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."

Comments

Who will control the iPhone?

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Who will control the iPhone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, cause hacking something developed by talented engineers from scratch takes so much more talent.

Re:Who will control the iPhone?

[Rob the Bold]

Actually yes. MythTV kicks the utter crap out of any other PVR ever made.

The MythTV developers are at least 800% more talented than ALL of the TiVo dev team combined.

do you not understand how 3000 developers are better than 10? did you not pass basic math in high school?

I'm not bagging on the Myth guys at all -- they've done a great job. But I know from experience that creating the second new something is much easier than the first. This is the "First Waffle Theory". This theory works especially well if you can get someone else to make that first one.

This proves that software is where the money is.

[master_p]

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.

who will control the iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

I know who should control it, the user.

Re:who will control the iPhone

[Pieroxy]

With Apple, it is very doubtful that the users will have a say. Jobs is the ultimate end-user of Apple products and will dictate his views no matter what.

Re:who will control the iPhone

[Qubit]

Mod parent up!

Name one large company that you'd trust to hold the reigns to your personal computing devices. Just one.

How about i-rootkit-you-Sony, or i-turn-you-in-Yahoo? Plays-for-only-a-limited-amount-of-time-for-sure-Microsoft?

Large companies by necessity will bow to government pressures. Large companies by necessity (and legal duty) will listen to the demands of their stockholders. The users are several steps down on the list.

Re:who will control the iPhone

[KnownIssues]

With Apple, users do have a say... with their wallets. And users will continue to pay money to Apple because Apple continues to make products that do what those users want better than the alternatives (Microsoft, *nix, etc). So Apple will continue to dictate what can be done on/with their platform.

When playing at being an analyst..

[onion2k]

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.

Re:This proves that software is where the money is

[readthemall]

And if you don't want to pay Apple or Google for such 'services', you can stick to the traditional model where one can choose among hundreds of phone models and use them with several providers. Just like we have several big photo camera manufacturers, and a few more independent lens manufacturers.

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).

Its phone?

[houghi]

Apple doesn't want Google to take over a critical part of its phone.

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