Auto-dial prefix, no # or *. Why, Apple, WHY?

Question

I have an iPhone through my employer. Lucky me.
In order to make private calls that are billed to me rather than my employer, I need to add a prefix containing # and *. For some reason, Apple has made this a real pain. The most obvious way to do this would be if the phone simply had a feature to add a prefix to any call. Failing that, a third party app should do the trick (by a button press, by modifying the address book, as a default sequence or a range of similar options).
However, no such feature exists in the phone, and third party apps are not allowed to append # and * to phone numbers.
First, is there any rational explanation for disallowing this? Why are Apple this evil?
Second, is there any workaround, e.g. batch-editing the address book on my computer or similar? An obvious solution would be to traverse each address book entry on my computer and add a number containing the prefix. Could be done manually I suppose, but, hey, this is the computer age. We even have supercomputers now, Apple.

Answer 1

"even if Apple offer this version (easy for non-tech people to use)
and an iOS version (for the geeks) who have iPhones, iPads and want
to play Angry Birds on their TV - or better still, both, have an iOS
button on the Remote so you can change to iOS when you want Apps?"
Who says they didn't do this? I see no difference in using AirPlay for movies than I do for a game or mobile safari. Also, the new TV has Bluetooth - wonder why....