Apple would not be anywhere near the innovative company it is today without open standards, open software, and publicly-owned and regulated networks. Yet, they are the prime proponent in pushing the censorship-laden App Store, patent-minefield codecs like H.264, “standard” HTML5 demos written to only work in Safari, and ridiculous corporate secrecy policies that coerce blue-collar employees on the other side of the earth to commit suicide (just to name a few recent transgressions). For a company supposedly innovative and good at bringing people what they want, they have quite a knack for preventing innovation and denying people who want specific freedoms from having them.

So, presumably, their “partner” AT&T said no to enabling video chat on their 3G network—nevermind that customers, now paying for each byte with AT&T’s new plans, should have the freedom to choose what those bytes are used for. Apple: how does it feel when someone says no to you and keeps you from innovating?

Sadly, it doesn’t. Even though it supports 802.11n, it’s not dual-band and works on 2.4 GHz only.

Assuming the iPhone 4 has 5GHz available, Apple could have provided an encrypted network on 2.4GHz for the media & attendees, with visible SSID, and have an encrypted 5GHz network with hidden SSID and broadcast turned off just for demo devices. All three MiFi devices available today use 802.11b/g at 2.4GHz, so the interference caused by them on the 5GHz band was close to zero.