Category Archives: Apple

Apple ‘Still Pondering’ Google Voice App for the iPhone

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Hmmm… New York Times reports that

Apple told the Federal Communications Commission on Friday that it did not reject an iPhone application submitted by Google and that it was still studying it, in part because of privacy concerns.

Apple was formally responding to a commission inquiry into the reason the Google Voice service, which offers users free domestic telephone calls, deeply discounted international calls and SMS messages, had not been allowed into the Apple iPhone App Store.

Apple said in a letter to the F.C.C. that Google Voice duplicated the functions of the iPhone, which uses the AT&T network in the United States, and might confuse users. The application “appears to 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 voice mail,” the letter said.

Apple also raised concerns that Google Voice copied all of the information about a user’s contacts onto Google’s servers. “We have yet to obtain any assurances from Google that this data will only be used in appropriate ways,” the letter said.

Interestingly, Apple said that it had not discussed the Google Voice App with AT&T and that in most cases “its contract with the wireless carrier gave it the sole authority to decide whether to accept applications”. But is also admitted that it had agreed “not to allow any applications that sent voice calls over the Internet, bypassing AT&T’s network, without the phone company’s permission”. This explains why services like Skype were allowed by Apple — they used only Wi-Fi connections, not AT&T’s network. So the problem with the Google Voice App may be that it doesn’t send calls over the Internet but connects to both parties over the telephone network.

This isn’t over yet. It’ll be interesting to see the FCC’s response.

The strange case of Apple, AT&T and Google Voice

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This morning’s Observer column.

The Google Voice team also developed a free App ie, application to run on the Apple iPhone. This would enable all US iPhone users to access the cool services above. The team submitted the App to Apple for approval in the usual way, only to have it rejected. Then Apple went even further: it deleted from the App Store two similar programs, GV Mobile and VoiceCentral, which had been there for months.

The VoiceCentral author got a call from an Apple functionary, who said, "I'm calling to let you know that VoiceCentral has been removed from the App Store because it duplicates features of the iPhone" – and absolutely refused to discuss the matter further.

At the moment, nobody really knows what lies behind Apple's intransigence. But conspiracy theories abound…

LATER: Jason Calcanis has published a terrific essay: “The Case Against Apple–in Five Parts”. Great stuff.

What Microsoft really thinks of Linux

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Well, what it told the Securities and Exchange Commission in its annual 10-K filing.

“Client faces strong competition from well-established companies with differing approaches to the PC market. Competing commercial software products, including variants of Unix, are supplied by competitors such as Apple, Canonical, and Red Hat.”

Translation: Microsoft for the first time acknowledges Linux as a serious competitor to Windows, especially on netbooks.

Thanks to Good Morning Silicon Valley for spotting it.

Schmidt finally ends conflict of interest. War now starts in earnest.

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From BBC NEWS.

The resignation of Google’s Eric Schmidt as a director of Apple’s board has failed to halt a government inquiry into possible antitrust violations.

Mr Schmidt stepped down because the search giant’s business increasingly competes with Apple’s.

The Google CEO recused himself when Apple’s board discussed the iPhone.

In a statement the Federal Trades Commission said “we will continue to investigate remaining interlocking directorates between the companies”.

And the NYT reminds us that Google and Apple still have one other Board member in common — Arthur Levinson, the chairman of Genentech.

So now instead of having Google+Apple vs. Microsoft we will have Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft+Yahoo.

There ought to be a board game in this somewhere.

The iPad cometh

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OK, time to set aside that $800 you’d been keeping for a neat gadget for Xmas. Here’s what Good Morning Silicon Valley thinks.

Rumors of a large format, touchscreen tablet from Apple — long the stuff of fanboy fever dreams — are starting to congeal into something with a little more substance. A couple of weeks ago, supply-chain scuttlebutt had the tablet arriving in October with an $800 price tag and, according to VentureBeat, powered by a processor developed in-house by the team Apple acquired in buying PA Semi last year. Friday, the AppleInsider blog reported that the 10-inch tablet, after two years of development and multiple iterations, had received the Steve Jobs seal of approval. “Jobs, who’s been overseeing the project from his home, office and hospital beds, has finally achieved that much-sought aura of satisfaction,” said the blog. “He’s since cemented the device in the company’s 2010 roadmap, where it’s being positioned for a first quarter launch, according to people well-respected by AppleInsider for their striking accuracy in Apple’s internal affairs.”

Why is this more plausible that all the other rumours about the iPad? Well, simply that it’s based on stories about a deal with the record companies to enable them to go back to their old anti-customer practice of selling albums rather than tracks. The idea is that they need a bigger screen in order to add ‘value’ with fancy booklets to go with the album.

It won’t work, of course, but who cares? What we need is a decent, well-designed tablet, and if this is the only way to get it, well, so be it.

A Tale of Two Stores

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This morning’s Observer column.

The prospect of Microsoft and Apple stores side by side is rich in comic possibilities. For one thing, what will the Microsoft store sell? It's a software company: its hardware range consists of the Xbox games console, some keyboards and mice, and the Zune music player – which, compared with the iPod, looks like something produced by the Soviet Union in its heyday. But a retail store needs exciting hardware to attract people in off the street and create a buzz.

Stand by, then, for a new range of viral ads from Apple. A Tale of Two Stores, perhaps. One establishment is crowded with teenagers browsing Facebook and trying to get off with one another, watched by benevolently smiling, T-shirted geeks. The other is a deserted cavern, rather like one of those Sony outlets, in which dispirited chaps in ties try to interest passing tramps in the new features of Office 2009. YouTube here we come!

1.5 billion App downloads don’t count — says Google

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From FT.com Tech Blog.

Apple customers may have downloaded 1.5bn applications from its AppStore in the past year for their iPhones and iPod touches, but the service does not represent the future for the mobile industry, according to Google.

Vic Gundotra, Google Engineering vice president and developer evangelist, told the Mobilebeat conference in San Francisco on Thursday that the web had won and users of mobile phones would get their information and entertainment from browsers in future.

He claimed that even Google was not rich enough to support all of the different mobile platforms from Apple’s AppStore to those of the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Android and the many variations of the Nokia platform.

“What we clearly see happening is a move to incredibly powerful browsers,” he said.

“Many, many applications can be delivered through the browser and what that does for our costs is stunning.

“We believe the web has won and over the next several years, the browser, for economic reasons almost, will become the platform that matters and certainly that’s where Google is investing.”

Well, as Mandy Rice-Davies said…

Rotten Apple

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It’s a rough world out there – as this Reuters report reminds us.

NEW YORK Reuters – Shares of Palm Inc fell more than 3 percent on Thursday after Apple Inc closed a loophole in iTunes that had allowed the music management software to be synchronized with Palms Pre phone.

On Wednesday, Apple released an update to iTunes — which complements the iPod and iPhone devices — meant to fix software bugs and “addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.”

“It also disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apples iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players,” said Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr.

Don’t you just love that phrase “addresses an issue”?

So it may be some consolation to Palm stockholders that Apple is about to get it in the neck from Microsoft.

Microsoft is planning to open the first of its planned retail stores next to existing Apple stores this fall.

Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer, told partners the news during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote on July 15. A number of attendees tweeted Turner’s words immediately.

Microsoft officials announced in February that Microsoft was planning to open retail stores but have offered few details since that time as to what the stores would look like or when they’d open. I did hear from some Softies that the stores wouldn’t be clones of Apple’s, and that they’d be more showcases than actual retail outlets.

Turner told Partner show attendees that the knowledge Microsoft gained from running the stores would be “shared with partners.”

According to partners attending the conference, Turner said Microsoft wouldn’t be imitating Apple; it would be innovating with the new stores. Earlier this year, Microsoft officials said the stores would be more about building Microsoft’s consumer brand than distribution.

Microsoft hired David Porter, a former Dreamworks Animation and Wal-mart exec, as Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores earlier this year.

Jobs on the job again

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From today’s NYTimes.

“Steve is back to work,” Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman, said on Monday. “He is currently at Apple a few days a week and working from home the remaining days.”

As was the case with Mr. Jobs’s leave, his return to work was accompanied by only minimal disclosures.

Mr. Dowling declined to say whether Mr. Jobs’s role had changed from what it was before his leave, and he declined to discuss his health. He also would not say when Mr. Jobs first returned to work at Apple. Mr. Jobs was at work on the corporate campus a week ago, according to a person who saw him there.

The Apple chief’s official return comes just before the self-imposed deadline for his medical leave. When Apple announced his leave in January, the company said he would be back at work by the end of June…

Plain speaking about Steve Jobs

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From Mark Anderson.

The first, and most important issue is Steve’s actual health condition. What was last described as a “hormonal imbalance” or something like it, now looks a good deal like liver cancer.

If Steve has / had liver cancer, it opens a new vista of medical questions which he should be discussing now, as CEO. So should the media, so, get with it, kids.

Second, on the legal side: I have never heard so much BS in my life, as has been written in the last week about why it was perhaps OK for Apple’s board not to share this information with shareholders and the public.

The test, according to the SEC, is simple: if information would affect an investor’s decision to purchase (or sell) shares, it is material and should be disclosed.

Since anyone who went through the non-Steve Apple years knows that there simply is no Apple without Steve, the fact of his liver transplant, and if so, of his new cancer, are life- and company-threatening. There is no fancy dancing about taking a leave that would remove the obligation to tell investors that the only person who could run the company at length was in jeopardy.

The Apple board has now broken the law, twice: first, over the options deal with Steve; and now, this.

While Steve is great at making products, this board, and this company, suck at obeying the law, and at modern governance. They have put their shareholders at unknown risk, and themselves personally.

Yep. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

LATER: Warren Buffett takes much the same line:

“Certainly Steve Jobs is important to Apple,” Buffett, chairman and chief executive officer of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. said in an interview today on CNBC. “Whether he is facing serious surgery or not is a material fact.”

[…]

“If I have any serious illness, or something coming up of an important nature, an operation or anything like that, I think the thing to do is just tell — the Berkshire shareholders about it. I work for them,” said Buffett, 78. “They’re going to find out about it anyway, so I don’t see a big privacy issue or anything of the sort.”