By now, we’re all aware of Apple’s rejection of Google Voice for the iPhone. For those of you who don’t follow such things (what are you doing

here, btw?), Google Voice gives you one phone number that rings all your phones (home, mobile, etc.), transcribes voicemail to text, and saves your voicemail online.

Apple’s official reasoning was that the app duplicates functions of the hardware and the carrier, and AT&T denies having anything to do with the decision whatsoever. Now the FCC is investigating. Yes, even the Feds are up in arms over Apple’s snubbing of the app, which is still in private beta!

What’s more, there seems to be a trending attitude of “forget Apple!” spreading like wildfire amongst the once loyal-to-the-death iPhone users. Among them is the man with arguably the most influence among technophiles, TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington who recently quit his iPhone cold turkey, opting for T-mobile’s MyTouch 3G.  That phone runs runs the open-source Android operating system, where “all apps are created equal.” Google Voice is also available on the Blackberry platform as a native app, and an unofficial version is available on Palm’s WebOS. With other choices available, it looks like consumers are beginning to break free from Apple’s glossy spell.

I’m curious: if you were unbound by any contracts and money weren’t an issue, which phone and carrier would you choose today? iPhone users, are you becoming fed up with Apple and AT&T?

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