Subscribe to RSS

News September 18, 2009
by

Apple To FCC: “You can’t handle the truth!”

Gear Diary Apple To FCC: You can’t handle the truth! photo

Hold on to your hats because this one is going to blow your mind… with regard to the whole Google Voice debacle it turns out… wait for it… okay, ready?… it turns out APPLE LIED!!!

Shocked? Amazed? Dumbfounded? Yeah, neither are we.

But the hubris Apple has to bold face lie to the FCC is pretty amazing.

Not sure what we’re talking about? Let’s go back a bit…

1. Apple allowed two applications into the App Store that made using Google Voice much simpler that it would otherwise be if we relied only on the web app. The apps did not integrate with the iPhone to the degree they can on an Android device or even a Blackberry but they were a huge step forward with regard to integrating Google Voice with the iPhone.

2. Google announced they were releasing their own native app for the iPhone.

3. The Google app was rejected and the two previously accepted apps were pulled from the App Store.

4. People cried out loud enough that the FCC stepped in. The FCC asked Apple, Google and AT&T to explain their role in the rejection of the Google Voice app. They all did so.

5. The Apple response stated clearly that the app had not been rejected but was undergoing further studying. This didn’t ring true to many of us but since Google’s response had been redacted (at their request) it was unclear what their take was.

6. Now Google has released their response in its entirety. They did so because,

“In light of Apple’s decision to make its own letter fully public and in the interest of transparency, we decided to drop our request for confidentiality.”

And what do we learn from Google releasing the redacted portions?

They were clearly told the app was REJECTED.
As the letter stated, “Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone.”

So what do we learn here? Nothing that we didn’t all suspect. It does, however, allow us to go into the weekend singing to Apple…

via Wall Street Journal

Tags: , , ,



About Dan Cohen

View all posts by Dan Cohen
Having a father who was heavily involved in early laser and fiber-optical research, Dan grew up surrounded by technology and gadgets. Dan’s father brought home one of the very first video games when he was young and Dan remembers seeing a “pre-release” touchtone phone. (When he asked his father what the “#” and “*” buttons were his dad said, “Some day, far in the future, we’ll have some use for them.”) Technology seemed to be in Dan’s blood but at some point he took a different path and ended up in the clergy. His passion for technology and gadgets never left him.

  • Pingback: Genjinaro

  • doogald

    Do you think that it is possible that, when Phil Schiller and Alan Eustace spoke on the phone, that Schiller told Eustace that Google Voice had not been approved, and Eustace inferred from that statement that the app was rejected? In other words, from Schiller’s point of view he communicated the reasons that Apple had not approved the app, without using the phrase “rejected:, and Eustace mistook that as meaning that the app was rejected rather than not yet approved?

  • Dan Cohen

    I suppose ANYTHING is possible but I find that very unlikely. We aren’t talking about a casual conversation here… especially once the FCC got involved I don’t think either party would be sticking to a story based on “I think he said…”

    I think one party is lying and, as you have previously pointed out, figured nobody would care. They were wrong.

    Prediction- Google Voice in the App Store within the month.