The way Apple introduced the iPhone was as revolutionary as the product itself. No carrier garbage on the phone, no carrier control of the end-user experience, "open" platform for apps (that came a little bit later), and unlimited data.
Those features were unusual in the dumb-phone dominated industry at that time, but were omnipresent when it came to smartphones.
I also had a Treo 300 (and a 180, a 600, and 750p)--so I maybe be confusing this with one of the later ones. The apps were easy enough to delete, IIRC, but there were some on there. And, as all crap apps, they were completely useless.
That said, sprint did offer unlimited data (and text) for far less than AT&T. I'm still bitter about that.
What begs a question, how can cellular phone providers even think, that their team of 12 underpaid code monkeys capable of producing software that's on par with google? AT&T places, map searching apps, etc are utter crap and you can't even get rid of them unless you flash the OS.
Unfortunately this problem isn't tied only to cellular phone providers. Network card manufacturers for Windows (yes, I'm looking at you Intel) come with their own crapware utilities who think their monitoring app is better than default windows wifi manager. Similarly, consumer routers that race to offer more and more features DMZ, QoS, etc but have millions of bugs because they're not software shops and still refuse to use DD-WRT or Open-WRT which are clearly better and have been developed, used and supported by thousands of professional.
Having used a Motorola Backflip before this, I certainly know the perils of crappy phones crippled with crapware. I just don't think the SGS2 is one of them.
Perhaps being a software engineer I have a spoiled sense of what it means to do thing well. The native AT&T apps don't just fail to do things well but clearly have a message "We don't give a damn about you nor this phone. This is our crapware and you have no choice but to use it".
Smartphones quite frankly sucked until halfway through 2007. It's been a nice climb ever since, and you can see the effect the iPhone had on other companies designs and policies. Pre 2007 smartphones looked like they were going after the Blackberry crowd.