Apple has now weighed in with regards to AT&T’s announcement today that they would be changing their policy and allowing VoIP (Voice over IP) to operate over their 3G network (something they’d previously asked Apple not to allow). When reached for comment, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told TiPb:

We’re very happy that AT&T is now supporting VoIP applications. We will be amending our developer agreement to get VoIP apps on the App Store and in customers’ hands as soon as possible.

Hopefully this means users on other carriers, liberated by AT&T along with the rest of us, will now also get VoIP over 3G apps. If any international carriers do decide to ban VoIP themselves at this point — yeah, we don’t see that going over well at all.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris has sent TiPb a response to the now fully public Google FCC disclosure, which Dieter posted earlier today.

“We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter. Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google.”

So it’s either Apple-said/Google-said, some broken-telephone (the irony!) between the two companies, or a mix of both?

Regardless of the “was it rejected or is it still being studied” tempest, Google Voice and Google Latitude remain absent from Apple’s App Store, and all companies seem to agree on the reason: they duplicate what Apple considers to be core functionality of the iPhone, and that’s something Apple currently doesn’t want to see duplicated.

Since it’s Apple’s product, that’s their prerogative (especially if they consider Google competitive in this space), though if Google Voice and Google Latitude are features a user needs, they’re not going to consider an iPhone. When/if that becomes a huge portion of the user base, Apple may have to reconsider. Either way, Google is still going ahead with WebApp versions for now and everyone else is just going to have to wait and see..

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Updated for clarity: This means that released firmware, like 1.x up to 2.1 is no longer covered by NDA, but un-released firmware, including the current iPhone 2.2 Beta 1, is still under NDA. Okay to talk about what was and what is, but not what will be, b’okay?

Hey, maybe the full on Dieter-rant from the last Phone different podcast finally got to them?

While issues of clarity in the rejection progress and app demo/refund handling remain, this will certainly go a long way towards not only easing the burden on developers, but restoring some of the lost luster (and ill will) Apple has garnered from the developer and blogging community as of late.

What do you think? First step? Giant leap? Or drop in the bucket?

Dieter’s already brought us up to speed on the nasty security bug Gizmodo found in the iPhone’s current 2.0.2 firmware (which John Gruber points out Apple already fixed once for firmware 1.1 way back last year — yikes!). Now Macworld (via MacRumors) reports that Apple has taken the unusual step (for Apple) of confirming the upcoming fix:

“The minor iPhone security issue which surfaced this week is fixed in a software update which will be released in September,” Apple representative, Jennifer Bowcock, said in an email to Macworld.

So add security to the list of what Apple’s now promising, along with 3G connectivity and App stability, for the next update.

Will that update be the already in beta 4 iPhone firmware 2.1? Kevin Rose has rumored it for September 6th, but we’ve already seen push notification fall off the feature list. With more bugs to fix, will Apple pull a Vista, or settle for a less ambitious, more urgent 2.0.3 in the interim?

I’m favoring the 2.0.3 at the moment. I’d rather stability over features at this point. Nail 2.0.x, then move on. What’s you preference?