Apple

Even though Apple prevented it from listing Google Voice on the iPhone App Store, Google is planning on retooling the application as a Web-based app, according to The New York Times.

In David Pogue's Friday column regarding the ongoing saga of Apple and Google Voice, he reveals that Google has already found a loophole:

Already, Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app--except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page. For all intents and purposes, it will behave exactly the same as the app would have; you can even install it as an icon on your Home screen.

Google Voice is a free application that lets users assign a single number to ring their home, work, and cell phones, and also get voice mail as text transcriptions. There's speculation that AT&T is behind the decision to block the application since Google Voice allows cheap international calls and free text messages.

It's not clear if simply making Google Voice available as a Web app will change Apple's mind, but there is precedent. Apple also rejected Google's Latitude for the iPhone until it was remade as Web app.

A Google spokesperson did not say how close to completion the project might be, but reiterated a previous statement. "We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users, for example by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers."

This story was updated at 3:58 p.m. PDT with comment from Google.

For all the discussion of the importance of transparency and openness on the Web today, it's very telling that the world's fastest-growing mobile platform may also be the most proprietary.

Apple wins rave reviews (including from me) on its technology but certainly not for its commitment to sharing its innovations with the world...unless, of course, you fork over $299 and sign a two-year mobile service commitment.

Indeed, Apple has earned the dubious honor of being more closed than Microsoft.

And yet, as Marc Hedlund reveals over on the O'Reilly Radar, application growth for the iPhone dwarfs that of the former leader in the smartphone category, PalmOS:

iPhone OS app growth vs. PalmOS app growth

(Credit: Marc Hedlund)

If openness matters so much, why is Apple doing so well with its uber-proprietary iPhone, just as Microsoft dominates the desktop with proprietary Windows?

There are at least two answers. One is that while Apple's iPhone (like Microsoft's Windows) isn't open in the open-source sense, it is open in the sense that it's easy to create applications that run on it. The second reason is that there's a huge financial incentive to do so, given the momentum behind the platform.

For some, these reasons aren't good enough, such as Mozilla Chair Mitchell Baker:

Many of us participate in closed systems where the rules are set for us and we don't see them, certainly can't change them, and aren't permitted to "participate" in building the rules. This is true of very popular web services. For example, I "participate" in Flickr and Facebook, but within the system and rules that those organizations set up to meet their own goals. That's fine; there's no reason for those sites to change.

Mozilla is trying to build a layer of the Internet that's different, where "participation" extends to the very core of what we build.

With 40 percent of Mozilla's Firefox written by outside contributors, it's clear that an open platform works for Mozilla to build a better browser, which is why Mozilla continues to improve the ways in which developers can contribute to it. But it's equally clear that there are other ways to be "open to participation," ways that pay the rent for Apple, Microsoft, and huge ecosystems of commercial partners.

Is one platform approach better than another?

While it's clear that the world has room for both proprietary-but-open-enough and pureplay-open approaches to platform building, I favor the more open approach. The reason is that eventually, it appears proprietary approaches can collapse under their own weight.

Take Windows, for example. To maintain its growth, Microsoft has had to include more and more functionality in the operating system, stepping on the toes (or outright devouring the toes) of its erstwhile partners. (Interestingly, while discussing whether openness matters for Apple over Google Android, Slate describes Microsoft's Windows approach as open.)

Eventually, Windows grew to such heft that the market, including Microsoft partners, started looking for open alternatives, causing then Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to dub Linux Microsoft's "most potent operating system competitor." The "good enough" operating system that performed certain tasks much more efficiently and powerfully than Windows has now grown to seriously threaten Microsoft in a range of applications and markets.

Eventually, even Microsoft's desktop dominance may be threatened by Linux as new classes of easy-to-use, cost-effective devices like Netbooks arise.

Back to Apple. Today, Apple's iPhone seems set to rule the world because it enables a huge community of application developers to reach a paying audience. Tomorrow, however, Google (Android/Linux), Nokia (Symbian, Linux), Palm (WebOS/Linux), and even Microsoft (Windows Mobile) threaten its cozy corralling of the mobile market.

Microsoft has made it clear that it's possible to build a massive business with an "open enough" approach to platform development. The question is, can Microsoft (and Apple) maintain that without truly opening up?

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Stanford University on Monday said its free iPhone Application Programming course has been downloaded more than 1 million times since being uploaded to Apple's iTunes U--a learning-focused area of iTunes--seven weeks ago.

The course is a series of classroom videos taken from the live lectures at Stanford. Apple engineers teach the course to students in an auditorium at Stanford's Quad--the videos are uploaded to iTunes U two days after every class, giving the public free access to the material. The university even makes copies of the slides shown during the class available to the public.

Jason Ediger, Apple's director of iTunes U and Mobile Learning, said this is the fastest any course hit the million download mark on iTunes U. Certainly a testament to the amount of interest from would-be iPhone developers.

Apple currently has over 40,000 apps available for download from the App Store, according to numbers from 148 Apps, an enthusiast Web site that monitors the number of apps on the store.

iPhone Application Programming is a 10-week course and can be downloaded free from iTunes U. Only students enrolled in the classroom course will receive credit, according to the university.

(Credit: Apple)

We could stare at the countdown tickers on Worldometers all day. Wow, 10.3 billion toilets have been flushed so far today! So it's no wonder we love the Apple App store contest with its mesmerizing flipping numbers counting us down to the 1 billionth app download, when some lucky punter will win shedloads of Mac stuff and a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

As the hour approaches--we're topping 988 million and change at the time of this writing--Mobile Squared, a U.K. research company, is helping us game the system by figuring out when the crucial moment will occur. According to its totally unchecked calculations, D-Day is this Thursday afternoon, April 23, U.K. time (Thursday morning in the U.S.)--so that's two days for another 13 million downloads, app fans.

Mobile Squared notes that it took almost six months to reach its 500 million app downloads on January 19, and the following 500 million downloads have taken just 94 days, so the rate is picking up.

If you want to get in on the action, you don't even need an iPhone or iPod Touch: just enter online at the Apple Web site. We'd love the irony if an Apple hater won, so get involved.

(Via Crave UK)

Almost $13,000 in Apple gear awaits the person lucky enough to download the 1 billionth App Store app.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple is approaching the 1 billion mark for applications downloaded from the App Store, and plans to give out a host of Apple gear to the lucky billionth customer.

The company put up a countdown Web page Friday as it gets closer to the mark: as of this writing, about 928 million applications have been downloaded from the App Store since it went live last July, according to the counter. Whoever manages to download the 1 billionth application will come away with a pretty good haul: a MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod Touch, a Time Capsule, and a $10,000 iTunes gift certificate.

Somewhere north of 30,000 applications have made their way onto the App Store to fuel those 1 billion downloads. Along with the promotion, Apple released some stats on the top downloads in both the paid and free categories: Facebook has been downloaded the most times among the free applications, while Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D has received the most downloads among paid applications.

Correction 5:15 p.m. PDT: This story initially misstated the author of the letter where quoted. It is the Free Press.

An advocacy group on Friday called on the Federal Communications Commission to require wireless carriers to allow consumers access to Skype via smartphones, as well as the ability to connect their devices to the Internet through tethering applications on their cell phones.

(Credit: Apple)

The Free Press, in a letter to acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps, expressed concern that wireless carriers were not abiding by the FCC's Internet Policy Statement.

Earlier this week, eBay's Skype made a VoIP application available for download from Apple's App Store.

But AT&T, Apple's exclusive iPhone dealer in the U.S., apparently wants to block the use of Skype on its 3G network, according to a report in USA Today.

In the USA Today report, Jim Cicconi, an AT&T public policy executive, said the telecommunications carrier had the right to forgo the facilitation of its competitors' services. He added Skype is considered a competitor.

The report further notes an Apple spokeswoman, Jennifer Bowcock, indicated the device maker limits third-party Internet phone applications for the iPhone and iPod to Wi-Fi.

In its letter to the FCC, Free Press says:

For two years, we have followed your leadership in raising concerns that wireless service providers appear to be engaging in activities that go against the Commission's Internet Policy Statement by violating consumers' right to run applications, use services, or attach devices of their choice over their broadband connections.

Recent reports about application blocking again raise these questions. Regardless of whether any particular incident would be found in violation of the law, the lingering uncertainty surrounding consumer rights on the Internet indicates the need for the Commission to clarify its rules. To resolve any alleged ambiguity raised by parties in earlier proceedings, the Commission should confirm that the Internet Policy Statement applies to wireless service providers that offer broadband Internet access service, as has been acknowledged in prior proceedings and statements of sitting Commissioners. Furthermore, the Commission should request more information on the extent of the wireless providers' role in and their justifications for these widely-reported behaviors.

Free Press further notes the FCC should investigate the practices of wireless carriers for possible violations of the Internet Policy Statement, as it particularly relates to possible direct or indirect limits on consumers' ability to run applications and services of their choosing on their devices.

Update at 2:52 p.m. PDT, with a report from AdMob about global Internet traffic on smartphones.

With the popularity of Apple's iPhone mobile-application store growing and competitors Palm and Google teeing up their efforts, the number of smartphone users tapping into mobile-application stores are expected to reach 100 million in 2013, according to a research report released Tuesday by In-Stat.

(Credit: Apple)

Currently, the number of smartphone users accessing mobile-application stores is roughly a fourth of the projected 100 million users and is largely comprised of only iPhone users.

But with Google calling on third-party developers to embrace its Android smartphone and Palm with its highly anticipated Palm Pre smartphone set to debut this summer, In-Stat is expecting the number of users accessing mobile-application stores with their smartphones to increase four-fold by 2013, noted David Chamberlain, a principal analyst with In-Stat.

(Credit: Palm)

These smartphones are built on an open platform that can accept applications from any developer who writes programs for that particular mobile operating system and are sold, or distributed freely, via a mobile-application store, rather than through the phone's carrier.

By 2013, Chamberlain said he expects nearly one-third, or 100 million, of all smartphone users to have the capability to access mobile-application stores. The current slice of the total pie is a fraction of that and largely comprised of Apple iPhones, he noted.

(Credit: Google)

While a number of these mobile applications are offered for free, that could change as third-party developers and operators of mobile-application stores find it difficult to make money off advertising.

"If Coca-Cola buys a Superbowl ad, Nielsen can say how many people watched it," Chamberlain said. "But there are no independent third parties to audit mobile applications."

AdMob, a mobile-advertising marketplace, issued a report Tuesday that looked at February Internet traffic using smartphones.

According to the report, smartphones accounted for 33 percent of the global Internet traffic in February, up from a 26 percent slice six months ago.

And within the smartphone market, here's a ranking of which device grabbed the largest share of Internet traffic, according to AdMob:

(Credit: AdMob)

And in the U.S., Apple's iPhone has an even greater share of the Internet traffic among smartphones.

The iPhone holds a 49.5 percent slice of U.S. Internet smartphone traffic, followed by Research in Motion's Blackberry 8300 with a 9.1 percent slice and the Blackberry 8100 with a 6.9 percent piece.

And among mobile operating systems in the U.S., AdMob ranks Google's Android as holding a 5 percent slice for the smartphone market. And holding the U.S. lead is the iPhone operating system with 50 percent of the market share in February.

Since this report was published, Apple has decided to approve the app for the App Store. Read the updated story here.

Updated at 3:10 p.m. PDT with comment from Tweetie developer.

Remember the time your mom withheld your dessert because you said a bad word? Apple is doing something along those lines, with one major difference: it's because a bad word has been heard in the neighborhood.

Tweetie won't be getting an update, at least not right now, due to the Trends report above.

(Credit: twitpic)

According to iLounge, Apple has rejected version 1.3 of Tweetie, the popular Twitter client application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The reason? An offensive word appeared in Twitter's Trends data.

Somewhat similar to Google Trends, Twitter's Trends is a list of the most frequently used topics or words on Twitter at any given moment. This means this live list of words/topics changes constantly (I checked it just now and the offensive word--which starts with an "F," by the way--has gone). Yet, somehow it still bothers Apple enough to take action.

It seems that Apple, as a matter of policy, does not comment on the approval process for Apple applications. We have, however, contacted the company, and will update this post if we hear back.

In an e-mail to CNET News, however, Tweetie developer Loren Brichter said Apple quoted this part of the company's guidelines as a reason for the decision:

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive, or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod Touch users."

"The question then becomes whether is it an individual app's responsibility to censor everything it gets from the Internet," Brichter said. "Twitter themselves create the "top trends" list; Tweetie just displays it. The consensus is pretty much that it would be ridiculous to expect that.

"At the same time," the developer added, "this could have been just a goof on Apple's part. The App Store is still very young, they're working out the kinks."

Here's the long list of improvements in Tweetie 1.3 that all you naughty Twitterers with iPhones and iPod Touches are gonna miss out on--at least for now:

The Android Market now offers the $200 'I Am Richer' application.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)

An application that did nothing beyond showing a person was willing to spend gobs of money for it didn't last long on Apple's App Store, but now we'll begin to see if Google lives up to its more laissez-faire approach to its rival Android Market.

Apple banned Armin Heinrich's "I Am Rich", which cost $1,000 and only showed a red ruby, from its App Store last August. Now the conceptually similar "I Am Richer" has arrived on the Android Market from Mike DG.

Perhaps owners of T-Mobile's G1 phone are more cost-conscious, or the recession has hurt the market for inane software, or Android programmers are willing to offer greater value, though, because the new application offers basically the same feature set for only $200, a fifth the price of the app Apple banned.

"Prove your wealth to others by running this app and showing them the mesmerizing glowing crystal," the software's description says.

Google has some rules for Android Market--no malware is allowed, for example--but generally has a much more liberal attitude than Apple. While each application on the App Store requires Apple's approval, Google plans to let the world at large sort out Android applications through the mechanisms such as the rating system. Good applications will eventually sift their way to the top of the heap the way good YouTube videos do, Google argues.

Update 7:06 p.m. PST: The $200 price is as much as Google permits organizations to charge, the company said. And yes, Google appears perfectly happy to let people buy the application:

"We check applications for compliance with the Market Content Policies and Terms of Service (in order to remove malware, porn, spam, or profanity)," the company said in a statement.

(Via IDG News)