So what do you think of Apple shutting out the Google Voice App on the iPhone?

Comment

Comment by Alex Salkever on August 14, 2009 at 1:47pm

Paul, sorry took me so long to respond. I am very much looking forward to BT Ribbit coming out for some sort of consumer-facing applications. It could give Google Voice a real run for their money.

Comment by Paul Graydon on August 7, 2009 at 2:16pm

Here's a very interesting take I read on the whole App Store pain the other day:
http://factoryjoe.com/blog/2009/08/01/steve-jobs-hates-the-appstore/

Comment by Paul Graydon on August 6, 2009 at 9:26am

I dislike the idea of closed software & closed hardware, so I avoid Apple like the plague. Which is a shame because they really do have probably the best idea of how an OS should be presented to an end user.

That and their ongoing rather bizarre and arbitrary application approval process only continues to make me glad I haven't got an iPhone. That they rejected the Google Voice application didnt' surprise me in the least. After all they blocked an e-reader application that enabled you to read Project Gutenberg books, because it allowed you to read the Karma Sutra. Just like their web browser allows you to do if you go to the Project Gutenberg site...

It wouldn't surprise me to find AT&T had some involvement in the rejection process, their non-denial denial smacks of politician style evasion. They weren't lying, they just weren't actually telling you anything at all. AT&T along with a number of telco's seem to have failed to grasp that what they have been providing from day one is not a voice system, but an information system. The predominant medium has been voice but its always been about getting meaningful data from one point to another. Whilst voice was predominant their business model and pricing structure made sense but it's always been just a matter of time until IP or computer data became just as significant, and their business model and pricing has failed to account for that or adapt to that.

BT, the main telecoms company in the UK, was surprisingly foresighted for them and identified at the turn of the millennium that their existing model of making money from calls, and their infrastructure itself, was rapidly going to be unsuited to the end users needs. They announced a new project, 21CN, that is focussed on replacing PSTN with an IP based solution, and altering pricing schemes to suit. Instead of routing calls, it's routing packets, something which can be done for cheaper and allow them to provide more advanced services (CDN style). I haven't heard much of an update on 21CN since I left my last job at an ISP in the UK, but they were hoping for a 50% switchover to the new platform by the end of last year!