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The Man Behind the Google Phone
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times is running a story about Andy Rubin, Google's resident gadget guru, and one of the primary architects of the gPhone. You won't find any new technical details about the gPhone in the story, (Google is planning an announcement on Monday about its future mobile plans.) but the story about Rubin gives some clues that indicate that Google plans to do more than merely develop an operating system for cellular phones. One clue to the gPhone is that after Rubin left Apple he joined General Magic, the company co-founded with Mac pioneers Bill Atkinson and Andy Hertzfeld that developed Magic Cap in the 1990s, a PDA precursor years ahead of its time that included a cell phone and email. The Times speculates that Google may also be planning to replay the strategy that Microsoft used to bulldoze Netscape in the mid-1990s by 'cutting off' Microsoft's air supply by giving the gPhone away to handset makers and to put Microsoft Windows Mobile out of business. If the strategy works, it will be because Rubin and his team have successfully developed a vision of the smartphone of the future and a strategy for getting it accepted by the public and by the carriers."
Andy's an old timer from the Bay Area BBS scene...I believe he used to run Spies on the Wire...he still has the domain as his personal page. www.spies.com. I believe I had an account there at one time or another. Glad to see he is still doing well.
Any old Spies members feel free to speak up...
You're right in aspiration, but the hyperbole here really gives me pause. It isn't that "you can't do anything" with the iPhone; it's that the iPhone doesn't enable you to do what you want on a "smartphone." The iPhone - like virtually all Apple products, from Mac OS X (and Macs) to the iPhone and iPod - is aimed at the average consumer, while attempting to hit enough high notes for the geeks to be satisfied. The Apple of late has been largely successful in this regard.
We all want the iPhone opened up as a development platform, and that's in the works. It probably still won't be the completely open ecosystem you desire, but that's just not Apple's way. Apple is extremely good at doing things its way, but unfortunately that means certain (many) people will be disappointed. That's understandable, but don't go around saying you can't do anything with it. That's flat-out false. It does a remarkable number of things really well, and for most people will provide a great deal of entertainment and utility. The implementation of its web browser alone was worth the price of admission for me. I do miss Flash on occasion, but I really respect Apple for focusing on standards-based web development as the initial "SDK" for its first mobile device. A toy? This device makes the mobile web usable for real people. It is not a toy.
I'm ecstatic at the thought of a future 1-3 years from now when most iPod users (and all iPod newcomers) are walking around with devices capable of truly accessing the web. As a web developer, that inevitability is reason enough for me to appreciate it.
It's also worthwhile to note that Google really is going after Microsoft - and not Apple - with its device (whatever it ends up being). That's how I read it, at least. Google and Apple have much to gain from one another, although neither absolutely needs the other, as is the case with most of the great partnerships. I apologize for coming off like an Apple fanboy, but as someone who has come to rely on having an iPhone in his pocket, I couldn't not say anything."The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Magic Cap offered some interesting ideas but didn't offer a mobile phone--it produced a PDA OS. The General Magic company (mostly Apple employees spun off in an internal battle between Magic Cap and Newton) ended up licensing its technologies to Microsoft in 1998, which turned Windows CE from a laugh-out-loud joke into a mild embarrassment.
Microsoft didn't start shipping a phone product until 2002, the same year the Handspring Treo arrived (which combined the older Visor+phone back pack.) There were no real PDA phones in the 90s.
The Egregious Incompetence of Palm
The Spectacular Failure of WinCE and Windows Mobile
Google is very unlikely to produce its own phone, and if it did, it would be nothing like Apple's iPhone, because Google is good at very different things. It has no experience in consumer hardware, retail, and couldn't even beat YouTube at serving videos.
The Great Google gPhone Myth
When reading continues flow of articles talking about iPhone that and gPhone this, I just get a feeling that what is the point? What's new? What's revolutionary? And when I think about it more, all I get it is pretty much nothing. The only explanation that I can find for this phenomenon is that as US lacks behind the rest of the world both in available cellular networks and phone models, and so anything new, even if it's been available for the rest of world for years, seems exciting. I can understand this from the consumers as they don't know any better, but why is the same true with the management of international corporations that should have a larger view on the matter?
I can understand that Apple wants to break into mobile phone businesses and deliver a phone with their touch. I can't understand why Google would ever want to do that. Google is concentrated on information and information deliverance business, they are not an hardware company. For Google it would be better to make an integrated Google mobile suite of applications, starting from blogging and imaging tools to email and calendars. Then they would work out a deal with leading smart phone vendors, Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson, so that they would include the package with their phones including an Google icon in the main menu of a phone. This way Google, if they wanted it enough badly, they could make an world wide penetrations to mobile markets quick and effectively. Also if for some unknown reason, Google would really want an phone carrying their name, they could just re-brand a phone from one of their partners.
Of course this all with gPhone could be just a byzantine styled political battle with the telecoms where Google tries to intimidate telecom operators to open up more and develop their services and offerings. Thought bringing a new phone to the markets doesn't actually do this. The only way for Google to open up US mobile markets would be to make Congress and FCC open up the mobile networks for other companies and thus allowing virtual operators to enter the stage.
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> It isn't that "you can't do anything" with the iPhone; it's that the iPhone doesn't enable you
> to do what you want on a "smartphone." The iPhone - like virtually all Apple products, from Mac
> OS X (and Macs) to the iPhone and iPod - is aimed at the average consumer, while attempting to
> hit enough high notes for the geeks to be satisfied. The Apple of late has been largely
> successful in this regard.
Reminds me of the last days of the "academic Internet". The phone companies were arguing that the anarchistic Internet where everybody could set up a service was fine for geeks, but that the average consumer would just be confused, and therefore were better off with the Phone Company's strictly controlled data network with Phone Company approved services.
The truth is that the Phone Company or in this case Apple, no matter how smart they believe they are, cannot duplicate the inventive power of a free market. That is why Apple lost the battle of the PC market to the plain IBM architecture (which they eventually adopted), and why the Phone Companies lost the battle of the data networks to the "academic and geeky" Internet.
Apple did win control of the music player market for now, but then again these devices doesn't need to do much beside playing music.