Or if on a windows machine you can't install or use google services.

if mac said one day no google voice you would all praise jobs.

Am I missing something or this a really

But their not, so Google complains like a big baby ... or so it seems.

Apple is successful because they know what customers want. Obviously, the iPhone has made a huge impact on other companies who are trying to play catch up with the innovative and seamlessly integrated iPhone.

Good for Apple.

I think that the Android buffet place is starting to whet people's appetites.

that's what i was thinking as well, i just didn't explain it in as much detail.

the root reason is app rejection, but you're absolutely correct that this is how the switching would happen on a per person basis.

you know, that minority happens to include the developers who make all the nifty apps that make the iphone so whiz-bang-special, and the early adopters who bring in new customers with good word of mouth.

of course it is a minority, it just happens to be the same minority that lined up in front of apple stores which helped get the iphone on CNN in the first place.

See, that all depends on whether people know about apps getting rejected or not - the biggest outlets for that kind of news are the blogs, like TiPB and TechCrunch.

However, what I can see happening is a switch based on experience comparison - that is, Jane iPhoneuser sees Jimmy Crackberry using full Slingplayer on his Bold (i.e. "How are you watching TV on your phone?!"). Jane iPhoneuser asks Jimmy to get her iPhone to do that, to which Mr. Crackberry replies, "Sorry, Apple won't let you." If Jane wants that functionality, she will switch.

that leaves the app marketplaces are the primary differentiator between these phones. apple is clearly way ahead here, but if they screw up their app marketplace by rejecting the most interesting, powerful and useful apps, people will start to switch.

That consumer is who the "App for That" campaign is trying to reach. We are the minority. Walk up to an average teenage kid with an iPhone on the street and ask him what he thinks of the App Store approval process - he will probably respond, "App Store? Isn't that the thing on my phone? I didn't have to get approved for that..."

The truth is that the App Store, by Apple's and the average user's standards, is very open. You can do all kinds of neat stuff - calculate tips, call taxis, surf the Internet, go on YouTube - and it all works very well. There is, in fact, an "App for That".

My overlying point here is that Apple really doesn't really care that SlingPlayer is crippled, that Skype is WiFi only, and that Google Voice was rejected. It hasn't made CNN, their profits are not suffering (even withstanding the supposed legions of bloggers and technoristocracy switching to the Pre or Tour or whatever) and there is no mass outcry from their user base. Just from us, the minority.

I agree with your sentiment.

I made that point in the other thread, but realistically, I only half believe it myself.

Just because Apple lets SOME apps in does not mean they are obligated to let all apps in.

The right thing to do is get rid of the whimsy, and they IMPLY that there are clear standards in their response to FCC questions 5 and 6: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/

But careful reading of the answers shows that they don't follow their own standards, and there remain several unwritten rules, which Apple danced around and didn't answer at all. There is nothing in their response to #5 which mentions "duplication of functionality", an often used rejection reason.

I think Rene's point is, that if Apple can not, or will not state the rules clearly then they should just flat out state that each app is a judgement call and all decisions are final.

He's not advocating that policy.

He is throwing his hands up in despair.

FWIW, I agree with Rene's main point here -- Apple has the right to be restrictive, even draconian, but that if they so choose, they owe it to their customers to be up front about it. The whole "There's an App for That" campaign emphasizes (or at least implies) an openness that clearly is not there.

Any arguments that seem anti-Apple (or anti-Rene, for that matter*), are only that -- the voice of a user (and yes, frustrated developer) who dearly wants Apple to allow this platform to grow to its full potential, and who sees Apple's corporate culture threatening to strangle it just as it did the Mac a couple decades past. I just love my iPhone, remember the bitterness of trading in my old Quadra for a PC, and I fear Apple is making the same set of mistakes, dooming them to being a marginal player in the market they created and ruled in its early years.

• Dexter's post made me go back and re-read my initial one, written in immediate aftermath of reading (and being angered by) Apple's FCC statement. #4, in particular, was snarky, and Rene, I apologize for the tone. I am glad that it prompted you to revisit the earlier article, but I should have written it better. My apologies.

i want both the apple polished experience AND the ability to roll my own.

this already exists. i enjoy my apple laptop running OS X very much, the apple apps i run on it as well as many unrestricted 3rd party apps.

but i don't think apple needs to go even that far on the iphone. the AT&T 3G bandwidth restrictions placed on certain apps are annoying but understandable. tethering restrictions are annoying but understandable. they are understandable because bandwidth hogging apps could negatively impact other customers on the network, and limiting such apps is understandable.

but this anti-competitive, anti-google garbage isn't understandable. it just makes me want to switch phones when my contract is up.

sometimes you create your own killer, but sometimes you get so scared - paranoid that everyone is out to get you - that you create a boring, closed platform that everyone moves away from because there's more fun and utility elsewhere.

I'm done. I'm selling my 3GS and getting a Pre. ETF be damned.

Nintendo addressed in other thread.

Competing food to food, iPhone is still killing Android (though that may change this time next year). However, if Google takes over the phone system like they have the search system, it's a different game.

And I'm not saying Apple is right in their behavior, I'm saying if they intend to run things the way they intend to run things, just tell us up front so that if we still choose to buy them, it's on us.

Care to address the actual points?

1) As mentioned in other threads now, the Apple/Nintendo analogy is horribly flawed. Nintendo no longer runs the "Seal" program BECAUSE IT HURT NINTENDO IN THE LONG RUN, and, even when they did, they applied clear rules. Moreover, Nintendo never went so far as to keep "side scrollers" off the platform to protect their Mario franchise, the closest analogue to the standard Apple is applying here.

2) An Executive Chef picks the ingredients, prepares the food, and leaves you in piece. They should; it is their name on the marque. Gordon Ramsay screams at his Sous Chefs, fine. Apple screams at the diner who dares to want to mix their mashed potatoes with their chicken. Once you've sold me a plate of food, back off and let me eat it how I want to eat it. Otherwise, you are neither supermarket nor restaurant; you are an overbearing mother lecturing children at the table.

3) "Sometimes you create your own killer." I'll see your aphorism and raise you one. "Sometimes a man meets his destiny on the path he took to avoid it." The ONLY way to avoid that restaurant down the street from stealing your customers is to make better food. If your food is better than Sous Chef Schmidt's, nobody will order off his list. Chef Jobs apparently will not let his food go toe-to-toe with another's; that is telling.

4) For further support, you link to your own earlier post that puts Android in a bad light. Oh, wait -- the main thrust of that article was debunked, and several commenters have pointed it out and politely requested the article be updated, but it has not.