Last week I was once again sucked into the argument of whether Apple is a hardware company or a software company. My take on it: it’s neither.

Apple is an “experience” company. They do hardware because it’s the only way to have the software under control. They do software because without good software, the hardware is useless. What they ultimately worry about is the user experience.

They partnered with AT&T because they needed to add the cellular network to the experience and they couldn’t build their own (they would have loved to). If they look like control freaks from the outside it’s because, well, they are.

On that note, in this piece, Saul Hansell argues that AT&T allows applications on other phones, except the iPhone. Saul claims that Mark Bercow, senior vice president of business development for Palm, encourages developers to do pretty much as they please with the Palm Treo:

Indeed, some developers have made video streaming applications, a particularly big bandwidth hog. (Of course, the cellular companies are free to charge whatever they wish for bandwidth use.)

Now go to the AT&T website and try to find their data rates. I could find a $24.99 data rate that was limited to 10MB, and an unlimited plan (with some fine print about per-kilobyte charges) for $69.99. That is in addition to the cost of the plan. The iPhone unlimited data plan is $20 per month. So while developers can create apps for any other AT&T phone, customers get charged per kilobyte. Now consider again what Steve Jobs said about third-party apps:

You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.

My take on that is that AT&T doesn’t want to see their network swamped with data transfers without being able to charge for them. However, a per-kilobyte service plan would have totally ruined the iPhone experience for the users. Apple wanted users to experience having a device that is always connected to the Internet. That experience is ruined if you’re worrying about how much you’re accessing the net because your service provider charges you per-kilobyte.

The reason Apple is so successful is because using their products is a pleasurable experience. That’s their trick, they think about the “experience”.