Apple iPhone 4Gs Is Coming To … Sprint?

Boy, listen to the Apple rumor mill and you’ll start to believe there’s a tablet computer in the pipeline … just in time to follow on the coattails of every other computer manufacturer in existence.  Yay, a computer without a keyboard … released months after every other competitor has released their version.  Revolution!

Listen to the undertones and you’ll here this: The iPhone 4Gs is coming to Sprint.

photo credit: 91RS

Here’s why it makes sense:

1. The iPhone is getting some serious heat.  AT&T is getting some serious heat for their shitty network, halting sales in New York, and general ineptitude.  Add in competition from the Nexus One, the Droid, (the) Google, Palm, etc.  Apple needs a distraction.  Enter the iSlate … a computer so far behind its competitors that it exists only in rumor form.  It buys them some time while they sever ties, upgrade, and switch to …
2. Sprint.  Sprint has the the largest (only?) 4G network.  The iPhone is a data hog.  It needs 4G.
3. Then there’s the exclusivity … but not the exclusivity you’re thinking.  The thing needs to be perceived as rare and premium, so Apple can’t partner with Verizon.  Can you imagine what would happen if any corn farmer in Iowa could buy an iPhone?  Or if Bob the grave-digger developed a GPS-enabled plot finding app?  The iPhone is an exclusive status symbol — it can’t become ubiquitous.
4. And think about it: the Apple II GS came out twenty years ago.  Last year there was the 3Gs … the 4Gs makes sense.  And who has a 4G network?  The infinite rumor loop continues!

So, there you go.  Get your iPhone 4Gs this spring from Sprint.

*This article may be entirely untrue … or is that what Steve Jobs wants us to think?