Safari, along with YouTube, and some other features could be disabled with 2.0. Apple is trying to ensure that parental controls exist for parents giving their kids an iPod Touch or an iPhone. I'm not defending what Apple is doing here, but this seems to be their main motivation in the case of this dictionary application.

After all, if kids have ready access to dictionaries whenever they need them, that completely undermines the message of "abstinence-only" literacy education.

Peter

Heh. First thing I thought on reading this was "undermine? oh, no... it'll only help abstinence from literary education!"

*sigh*

I finally went through the FCC filings, and there are still a lot of questions.

Full FCC PDF links are: AT&T, Apple, and Google

AT&T claims that they had nothing to do with the Google Voice rejection, but does confirm AT&T and Apple have agreements in place to ensure no VOIP apps over 3G are approved. An interesting tidbit of that though is this:

Basically meaning if someone jailbreaks their phone and runs a VOIP app over the AT&T network, Apple doesn't have to try and stop it. AT&T also claims this:

Apple and AT&T also agreed to deny apps that violate AT&T's terms of service, such as an app that redirects a TV signal (IE, why SlingPlayer was shot down until it worked only over WiFi).

Apple's response had a lot of interesting tidbits on how their approval process works. Average time an app is in queue is 14 days. 40 full time staffers review apps, and 2 reviewers must review each app. 20% of apps are rejected initially due to bugs or other issues, but the majority of those are fixed by the developer and resubmitted. Lots of fluff about protecting people, and the really interesting tidbit about Google Voice is this one:

Basically it sounds like they got their hand caught in the cookie jar, and are now trying to backpeddle. "We didn't reject it, honest!. We just haven't approved it yet".

Google's response was pretty useless, due to this:


So, some interesting info came out of the inquiry, but the most useful information was censored, leaving us only with Apple's side of the story. I really have to wonder here why Google did censor their response. They may not want to harm relations with Apple over this situation, even though they stand in the best position to help force better improvements to the App Store approval process.

Tom, I had mostly the same reactions as you, although I'm far more anti-Apple on the whole thing. I'll admit, Google wussed out majorly here, and I'm really disappointed in them, but I'm actually angry over Apple's response here. The whole "oh, hey, no, it's not actually rejected, we're still reviewing it! and hey, we were just protecting everyone the whole time! bye bye!" Every podcast I've listened to has compared Apple to a little child that got its hand caught in a cookie jar, making rambling excuses to try to get out of it.

Tom, you should have mentioned the part where Apple describes how great it is that they protected their users from Google's dangerous app, by claiming it does things that it doesn't actually do:

- They claim it completely takes over phone and sms from the iPhone and makes it all free. Untrue. It does make sms to and from your GV number free, and makes international calling with your GV number cheaper, but it doesn't have a single thing to do with calls and sms to your AT&T number.

- They claim that all the contacts on a user's iPhone are automatically, and without the user's knowledge, uploaded to Google's servers for use with Google Voice. Apparently, hearing from users who had the app briefly, this is just plain untrue.

Ugh, the whole thing annoys me. Frankly I can see why AT&T would be annoyed by this app, seeing as how it does, in fact, let you send free SMS messages, obviating the need for a text message plan, but of course this isn't the issue here. I'm still not sold on AT&T's claims that they had nothing to do with it. If Apple's the little kid who got caught, AT&T is the sibling who happened to be in the same room at the time, and there's no way to tell if it coerced the sibling into getting those cookies.


On a completely separate note, two weeks is a long time for your app to be in approval. In that time, a developer's app could have been on the Android market for...two weeks. And that's actually two weeks plus an apparent 1 in 5 chance that it'll be longer than that.

Compare this to the recent report that apparently only 1% of apps from the Google App Market get removed from the market (100% get on in the first place). That comes to about 60 apps, and supposedly those are mostly removed for offensive and malicious reasons. Naturally, I can understand why the install base of Android phones is less appealing to developers, but I've got to imagine that the lack of any hassle from Apple would be appealing as well.


My ultimate hope is that this will force Apple to be more open about the approval process. I think everyone has wanted real reasons for app rejections, and for the app store to be more open than it is.

The overarching reason I've been hearing from Apple for why this all exists is that they're trying to protect the experience the users have with their phones. Okay, that's fine, but what if the user wants to opt out of Apple's loving oversight (like Bitt was saying)? On my Android phone, I have the option to check a box in the settings that lets me install software from other sources, so I could just install an app from someone's web site, bypassing the app market entirely.

They (rightfully) claimed that Google Voice replaces the built in functionality of the dialer, voicemail and SMS. Basically meaning that by using your Google Voice number exclusively, those functions would be accessible through the app only and not the built in apps. Is it a good reason to reject the app? I don't think so, and I do wish Apple would stop rejecting apps for "duplicating iPhone functionality". If a user wants Firefox Mobile instead of Safari, that should be the users choice.

As far as the contacts being uploaded to Google, thats something that without Google's response, is hard to verify. The official Google App never made it out for anyone to download, so any "users who had the app briefly" were either confusing the 3rd party apps that were pulled, or somehow had a prerelease copy.

Overall, I'm not nearly upset* as some people are about all this. I don't expect Apple to open their platform like others do. I still have a choice of smartphones, and I still prefer the iPhone experience over the Android, Pre, WinMo or Symbian experience. If I feel the advantages of the Apple platform no longer outweigh the disadvantages, I'll look at switching.

* I was hesitant to even link to either of these two articles, as both really come across as hit generating headlines. Both authors have recently started trolling heavily against Apple to generate hits, and (following the money here), may be trying to generate enough negative press to get a backlash going against the rumored Apple Tablet, a device that would compete directly with the CrunchPad.

Oh yeah, I'm not an Arrington fan (SCREW YOU, ARRINGTON!). I'm not going to take their word for it. And my apologies, I could have sworn I'd hear that the app was out briefly and then rejected.

Technically, the app did not "replace" functionality. I'll concede that it "duplicates" functionality. You still need the official iPhone dialer and SMS app to handle calls and texts to and from your AT&T number. And I don't know how it works on the iPhone app (I guess nobody does), but actually, on the G1 I still use the built-in dialer too. Regardless, I think the way they're putting it is not valid. And their response is not acceptable.

From a technology standpoint, Apple (to a small extent) and AT&T (to a much larger extent) should be a little afraid of what Google Voice represents. I must admit that I keep finding myself using more and more of Google Voice. At first it was exclusively a way to give out a second number for my business. But now I'm giving it out a lot more, using the texting features (I've never liked texting before, probably because I can't imagine paying for such tiny amounts of data), and the visual voicemail is a really nice feature.

I guess I can't be all that upset, in the end. Once my contract with AT&T is up, I'll be switching to TMobile (so I can get 3G on my G1). When I'm there I'll get more minutes, and even though I had to buy my phone at full price, I have to admit that it's going to be nice to not be under contract.

There were a couple of other GV apps from third parties on the app store that got pulled when Apple decided they didn't like Google's app.

Yeah, I was definitely aware of those. I wish the FCC was, though. I'd like to see Apple try say that those apps weren't rejected.

Google is under NDA with Apple. It's likely that some (or much) of what was discussed in their filing was subject to the NDA and therefore not able to be made public. Able to be disclosed to the FCC, yes, but to you and me, no.

Page 3 of Apple's response has the 3 apps that were pulled as well, as the FCC specifically asked about them.

Google uncensored their response:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/our-complete-letter-to-fcc-regarding.html

So now there is a conflict in the responses, as Google says flat out that Google Voice was rejected by Phil Schiller directly on July 7th.

Definitely hands caught in the cookie jar mentality at Apple. Now to see how they responds to this one, or what the FCC does.