>For example, on an iPhone, the “Phone” icon that is always shown at the bottom of the Home Screen launches Apple’s mobile telephone application, providing access to Favorites, Recents, Contacts, a Keypad, and Visual Voicemail. The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail.
This is misleading bullshit.
First, they mention the "phone" icon right after complaining that GV is "replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail" to try to give people the false impression that GV is stealing the phone icon, which an app can't even do.
Then, they try to claim that by cherry-picking calls and not letting the forwarded calls hit apple voicemail, they're "disabling" visual voicemail, which is just untrue. People could still call your iPhone's direct phone number, and visual voicemail would work juts fine.
I think what they're trying to say is that they are abiding by the general principle of not allowing apps that duplicate built-in functionality, because they feel it might negatively impact the user experience of their product. This is a much more defensible (and I think probable) position than that they are singling it out for purely competitive reasons.
I can see a great many people downloading it and then getting confused for a split second every day between the two and keeping track of what they were using each for. Over time that additional mental fatigue translates into lowered satisfaction with the device. It's similar to the fatigue of maintaining different versions/copies of anything in parallel - code, email inboxes, a story that you've told people about an event.
It's much simpler and less fatiguing to have one copy of any given thing. While I might chafe at their deciding this for me, I think their policy makes a certain amount of sense in the context of keeping (most of) their users loving their devices.
Apple must think the FCC is staffed by morons. They "don't know" how the application works, but it "prevents" existing iPhone features from working, and they need to "ponder it some more."
The FCC certainly used to be staffed by morons. At least tech morons (the board, I don't know about the employees). We at least have a solid chairman now, lets hope its a sign of the times.
A citation would be helpful here. I am not disputing your claim. But in general, it is easy to disparage someone as a moron when they make decisions you disagree with.
I would not be surprised if it turns out that the FCC was staffed by tech morons appointed for political reasons, but at least a couple examples of moronic behavior seems called for to keep this a useful discussion. Mind you, even making a morally distasteful decision does not qualify as moronic, there would need to be an indication of an actual misunderstanding of the underlying issues.
Your response is well said. I didn't add specific examples as to not put too much politics into the discussion.
I think if you look over the last decade or two of the FCC board, you will find people were chosen for their political connections and willingness to support industry status quo.
The new chairman seems a refreshing departure from this trend.
Question 2:
Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with
AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application
and related applications? If the latter, please describe
the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection
with the decision to reject Google Voice. Are there any
contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings
with AT&T that affected Apple’s decision in this matter?
Answer 2:
Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T
about whether or not to approve the Google Voice
application. No contractual conditions or non-contractual
understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s
decision-making process in this matter.
--
I guess that is about as straight an answer as we could have hoped for on the issue. Apple, not AT&T, made the call.
If ATT called Apple and simply asked them to deny GV approval then that is certainly a "non-contractual understanding". There do not need to be reverse conditions AFAICT - if there are it's a contract.
From AT&T's answer, you finally know why all those applications are a problem:
AT&T and Apple discussed a proposed iPhone application from MobiTV and CBS that was designed to stream live video and audio from the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. AT&T and Apple discussed the likelihood that such an application could cause substantial network congestion and degradation of service for certain customers on AT&T’s 3G network, especially customers accessing cell sites located near colleges involved in the tournament.
The questions are good. The answers may be honest or not. Hard to say. It wasn't too long ago that Apple tried to cover up their problems with backdated stock options.
As much as I'd like to believe this, it just doesn't feel right. Why didn't Apple respond in this manner sooner? Why did it take a strongly worded letter from the FCC for them to do so?
Personally, I suspect that Apple would prefer that AT&T take the blame for as much as possible.
From the tone of the letter, it sounds like Apple tries to shift blame onto AT&T where they can- For instance, Apple was responsible for the initial SlingPlayer rejection.
Apple's response says that they rejected the app because it violates AT&T's TOS, but doesn't say that AT&T requested the rejection.
Viewed in the context of the Google Voice rejection, this leads me to believe that Apple is happy to be able to point to the TOS as the reason for the rejection, rather than having to decide if they want to allow an (indirect) competitor to their iTunes TV store.
Apple's original reason for rejecting the application was that it duplicated functionality. This is almost exactly the same statement with more direct answers to specific questions.
"No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s decision-making process in this matter."
I wonder if that implies that there are contractual conditions and non-contractual understandings that exist, but were not a factor in the decision-making process in this case (but was a factor in other cases). Though I guess answer 3 answers that.
That computes to around 515 applications per day. Can't really blame them for taking too long, eh?
Yes, you can. Apple could easily afford hiring 250 people to review applications - at 2 applications a day, they should be able to thoroughly test apps the same day they get them.
With >600% YOY growth in iPhone sales, margins of approximately 36% and quarterly revenues/profit of $8.3/$1.2 bn, I think Apple can afford to hire and train plenty of people.
Recruiting, training and retaining 100 employees at a salary of $48k/yr - which seems like a pretty good starting wage to me - would only run them about $8-10 million a year, or ~0.2% of that profit margin. What the hell, double that amount if you need to rent/build a new office block for them. It would still pay itself in terms of positive press and developer relations.
40 reviewers each testing 40 apps per day is absurd, that's less than 15 minutes each. OK I know a lot of iPhone 'apps' do only one thing and have a novelty half-life of 90 seconds, but still.
They wouldn't have to train so many if they easily allowed 3rd party app stores. If you don't like the wait in Apple's official store, go to the alternative. As long as they insist on being the bottleneck, this will be a problem.
More people = less consistency. A common complaint among developers has been the inconsistency of approvals, where one app may be rejected while another one with similar features is improved.
Right now the approval delay is about two weeks - that's not bad. Your testing cycle should be longer than that. An extra two weeks should not be a big deal.
It shouldn't take a company with billions in revenue this long to ponder an issue as they say. It makes me wonder if there's a bit of a civil war going on inside Apple over the App Store. Apple initially approved the apps, then un-approved them, and is now leaving the door open to re-approve it. If I were an investor in Apple I would be concerned about the management structure around Apple's single most important product taking weeks to deal with the Google Voice situation that has evolved outside of a techie issue into the mainstream business press (WSJ)
My guess: Apple has decided that they want to implement Google Voice, Skype directly into the Operating System. Just like Copy-Paste, you won't hear about it until a couple of weeks before the update.
So yeah, sounds like Apple is more or less shooting straight. They're facing a huge problem (hundreds of submissions per day) and are trying to be decent about it.
The Google Voice thing is annoying but not altogether unsurprising since no one is really pretending this is an open platform:
Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its “Google-branded” user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices.
In other words: just try it Google. You're going to play by our rules here.
The funny thing about that is, you're still circumventing visual voice mail and all the other stuff they're complaining about by using the web interface, albeit in a much less convenient manner, which is obviously the point.
"The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail."
How does a 3rd party app prevent voicemail from being stored on the iPhone? I don't understand.
Google Voice works by sending an API call to Google, asking Google to dial your phone.
After you answer the phone, Google then dials out to the number specified in the API request.
For instance, if I wanted to call my parents, the app on my iPhone would send a HTTP request to Google with their number. Google then dials me, and once I pick up, it would dial my parents.
My parents would see the Caller-ID from Google, not from my Phone.
If they call back this Caller-ID, Google would answer the call, and then dial my phone, so I could speak with them.
If I didn't answer, then Google would record a voicemail message. This message would be both emailed to me, and accessible via API from the application that I originally dialed them with.
Google's ultimate plan is to allow you to "port" your number to their service, so that your normal, regular number becomes the one on their caller-id, and AT&T assigns you a new number that you would never give out.
I was (am?) still confused by this. I had assumed all this time that the FCC questions were regarding the approved-then-removed GV Dialer application.
My understanding is that on other platforms, the Google Voice dialer does actually hijack the actual phone application. (see [1] for a testimonial) To do that, you would need to reach into unauthorized API's. Google has done that in the past and gotten away with it. They used the proximity sensor to detect when they were near the user's ear for their search app. In my reading of it, Apple is implying that this is what the Google app does, and seemingly wants you to connect those dots to the other three apps.
If it is the case that they are reaching into unofficial API's, then Apple had every right to deny that application. What I still don't have an answer for is why was GV Dialer approved and later pulled?
If you actually use Google Voice all calls go through it, and get sent to the GV voicemail, instead of whatever voicemail your phone uses. This would make the Visual Voicemail and SMS that ship with the phone useless.
My understanding is that you can use both in the sense of alternating between them, but for any given message, it only appears in one place.
From a user experience perspective, this means that some fraction of users will be confused, annoyed, or downright furious that they now have two completely disconnected ways of making calls, recieving messages, listening to voicemails, etc. I think that's what bothers Apple about it.
I don't understand this point which someone tried to make above. If GV actually came pre-installed you may have a point, but the fact is that the users seeking to use GV will not be confused, annoyed, or furious at all. We understand exactly what GV is and what we want out of it. Apple's point is completely bullshit about confusing users because only users specifically seeking this functionality will have it.
Maybe you do, but can you guarantee that every potential GV user does? Of course not. This is what I mean by "some fraction of users". That fraction is unknown, but as GV creates a significantly different parallel method of accomplishing core phone functions, it is quite plausible that users with an imperfect understanding of how it works and why would suffer as described--for instance, a user who does not understand why his voicemails might show up in two different places. While it is true that it is ultimately the user's responsibility to understand the software he is using, this potentially impacts the core functionality of Apple's device, so it would be only natural for Apple to want to consider it carefully.
Apple's point is completely bullshit about confusing users because only users specifically seeking this functionality will have it.
Does not follow. Users who specifically seek to purchase (say) Microsoft Office are entirely capable of being confused, annoyed, or infuriated by it. The same can be said of most software, hardware, and machines in general. Have you ever seen someone try to push a pull door or pull a push door?
Yup, that's exactly right. But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Apple assumes that people will get confused. At least put some warning note or something. Though I'm sure that most people who download GV will be aware of what's happening...
Are you serious? You couldn't possibly be smarter than Apple! And, since you pay $299+ to effectively rent your device, because of the DMCA, you're out of luck.
Duplicate phone functionality: Let the user decide which number they want to dial from by changing the Settings on the iPhone and thus making the iPhone capable of making and recieving the phones calls from either AT&T and Google.
Voicemail: Let both AT&T and Google store the voicemails at their own servers and push them down to iPhone.
SMS issue: Solution is same as voicemail. Let the user decide which number they want to send the SMS from, and let both Google and AT&T deliver the SMS to the iPhone Messages app.
This solution will allow for flexibility for both the users and the service providers.
So apple says they haven't rejected the application which in iTunes connect terms would mean that it is still "in review". So did the Google development team mis-read the status or is Google lying about the rejection or did the media jump the gun or is Apple just outright lying now or what? I wish I had access to their iTunes connect account to see for myself.
Six weeks is not a long time to wait. I've had applications take 3+ months before they ever get a response. Google should stop acting so entitled and get in line like the rest of us.
This is misleading bullshit.
First, they mention the "phone" icon right after complaining that GV is "replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail" to try to give people the false impression that GV is stealing the phone icon, which an app can't even do.
Then, they try to claim that by cherry-picking calls and not letting the forwarded calls hit apple voicemail, they're "disabling" visual voicemail, which is just untrue. People could still call your iPhone's direct phone number, and visual voicemail would work juts fine.