Your and your friends "musings" might be correct! They almost seem like a spoof of the early Apple ads.

If they are driven by ATT then I understand why the background is black versus the white that Apple uses. The black matches the perception I have what the Apple and ATT relationship is and what it is like to have ATT as a carrier.

Someone at Apple must be kicking themselves over getting in bed with ATT! I know I am over switching my carrier, visual vmail or not!

That's an interesting observation. I saw two of the three during a football game last Sunday, and my first thought was that these were AT&T ads, not Apple. I was surprised later to find out that they were on the Apple site.

Given the prominence of the AT&T logo at the end, I still feel that they are AT&T ads. The Apple logo show up after the AT&T logo, but that is at the very end.

No. "iPhone" is the brand. Almost nothing else matters in the ad. A big Apple logo at the end (and AT & T, of course).

Besides, what else are you going to call Visual Voice Mail? "That out of order voice mail thingy?" "The on screen voicemail" "Voicemail"

I'm sure they're Apple's own commercials. Adverts that don't (or hardly) show the product are not all that unusual. They take the focus away from the details of the product itself.

These commercials aren't so much about the details - people have to be drawn in first, and they can learn about the details later. These commercials are selling a lifestyle to a non-geek audience.

Non-geeks are more likely to pay attention to a person with experiences (even if it's an actor) than to a video of a machine and a pair of hands. People can empathise with a person, but not with a video that's giving them a lecture about how to do something.

Finally, these ads will attract women who will recognise their average-Joe husbands (or sons) in the commercials, and will decide that the iPhone is this year's Christmas present.

The characters in the ads are even telling them why: "Oh yes, my man hates wading through voicemail. And he hates having too much stuff to put in his pockets - he's always wanting me to carry his surplus in my handbag. And yes, when we're out together we've sometimes found ourselves in awkward situations - I wonder if we could have also got out of them by checking a website? If I buy him this phone I'll make his life easier, and he'll love me more."

Genius, Apple!

Could this be because they used actual people's testimonies from off the street and those people didn't know all the proper "talking points" and names/titles to throw in? I don't know, just a thought.

Well, I hate to rain on anyone's theory about where these commercials come from, but I must. As someone who worked several years on the Apple advertising at the ad agency (Chiat/Day), having been very close to the process, and knowing people who are still close to the process, I can say this without hesitation: There is no way in hell, not even the remotest chance, literally a zero % possibility that our friend Mr. Jobs would ever allow AT&T to have any say in advertising the most important product of his career. Just as he would never allow Intel to have any kind of say in the advertising of the Intel-powered Macs (even though they are heavily involved with the advertising of every other computer-maker they deal with). What you are seeing is the work of an agency that is desperately trying to "do something different" within the confines of what Jobs demands. Getting tired of black backgrounds? Okay, try a black one. Then really shake things up with the "visible set" at the end. It's really that simple. So don't try to read any more into it than that. Note that the Apple website, which is largely white for consumers, is black for iPhone. Again, it isn't any more complicated than that.