Peter’s last blog spelled out some major problems with Apple “stifling innovation”. With the FCC now involved with the battle between Google and Apple over the rejection of the Google Voice Mobile app, it’s got me thinking…
As developers, we deal with technical limitations and licensing restrictions all the time. Commercial and open-source licenses clearly spell out what you can and can’t do (legally) within a platform or framework. This ensures that when we build applications that use an existing framework or integrate a 3rd party application, the copyright holder’s “program” is preserved and no laws are broken.
What if a platform’s restrictions weren’t disclosed entirely to developers? Or worse, what if the owner of the platform arbitrarily decided which applications were allowed or restricted regardless of whether they followed the guidelines provided? Wait, isn’t that what Apple’s doing?
Apple may finally be in over their heads after rejecting a perfectly legitimate app, Google Voice, and then lying about it!
There are a number of core iPhone apps that are powered by Google, such as Search, maps, YouTube, etc. Apparently, Apple feels that Google is taking over too much core functionality of the iPhone. Since the Google Voice app provides alternative functionality to the iPhone’s core phone application, perhaps Apple feared they would essentially be turned into a hardware manufacturer for a Google-dominated device.
You can read more about the insanity on techcrunch:
The Truth: What’s Really Going On With Apple, Google, AT&T And The FCC