If the company did spend billions, it got the smallest bang for its buck since Mike Tyson went bankrupt. At the time, I didn’t (and I still don’t) regret posing 2 questions I thought were worth asking. And I say humbly: I was right.

Since the release of the first iPhone (June 29, 2007) Apple’s stock is up 10% -- impressive given the fact that the NASDAQ is down around 31% in the same time period. AT&T is down one-third more than the NASDAQ -- over 40%. There are any number of reasons AT&T has dramatically lagged the NASDAQ and Apple. For one thing, it’s a worse company than Apple, and in the lower half of the S&P 500.

Looking to minimize the fiscal damage of violating the terms of my AT&T contract -- and being totally unwilling to give up my music library, not to mention the other insanely-cool-toy aspects of my iPhone -- I considered the Pre.

But Palm (PALM) couldn’t make enough phones to meet demand by a long shot. This wasn’t a release as much as a product leak. Much was made of Palm poaching the Apple team. But to have worked on the iPhone but still have failed to notice AT&T’s stranglehold on the network is a glaring example of flawed, short-term thinking. Sprint (S) closed down $5.44 as the post-Pre excitement was dampened by the grim reality that the Pre isn’t really available.

For what it’s worth, I bought a BlackBerry (RIMM), which runs on Verizon Wireless (VZ) and is down “only” 28% since the iPhone's release. I’m back to where I was until the middle of last year, when I tried to limit myself to only one object to lug around. It works as a phone, costs less, and is less exciting than a summer of rain and dropped calls.