For the first 18 months I’ve owned an iPhone, I’ve been able to see past the shortcomings of the service, but I’ve had a change of heart towards the lacking service.  Changing expectations, history with a more reliable provider/phone, and a few specific incidents where service quality (dropped calls, missed calls) has had an acute, detrimental impact on my work or personal life.

Now that I’ve made the mental leap to make a change, it’s time to evaluate the options:

1. Get AT&T to fix the service
2. Jailbreak the phone and swicth to T-Mobile (the only other GSM provider in the states)
3. Buy a Palm Pre, Android, or HTC phone

After a stop at the local AT&T store, the manager helpfully submitted an on premise service request – apparently they will actually check my home address and make make adjustments to the tower.  She literally said they might ‘turn the antenna’.  Needless to say, I’m not optimistic that will resolve the issue.  She also confirmed that the Santa Monica area does suffer from ‘capacity problems’, and that AT&T is in the process of adding capacity in the area.  Promising, but who knows how long that will take.

Next up, I acquired a first generation iPhone to test a jailbreak and a T-Mobile SIM.  Fortunately, the phone was already jailbroken, so after a few updates, I dropped in a T-Mobile SIM, and the phone was running.

The ability to compare an AT&T iPhone and a T-Mobile iPhone side-by-side was eye opening.  I’ve heard lot’s of speculation that the iPhone was at fault for service problems – different provisioning of towers for iPhone users, a weaker radio, lot sof reasons, but nothing I could confirm.

This test was in no way scientific, but here’s what I observed:

• Visible difference in the number of bars on the phones.  In most areas of my Santa Monica residence, the T-Mobile phone show more bars.
• Several areas where there is no reception for AT&T, but a few bars for T-Mobile.

I made several test calls – simultaneously calling both phones via Skype – as a conference call.  In 4/6 tests, both phones rang. In 2/6 tests, the AT&T phone never rang and the calls went straight to voicemail.

Disappointing results by AT&T to be sure.  At this point, I plan to give AT&T a few days to attempt to resolve the issues, then on to figure out which direction to take.

Steve Jobs has completed the third chapter of what I see as a 4-part story to take over entertainment.

In chapter 1, he built a little film company called Pixar that helped a bigger company Disney stay relevant during an otherwise tough time for the mouse.  Since Pixar’s films represented the lion’s share of revenue during their relationship, and Disney never developed any of their own digital skills, they picked up Pixar – along the way making Steve Jobs the single largest shareholder of Disney stock.

In chapter 2, while music industry exec played ivory tower games and attempted to turn off the internet with attorneys and fruitless DRM efforts, Steve took the novel approach of vertically integrating music distribution with the personal computer and a line of devices that turned digital music into mobile assets that you could pack in your pocket. These efforts have put Apple on a path that today controls over 70% of digital music sales and could account for 28% of all music sales in 5 years.

In chapter 3, Steve decided that he could apply his smarts to the telecommunications industry, in one fell swoop, creating more innovation with the iPhone than the industry had seen since the creation of the mobile phone itself – fundamentally changing the way people interact with their phones.

Obviously much more can be written about each of these chapters, as well as the previous period which led to this series of breakthroughs, however the point of this post is a prediction about what I believe will be the next major chapter in the Apple Story:

CHAPTER 4: Re-inventing Television

Image: Dan Wiersema (http://www.danwiersema.com/)

Like music distribution and the mobile phone, the television industry finds itself in a transitional period.  The industry has been devoid of significant innovation since the advent of color.  HD, cable, satellite, DVRs, and now Internet TV are fairly obvious, incremental improvements, but even these improvements lfailt to deliver a fulfilling user experience.  It’s the same vacuum that was felt by the music industry, and the mobile phone user before Apple delivered their solution.  It’s a huge market to boot, and Apple now knows everything it needs know to enter in a meaningful way.

Here are some of the factors that frame this prediction:

• Apple has significant investments in flatscreen manufacturing with Samsung and LG
• the current Apple TV box is a test, to learn things about the market and user experience
• The experience of flattening hardware ala MacBook Air enables Apple to fit lots of gear in the back of an LCD case
• A line of high quality, flatscreen TVs with wifi + storage + an elegant remote + great media browsing UI would be a leap ahead for the TV marketplace (my Motorola DVR remote control has more buttons than my computer keyboard – count ‘em) – clearly an area where some iPhone like UI magic could assist

I’d suggest that Apple’s entry into the convention TV marketplace is inevitable – guessing when is a much harder task. Analyst Piper Jaffray suggests it will be in 2011, but I think we might hear something as soon as at the June 2009 Developer Conference.

There are many more reasons why this is a great next step for Apple – share your thoughts in the comments.