Google Voice, of course, is Google’s new online service that allows you route all your calls through a new, independent phone number. The service also transcribes and stores voicemails, SMS messages and more. It’s quite handy, but it’s complicated to use from the iPhone, as it requires a user to launch Safari and use a somewhat painful mobile site to make calls and send texts.
To remedy this, a couple of iPhone developers created apps that replicated the functionality of Google’s site but in a way much easier to use.
This week, Apple pulled every single one of those apps from the App Store. Some reports claim that the developers were then responsible for issuing refunds to their customers, which is simply horrific, as Apple keeps 30 percent of the profit for every copy of every app sold.
Needless to say, this was met with great outcry from the Apple community. It even led a high-profile Mac developers abandon the platform (on a personal level, at least) in a vocal way this week:
My position is not that every app should be approved — it’s that rejected apps should be rejected for reasons that at the very least make consistent, logical sense, without garbage form-letter rejection notices that explain nothing, and with at least some sort of guidance available to the developer about how to fix the problem instead of meeting them with a brick wall.
Ouch. Apple needs to listen to complaints like these — they are valid and honest. These problems are serious.
Unless things change, Apple will continue to piss off developers and customers, and that’s good for no one. Apple needs to get the App Store and its governing policies under control, and fast. By pulling apps months after their approved (and then blaming AT&T for it) is bad form, no matter who was behind the decision. Apple needs to be much more transparent about what they will allow and not allow in the Store, and stick to it. The longer they wait, the angrier developers and customers will become.
I’m not saying bad choices on Apple’s part are going to ruin the platform. The iPhone and App Store have so much momentum behind them, they’re about impossible to stop at this point.
Of course, the plot got a lot more serious today as news broke that the FCC is looking into the situation.
Macworld:
In a letter sent Friday to Apple, the agency asked the company why Google Voice was rejected, which related applications have been rejected along with it, and what role AT&T may have played in the decision. It also asked what the difference is between Google Voice and other VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software that has been approved for the iPhone.
More broadly the agency asked Apple what other applications have been rejected for the phone and why.
(This evening, TechCrunch posted copies of the letters the FCC sent to AT&T, Apple and Google.)
While this is a serious turn of events, it’s unknown what the consequences would be if Apple and/or AT&T are found in the wrong. Honestly, that might the best thing for everybody involved.