8 ms·

Apple Answers the FCC’s Questions

87 points by tvon 17y ago

tvon 17y ago
(via Daring Fireball)
isharan 17y ago
In my opinion, this is total BS. Apple would obviously make up some lame excuse and everyone knows it. Update: Though, there is this at the end: "In little more than a year, we have reviewed more than 200,000 applications and updates." That computes to around 515 applications per day. Can't really blame them for taking too long, eh?
- BRadmin 17y ago
  And what was that lame excuse again?
- jonursenbach 17y ago
  This is the kind of problem that you can throw people at though. There is no excuse for them taking this long.
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Yeah, you can throw people at it. And many of them will be underqualified or undertrained, and will reject things for no good reason...
    - jonursenbach 17y ago
      That's a moot excuse though. That's a training issue, not manpower.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      With >600% YOY growth in iPhone sales, margins of approximately 36% and quarterly revenues/profit of $8.3/$1.2 bn, I think Apple can afford to hire and train plenty of people. Recruiting, training and retaining 100 employees at a salary of $48k/yr - which seems like a pretty good starting wage to me - would only run them about $8-10 million a year, or ~0.2% of that profit margin. What the hell, double that amount if you need to rent/build a new office block for them. It would still pay itself in terms of positive press and developer relations. 40 reviewers each testing 40 apps per day is absurd, that's less than 15 minutes each. OK I know a lot of iPhone 'apps' do only one thing and have a novelty half-life of 90 seconds, but still. These #s from http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/67654.html http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/67654.html
      - jhancock 17y ago
        They wouldn't have to train so many if they easily allowed 3rd party app stores. If you don't like the wait in Apple's official store, go to the alternative. As long as they insist on being the bottleneck, this will be a problem.
        anigbrowl 17y ago
        Yeah, but they wouldn't be making those sweet margins either, I suspect :-)
  - xsmasher 17y ago
    More people = less consistency. A common complaint among developers has been the inconsistency of approvals, where one app may be rejected while another one with similar features is improved. Right now the approval delay is about two weeks - that's not bad. Your testing cycle should be longer than that. An extra two weeks should not be a big deal.
- andreyf 17y ago
  That computes to around 515 applications per day. Can't really blame them for taking too long, eh? Yes, you can. Apple could easily afford hiring 250 people to review applications - at 2 applications a day, they should be able to thoroughly test apps the same day they get them.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
- GHFigs 17y ago
  Would you mind explaining that? It isn't obvious to me.
e1ven 17y ago
Question 2: Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice. Are there any contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T that affected Apple’s decision in this matter? Answer 2: Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application. No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s decision-making process in this matter. -- I guess that is about as straight an answer as we could have hoped for on the issue. Apple, not AT&T, made the call.
- jf 17y ago
  As much as I'd like to believe this, it just doesn't feel right. Why didn't Apple respond in this manner sooner? Why did it take a strongly worded letter from the FCC for them to do so?
  - e1ven 17y ago
    One reason may be that AT&T and Google's answers are also now public, so Apple wanted to have it's best face forward. http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983512/ATT-Response-to-FCC-iPhone-Letter-082109-as-Filed http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983512/ATT-Response-to-FCC-iPhon... http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983640/Google-Response-to-FCC http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983640/Google-Response-to-FCC Personally, I suspect that Apple would prefer that AT&T take the blame for as much as possible. From the tone of the letter, it sounds like Apple tries to shift blame onto AT&T where they can- For instance, Apple was responsible for the initial SlingPlayer rejection. Apple's response says that they rejected the app because it violates AT&T's TOS, but doesn't say that AT&T requested the rejection. Viewed in the context of the Google Voice rejection, this leads me to believe that Apple is happy to be able to point to the TOS as the reason for the rejection, rather than having to decide if they want to allow an (indirect) competitor to their iTunes TV store.
  - jsz0 17y ago
    Apple's original reason for rejecting the application was that it duplicated functionality. This is almost exactly the same statement with more direct answers to specific questions.
relme 17y ago
"The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail." How does a 3rd party app prevent voicemail from being stored on the iPhone? I don't understand.
- bvttf 17y ago
  If you actually use Google Voice all calls go through it, and get sent to the GV voicemail, instead of whatever voicemail your phone uses. This would make the Visual Voicemail and SMS that ship with the phone useless.
  - isharan 17y ago
    Yup, that's exactly right. But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Apple assumes that people will get confused. At least put some warning note or something. Though I'm sure that most people who download GV will be aware of what's happening...
    - jodrellblank 17y ago
      But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Then honestly, buy a phone you have control over.
    - apgwoz 17y ago
      > But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Are you serious? You couldn't possibly be smarter than Apple! And, since you pay $299+ to effectively rent your device, because of the DMCA, you're out of luck.
  - relme 17y ago
    Oh I see, but does this "prevent" AT&T voicemail from being stored on the iPhone? (Which is what was said)... I mean you could use both the Google Voice Voicemail and the AT&T voicemail, right?
tel 17y ago
So yeah, sounds like Apple is more or less shooting straight. They're facing a huge problem (hundreds of submissions per day) and are trying to be decent about it. The Google Voice thing is annoying but not altogether unsurprising since no one is really pretending this is an open platform: Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its “Google-branded” user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices. In other words: just try it Google. You're going to play by our rules here.
- apgwoz 17y ago
  The funny thing about that is, you're still circumventing visual voice mail and all the other stuff they're complaining about by using the web interface, albeit in a much less convenient manner, which is obviously the point.
darkxanthos 17y ago
Pondering? Could they choose an any more lazy way to describe this process?
- jimbokun 17y ago
  "Pondering?" This seems to call for a parody video of Pinky and the Brain working as App Store app reviewers. (Apologies to readers too young to get the reference.)
sachinag 17y ago
Engadget has AT&T and Google's responses as well as quick commentary from their in-house lawyer: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/atandt-tells-the-fcc-it-had-no-role-in-removing-google-voice-fro/ http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/atandt-tells-the-fcc-it-h...
jackowayed 17y ago
>For example, on an iPhone, the “Phone” icon that is always shown at the bottom of the Home Screen launches Apple’s mobile telephone application, providing access to Favorites, Recents, Contacts, a Keypad, and Visual Voicemail. The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail. This is misleading bullshit. First, they mention the "phone" icon right after complaining that GV is "replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail" to try to give people the false impression that GV is stealing the phone icon, which an app can't even do. Then, they try to claim that by cherry-picking calls and not letting the forwarded calls hit apple voicemail, they're "disabling" visual voicemail, which is just untrue. People could still call your iPhone's direct phone number, and visual voicemail would work juts fine.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  I think what they're trying to say is that they are abiding by the general principle of not allowing apps that duplicate built-in functionality, because they feel it might negatively impact the user experience of their product. This is a much more defensible (and I think probable) position than that they are singling it out for purely competitive reasons.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - jhancock 17y ago
    I think either/both could be the answer. I see no reason why the first outweighs the second.
- CamperBob 17y ago
  Apple must think the FCC is staffed by morons. They "don't know" how the application works, but it "prevents" existing iPhone features from working, and they need to "ponder it some more."
jsz0 17y ago
It shouldn't take a company with billions in revenue this long to ponder an issue as they say. It makes me wonder if there's a bit of a civil war going on inside Apple over the App Store. Apple initially approved the apps, then un-approved them, and is now leaving the door open to re-approve it. If I were an investor in Apple I would be concerned about the management structure around Apple's single most important product taking weeks to deal with the Google Voice situation that has evolved outside of a techie issue into the mainstream business press (WSJ)
- jstevens85 17y ago
  My guess: Apple has decided that they want to implement Google Voice, Skype directly into the Operating System. Just like Copy-Paste, you won't hear about it until a couple of weeks before the update.
gcheong 17y ago
So apple says they haven't rejected the application which in iTunes connect terms would mean that it is still "in review". So did the Google development team mis-read the status or is Google lying about the rejection or did the media jump the gun or is Apple just outright lying now or what? I wish I had access to their iTunes connect account to see for myself.
- tvon 17y ago
  Apparently Google never said the app was rejected, they only said it had not been approved (which was 6 weeks after it had been submitted).
  - jzdziarski 17y ago
    Six weeks is not a long time to wait. I've had applications take 3+ months before they ever get a response. Google should stop acting so entitled and get in line like the rest of us.
lacker 17y ago
I'm surprised that Apple rejects 20% of all submissions. That number seems huge! We receive about 8,500 new applications and updates every week, and roughly 20% of them are not approved as originally submitted. No wonder complaints are so common.
- lallysingh 17y ago
  It's submissions, not applications. I'd expect the majority of the apps whose submissions were rejected to be updated and resubmitted.
jrockway 17y ago
So Apple is evil.
sahaj 17y ago
This is an easy to solve problem. Duplicate phone functionality: Let the user decide which number they want to dial from by changing the Settings on the iPhone and thus making the iPhone capable of making and recieving the phones calls from either AT&T and Google. Voicemail: Let both AT&T and Google store the voicemails at their own servers and push them down to iPhone. SMS issue: Solution is same as voicemail. Let the user decide which number they want to send the SMS from, and let both Google and AT&T deliver the SMS to the iPhone Messages app. This solution will allow for flexibility for both the users and the service providers.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

87 points by tvon 17y ago

tvon 17y ago

(via Daring Fireball)

In my opinion, this is total BS. Apple would obviously make up some lame excuse and everyone knows it. Update: Though, there is this at the end: "In little more than a year, we have reviewed more than 200,000 applications and updates." That computes to around 515 applications per day. Can't really blame them for taking too long, eh?

BRadmin 17y ago
And what was that lame excuse again?
jonursenbach 17y ago
This is the kind of problem that you can throw people at though. There is no excuse for them taking this long.
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Yeah, you can throw people at it. And many of them will be underqualified or undertrained, and will reject things for no good reason...
  - jonursenbach 17y ago
    That's a moot excuse though. That's a training issue, not manpower.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    With >600% YOY growth in iPhone sales, margins of approximately 36% and quarterly revenues/profit of $8.3/$1.2 bn, I think Apple can afford to hire and train plenty of people. Recruiting, training and retaining 100 employees at a salary of $48k/yr - which seems like a pretty good starting wage to me - would only run them about $8-10 million a year, or ~0.2% of that profit margin. What the hell, double that amount if you need to rent/build a new office block for them. It would still pay itself in terms of positive press and developer relations. 40 reviewers each testing 40 apps per day is absurd, that's less than 15 minutes each. OK I know a lot of iPhone 'apps' do only one thing and have a novelty half-life of 90 seconds, but still. These #s from http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/67654.html http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/67654.html
    - jhancock 17y ago
      They wouldn't have to train so many if they easily allowed 3rd party app stores. If you don't like the wait in Apple's official store, go to the alternative. As long as they insist on being the bottleneck, this will be a problem.
      - anigbrowl 17y ago
        Yeah, but they wouldn't be making those sweet margins either, I suspect :-)
- xsmasher 17y ago
  More people = less consistency. A common complaint among developers has been the inconsistency of approvals, where one app may be rejected while another one with similar features is improved. Right now the approval delay is about two weeks - that's not bad. Your testing cycle should be longer than that. An extra two weeks should not be a big deal.
andreyf 17y ago
That computes to around 515 applications per day. Can't really blame them for taking too long, eh? Yes, you can. Apple could easily afford hiring 250 people to review applications - at 2 applications a day, they should be able to thoroughly test apps the same day they get them.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
GHFigs 17y ago
Would you mind explaining that? It isn't obvious to me.

e1ven 17y ago

Question 2: Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications? If the latter, please describe the communications between Apple and AT&T in connection with the decision to reject Google Voice. Are there any contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T that affected Apple’s decision in this matter? Answer 2: Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application. No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s decision-making process in this matter. -- I guess that is about as straight an answer as we could have hoped for on the issue. Apple, not AT&T, made the call.

jf 17y ago
As much as I'd like to believe this, it just doesn't feel right. Why didn't Apple respond in this manner sooner? Why did it take a strongly worded letter from the FCC for them to do so?
- e1ven 17y ago
  One reason may be that AT&T and Google's answers are also now public, so Apple wanted to have it's best face forward. http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983512/ATT-Response-to-FCC-iPhone-Letter-082109-as-Filed http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983512/ATT-Response-to-FCC-iPhon... http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983640/Google-Response-to-FCC http://www.scribd.com/doc/18983640/Google-Response-to-FCC Personally, I suspect that Apple would prefer that AT&T take the blame for as much as possible. From the tone of the letter, it sounds like Apple tries to shift blame onto AT&T where they can- For instance, Apple was responsible for the initial SlingPlayer rejection. Apple's response says that they rejected the app because it violates AT&T's TOS, but doesn't say that AT&T requested the rejection. Viewed in the context of the Google Voice rejection, this leads me to believe that Apple is happy to be able to point to the TOS as the reason for the rejection, rather than having to decide if they want to allow an (indirect) competitor to their iTunes TV store.
- jsz0 17y ago
  Apple's original reason for rejecting the application was that it duplicated functionality. This is almost exactly the same statement with more direct answers to specific questions.

relme 17y ago

"The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail." How does a 3rd party app prevent voicemail from being stored on the iPhone? I don't understand.

bvttf 17y ago
If you actually use Google Voice all calls go through it, and get sent to the GV voicemail, instead of whatever voicemail your phone uses. This would make the Visual Voicemail and SMS that ship with the phone useless.
- isharan 17y ago
  Yup, that's exactly right. But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Apple assumes that people will get confused. At least put some warning note or something. Though I'm sure that most people who download GV will be aware of what's happening...
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Then honestly, buy a phone you have control over.
  - apgwoz 17y ago
    > But honestly, what if I want this to happen? Are you serious? You couldn't possibly be smarter than Apple! And, since you pay $299+ to effectively rent your device, because of the DMCA, you're out of luck.
- relme 17y ago
  Oh I see, but does this "prevent" AT&T voicemail from being stored on the iPhone? (Which is what was said)... I mean you could use both the Google Voice Voicemail and the AT&T voicemail, right?

tel 17y ago

So yeah, sounds like Apple is more or less shooting straight. They're facing a huge problem (hundreds of submissions per day) and are trying to be decent about it. The Google Voice thing is annoying but not altogether unsurprising since no one is really pretending this is an open platform: Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its “Google-branded” user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices. In other words: just try it Google. You're going to play by our rules here.

apgwoz 17y ago
The funny thing about that is, you're still circumventing visual voice mail and all the other stuff they're complaining about by using the web interface, albeit in a much less convenient manner, which is obviously the point.

darkxanthos 17y ago

Pondering? Could they choose an any more lazy way to describe this process?

jimbokun 17y ago
"Pondering?" This seems to call for a parody video of Pinky and the Brain working as App Store app reviewers. (Apologies to readers too young to get the reference.)

sachinag 17y ago

Engadget has AT&T and Google's responses as well as quick commentary from their in-house lawyer: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/atandt-tells-the-fcc-it-had-no-role-in-removing-google-voice-fro/ http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/21/atandt-tells-the-fcc-it-h...

jackowayed 17y ago

>For example, on an iPhone, the “Phone” icon that is always shown at the bottom of the Home Screen launches Apple’s mobile telephone application, providing access to Favorites, Recents, Contacts, a Keypad, and Visual Voicemail. The Google Voice application replaces Apple’s Visual Voicemail by routing calls through a separate Google Voice telephone number that stores any voicemail, preventing voicemail from being stored on the iPhone, i.e., disabling Apple’s Visual Voicemail. This is misleading bullshit. First, they mention the "phone" icon right after complaining that GV is "replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail" to try to give people the false impression that GV is stealing the phone icon, which an app can't even do. Then, they try to claim that by cherry-picking calls and not letting the forwarded calls hit apple voicemail, they're "disabling" visual voicemail, which is just untrue. People could still call your iPhone's direct phone number, and visual voicemail would work juts fine.

GHFigs 17y ago
I think what they're trying to say is that they are abiding by the general principle of not allowing apps that duplicate built-in functionality, because they feel it might negatively impact the user experience of their product. This is a much more defensible (and I think probable) position than that they are singling it out for purely competitive reasons.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- jhancock 17y ago
  I think either/both could be the answer. I see no reason why the first outweighs the second.
CamperBob 17y ago
Apple must think the FCC is staffed by morons. They "don't know" how the application works, but it "prevents" existing iPhone features from working, and they need to "ponder it some more."

jsz0 17y ago

It shouldn't take a company with billions in revenue this long to ponder an issue as they say. It makes me wonder if there's a bit of a civil war going on inside Apple over the App Store. Apple initially approved the apps, then un-approved them, and is now leaving the door open to re-approve it. If I were an investor in Apple I would be concerned about the management structure around Apple's single most important product taking weeks to deal with the Google Voice situation that has evolved outside of a techie issue into the mainstream business press (WSJ)

jstevens85 17y ago
My guess: Apple has decided that they want to implement Google Voice, Skype directly into the Operating System. Just like Copy-Paste, you won't hear about it until a couple of weeks before the update.

gcheong 17y ago

So apple says they haven't rejected the application which in iTunes connect terms would mean that it is still "in review". So did the Google development team mis-read the status or is Google lying about the rejection or did the media jump the gun or is Apple just outright lying now or what? I wish I had access to their iTunes connect account to see for myself.

tvon 17y ago
Apparently Google never said the app was rejected, they only said it had not been approved (which was 6 weeks after it had been submitted).
- jzdziarski 17y ago
  Six weeks is not a long time to wait. I've had applications take 3+ months before they ever get a response. Google should stop acting so entitled and get in line like the rest of us.

lacker 17y ago

I'm surprised that Apple rejects 20% of all submissions. That number seems huge! We receive about 8,500 new applications and updates every week, and roughly 20% of them are not approved as originally submitted. No wonder complaints are so common.

lallysingh 17y ago
It's submissions, not applications. I'd expect the majority of the apps whose submissions were rejected to be updated and resubmitted.

jrockway 17y ago

So Apple is evil.

sahaj 17y ago

This is an easy to solve problem. Duplicate phone functionality: Let the user decide which number they want to dial from by changing the Settings on the iPhone and thus making the iPhone capable of making and recieving the phones calls from either AT&T and Google. Voicemail: Let both AT&T and Google store the voicemails at their own servers and push them down to iPhone. SMS issue: Solution is same as voicemail. Let the user decide which number they want to send the SMS from, and let both Google and AT&T deliver the SMS to the iPhone Messages app. This solution will allow for flexibility for both the users and the service providers.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]