Apple and AT&T Hate You.
Posted by Matt Kolowski on Thu, Jul 30, 2009
Ok, maybe not.
But they sure give that impression.
Ever heard of Google Voice? Pretend for one second that you're a very busy professional and you have an office, home and cell phone. And it's very hard for everyone to get in touch with you at the right place. So you get a new phone number;KL5-867-5309 through Google Voice. You can now give that number out, and have it forward to all of those numbers. You can even set certain contacts and groups to only ring certain phones. For instance, that friendly woman I met at the bar the other week will only ring to my cell phone. But when my boss calls that number, it will ring all 3 of my phones. When the CFO of my client that I spilled the cake on calls me, she can ring my office line(which I never answer). You can also forward text message to different phones too. Cool, huh?
If you want to be able to respond to your friends and co-workers using that number, you can download the Google Voice App for your Android or BlackBerry phone. That way you can send texts from your Google number and even make calls too. All over your existing network.
Want to be able to do that on your iPhone? Tough marbles. The app was out for a day or so and then Apple decided to pull the plug. There was even a third party app that was approved by Phil Schiller himself that was yanked after a few days. Sadface.
If you dig deep enough on the internets, it looks like AT&T is to blame. It's not the first time that the phone company has cut down a perfectly good app. They told Apple that the Slingplayer app, which streams television, could only use Wi-Fi, and not AT&T's 3G network. It looks like they're not that keen on another company coming in and copying the company that Apple partnered with. (They seem to be fine with it on their other AT&T phones, just not the one that is the face of their company.)
But lets say that it wasn't AT&T's doing, and it really was Apple's decision. Lets also say that instead of Google Voice, it was Microsoft Voice. Would you really approve an app from your main competitor that replicated features on your own phone? I'd give that a swift kick in the pants too. While I'm at it, I would complain about those pesky ads they've been showing bashing my laptop prices. Oh wait, they did that already.
Suck it up people, this is AT&Ts world and we're just living in it.