More On Apple vs. Google Voice

So I read another depressing account of what exactly happened with Apple’s rejection of Google Voice and, a couple weeks earlier, Google Latitude:

http://gizmodo.com/5325539/apples-chickenshit-approval-process-has-gone-too-far

The important contradictions are these:

Yet here we are, Apple has rejected not one, but two Google apps that would deliver major new features to the iPhone, for reasons that are so obviously tripe it’s insulting to even our non-exceptional intelligence. A Google Latitude app would confuse us? Really? Because it would “use Google to serve maps tiles”? Wait. Isn’t one of iPhone 3.0’s major new features that it can use Google Maps inside of other applications? So like every app can use Google to serve maps tiles. I admit, though, Latitude is a really big word. What does it even mean? That is pretty confusing. Maybe they should call it, like, Google Stalker.

What happened with Google Voice is worse. Google didn’t elaborate on the reason Apple gave for rejecting its official Google Voice app six weeks ago—and presumably, Google had more success wringing it out of Apple than most developers. Hours before Google broke the news, the developer of GV Mobile—a solid third-party app for Google Voice—said that it was being pulled from the App Store for “duplicating iPhone features.” Then every other Google Voice application was silently killed too. Even though, reportedly, Apple’s Phil Schiller personally apologized when GV Mobile initially ran into problems getting approved months ago, and it’d been sitting pretty in the store since then. Oh, and there are tons of other apps that duplicate the functions of dialing and sending text messages.

And, for whatever reason, AT&T’s fear is about Google Voice on the iPhone, since the app is available for BlackBerry on their network.

Apparently AT&T claim that they are not involved in the application approval process, so they can’t speak to this issue. I guess that’s to be expected though, even if they were involved somehow.

So as I suggested before this looks like Apple hating on Google for some reason. I don’t have a clue why though. The article points out that Google gave the iPhone voice search and Maps and YouTube. Apple can’t possibly see Google’s Chrome OS as a threat worthy of retaliation, since Chrome OS is meant for netbooks and Apple doesn’t compete in the netbook market (in fact, Apple thinks netbooks are stupid. See here). Unless Apple is planning a major move toward building its own telephone network I don’t see how this makes sense.

Anyway I’ll repeat what I said yesterday; why buy a computer when the manufacturer can control what you install, supposedly for your own good? I’ll be sticking with Android for a long time…