An iPhone App to Sidestep AT&T(nytimes.com) |
An iPhone App to Sidestep AT&T(nytimes.com) |
And I'm one of the crowd who is wondering how long it'll last. It seems designed to be denied / ejected.
The Line2 app is a carbon copy, a visual clone, of the iPhone’s own phone software.
Line2 was first submitted to the App Store in August 2009, which was really bad timing because it was in the middle of the Apple/Google Voice storm. A month later it was approved (after the founder pestered Apple a lot). And I'm pretty sure the version Pogue is reviewing was actually released last month (http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/line2-google-voice/).
In other words, none of this is news to Apple, though it's clearly hypocritical on their part. Also, no way Apple would pull this after a Pogue review — he'd probably write about it, and he's proven before with his 'Take Back The Beep' campaign that he can incite quite an uproar.
Edit: Never mind, I should have finished reading the article before posting. Line2 routes calls through the cellular network when the app isn't running.
Input and output
* Dock connector port
* 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
* Built-in speaker
* Microphone
* Micro SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only)
See http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/ipad/faq.html, question "Does it work with Apple's remote earphones?".
As submitted, Google Voice had several problems, including a massive privacy violation that would have held up any app. It is reasonable to think that they could have worked through those. The "duplicates the dialer, voicemail, and SMS" seems to be the key objection that Google could not, or chose not, to work around, but at least for voice calls that is changing as evidenced by Line2. I never saw SMS come up explicitly, but surely AT&T would not be happy to see that cash cow vanish. The question is if they had enough foresight and clout to get it protected in their agreement with Apple.
And, at least if you believe the statements to the FCC, AT&T has never had anything to do with the acceptance or rejection of the Google Voice app. So Apple ends up looking rather hypocritical here, when all of it's stated reasons for rejecting Google Voice also apply to Line2's app and yet that app was accepted.
What I do know is that Google Maps isn't attempting to commoditize smart phones like Google Voice is. So Apple has more reason to spite Google by rejecting Voice than Maps.
I think the prevailing meme is clearly missing something. Like, why did google quit instead of addressing the flaws. Apple stated officially on the record that google voice was not rejected, in december, did google get discouraged and give up? Are they still in queue? Are they happier with a reason for people to buy android phones than fir iPhone users to be able to have convenient access to their google voice accounts?
Did people even want a native google voice app for anything other than subverting their voice/SMS contract? I use google voice, and I'd like a native voicemail viewer for it, but I don't need to replace my SMS program or dialer.
"When [you get a] call, the service can either relay the call to your ‘real’ number (the AT&T number assigned to your iPhone), or it can send it to voicemail, depending on the way you’ve set up your call filters."
This is exactly what Google Voice does, and Line2 even included a similar "visual voicemail" feature from the start. It also duplicated the iPhone's dialer pixel for pixel. In Apple's FCC statement the stated reasons for Google Voice's rejection were re-routing of voicemail, duplication of "visual voicemail," and duplication of the iPhone's native dialing functionality.
Is there a claim in the FCC statement against the Google Voice app that doesn't also apply to Line2's app?
And Google didn't address the flaws, because there were no flaws to address! As the acceptance of the Line2 app makes clear, all of Apple's stated complaints about GV weren't real, so why try to get around them when the app will just be rejected for some other completely ridiculous reason?