying to glorify Apple in every way.
Actually I think these snippets reveal the gist of the original article pretty well, and also highlight some pretty basic differences between AT&T and Apple:
1) AT&T wants to cripple features and sacrifice customer experience because it won't invest in it's network fast enough
2) AT&T wants Steve Jobs to wear a suit to meet with it's board of directors. Not only is this something that AT&T seemingly desires, but it needs to have a deputy arrange and suggest the clothing choices of executives before they meet.
So on one side: a company that sacrifices customer experience and makes inane suggestions about clothing suggestions, because appearance matters.
On the other side: a company that releases some bugs in some of it's software.
You pick which is more indicative of an overall company culture. Perhaps Apple seems hard to work with when you come from an aging bureaucracy and an old way of doing business. I can understand how some people might find fighting for the customer and for good products "hard to work with".
>AT&T wants to cripple features and sacrifice customer experience because it won't invest in it's network fast enough
Alternately, AT&T makes mass-market products, and wants to insure a baseline level of usability for everyone, while Apple makes products aimed at the top 10%, and wants the absolute best user experience possible without regard for scalability.
Don't get me wrong, AT&T's network needs work, but I don't think that this sort of design philosophy can necessarily work if all handsets are designed to be 'selfish.' It only works if the expensive handsets/plans are allowed to do that sort of thing.
I'm aware that HN is mostly US focused. But I'm one of those iPhone users that doesn't have any relationship with ATT and I can emphatically say that this phone is not the problem. I'm assuming I have the same baseband and radio as the US version, but dropped calls isn't a problem. And I've had tethering from the day I bought it (no hacks).
Gruber is nothing but a hack who's trying to glorify Apple in every way.