Apple / AT&T Spat? GOOG/AAPL 700Mhz?

I’ll admit to liking Robert X. Cringely of PBS. Sure, his theories are wild sometimes. But they’re wild in a fun way, and he’ll revisit things that he got wrong. He doesn’t resort to trolling like some writers of his generation who happen to be friends of his, and when he does troll, it’s against something that we all hate anyway, like our mobile phone carrier. He’s a uniter, not a divider.

Cringely’s idea is that Stephenson’s recent message of a 3G iPhone next year (covered recently here) will chill iPhone sales and cost AT&T about $1 billion in market cap. That, and that Apple will be parnering with Google to buy that 700MHz spectrum. If that charge was true, stockholders should oust Stephenson for neglecting is fiduciary duty: to make them a crapload of money. If I was a stockholder, I wouldn’t forgive a billion-dollar mistake. I’m inclined to write off the spat as likely to be a rumor because Stephenson’s line is pretty much the same line we were given from Jobs. However, there is a ‘but’ in this: the possibility of Apple working with Google for spectra, that’s enough to give me pause. Like so many Cringely articles one has to file it away and see what happens in the distant future.

In other news, Apple has a $30 billion war chest. That’s Microsoft scale money.