Apple Rejects Official Google Voice iPhone Application

[str1f3]

There it is. This is why an analogy to Microsoft's old policies on Internet Explorer was inadequate. Microsoft's inclusion of IE didn't force people to use it, but it did prevent a large majority of people from realizing that there were other options. This goes beyond that; Apple is not only including their own apps but also completely preventing any competition for any of their homemade apps. (Safari, Phone, and Mail come to mind, although can you imagine what would happen if someone tried to come up with a competitor for the iPod app?) There is no analogue to this kind of control in the PC world (PC as in any computer, not something that runs Windows) because developers for major operating systems are working in a mostly free market. The app store is not a free market in any sense, which is why I think that they should start getting hit with anti-trust legislation. They are stifling other developers' innovations and creativity for the sake of their own product, and that is what anti-trust legislation is designed to fight.

Best post of this thread. If Apple rejects Spotify as well the EU will come knocking at their door. Apple right now is trying to fight the jailbreakers through legal means so they can continue the monopoly. Interestingly enough not even Microsoft is willing to go down this road of locking down their phones. When their App Store is released users can still download apps outside the store. Apple is setting an ugly precedent which no one else is willing to follow.

They piss off the EU enough and they will go after iTunes as well. Look at what they're doing with Microsoft.

 

[stone315]

Best post of this thread. If Apple rejects Spotify as well the EU will come knocking at their door. Apple right now is trying to fight the jailbreakers through legal means so they can continue the monopoly. Interestingly enough not even Microsoft is willing to go down this road of locking down their phones. When their App Store is released users can still download apps outside the store. Apple is setting an ugly precedent which no one else is willing to follow.

They piss off the EU enough and they will go after iTunes as well. Look at what they're doing with Microsoft.

Thanks for the compliment. I agree with you that the EU is much more likely than the FTC to start cracking down on Apple's growing monopolistic tendencies. However, it would probably be possible for Apple to implement multiple versions of the App Store based on either the location of the customer or the cellular network the customer is on. If they could get away with satisfying the EU with a European version of the store, similar to how Microsoft is currently only offering the "browser ballot" on the European distribution of Windows 7, Apple would most likely continue with their implementation of a controlled App Store in the U.S.

 

[abercrombie]

i think we have a chance of getting GV Mobile and the Google app approved if we yell and shout about our distaste for these type of practices. this is totally an un-incentive to innovating applications, IMHO. boo, apple.

 

[mac4drew]

I hear this quite often people talking about how jailbreaking "isn't worth it". I'm not sure what people think is involved in the process but I assure you it is not difficult and takes about half an hour to accomplish. People, don't hate apple... just don't let them dictate what you can and can't do with your device. Jailbreaking is awesome and EVERYONE with an iphone should do it.

tb

I didn't mean that I don't know how to do it or that the act of jailbreaking itself is too much trouble. What I meant when I said that jailbreaking "isn't worth it" is that, from what I've read, it seems that some of the costs outweigh the benefits. For me, personally. I would love to have Google Voice, an NES emulator, the ability to run apps in the background, and Skype over 3G. These features are all quite appealing, but I don't like the idea of having to compromise the security and stability of my phone in order to choose what apps I get to run.

I lived through that with my old Nokia. Symbian had an app approval process that was cumbersome and unused by the majority of developers who released apps for Nokia phones. I installed a bunch of unapproved apps I had downloaded, they compromised the stability of the phone, and before I knew it, I found myself restarting every time I wanted to use the camera due to some random background process with a memory leak. I'm not saying that's necessarily going to happen to my iPhone if I were to jailbreak, just that the potential for things like it to happen becomes greater. I'm not interested in dealing with little bugs all day on my phone... been there, done that.

Not to mention that if I screw up during the jailbreak process (or my phone decides to crap out at an inopportune moment) and I'm left with non-standard logos or something else that makes it easy to tell the phone has been modified, there goes the extended AppleCare warranty I paid for. I shouldn't have to deal with that crap to install a Google Voice client or anything else that's legal and doesn't bog down AT&T's network. My phone should Just Work™ the way that I want it to, the way I paid for it to work.

For me, it was something of a selling-point that with the iPhone someone was keeping track of all the apps and making sure they were of a certain caliber before they were released and installed to my phone. I could install whatever I wanted from the App Store without worrying about potential consequences to my phone's stability. I thought that the 17+ warnings would solve the problem of Apple arbitrarily disapproving most useful apps, and I decided I could live with people telling me what I can and cannot do over 3G. But this action with Google Voice just takes it way over the line for me.

 

[Fruiteatingbear]

The App store review process makes sense if you imagine it staffed by two people, one is stoned and the other, who's mummy works for AT&T does what he's told half the time and the rest of the time makes decisions by tossing coins. Or am I being too harsh?

 

[M2M]

Apple should be forced to have let any Apps on the iPhone. One form (like Cydia) where everything is possible - for the sake of less security. And the other one through the App Store - where apple controls the Quality.

Anyone who feels brave enough can install form the where everything is possible place. Other keep on the safe side of the app store.

Hell Apple is is always advertising like Mac OS is so secure. So why not let everything on the iPhone (which runs Mac OS, right?)

There shouldn't even be the need for jailbreak (i don't talk about unlocking here) - I just don't want to be bullied by Apple (who released an innovative phone) but are missing some kind of innovations free places like Cydia or else give us (talking about Lock-Screen Calender, Birthday reminders, MxTube, Terminal, just to name a view)

Talented people like the ones from the Dev-Team shouldn't be kept busy with figuring out how to jailbreak the iPhone, they should be kept busy with amazing apps delivered to the phone with every means they think they need (talking about background processes, access to the full hardware). Competetion is good for us - the customers. If anyone comes us with a better Phone app then Apple, then fine. Apple take the fight and develop an even better Phone App.

 

[w0ngbr4d]

For all the people claiming monopoly, anti-trust, anti-competitive, etc., isn't the relevant market smartphones/cell phones?

If GV is available on a Blackberry and you have a choice of what phone to use (yes, you might have to pay an ETF, but its in the contract you agreed to) I don't see how it falls into any of the above categories.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple should be forced to have let any Apps on the iPhone. One form (like Cydia) where everything is possible - for the sake of less security. And the other one through the App Store - where apple controls the Quality.

Anyone who feels brave enough can install form the where everything is possible place. Other keep on the safe side of the app store.

Hell Apple is is always advertising like Mac OS is so secure. So why not let everything on the iPhone (which runs Mac OS, right?)

There shouldn't even be the need for jailbreak (i don't talk about unlocking here) - I just don't want to be bullied by Apple (who released an innovative phone) but are missing some kind of innovations free places like Cydia or else give us (talking about Lock-Screen Calender, Birthday reminders, MxTube, Terminal, just to name a view)

Talented people like the ones from the Dev-Team shouldn't be kept busy with figuring out how to jailbreak the iPhone, they should be kept busy with amazing apps delivered to the phone with every means they think they need (talking about background processes, access to the full hardware). Competetion is good for us - the customers. If anyone comes us with a better Phone app then Apple, then fine. Apple take the fight and develop an even better Phone App.

Because Apple wants their 30% cut. That is why there is no other official way of getting apps on the iPhoneOS devices.

 

[Mackan]

Unlike some, I don't see this as "censorship" or anything like that - it's apple's store and they can disallow whatever they like. I just think they're playing with fire here because while they're not going to lose customers over some of the utter crap that's been rejected in the past, some potential buyers will take note of things like this that are available on other platforms and not the iphone.

You are right, these 'some'... the intelligent ones, will look for alternatives. The 'majority', the stupid ones... is what Apple is living on, year after year.

 

[M2M]

For all the people claiming monopoly, anti-trust, anti-competitive, etc., isn't the relevant market smartphones/cell phones?

If GV is available on a Blackberry and you have a choice of what phone to use (yes, you might have to pay an ETF, but its in the contract you agreed to) I don't see how it falls into any of the above categories.

So why is MS charged by the EU of exploiting their monoploy and forced to put the option of installing other browsers on their OS ? You can buy an apple that comes with safari. You can get PC's with Linux preinstalled, etcpp.... On Windows you can even install a different browser if you want.

Also this Windows 90% market-share argument is totally irrelevant. With that argument Apple can easily adopt the App-Store Practice and enforce a closed Eco-System on the Mac. "Bye, bye Adobe! Photoshop somehow mimics Apperture. After Effects ? Ohh thats too bad we have Shake! Premiere is a clone of Final Cut. Firefox competes with Safari anyhow. And anything else related to Music is either iTunes or Logic Studio...."

Because Apple wants their 30% cut. That is why there is no other official way of getting apps on the iPhoneOS devices.

Thats why my initial statement started with: "Should be forced"

 

[cere]

There it is. This is why an analogy to Microsoft's old policies on Internet Explorer was inadequate. Microsoft's inclusion of IE didn't force people to use it, but it did prevent a large majority of people from realizing that there were other options. This goes beyond that; Apple is not only including their own apps but also completely preventing any competition for any of their homemade apps. (Safari, Phone, and Mail come to mind, although can you imagine what would happen if someone tried to come up with a competitor for the iPod app?) There is no analogue to this kind of control in the PC world (PC as in any computer, not something that runs Windows) because developers for major operating systems are working in a mostly free market. The app store is not a free market in any sense, which is why I think that they should start getting hit with anti-trust legislation. They are stifling other developers' innovations and creativity for the sake of their own product, and that is what anti-trust legislation is designed to fight.

I agree completely and have had similar discussion regarding Apple's behavior with regard to installing OSX on non-Apple machines. From my point of view, Apple controls the platform, be it OSX or iPhone OSX. As such, they control the market. Within these markets, they hold a monopoly. If they are a monopoly within this market, then their behavior is clearly anti-competitive and should fall under the anti-trust/anti-competition laws in most countries.

Unfortunately, as shown recently in the PayStar case, the courts do not accept this arguement. Since OSX and iPhone OSX have competitors, they do not consider Apple to have a monopoly and therefore their behavior is not considered illegal.

Again, I would argue that they are monopolies within submarkets to the primary markets. In the overall PC market, sure they compete with MS brands. Within the SmartPhone market, they compete with lots of companies too. But, as a fairly distinct platform within both of those markets, they form their own ecosystem, their own market. This is obvious by the fact that their are products and services and customers and retailers that focus exclusively on these submarkets. The Mac and the iPhone do form their own markets. if one accepts or assumes this premise, then it cannot be denied that Apple has monopolies in these markets and therefore their behavior should be deemed illegal or at least be sanctioned. But, again, the courts and governments have seen differently.

I am a huge Apple fan and have using their products for well into my third decade. But behavior like this turns me off. I wanted to upgrade my 3G next year to whatever new model comes out. With behavior like this, I will have to consider a more open platform, like Android.

 

[cere]

So why is MS charged by the EU of exploiting their monoploy and forced to put the option of installing other browsers on their OS ? You can buy an apple that comes with safari. You can get PC's with Linux preinstalled, etcpp.... On Windows you can even install a different browser if you want.



Thats why my initial statement started with: "Should be forced

I agree with you, but the reasoning is simple. MS controls a high enough percentage of the overall PC market (PC including Macs, Linux, etc) at ~90% that they various courts have found that they are in a monopoly position within the overall market.

Within the overall cell phone or even smartphone markets, Apple does not control nearly as commanding a share. Therefore, the courts have decided, that they are not a monopoly and anti-trust laws do not apply. As I posted previously, I would strongly argue that the courts should not only look at the overall market but within submarkets that have become distinct from the overall market. Within this framework, Apple obviously has a monopoly and anti-trust laws should apply.

 

[BC2009]

Google Latitude Directly Competes with AT&T Family Map Feature

how can we possibly mix up Google Latitude with Maps?

If the iPhone customers spontaneously become that dumb, we deserve to have our iPhones confiscated.

Rejecting Voice and dictating that Latitude should be a web app is the kind of behavior that encourages the Jailbreak community.

Keep up the good work, App Store Goons.

I think AT&T had a hand in both of these actions recently. AT&T charges like $10 per
month for Family Map Feature. Google Latitude would make it easy to circumvent
even though there are other IM apps that already allow you to check the proximity of
your buddies.

Clearly Google Voice with Push would have been great -- I just got invited to
Google Voice and getting transcriptions of voice mails, unlimited texting, and
a phone number that forwarded to any number of phones would have been
fantastic. Sure there was some overlap with the iPhone voice mail and texting
features, but what Apple *should* be doing when rejecting an app like this is
licensing the technology and rolling it into the iPhone for tighter integration like
they did with Google Maps (assuming they really do want to prevent confusion).

Personally, I can't grasp why they would give any concession to AT&T when it
would seem to me that they have AT&T right where they want them (i.e.:
utterly dependent on Apple). The only reason I can imagine it is that the fine
print of the exclusivity contract includes some concessions to AT&T with regards
to the app store.

This reminds me of the Sling Player rejection/modification. Any number of inferior
phones can get Sling Player with 3G (not just WiFi), but not the iPhone because its
exclusivity with AT&T means that too much of the AT&T customer base would
potentially run Sling Player on 3G and would crush the AT&T network.

Quite honestly this draconian/Microsoft-esque behavior was _almost_ enough
to get me to purchase the Palm Pre instead of the iPhone. I can say this, I am
not dead-set on iPhone forever. If WebOS matures and becomes available
with better hardware on a GSM network that allows simultaneous voice/data, I will
consider it for a next phone if Apple keeps the best apps away from iPhone.

I also believe that eventually somebody in Congress is going to find some way
to apply anti-trust laws to computer systems that can only download software
from a single vendor (Apple). That's the hitch here for anti-trust, it is still Apple's
store and there is no other supported way to obtain software. If the next version
of Windows from Microsoft only allowed software to be installed from Microsoft,
could you imagine the outcry? Can you imagine how long it would take
Microsoft to "approve" the next version of Firefox or to reject it based on the
grounds that the functionality was redundant with Internet Explorer?

AT&T sucks, but Apple is to blame here. I hope Congress finds a way to get
involved soon since these guys are surely not police-ing themselves.

 

[cere]

I think AT&T had a hand in both of these actions recently. AT&T charges like $10 per
month for Family Map Feature. Google Latitude would make it easy to circumvent
even though there are other IM apps that already allow you to check the proximity of
your buddies.

Was Google Latitude denied by Apple or did Google simply not release it because it was sort of useless if it couldn't run as a background app?

 

[M2M]

Anyway. I see a App-Store coming for the Apple Tablet Apple invented a Cash-Cow and sure they know it.

 

[windywoo]

It wasn't Apple. Stop whining.

Classic post. I haven't got a real argument I'll just my accuse my opponents of whining.

I'm glad to see that some people have spines and don't just bend over and take it from Apple. If they had their way no other OS than OSX would have a GUI unless licensed from Apple.

I think they would save themselves a massive headache if they stopped vetting apps altogether. If others have a competing product then so be it, the quality of the products should speak for themselves. If Apple has a weak product then its up to them to improve it so more people desire their service.

 

[wonderbread57]

It wasn't just AT&T because the app isn't available to download on the iPod Touch either, which of course has no policy restrictions imposed by AT&T. And when the Tablet comes out it will use the App Store too and be subjected to the same B.S.

Steve Jobs is a such a control freak and that culture is reflected in Apple's consumer offerings. Attention to detail, good, perfectionism, fine, but Steve, once you have made the product you imagined don't lock users into it and cage them from custimization or exploring other uses. This whole "no you have to use our version!!" stuff is juvenile.

 

[str1f3]

Thanks for the compliment. I agree with you that the EU is much more likely than the FTC to start cracking down on Apple's growing monopolistic tendencies. However, it would probably be possible for Apple to implement multiple versions of the App Store based on either the location of the customer or the cellular network the customer is on. If they could get away with satisfying the EU with a European version of the store, similar to how Microsoft is currently only offering the "browser ballot" on the European distribution of Windows 7, Apple would most likely continue with their implementation of a controlled App Store in the U.S.

I'm hoping for a domino effect. The US has proven in the past that it will not go after their own companies when they are successful internationally. The EU going after Apple would set precedent for a case being brought against them in the US. From what I've heard the Obama administration has a lot of people who are anti-monopoly and I'm sure the EFF is willing to take on the case.

Was Google Latitude denied by Apple or did Google simply not release it because it was sort of useless if it couldn't run as a background app?

Google Latitude was unofficially rejected by Apple. They were developing an iPhone app.

 

[ViViDboarder]

I would like to see more big developers release apps on Cydia.

I have not registered and seen if there is any clause that says if you use the SDK you must not release your app anywhere other than the App Store. I guess if this was the case, legal recourse would desuade them.

I just think it would be great if Google created a Gmail (Push) app, Google Voice, Google Latitude (Background enabled) and released it to Cydia. I suppose the good news is that Google often releases a lot of API's for writing apps that interact with their services. This makes it easy for independent developers to develop their own Cydia distributed apps.

The closed market makes sense for Apple and I feel like it'd be awfully hard to claim it's an anti-trust issue when there are so many iPhone alternatives... but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Real issues will come if Apple brings legal force against iPhone Dev and the people responsible for all the jailbreaking applications or Cydia.

If Apple doesn't want Windows computers in their Apple Store you can go to Best Buy and get them. They don't want Growl, StatusNotifier, Cydia or Google Voice, then I'll go to the Jailbreak community and get them. Simple as that for me.

 

[welfaremike]

Google Fanboys

I just wish Apple would approve the app so all the Google Fanboys around here would be quiet.

Google sucks.

 

[wonderbread57]

IMO multi-touch and google is what makes the iPhone exciting. Take google maps out of the picture and i'm not so compelled.

 

[Love]

I think this is getting a bit ridiculous. I'm with the majority of people. Why approve fart apps and not useful, good quality programs?

 

[str1f3]

I just wish Apple would approve the app so all the Google Fanboys around here would be quiet.

Google sucks.

You're a dope. I'm one of those security nuts that doesn't trust Google when it comes to information but people should have a choice if they want to use Google services. This is the monopolist tendencies of a company towards it's consumers.

Go brown-nose Apple's butt elsewhere.

 

[diamond.g]

It wasn't just AT&T because the app isn't available to download on the iPod Touch either, which of course has no policy restrictions imposed by AT&T. And when the Tablet comes out it will use the App Store too and be subjected to the same B.S.

Steve Jobs is a such a control freak and that culture is reflected in Apple's consumer offerings. Attention to detail, good, perfectionism, fine, but Steve, once you have made the product you imagined don't lock users into it and cage them from custimization or exploring other uses. This whole "no you have to use our version!!" stuff is juvenile.

GV won't help the iPod touch any. GV is just Grand Central (the original) redone. Which in the end will still require phone service (of some sort).

 

[w8ing4intelmacs]

Can Google offer the Google Voice app ad hoc? If so, why don't they?