kdarling
macrumors P6
I understand. In fact, I tried to delete mine as irrelevant to the thread after I realized you had deleted yours, but no go
Apple Publicly Responds to FCC Inquiry, Comments on Google Voice App Status
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I understand. In fact, I tried to delete mine as irrelevant to the thread after I realized you had deleted yours, but no go
*LTD*
macrumors G4
I understand. In fact, I tried to delete mine as irrelevant to the thread after I realized you had deleted yours, but no go
Hehe, it'll happen. There are so many ancillary issues to the central issue. The conversation will at times wander off into different directions.
bruinsrme
macrumors 604
I use both so GV serves me as well, the customer paying $180+ a month to ATT and the person that has 3 iphones purchased at ATT. So if ATT pays $700 per phone, Apple has receieved $2100 between my contribution and the subsidy, in the last year from my iphone experieince. ATT has received over $2800 since switching to them . HOLY COW !!!!! Our data usage at $90 a month is under 5G. That there my friend is a ton of international calls at $.04 to $.08 a minute if i was using a calling card in which ATT woould be a VERY VERY small percentage if any.
Getting a texted voice mail is great especially when I am at work too busy to dial up voice mail and wait for the message to play.
I will have to disagree it only serves goodle end because it is serving me in a completely different way ATT and apple are providing a the moment.
I can also use the regular dialer on viz voice mail if I so chose.
In my experieince GV has enhanced my iphone experience with little to no confusion.
*LTD*
macrumors G4
Which seems to be part of the problem, from the perspective I wrote from, at least.
bruinsrme
macrumors 604
It wil be interesting to see what happens as apps start to take the iphone to new directions that may not have been anticipated in it conception.
Yes it is conjecture. The funny thing is you actually believe what a corporation tells you. It's comical that you call it conjecture and then follow eith your own conjecture. You want to believe anything AT&T tells you? Fine. These are the people that will always lie for their own interests. You're telling me:
1. Gruber is wrong when he says his source was wrong in saying AT&T was not behind the rejection when he has sources deeper than anyone in the industry at Apple.
2. That Apple didn't know what the hell they were doing when they left apps that supported Google Voice out on the marketplace for two months (including Phil Schiller).
3. That Apple still doesn't know what the hell Google Voice was two months ago and still doesn't today.
It's funny that you believe corporations more than the FCC which is there to protect the consumers. It says a lot. Exactly how do you know that none of the companies violated any rules? You don't even know what Google's response was to the FCC because they redacted it! There are rumors already going around that Apple flatly rejected the app and is not still "reviewing it". These rumors are circulating from TechCrunch citing sources at Google.
Apple is completely lying about this and if you believe that they still don't know what Google Voice is, then you are naive.
BTW your idea that AT&T allowed GV on other platforms so they had nothing to do with it does not hold water. They admitted to blocking Slingbox on the iPhone yet it still works on 3G on other platforms.
RazHyena
macrumors 6502a
Eso
macrumors 68020
It's not Apple's phone. You paid for it; it's your phone. On the other hand, they own the OS, namely the code. That doesn't give them the right to determine which software can run on their platform. They have every right to choose which applications they sell in their store, but will run into problems when they continue to insist to be the sole distributor.
*LTD*
macrumors G4
Gee really? I had no idea.
But hey, this is still all AT&T's fault, right?
They certainly had a hand in this. I'm a firm believer in that.
Doesn't matter whether Apple is lying or not --- Apple believes that they have a right to set up a secretive group of senior Apple executives to handle sensitive app approvals because (1) Apple basically "breaks even" on itunes, (2) iphone has about 1% of the worldwide cell phone market share, and (3) iphone is not even remotely challenging Nokia (globally) and RIM (North America) in smartphone sales.
Google believes that they set up their own "approval" system that will give them political cover for rejecting apps. Hey, it's not Google that has a problem with your app, it's the content owners (who co-incidentally is a thousand times smaller than Google).
AT&T believes that they have a right to reject apps that eats up a lot of spectrum space. It doesn't need a lot to crash the internet --- Michael Jackson's death is a perfect example. Any regular sports event like the NCAA final 4 would have eat up all spectrum on their network. AT&T is not the largest carrier in the US, the cell phone carrier market is very competitive and thus there are zero anti-trust issues.
PS: I don't know how many negative negative negative in your number 1 statement and my limited English ability has failed me right now --- Gruber has acknowledged that his Apple source gave him incorrect information on the AT&T thing (Gruber now has accepted Apple's official stance in that AT&T had nothing to do with GV's rejection).
Shame...I love what google is doing software wise. Now only if Android could get a little better, and on my network, I'll be more than happy to go that route.
I can understand why Apple doesn't want Google providing GV, but if they are doing it because it is to taking over the telephony/messaging/contacts user experience, then I shouldn't all the other apps be blocked that duplicate those features. Or maybe because Google does things right and they are afraid that it will be better than what they offer which is very possible.
I can understand why Apple doesn't want Google providing GV, but if they are doing it because it is to taking over the telephony/messaging/contacts user experience, then I shouldn't all the other apps be blocked that duplicate those features. Or maybe because Google does things right and they are afraid that it will be better than what they offer which is very possible.
*LTD*
macrumors G4
Interesting points.
Net Neutrality is dead --- Google fooled everybody with their PR and then sign deals with the carriers, lost all many fans. Then Google had the instinct of a 6 year old kid by announcing that they fooled the FCC into writing the open device rules on the 700 MHz auction and had zero intention to actually win the auction.
FCC won't do anything --- because other countries have been allowing VoIP blocking for a few years now.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1564
KnightWRX
macrumors Pentium
2 things, you assume that I believe what Apple and AT&T wrote. I'm not inclined to at face value. However, I don't see what Apple has to gain by lying and taking all the blame. Lying and shoving the blame over to AT&T ? AT&T lying and shoving the blame to Apple ? Makes more sense. Apple taking the blame fully seems credible, especially seeing what could result if they lied to the FCC (the death of the iPhone).
And yes I did follow with my own conjecture, which I however based in Apple's and AT&T's testimony. I never said it wasn't conjecture though, if you note, since I said "This is PROBABLY what happened".
kdarling
macrumors P6
Net neutrality is hot again.
I was heavily involved in it fifteen years ago, and I can see the same signs again.
(If we had continued on the same path back then, we'd have had incredible interactive abilities right now. I know, I worked on some of it. But as soon as neutrality was dropped as an FCC requirement, the land and air carriers immediately dropped all the expensive R&D work.
Lesson #1: carriers don't like spending money unless they're forced to. )
Nevertheless, they succeeded in getting the neutrality rules passed. Sure, so far the carriers are only paying lip service to the idea of any device or app allowed, but that's part of what this investigation is all about.
DELLsFan
macrumors 6502a
FCC won't do anything because it doesn't make sense to help Google (which is a much bigger and richer company) against the much smaller carriers. Carriers' shareholders are people who look for steady dividends and quite a few workers are unionized. Google shareholders are high risk day traders and their workers are rich with google stock options.
NoExpectations
macrumors 6502a
Agreed
What more do you Apple Fanboys want? Apple and AT&T responded fully (and unlike Google) did not hide their answers.
AT&T already allows Google Voice on their other smart phones. Plus, if you really want to use GV now, use the Web Ap service. No one is stopping you.
This was all Apple trying to keep the user experience from being dominated by Google's Trojan Horse. I honestly don't blame Apple at all. The next feature that GV would add (besides all those annoying banners and ads) would be a Calendar App, Stock App, Weather App, Contact App, Notepad, etc......in short, they would hijack the entire phone and blast everyone with even more ads!
What more do you Apple Fanboys want? Apple and AT&T responded fully (and unlike Google) did not hide their answers.
AT&T already allows Google Voice on their other smart phones. Plus, if you really want to use GV now, use the Web Ap service. No one is stopping you.
This was all Apple trying to keep the user experience from being dominated by Google's Trojan Horse. I honestly don't blame Apple at all. The next feature that GV would add (besides all those annoying banners and ads) would be a Calendar App, Stock App, Weather App, Contact App, Notepad, etc......in short, they would hijack the entire phone and blast everyone with even more ads!
kdarling
macrumors P6
The Google question was a red herring. They're working at a much deeper level. Everyone's discussing the wrong things.
The FCC wasn't concerned with GV. The FCC was obviously after only one piece of critical information:
Are Apple's decisions about its app store made totally independently? The answer was no.
This has critical bearing on exclusivity contracts, application availability, consumer choice... the whole net neutrality concept. The FCC isn't going to like that a carrier can tell a software supplier what apps can run or not. They're going to blame exclusivity for that.
The deeper level is that US cell phone carriers operate in an extremely competitive environment where Verizon owns 31% and AT&T owns 29% of the US cell phone service market. France Telecom owns about 45% of the French cell phone service market. T-Mobile owns about 40% of the Germany cell phone market. NTT DoCoMo owns over 50% of the Japanese market.
iPhone is pretty much available exclusive worldwide without any legal problems.
There is no such thing as net neutrality --- internet is the whole world and most of the world don't believe in such things. Cell phone companies are allowed to block VoIP traffic in a few countries in Europe.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1564
UAE government blocks VoIP as a public policy. Communist countries like China block internet traffic with all kinds of firewalls. The internet hasn't collapsed yet.
The rest of the world is going to protect their own telecom industries against all these American owned software giants from silicon valley.
kdarling
macrumors P6
Not sure why you keep bringing it up, but the rest of the world isn't germane to this discussion.
The topic involves the FCC, and thus is about the USA communications market only, since they have no control over other countries.
Now when it comes to cell phone neutrality, the rest of the world is in a different situation due to homogenous networks and sometimes more proactive government arms (e.g. forcing Apple to unlock phones).
We don't operate in a vacuum. The rest of the world may have their bright and shiny cell phones, yet the 30 richest countries in the world (the recent OECD report) thinks that the first world citizens should on average use 65 outgoing minutes a month (or double that to 130 minutes incoming/outgoing a month) and use 50 outgoing SMS a month (or 100 SMS if you count incoming). An average American talk 800 minutes (incoming/outgoing) a month and 400 SMS (incoming/outgoing) a month --- 6x more voice minutes and 4x more SMS than the rest of the first world.
If you want your cell phone as a fashion accessory, then look at the rest of the world for examples. If you want your cell phone as an actual useful tool, the American system is working quite well.
Quite a few countries still own a massive stake in their telecoms --- like the Japanese and the German government. Quite a few countries still don't allow foreign companies to own their telecom industry. And all their "proactive" regulations haven't worked against the iphone at all. Apple still sells simlocked exclusive iphones worldwide.
Somehow, the US having the second cheapest iphone plan in the G7 countries, the largest regular priced iphone data allowance in the world and the 3rd fastest 3G iphone speed --- wow, there must be something terribly wrong with the American system.
Apple is compilcit in this. If they blamed AT&T, it would not have made a difference. They would still be equally as wrong as would suffer the same consequences. Apple is in the position to take the blame and after taking a second look at ther app, I'm sure that Jobs wasn't in love with the idea.
BTW how is it different between you saying this "probably" did happen and me saying "my bet" on what happened? You are splitting hairs and chastising me on something you proceeded to do in your next sentence.
You might be be basing your own conjecture based on Apple testimony. But when has a company ever told the truth against their own benefit? It's ridiculous to take their statement solely at face value. It would mean to this day that they still don't know what Google Voice does and that a few months ago Phil Schiller (who is dealing with most of the App Store controversial apps now), didn't know what Google Voice did when he gave personal assurance to the GV Mobile developer that it would get acceptance into the App Store.
To tell the truth, I have no idea what you were talking about in your earlier paragrapghs. I'll chalk it up to lost in translation.
To address your P.S.: You are wrong. John Gruber never said that. In fact, in his most recent post regarding this, he said that he would relay anything his source told him after Apple's public post of the FCC questioning. He never said that his source was inaccurate or not telling the truth. If he said what you're implying, please link to to his post and prove me wrong.