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Apple vs. Google, Who Will Control the iPhone?
Pieroxy writes "Theiphoneblog carries a nice article on the reason Apple rejected the Google Voice application even though it doesn't violate any terms and services. The article goes in depth over the issue of controlling the hardware (Apple) vs. controlling the software (Google & Apple so far) and how Apple doesn't want Google to take over a critical part of its phone. Just like Google is going into the OS business to make sure it never gets cut out, Apple is also building a huge data center to — they guess — take over some online cloud computing business of their own and be less dependent on Google for these services."
Probably at the end of the day it will be some 17 year old hardware hacking genius from Croatia.
The skills and resources of the hardware hacking community is far out-stepping the biggest corporations. I'm surprised at their resourcefulness every day when I read about a new hack.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
This is very important for the industry. It proves, once more, that software is more important than hardware.
It also proves that Apple follows a wrong path selling hardware. It has some nice software in its hands, and it could become an alternative to Microsoft/Google if they wanted to.
Now Google comes and stills their business - if users are accustomed to Google services, they could be tempted to buy an Android-based phone in the future, since the services would be similar to the ones they were used to.
I know who should control it, the user.
These articles crop up pretty much daily on various blogs. They all follow a very clear pattern:
1. Pick a hot IT company.
2. Pick a service they're not providing.
3. Pick something that they're spending money on.
4. Relate points 2 and 3.
There's no evidence that the two things are related. For all we know Apple might be getting back into selling time-slices on servers because Steve Jobs has hit his head and thinks it's 1983 again. These sorts of poorly researched, uninsightful articles that are absolutely nothing more than *a guess* are completely pointless.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
A phone is just a phone and we don't need it to become another computer platform to be monopolized. Stop selling me services, please, I only need a phone (that is, hardware).
Uh, I thought it was MY phone and I bloody well should be able to decide who takes over and how they do it. If the provider is not happy with what I send over it, that is another matter, because I RENT that. I BOUGHT the phone.
Have people become so ignorant that there is no difference in buying and renting anymore?
It is actually pretty simple. If you SELL something, the other person becomes the owner and it isn't YOURS anymore. Perhaps they should make a version of "mine" and "yours" like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H9MUWhU7Xw
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How does having iPhone users receive calls via their Google Voice number affect the iPhone overall at all?
Apple walked into this market out of the blue and to get anywhere they had to make serious concessions to AT&T. Right now, Apple is getting ready to renegotiate, this time from a position of strength. Apple gets hardware sales from the iPhone and a strategic influence that can help their other products. So what do they have to offer phone companies in order to make the iPhone more functional and thus sell more handsets? Basically, they're offering to bring in new customers and get those customers to pay for services. Every service that is not used by iPhone users, weakens Apple's pitch to cellular phone service providers. So enabling users to bypass AT&T's SMS and thus AT&T's SMS revenue, may sell more iPhones to end users, but also makes AT&T and others less interested in selling iPhones and less likely to make concessions to Apple to get that to happen. Before the iPhone was a success all Apple had was promises and the offer of an exclusive deal where users would be banned from bypassing certain moneymaking services of the cell service provider. Even offering to cut out all other providers they had a hard time getting anyone on board willing to make a good package deal for service given that it needed network tweaks to make it work as nicely as Apple wanted.
This cannot be understated. The computer industry experienced exponential growth once it became open. It all started the day Compaq produced the first IBM PC clone. That day will only come for phones/PDAs when people can use any phone, with software from any company or individual, with any telephone service provider.
We need to treat phone technology openly, just like...well... almost every other piece of hardware on earth (TVs, CD players, vacuum cleaners, hammers, baseballs, ...)
The "holy shit" part of the iPhone is the OS, though. The original hardware was merely adequate, and only barely for anyone who didn't live in a nest of wi-fi hotspots. Yet it was enough to sell the OS to people.
To release the One True Google Phone would undo the platform's great advantage. If someone walks into a phone store and wants something that's like an iPhone, but kind of different, probably half of the alternatives are going to be Android handsets.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I agree with your second point, actually, and that may well be something that concerns Apple. But I disagree with the assertion in the second paragraph: Apple likes to control the software on its devices, because...they really aren't a hardware company. If they were, they'd have been dead long ago.
Apple's always been a 'solutions' company; that's what they sell. The iPhone is not the flash memory and processor and screen; it's a package, where they fairly seamlessly combined software and hardware together into a complete whole.
I didn't buy my MacBook Pro because it has a 2.8 Ghz Intel processor and blah blah...all laptops on the market are essentially the same. I bought it because it runs OS X well, without hackery, and is generally well made. I don't necessarily use all of them, but iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iWork, and so on are all very nice pieces of software in their own ways, but Apple doesn't try to profit hugely directly from them.
So the point is: Apple's always been part (and maybe mostly) software company; the difference between them and Microsoft (in most markets) is that Apple just uses the software to sell hardware, whereas Microsoft's empire was all about the software sales itself. So, I can see why Apple's threatened by Google (though as an Apple consumer, I wish they'd get over it and compete instead of trying to block everyone that's outdoing them).
gameDB
That doesn't follow. Just because you CAN compete with someone else on a level playing field doesn't mean you want too. If you and I were dueling to the death with pistols, and I know that I am slightly better than you and thus likely to win, should I refuse to allow a further handicap of your abilities just because I'm pretty sure I can win anyway? If I were an honorable man, or a man wishing to appear honorable for some person in the audience, I might indeed refuse to allow you to be further handicapped. Companies have no such honor. Companies take any advantage they can get, even if they already have other advantages.
Generally speaking, the court of public opinion seems to think that Apple makes one of the best smart-phones on the market right now. It's extremely popular and selling more units daily. Google has had considerably more limited success with Android. This hardly means that Apple is going to let Google find new advantages to catch up if they can help it. By preference they want to keep their dominance, and do so with the least possible effort on their part.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
....If Apple's software were so much better ....
Apple's main business has never been hardware or software, but integrated working devices that fulfill their function remarkably well, better than cobbled together hardware from one company and software from another. They have also allowed numerous third parties to make numerous accessories that interoperate with their products, as long as these accessories don't change the basic functionality of an Apple product. They want the basic functionality of the Macs, iPods, iPhones and other devices to remain distinctly Apple.
They will allow third parties to add functionality to their products, but when third-party applications or add-ons affect the basic functionality reflecting Apple's design, they squelch that and have every right to do so. They objected to Google software, because rather than adding functionality, they claim the application takes over the basic function of their product in ways that they will not allow.
Anybody who does not like the iPhone, has the option of buying numerous other devices that perform similar functions. Anybody who desperately wants the Google application can buy another phone and then be happy.
All theory is gray