Google Voice, shown here running on Android, was in fact rejected from the App Store, Google said Friday.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Updated 10:25 a.m. PDT with additional details, and at 10:52 a.m. with comment from Apple.
Google told the Federal Communications Commission in a redacted letter to the agency a few weeks ago that Apple did in fact reject its Google Voice application from the App Store.
Google dropped its request for confidentiality in the manner concerning the rejection of Google Voice from the App Store in July, and directly contradicted Apple's version of events Friday. In the letter (click for PDF), Google said Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller informed Google that the app had, in fact, been rejected, when Apple's public statements to the FCC in that month claimed it was merely still under review.
The FCC had requested information from Apple, Google, and AT&T concerning the rejection of Google Voice from the App Store in July, and all three companies sent letters that were eventually made public. But Google redacted a significant portion of its letter at the time, raising questions about what lay behind those black pixels.
Now we know. "Apple's representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone," Google said in its letter. By contrast, Apple said in July that "contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and continues to study it."
Apple stuck to that story on Friday. "We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter," the company said in a statement. "Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google."
Suspicion had originally fallen on AT&T, based on the theory that the wireless carrier didn't want an application that allowed the user to make cheap international calls on its network. But AT&T claimed it had no involvement in the manner in its own letter to the FCC released in August.
Google Voice allows users to give their contacts a single number and have that number ring multiple phones depending on their location. It also translates voice mails into text, and is a popular application on Google's own Android mobile operating system.
In its letter to the FCC, Google also says that Apple rejected the iPhone native version of Google Latitude for potentially causing confusion with the built-in Maps application that ships with every iPhone. That application is an Apple-tweaked version of Google Maps, and Google said Apple believed that "the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality and potentially create user confusion."
Schiller spoke on the phone with Google senior vice president of engineering and research Alan Eustace on July 7th to inform him that Google Voice had been rejected, according to the letter. Other Apple and Google representatives met to discuss the application on several occasions between July 5th and July 28th, but Schiller and Eustace were the point men for their respective organizations, Google said.
Apple has become more open about its App Store approval process in recent weeks and months, explaining to prominent developers why certain applications were rejected from the store and shedding light on the process for the first time in its letter to the FCC.
However, the stark contrast between the public statements of the two companies will undoubtedly raise eyebrows, and give more fuel for those who believe Google and Apple are increasingly at odds, especially now that Google CEO Eric Schmidt no longer sits on Apple's board of directors.
Updated at 3 p.m. PDT with additional information and background.
AT&T told federal regulators on Friday that it played no part in Apple's decision to keep the Google Voice application from the App Store, while Apple said it never actually rejected the application.
In response to inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T's Jim Cicconi, senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, told the agency, "Let me state unequivocally: AT&T had no role in any decision by Apple to not accept the Google Voice application for inclusion in the Apple App Store."
Google Voice, which allows users to receive calls placed to a single telephone number in multiple places and make cheap international calls, was deemed unfit for App Store inclusion in July, after it was released for BlackBerry and Android smartphones. Several days after the story broke, the FCC requested that AT&T, Apple, and Google all comment on what led to the exclusion of Google Voice.
Apple, for its part, claimed that the application was never actually rejected. "Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it 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," Apple said in a statement.
Google also filed a letter in response to the FCC inquiry but redacted a significant portion of that letter when releasing it to the media. A PDF copy can be found here.
Suspicion immediately fell upon AT&T after the Google Voice application did not make it through the approval process, based on the fact that the application lets users bypass hefty rates on international calls. AT&T has also been believed to be behind the delay or rejection of several other applications that could have placed a strain on its network, such as Sling Media's SlingPlayer Mobile application.
But AT&T said it has little influence over the approval process.
"AT&T was not asked about the matter by Apple at any time, nor did we offer any view one way or the other. More broadly, AT&T does not own, operate, or control the Apple App Store, and is not typically consulted regarding the approval or rejection of applications for the App Store, or informed when an application is approved or rejected," Cicconi said in the letter, a PDF copy of which can be found here.
Still, Apple said it's not like AT&T is an innocent bystander.
"There is a provision in Apple's agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T's cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) session without obtaining AT&T's permission. Apple honors this obligation, in addition to respecting AT&T's customer terms of service, which, for example, prohibit an AT&T customer from using AT&T's cellular service to redirect a TV signal to an iPhone. From time to time, AT&T has expressed concerns regarding network efficiency and potential network congestion associated with certain applications, and Apple takes such concerns into consideration," Apple said in its statement.
Skype, perhaps the most well-known VoIP service, seized upon part of AT&T's letter that promised a review of policies regarding VoIP apps running on 3G network as a hopeful sign that Skype would soon be allowed to work on cellular networks.
"We welcome AT&T's willingness to take a fresh look at authorizing VoIP capabilities on the iPhone over AT&T's 3G network," Skype said in a statement e-mailed to reporters. "Skype hopes this is a step forward in enabling consumers to be able to use Skype together with their iPhones and 3G connections and looks forward to hearing more about any potential change to AT&T's policy, in connection with the pending FCC proceeding related to the Skype petition."
As for Google's part, its decision to redact a key portion of its letter to the FCC will raise many eyebrows. The company asked the FCC to redact its part of its answer to the FCC's because "the redaction information relates specifically to private business discussions between Apple and Google and, as such, it constitutes commercial data 'which would customarily be guarded from competitors'...The Internet service industry is highly competitive, and the redacted material relates to business and operations of Google, warranting protection from disclosure under the commission's rules," Google said in a letter to the FCC asking for confidential treatment.
In an extremely rare move, an Apple executive has publicly commented on the App Store approval process as it relates to a controversial dictionary application.
Apple's Phil Schiller, seen here at Macworld in January, commented on the App Store approval process this week--a move that seems to be unprecedented.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)Apple's Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing and last seen playing the role of Steve Jobs at Apple events this year, e-mailed John Gruber of Daring Fireball to comment on the approval process of Ninjawords, a dictionary application that was initially rejected from the App Store because it supplied the definition of several dirty words. Schiller blamed the snafu on poor timing, saying that Apple never directly censored the application but felt it deserved a 17+ rating, which wasn't formally available as an option until parental controls were released along with the iPhone 3.0 software in June.
Ninjawords draws on Wiktionary.com for its definitions, Schiller said, which means it offers up a few more choice words than the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary have gotten around to including. "Apple rejected the initial submission of Ninjawords for this reason, provided the Ninjawords developer with information about some of the vulgar terms, and suggested to the developer that they resubmit the application for approval once parental controls were implemented on the iPhone," Schiller told Gruber via e-mail.
The developer of Ninjawords isn't exactly mollified by Apple's reasoning. "Apple may slap a 17+ rating on our app and wash their hands, saying 'you're not required to censor your app', but at the same time, they're putting a great deal of pressure on us to do so. Who wants to be the only illicit dictionary on the App Store?" said Phil Crosby of Matchstick, which created the application. Crosby and Gruber noted that several other dictionaries in the App Store contain language that some may find objectionable yet are not required to carry the equivalent of an R movie rating.
But while the debate over Ninjawords will rage on, what's perhaps most significant is that Apple has directly commented on its decision-making process regarding the approval or rejection of a specific iPhone application. As far as I can tell, Apple has never done this in the year-plus history of the App Store, with the notable exception of Baby Shaker. But even then, Apple didn't explain the reasoning behind its decision to approve an application it eventually called "deeply offensive."
Perhaps now that the FCC is taking a closer look at the Google Voice debacle, Apple will now start to finally give developers and iPhone users some specific input on the criteria it uses to approve or deny iPhone applications. To this point, the process has been a black box, frustrating developers time and time again.
Gruber credited Apple with perhaps waking up to the reality that at some point, the App Store approval process went off the rails. "That Schiller was willing to respond in such detail and length, on the record, is the first proof I've seen that Apple's leadership is trying to make the course correction that many of us see as necessary for the long-term success of the platform. The improvement I consider most important is a significant focus on fairness, consistency, and common sense in the App Store review process," he wrote.
Apple could be thinking about adding 3G networking to laptops like the MacBook Air.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)An Apple job posting suggests the company might be thinking about adding 3G wireless radios to future MacBooks.
Apple's Mac Hardware Group is looking for a quality-assurance engineer with experience in the various networking technologies popular in the personal computing market, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, "and/or 3G Wireless WAN," according to the job posting spotted by Computerworld. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet are the standard network interfaces on the Mac at the moment, while 3G Wireless WAN is a technology confined just to the iPhone inside Apple.
A few years ago, notebooks with embedded chips that could connect to cellular networks were thought to be the next big thing in mobile computing, but the concept didn't exactly pan out in the same way that Wi-Fi is now ubiquitous in notebook computing. But Apple may be considering a MacBook partnership with AT&T, given its close ties to the carrier through the iPhone.
Rumors to that effect have surfaced before, and it might make sense that Apple would want to have some sort of tweak available for its MacBook lineup heading into the second half of the year.
Correction, 5:03 p.m. PDT: This story had an incorrect title for Art Levinson. He is the former CEO of Genentech.
The Federal Trade Commission has decided to take a look at the cozy relationship between Google and Apple, according to a report.
The New York Times reported Monday that Google and Apple have been informed that the FTC would like to investigate whether the fact that Apple and Google have two members of their boards of directors in common--Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Genentech CEO Art Levinson--amounts to a violation of antitrust law. The Times attributed the news to anonymous sources; all three parties--the FTC, Apple, and Google--declined to comment on the matter for the report.
Schmidt's involvement on Apple's board has long raised eyebrows, especially after Google revealed plans to release its own mobile operating system in Android. Schmidt has said he recuses himself from Apple board meetings where the iPhone is discussed, but under Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act, companies are not supposed to have the same board members if "it would reduce competition between them," the Times reported.
Given that Android is such a small part of Google's business at this point in its history, the relationship between the two companies may not amount to a clear violation, according to legal experts interviewed by the Times. Still, neither company is likely to be thrilled about government scrutiny; Google is reportedly facing another investigation from the Department of Justice over Google Book Search.
Apple outdistanced the competition in consumer smartphone customer satisfaction ratings from J.D. Power.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)Apple's iPhone has won another J.D Power award for customer satisfaction among consumers, after taking the business crown last year.
J.D. Power and Associates released the results of a customer satisfaction study measuring consumer tastes on Thursday, and ranked the iPhone highest among smartphone consumers judging five factors: ease of operation, operating system, features, physical design, and battery function. Apple scored particularly well in everything but battery life, which appears to be a sore spot for iPhone owners.
The iPhone received an overall score of 791 on a 1,000-point scale, ahead of LG's 772 points and Samsung's 759 points. The industry average was 751 points, and overall smartphone satisfaction rose since J.D. Power's last survey in November 2008, it said.
Apple won a similar award from J.D. Power last year for business smartphone customer satisfaction.
Apple could be getting ready to cut prices on iMacs and MacBooks, according to a report.
Does Apple really have MacBook pricing cuts in mind?
(Credit: CNET)AppleInsider is reporting that Apple plans to introduce less-expensive versions of its two most popular Macs at some point over the next several months. It's not clear how much of a cut Apple has in mind, or whether it plans to offer more value at current prices, but Apple has apparently decided that it wants to hedge its bets against a proliferation of cheap Netbooks over the last year or so, according to the report.
Mac pricing has certainly been a big topic over the last several months, as Microsoft has aggressively pushed the notion of the Mac as an expensive bauble unfit for recessionary spending. Apple responded to those ads with its standard message that Macs are more capable than PCs, therefore PCs aren't quite the bargain they appear to be.
This move, if it comes to pass, would therefore represent a change in Apple's strategy of positioning the Mac as a premium experience. Apple did cut the price of the MacBook last year, keeping an older system around for $999 while introducing the new unibody MacBooks in October. The company also lowered the cost of acquiring certain features previously reserved for the high end of its notebook line, which to some extent has a similar effect to a price cut.
Times have changed since then. ... Read more
Apple CEO Steve Jobs was not feeling well enough to attend a town council meeting regarding his request to tear down an old mansion, according to his lawyer.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)Apple CEO Steve Jobs was not feeling well enough to attend a marathon town council meeting Tuesday night over the fate of his Woodside, Calif., mansion, according to his lawyer.
"I don't think he would be strong enough if we were here until 1 a.m., and I think there's a strong possibility of that," said Howard Elman, Jobs' representative before the Woodside Town Council, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News. Jobs is currently on medical leave from Apple, and is scheduled to return to his regular schedule by the end of June.
Anyone who has ever attended a mildly contentious town meeting over zoning issues would probably look for any excuse to avoid having to attend another one. But one of the most pressing topics for Apple in the second half of the year will be the health of its founder, after the company made his health a public matter with revelations in January that Jobs was suffering from a hormone imbalance.
The issue of what to do with Jobs' huge mansion in Woodside appears undecided despite the lengthy meeting. Jobs applied for a permit to tear down the existing house and build a smaller house on the property in 2001, but some locals think the house has historic value and want him to save it.
Apple seems almost ready to bridge the gap between the iPhone and the Macbook with a new type of mobile computer.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET)Is the world finally ready for the mobile minitablet?
It's become quite clear over the last several months that Apple is ready to bridge the mobile computing gap, with plans to develop a device that fits somewhere in between the iPhone and the MacBook. A recent Wall Street Journal article proclaimed that during his medical leave, CEO Steve Jobs has been working on that midsized mobile device, bigger than an iPhone but smaller than a MacBook.
And just this week, BusinessWeek reported that Apple is developing a "media pad" that would let users watch videos on a larger screen than an iPod Touch or Amazon Kindle, but on a device that's more portable than notebooks and lacks a keyboard.
The personal computer industry has long tried to make such a device a reality, but apart from some early success for the Kindle, no one has managed to convince the public that the attempts released to date--such as the Ultra Mobile PC--are worth buying. Instead, PC companies looking for increased mobility are finding ways to shrink the notebook PC as opposed to a finding a new way to use computers.
As far back as 2000, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was evangelizing Tablet PCs, but a combination of price and uninspired software doomed that category to niche status. Intel and Microsoft then turned the hype machine to the UMPC (later rebranded MID, or Mobile Internet Device), which several years later aren't exactly flying off store shelves.
More recently, PC companies have embraced Netbooks, small inexpensive mininotebook computers that are designed for basic Web surfing and e-mail. Netbooks, however, are further depressing the PC industry's gross margins and attempt to cram a full-fledged notebook user interface into a small package, and it doesn't seem that Apple is all that crazy about this category.
But Apple has developed a few unique ideas for mobile computing over the past two years that have resonated with designers, developers and users; namely, the iPhone OS and the App Store. So, is the timing finally right for the tweener computer?
BusinessWeek reported that the iPad (name stolen from Silicon Alley Insider for its brevity) would be about the size of the Amazon Kindle, but with a screen that covers a greater portion of the surface. The Kindle is 7.5-inches long, but the screen is just 6 inches; by comparison, the iPhone sports a 3.5-inch display, while the smallest MacBook uses a 13.3-inch display.
Previous attempts at making keyboard-less devices with 7-inch or 8-inch screens--such as UMPCs and MIDs--haven't captured the public's imagination. Microsoft and Intel had high hopes for the concept in 2006, which was also known as Project Origami inside Microsoft. Samsung made perhaps the best-received UMPC, but that wasn't saying much, and interest in the category quickly faded after the launch of the iPhone.
The main issue with UMPCs was a lack of compelling software. They were designed to run Windows XP, which itself wasn't designed to run on a device with such a small screen and limited methods of input. And at launch, Windows Vista was actually a step backward in terms of its suitability for mobile devices.
Samsung's Q1 was perhaps one of the best UMPCs/MIDs, but it never amounted to much in the market.
(Credit: CNET)Intel tried to shift MIDs to Linux to get around the resource problems of Windows Vista, but its partners have yet to gain any traction. And neither attempt was able to galvanize third-party developers into creating applications designed specifically for a mobile platform.
Apple's iPhone OS, however, was designed for a small-screen mobile environment. Installing the iPhone OS 3.0 on the iPad would allow Apple to preserve the user interface from the iPhone and iPod Touch and keep the device simple: a more complicated (and power-hungry) operating system isn't needed for a computer like this.
This would also allow Apple to take advantage of the App Store, giving the iPad thousands of applications at its disposal right from launch. One potential problem with that approach is that developers will have to rewrite their iPhone applications to adapt to the larger-size screen on this new device, said Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory, creators of Twitterific.
Hockenberry, who is very confident that Apple has such a device in the works, doesn't think this will be a huge obstacle, but developers will have to gauge whether the extra development effort is worth their time. One thing Apple could do is set aside a separate section of the App Store for iPad-optimized applications, while finding a way to run older iPhone applications in some sort of compatibility mode.
"It wouldn't be hard for Apple to have a "Classic" environment on a tablet that provided a 320x480 window for running one or more iPhone applications," Hockenberry said in an e-mail. "It would be a smart thing for them to do: there are instantly tens of thousands of apps and users are presented with a familiar interface (something that looks a lot like Dashboard in Mac OS X.)"
The iPad could also be the first Apple product to surface with a chip designed by P.A. Semi, which Apple didn't buy on a lark. A custom chip could solve two problems for Apple--the need to keep software compatibility with the ARM-based chips used to run the iPhone while delivering more performance for HD video playback or more robust games that competitors might not be able to immediately match.
What might such a device cost? There are two schools of thought on price.
UMPCs, at around $700, were considered too expensive but because they didn't offer any value, not because of the sticker price itself. It would not be hard for Apple to argue that an iPad with an HD screen, thousands of applications, and a superior mobile browser is worth just slightly more than what people were willing to pay for the original iPhone.
A $699 iPad would slot nicely between the iPod Touch and MacBook in Apple's product lineup and preserve Apple's profit margins, while allowing the company to reduce the price over time if needed similar to the original iPhone.
But Apple could also hook up with a wireless carrier--we'll save the AT&T versus Verizon debate for another day--to subsidize the iPad. The company has reportedly been in talks about distributing MacBooks through wireless carrier friends like AT&T, which already sells 3G-equipped Netbooks with a data plan subscription.
A device such as this would be infinitely more attractive with wide-area wireless networking, as opposed to just Wi-Fi--especially if carrier subsidies bring the price down to around $499, just above the largest iPod Touch. It's hard to see something this big replacing a mobile phone--you're not going to hold one of these up to the side of your head--but there are certainly plenty of headsets available in the world.
This is the last frontier of the promised convergence between computers and communication devices: the midsized device. That shift has already happened to the smartphone, but it seems very reasonable that for many people, smartphone screens are too small for serious computing.
If Apple is indeed working on such a product, it will have to get the implementation right to avoid duplicating the failures of so many other mobile computing aspirants. But by having awakened the public to the promise of basic mobile computing, Apple could be best positioned to capitalize on the need for something more.
A Web site operator has sued Apple seeking protection for online discussions of ways to circumvent iTunes.
(Credit: Apple)Apple has been sued by the operator of a wiki site over legal threats Apple made to stifle discussion of iTunes workarounds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced Monday that OdioWorks, which runs a Web site called Bluwiki, has sued Apple in hopes of securing a legal ruling that would allow it to host discussions regarding the use of alternative music software to manage an iPod or iPhone. Earlier this year, Apple sent OdioWorks a cease-and-desist letter invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act after Bluwiki users began discussing a plan to develop software that could sync music or videos to iPods or iPhones from sources other than iTunes.
OdioWorks complied with the request to remove the discussions, but now wants legal cover to continue those discussions. According to a copy of the complaint (PDF) filed against Apple, none of the discussions had advanced as far as to constitute development of a way to bypass iTunes.
