When the feds smelled anti-competitive behavior on Apple’s breath in July after the computer maker rejected an iPhone app for Google’s Voice calling service, the FCC asked Apple, its telecom partner AT&T and Google to explain what happened.

When the three tech giants replied three weeks later, one decided to file part of its answer in secret.

Oddly, that was Google — the ostensible victim in the incident and a company that prides itself on its openness and transparency.

Google’s decision (.pdf) causes a big blind spot in the story of the highest-profile mobile app store rejection yet — a story that is likely to change how app stores are run, how people expect apps stores to be curated, and whether the feds decide to regulate them.

1. Google Voice

Apple recently rejected and banned Google Voice apps from its App Store. The apps would have augmented the search giant’s new voice service, which enables users to rely on a single phone number to ring all their phones, while also delivering the gift of free text messages, voicemail service and cheap international calls. The move stirred so much controversy that even the Federal Communications Commission is inquiring about the prohibition.

Thankfully in the Cydia store there’s GV Mobile, an unofficial Google Voice app. In light of Apple’s blanket ban of Google Voice apps, GV Mobile is the no. 1 reason to jailbreak your iPhone (if you weren’t one of the lucky few to grab a copy before Apple banned it). Overall the app is really sweet, despite having room to improve in terms of performance (connecting to Google’s server each time you launch the app can be a drag). Your contacts list is nicely integrated into the phone dialer and SMS sender; the overall UI is slick and cool. After a few minutes you’ll be sending free text messages, and maybe even dialing your relatives in Taiwan for once with cheap international VOIP calls. The best part? The app’s free.

2. Unrestricted 3G Privileges

AT&T iPhone owners pay $30 per month for “unlimited” 3G data access. But your access isn’t truly unlimited, thanks to restrictions that Apple imposed on some apps. SlingPlayer, an app that streams television from a Slingbox device, was crippled to work only on a Wi-Fi connection at the request of Apple and AT&T. And the Skype VOIP app only works on Wi-Fi, too, rendering it impractical.

This is where 3G Unrestrictor comes in handy. The $2 app enables jailbroken iPhone users to select any app that they wish to use over 3G, including Skype and SlingPlayer. Also, by default the App Store won’t let you download files larger than 10MB on the 3G network, and 3G Unrestrictor will remove that regulation, too. Free your apps and download away.

3. Tethering

Apple promised the new iPhone 3.0 OS would deliver tethering, but AT&T customers have yet to see that promise fulfilled. AT&T promised tethering would arrive “late summer.” Well, we’re waiting, and it’s not here yet. Some iPhone 3.0 users have figured out a roundabout way to turn on tethering without hacking, but that solution is only temporary.

Guess what? There’s a tethering app in Cydia, too. It’s a $5 app called Tether. The steps on setting up tethering aren’t as simple as Apple’s, but hey, you don’t even have to pay a monthly fee to use the service. The app even includes a feature to set a data cap in case you’re worried about extra charges incurred on your account if AT&T catches you tethering. It’s a little rough around the edges thanks to the network setup taking a few minutes, but we still love it.

4. Overseas Travel

Need to travel? Your iPhone can only go so far thanks to its carrier-tied SIM card, unless you wish to receive bills up the nostril thanks to international roaming costs. Jailbreaking will actually enable you to follow a process to unlock your iPhone to work with other carriers’ SIM cards overseas.

5. Pissing off Apple

Whether you’re a developer who has a beef with Apple, or if you’re a consumer who’s pissed at Apple, or if you’re a kid whose puppy was run over by an employee of Apple, then you may want to exact revenge by jailbreaking your iPhone. That’s because Apple clearly doesn’t like it when users jailbreak their iPhones. The company claims the process is illegal, and goes as far as to say jailbreaking will crash cellphone towers. So far these are empty threats, although buyer beware: Future court decisions, laws or FCC regulations may put teeth into Apple’s claims.

6. Pissing off AT&T

Frustrated with AT&T’s brainless customer service, spotty network reception and passive-aggressive totalitarian rule over the App Store? Jailbreaking for any of the reasons above will piss off AT&T, mostly by enabling your applications to use its 3G network without restriction. Or, if you like, you can take your protest a step further and unlock your jailbroken phone, enabling it to work with with T-Mobile or any other GSM-based carrier. It’s not a tea party, it’s an AT&T party!

So what are you waiting for? We won’t tell you how to jailbreak your phone, but you can find the necessary tools and instructions on iPhone Dev-Team’s blog. We also found YouTube user Rizzo893’s video really helpful, too.

Apple is the exclusive gatekeeper to its iPhone App Store, able to reject apps at will — as it did July 28 with Google Voice. But some developers aren’t taking the rejection lying down: They’re turning instead to an unauthorized app store called Cydia, where forbidden wares continue to exist — and even earn developers some money.

That store is operated by Jay Freeman, more fondly known in the iPhone “Jailbreak” community as Saurik. Only five months old, his app store Cydia specializes in selling apps that Apple would reject or ban (or already has). To use Cydia or the apps available through it, customers need to jailbreak their phones — hack them to work around Apple-imposed restrictions — a process thatApple claims is illegal.

When a brain tumor caused professional photographer Alex Dejong to lose his eyesight three years ago, he turned to gadgets to continue making his art.

Carrying around a Nokia N82 cellphone, Dejong used assistive software to translate sounds into visuals in his mind. After stitching together a mental image of his surroundings, he snapped photos with his Canon and Leica digital cameras.

But Dejong’s blindness is acute: He can only perceive light and dark. Because Dejong could not see his own photographs, he hired an assistant for editing. Until recently, editing was a part of the creative workflow that he thought he’d lost forever. And then to his surprise, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, which launched late June, gave him back the ability to edit photos.

The new iPhone has a feature called VoiceOver, which reads back anything a user places his finger over on the screen: e-mail, web pages, system preferences and so on. Beyond that, photo-editing applications such as CameraBag and Tilt-Shift perform automated editing tasks that blind users like Dejong could not otherwise do on their own.

Over the weekend Apple waltzed through the latest iPhone launch, while its partner AT&T tripped and stumbled like a dance-school dropout. Perhaps AT&T didn’t feel the need to smooth its moves, because in three days Apple sold over a million iPhone 3GS units worldwide anyway.

But in a surprising move, Apple two weeks ago pointed the harsh spotlight of scrutiny on its partner at theWorldwide Developers Conference by announcing that multimedia messaging and tethering on the iPhone would be immediately available for customers with several international carriers — but not for AT&T customers. As if the chorus of “boos” in the audience weren’t enough, AT&T soon after came under heavy fire when customers learned about an early-adoption fee — an extra $200 that iPhone 3G users would have to pay to upgrade to the latest iPhone 3GS handset.

While AT&T has addressed both the lack of MMS (it’s coming, the company says) and the early-adoption fee (AT&T later offered the fully-subsidized new-customer price to a larger number of current customers), these are just two of the company’s many missteps around the iPhone 3GS launch.