Aug 7
2009Apple bans Google Voice apps for iPhoneView Comments

Just in case you have been living under a rock for the last week or so here’s the news: Apple has refused to offer Google Voice Apps for the iPhone from the iTunes app store. Everyone and his dog has been on their soapbox about this one so, without further ado, I’ll clamber up on mine:

Anyone who has bothered to read the Apple Terms & Conditions when downloading the iPhone SDK should know that they are working with a closed platform for a closed device. Apple can, quite legally, ban your app from the iTunes store because they don’t like you, your app or, if they are having a really bad day, because they don’t like the colour of your socks. It would be a fantastic world if every mobile development platform were truly Open Source but that’s not the case and that’s not the way-of-the-world, so if you want to develop for the iPhone you need to work with Apple’s rules.

Apple’s T&C might not seem particularly fair but this is nothing new. If I write a BREW app for Verizon Wireless cellphones, I will have to go through Qualcomm/Verizon to distribute that app. The platform belongs to it’s patent holder and is licensed to the Operator. Together they approve your app (or not) and in the case of my software, MO-Call – an app that competes with the Operator – they most certainly disapprove.

Nothing that Apple has done is any different from the approval processes that other Operators have been running for years. In fact, we should celebrate Apple as they (arguably) changed the game by being the first manufacturer to retain significant control of the app store and content.

Given the columns of newsprint and blogtype devoted to the subject recently, the fact that Apple picked Google as a target, rather than say Truphone, has harmed neither them, nor the target.

In summary: Caveat Emptor.

PS: None of the above has stopped us from developing a  MO-Call app for the iPhone.