Who do you believe? AT&T? Or, SlingMedia? Ars reports that AT&T approved a version of the Sling Media player for the iPhone to run on AT&T’s 3G network:

“Sling Media was willing to work with us to revise the app to make it more bandwidth sensitive,” AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega said in a statement. “They made important changes to more efficiently use 3G network bandwidth and conserve wireless spectrum so that we were able to support the app on our 3G mobile broadband network.”

Sounds like a nice little relationship you’ve got going there, Ralph. What does Sling Media’s John Santoro say?

“We didn’t change anything,” Sling Media’s John Santoro told Ars. “AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us.”

It’s so difficult to know who to believe these days.

I’m spilling Alexis’ popular Friday Freebie beans a few hours early:

Windows PC users have flocked to the Mac by the millions in recent years. One question they ask is, “What software do you recommend for the Mac?” Last week I gave you my list of The Top 12 Tools Your New Mac Must Have Now.

This week it’s time for free. The Top 20 FREE Tools Every Mac User Must Have.

Great list with a few surprises and a couple of ties.

Quicken Essentials for Mac is the latest attempt by Intuit to win back the hearts and minds and money of Mac users. Ron in Mac360:

Quicken’s history with the Mac is long and spotted. It’s been ages since there was feature parity with the Windows version of Quicken. Quicken Essentials for Mac will continue that time-honored tradition.

Sigh.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer when asked about Google’s upcoming Chrome OS:

I don’t know if they can’t make up their mind or what the problem is over there, but the last time I checked, you don’t need two client operating systems. It’s good to have one.”

How many operating systems does Microsoft have? How about Windows Vista, Windows CE, Windows Mobile?

On average, iPhone users have downloaded and installed over 50 apps from the iTunes App Store. Katie Marsal in AI on the Olswang Convergence Study:

Owners of Apple’s iPhone are more likely than any other consumer to pay for digital content across a range of content types, including newspapers…

Duh. I have 11 pages of apps on my iPhone, 16 apps each, plus the home bar of 4. Total? 180 apps. I’ve purchased or downloaded about 100 more.