When did you stop caring about cell phones? Right before your boss told you that you had to hustle up a new SMS project, because that is “what the kids are doing” these days? Thought so.

Cell phones are the technological miracle of 1999. That is when the last person on earth got one: me. Back then, I cared so much. I obsessed over specs, both physical (dimensions, weight) and bureaucratic (nighttime minutes start at 8 p.m. or 9?). I anticipated the arrival of new models to the American market that, when available, I would not buy. I thought about them in bed.

But that was years ago. These days I can hardly summon an ounce of shame for the chintzy old Sony Ericsson phone I carry around. That old imported beast had the famous Bluetooth for years before the technology finally showed up in phones available from American carriers.

Speaking of telecom companies—boy howdy, aren’t they fun. I used to work for Lucent. It was 2001, around the time they were Internet-busting. Everyone in the imploding industry was desperately clinging to the idea that the mobile Internet would save them. Unfortunately their mobile Internet had a lot more in common with Minitel than with the Internet that we knew and loved. It did not save them.

Not much has changed since then. The carriers continue to leverage their oligopoly power to be as crappy as possible. Nothing spells “barrier to entry” like bathing the country in a fog of exclusive short-range radio signals. Their suckiness has been disrupted only once, by BlackBerry’s stealthy entry via open pager networks that telecoms had foolishly allowed to exist.

And Apple, for all their iPhone strutting and chest-beating, has become the industry’s bitch. They could have just put their phone up for sale. It isn’t illegal to sell FCC approved unlocked phones in this country. Ever since the U.S. belatedly discovered the miracle of interoperable GSM, you could just buy a phone and use it on any compatible prepay or contractual service.

Of course, there’s a lucrative bounty for your servitude if you sign a restrictive two-year contract: a couple hundred dollars travels from the contract owner to whoever suckered you to sign it. So, you might think, the iPhone is cheap because you’re tied to Cingular. Yay, savings!

Except it’s not at all “cheap.” This is a $500 – $600 phone. That’s damn expensive. What if it were $800? Well, what if? Who is going to buy a ridiculous $600 phone but not an $800 one? Why don’t we just find out? Why not sell an unlocked version alongside the Cingular version? They could still have excluded deals with any other particular carrier.

But the contract is not the end of the abuse. When news first came out that the iPhone wouldn’t support independently written programs, I assumed it was a false rumor. Because that doesn’t make any sense. The iPhone is like a tiny Mac, running software derived from Mac OS X. Of course we can write cute little programs for it, yes? No. Wow.

Lameity lame lame lame! Must we make facile analogies, like what would have happened if you couldn’t write your own programs for the Apple II? Fine, consider them made. The offensiveness of this restriction puts that cheesy rhetoric in-bounds.

There is only one reason that Apple Computer would prevent us from writing apps for their phone: Cingular. Why? Because they know we will put Skype on it. Seeing as they are perversely subsidizing the iPhone, they will not tolerate it being used to subvert their tax on talking. Getting Cingular to support not-horrible voicemail, if that’s what negotiations came down to, was not worth this pathetic kowtowing.

It took balls for Apple to enter the cell phone market. Too bad they checked them at the door.