Apple, Google, AT&T Respond To the FCC Over Google Voice

We've recently been following the FCC's inquiry into Apple's rejection of the Google Voice app. Apple, Google, and AT&T have all officially responded to the FCC's questions: Apple says they haven't actually rejected the app, they're just continuing to "study it," and that it may "alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging, and voicemail." The interesting bits of Google's response seem to have been redacted, but they talk a little about the approval process for the Android platform. AT&T claims it had "no role" in the app's rejection and notes that there are no contractual provisions between the two companies for the consideration of individual apps. Reader ZuchinniOne points out a report in The Consumerist analyzing some of the statements made in these filings, as well as TechCrunch's look into the veracity of their claims.

Comments

"Over" Google Voice?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're all communicating via Google Voice, then the app clearly works, so this whole issue is moot. Right?

the point

[Brian Gordon]

alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience

Isn't that the whole point of iphone apps?

Re:the point

[ScrewMaster]

Okay, fanboys, stop modding reasonable comments like the above as flamebait ... your bias is showing. Matter of fact, his reasoning is some of the same that I used in deciding to buy an Android phone over an iPhone, as slick as Apple's product happens to be. Personally, I don't care about Apple's endless pursuit of the perfect UI. I just wanted a powerful smartphone that would do what I (yes, I, the customer) want it to do, without having my options limited by a company I don't particularly trust. Fortunately, Apple's not a monopoly and I was perfectly free to choose something else, so I don't really care. It is interesting, though, that it appears that AT&T was not, in fact, trying to suppress an application/service that might cost it money as many first assumed. Not that I believe anything any corporate mouthpiece has to say, just on principle.

In the end, I suspect that iPhone users will get access to Google Voice: Apple's just taking a little too much heat on this one, and GV is just too cool. Sorry, fanboys, Apple does not have a monopoly on being way-cool. Alternatively, of course, AT&T could offer something functionally identical to Google Voice ... theoretically it would be much easier for them to do it, given that they own so much of the network in this country. If Google achieves nothing else by this, they'll have raised the bar on what millions of people expect from their telephone company. That's a damned good thing: those bloodsuckers have been holding us back for a long, long time.

The irony there being that the old AT&T was originally broken up, in part, because they weren't offering consumers enough new products and services. It took a Google to come along and start shaking things up, and not for the first time I might add.

Re:the point

[Discordantus]

Apple charges me around $100 each year to upgrade my G4 Mac from 10.3 to 10.4 to 10.5, whereas Microsoft charged me *nothing* to upgrade from XP to XP-SP1 to SP2 to SP3

That is hardly true. Upgrades once a year? 10.3 had a 1.5 year lifespan, 10.4 lasted almost 2.5 years, and 10.5 is nearing it's 2 year mark as well. Plus, the soon-to-come upgrade to 10.6 is only 29 bucks. Also, Windows service packs are minor updates, mostly for bugfixes and consolidated security patches; Apple doesn't charge for these minor updates either. All the OS X point upgrades (10.3, 10.4, 10.5) were *major* upgrades, packed with new features.

Over the last seven years using Wintel OS has been free, where using Apple's OS has been costly.

In other words, over the last seven years, Windows has not released any new features. And you're ignoring Vista, which you apparently were not forced to upgrade to; Interestingly, you weren't forced to upgrade to 10.3, 10.4 or 10.5, either. You always have the option not to buy; if you don't think the feature set of a particular release is big enough, wait for the next one, and you get double the features for the same price.

Re:the point

[vux984]

Windows 95 -> 98 -> NT -> 2000 -> XP are all separate products one pays for. They are all Windows.

OS X 2 3 4 and 5 are all seperate products one pays for. They are all OS X (10)

This is patently absurd on multiple levels. The time period's don't line up, and the Windows sequence you illustrated is nonsense.

First, you are mixing two separate windows lines. NT4 came out in 96, it its absurd that people would have "upgraded" from Windows 98 to NT, and because of their separate functions few if anyone upgraded from NT to 98 either. Perhaps you meant ME? But that's irrelevant, practically nobody upgraded from 98 to ME, nor had any reason to. ME was only released because 2000 wasn't ready for the home market. So at best people went from 98 to ME or 2000 but not through both. But most went straight from 98 to XP, and only got ME new if it was on a PC released in that window between ME and XP.

Realistically, from 95 to XP you upgraded twice: Either you went from NT4-2K-XP or 95-98-XP. Because the average lifespan of a PC is 3-4 years, most people NEVER paid to upgrade at all, and just got the new version on their new PC.

Second, the reality is that ALL the above windows happened before OSX10.2 was even released. To take Windows back to 95 you HAVE to go back to 95 with MacOS. That means in addition to 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, you have to count: System 7. MacOS8, MacOS8.5, MacOS9, OSX 10.0 & OSX 10.1. That's 10 versions of the Apple OS in the same time frame as Microsoft had 3. Now, the same hardware cycle applies to OSX to Mac's as PCs, and indeed there is simply no way to run OSX10.5 on a PC that ran System 7. But still, that's enough releases to essentially require you to upgrade your OS every year that you don't replace your Mac. Granted you can skip the odd release, but Apple is a lot more demanding about having current software. Windows 2000 is just now falling off the wagon for being supported by new software... how much new software will run on OS9? Or even 3 versions later 10.2?

Bottom line, MS really HAS given us a relatively free ride the last 7 years with XP, while Apple has released several paid upgrades in that time frame. No point in trying to dispute it.

However, that ride is over, as Vista was a paid upgrade, as is Windows 7, so the comparisons start balancing out again. And who knows when Windows 8(or whatever they'll call it) will be out, or whether we'll get another 5+ years of good support and free service packs. We might see that again, we might not, but I think we all expect 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.X(?) to keep coming out like clockwork.

So you CAN make a good argument against comodore64_love, but yours was not a good argument.

Re:the point

[ScrewMaster]

It is very strange, isn't it? The unashamed Apple bashing continues in true Slashdot style.

Not really. A lot of us (myself included) don't like Apple very much. Others (myself included) don't really like Microsoft very much. Regardless, when Microsoft is being correctly slammed for yet another gaffe, you don't see legions of Windows users rising up to defend them. So ... is Apple is being bashed unfairly? No, not really. See, Apple needs to ride on its merits (and sink on its failures) just as much as Microsoft or any other company does. The difference here is that pretty much nobody spends an incredible amount of effort defending Microsoft from its numerous detractors and point-blank denying their many screwups.

Put it this way: Microsoft is a fucked up company in many ways. Nobody with half a brain would argue otherwise. Realistically though, so is Apple is its own inimitable way. Can't hardly be anything else, this being America and given the way publicly-held corporations are required to behave under U.S. law. The fact that Apple's fanbase is so irrational on the subject is more an indication of defects in their character and/or critical thinking skills than those who are doing the bashing.

Matter of fact, if Apple's user base wasn't so goddamn hypocritical about the whole thing, us non-Apple people wouldn't give Apple a damn. But this eternal state of denial just gets old after a while. Too many Apple users are like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

King Arthur: Your bloody arm's off!

Black Knight: No it's not.

Truth is, they keep the flames alive because they just won't admit when Apple is wrong.

Reverse engineering

[jlintern]

Apple says they haven't actually rejected the app, they're just continuing to "study it," and that it may "alter the iPhone's distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging, and voicemail."

So Apple is holding Google's app in limbo until they have time to reverse engineer the functionality and release it as native functionality of the iPhone?

Dupe Summary: Apple Is The Bad Guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Summary of this dupe:

Apple is the bad guy who is preventing iPhone owners from using the hottest cellphone app, Google Voice. They flat out admitted it in the FCC response. Much gnashing of teeth and hair pulling from the "Apple can do no wrong. Teh iPhone is teh best thing EVER!!! crowd".

AT&T has nothing to do with Apple's PR disaster.

Lots of screaming and crying from Apple loonies and all sorts of kooky theories trying to make Apple out to not be the culprit "Apple is lying to cover AT&T to the FCC!!!"

Android, Blackberry, and Palm owners not caring and loving Google Voice.

Apple declares: "Fuck it, we're evil."

[David Gerard]

After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) as a corporate policy.

"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."

"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."

Re:Dinosaurs

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, "US mobile carriers should act more like the ones they have in the rest of the world", right?

In the last 4 years, I've been to 16 different countries on 4 continents. In every one of them -- except one -- I've had reliable, reasonably-priced access within 30 seconds of turning my phone back on after landing or crossing the border. Even in a village in freaking *Cambodia* where most people didn't even have running water, for cryin' out loud.

Except one. The US.

I have a Swedish and an Australian SIM card. Each of which cost less than US$ 10 and included a bunch of minutes and free or nearly-free (international!) texting and cheap and easy-to-get refills. Both of which "just work" every place I've tried to use them.

Except one. The US... where they want 10 times that much just for the SIM and they can't even guarantee that it'll work in both Florida and New Jersey!

(If you're curious -- Yes, I was stupid enough to lay out $100 just so I could use my phone in the US for about 10 days. And No, it did not.)

Re:babies

[geekboy642]

why does anyone have the right to install whatever they want on the device?

I invite you to study the concept of ownership. If I pay $600 for a piece of hardware, I have every right to do whatever I want with it. It's the whole point of buying hardware, honestly. If I wanted a restricted environment with no control, I'd rent my phone.
That said, AT&T should have the right to block my use of the network if they don't like what I'm doing on it, but at no point should Apple even slightly get involved. This 'walled garden' concept is harmful to consumers and developers alike.

Re:The Steve Jobs method of living?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Be abusive generally.

2) Get cancer.

3) Lie about Google Voice.

4) Die?

5) Ascend to heaven in a fiery chariot.

6) Prophet!

Re:Dinosaurs

[speedtux]

Just like the RIAA, the MPAA, and other such entities, the cellular and phone companies are dinosaurs of an early technological age, and they are holding us back.

In Europe, you can use any phone on any carrier. You can effectively stream audio, video, and whatever else you like and the carriers don't really care. You do get unlimited 3G flat rates for under $30/month.

The only major phone that doesn't work that way? You guessed it: Apple's iPhone.

Far from freeing the US market from SIM locking and carrier lock-in, Apple is trying to export the evil of the US cellular market to Europe.

Re:The Steve Jobs method of living?

[nametaken]

Pssh... keep up. It's iProphet.

This is for you, fucking fanboi...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the arguments that somehow Apple gives you better quality hardware for the higher prices, when the hardware is the same as any Windows computer.

I hate the arguments that Microsoft is evil for some reason, but when Apple does the same, it is perfectly fine (e.g. activation of Windows vs. activation of an iPhone, or how Intel had unique identifiers in their chips accessible by software, but when they do the same in the iPhone - not a problem).

I hate the arguments that Microsoft is evil when 10 year old hardware is not supported (such as when Vista was released), but when Apple cuts support for 3 year old printers in Leopard, it is the user's fault for not owning the latest hardware.

I hate the arguments that problems with 3rd party hardware drivers it is the fault of Microsoft, but when Apple has problems with 3rd party hardware drivers, it is the hardware manufacturer's fault.

I hate the arguments that Apple never has any problems, but when a problem appears (such as not being able to activate a phone for hours), the user is at fault for not knowing the proper way of using a Mac, just plain stupid, or hate.

I hate the arguments when Microsoft services go down for an hour or two (such as Zune last week), it is said Microsoft provides horrible service and it is a Engadget front page mockery of Microsoft. But when iTunes goes down (http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/07/itunes-store-and-app-store-problems/) nothing is said, and it really is not a problem.

I hate the argument that before the iPhone, the number of applications available for a platform does not make a difference, it is the quality of the software. After the iPhone is released, all that matters is the number of applications available.

I hate the argument that somehow Apple hardware will last forever, but other computers last only a year or two (this argument is used in this very article). I am typing on a 5 year old Dell laptop, how long does an iPod last?

I hate the argument that somehow Microsoft limits user choice, when many people use non-Microsoft products. But when Apple limits choice (such as installing alternative browsers on an iPhone), it is in the user's best interest.

I hate the arguments that Microsoft keeps control over their products, but you need to jump through hoops just to develop for the iPhone.

I hate the arguments that Microsoft releases poor products that do not work and you need to wait for SP2 for it to be useful, is MobileMe working yet?

I hate the arguments that Microsoft does not deliver what was promised, Apple is just now delivering push notification - a year after it was promised.

I hate how some say everything was invented, created, designed, or innovated by Apple first, and everybody creates cheap knock-offs of Apple, when there is proof of it being done years before by other companies.

I hate the arguments that products such as Tablets, Netbooks, etc. are useless crap, but rumored products such as the Apple Tablet, or Netbook will be the savior of man.

I hate the argument that somehow opening a store, something that has existed for 1000s of years since somebody found they could trade a basket of vegetables for a chicken, is an Apple creation, and from now on no other company is permitted to open stores.

And, among the many others (but the last I will list), I hate the argument that somehow Apple is allowed to air commercials that lie about Microsoft and Apple's own products, but when Microsoft airs commercials that are true (a Windows computer is lower priced than an Apple computer), somehow Microsoft is evil and must stop now.