Apple executives are probably waking up this morning feeling a bit 'foot in mouth'. During the wee hours of the morning here in the US, a picture surfaced on Gizmodo UK of an AT&T store iPhone display that had to be rebooted. Well, of course we all could have guessed that the displays were running off PCs which might occasionally need a restart. What most wouldn't have guessed is that the PCs behind the iPhone displays were running Microsoft Windows XP.

The display pictured is the model found across the United States at all AT&T corporate retail stores. The iPhone display at Apple stores is completely different animal, and one can only presume does not run on Windows as well.

Of course, one could surmise any number of reasons that the iPhone display in AT&T stores might be running Windows. On one hand, putting a Mac behind every in store display would be considerably more costly for Apple/AT&T as compared to the lost cost of a relatively bare bones PC with Windows XP on it. Additionally, though more unlikely, AT&T stores already operate on PCs using Microsoft Windows, which opens up the possibility that the stores leveraged existing PCs when setting up the iPhone displays.

Whatever the reason, the result is a bad PR moment for Apple. Though one that we wouldn't expect to cause any real impact in the community, it's definitely a "doh" moment for the folks at Apple and AT&T.