NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting Personal
I can't resist a quick comment on the iPhone vs. Android story. Viewed strictly from a techie standpoint, several things seem very clear. First, Android is an OS that can (and is, and will) run on a myriad number of different platforms from different manufacturers. The iPhone is a single device. The application OS environment of the iPhone is present in one way or another on the iPhone, certain iPods, and presumably the iPad. All made and controlled by Apple. The iPhone OS environment is closed source. The Android OS environment is open source. Apple attempts to tightly control -- it what only can be described as a bizarrely arbitrary manner, the applications that can run on the phone. Their recently leaked developer license agreement is a textbook model of almost paranoid top-down control over developers. Google allows anyone to freely develop and run any apps they wish on Android phones, and to distribute them in any manner (not just via an official app store as in the Apple model). The list goes on but the differences are stark. One final thing. When we see lawsuits over concepts like multitouch gestures, it's a sure sign of desperation. To me, it would be as if AT&T had tried to prevent anyone else from using their ordering of numbers on touch-tone phones (after all, Bell Labs reversed the row order top to bottom from the conventional ordering on adding machines and calculators, right? That's an interesting human factors story, by the way). By and large, the iPhone and Android have very different philosophical models, and while I obviously prefer the latter, that doesn't disparage iPhone fans. Let's concentrate on making people's lives better with these devices and systems, not continually turning the flow of technology into the Lawyers' Full Employment Act. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator - - - On 03/14 10:14, Lauren Weinstein wrote: > > ----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- > > Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:09:51 -0400 > From: David Farber <dave@farber.net> > Subject: [IP] Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting Personal > Reply-To: dave@farber.net > To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com> > > > > Begin forwarded message: > > From: dewayne@warpspeed.com (Dewayne Hendricks) > Date: March 14, 2010 9:24:38 AM EDT > To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy@warpspeed.com> > Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Apple's Spat With Google Is Getting Personal > > March 12, 2010 > Apple’s Spat With Google Is Getting Personal > By BRAD STONE and MIGUEL HELFT > <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/technology/14brawl.html> > > IT looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. > > Three years ago, Eric E. Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, jogged onto a San Francisco stage to shake hands with Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, to help him unveil a transformational wonder gadget — the iPhone — before throngs of journalists and adoring fans at the annual MacWorld Expo. > > Google and Apple had worked together to bring Google’s search and mapping services to the iPhone, the executives told the audience, and Mr. Schmidt joked that the collaboration was so close that the two men should simply merge their companies and call them “AppleGoo.” > > “Steve, my congratulations to you,” Mr. Schmidt told his corporate ally. “This product is going to be hot.” Mr. Jobs acknowledged the compliment with an ear-to-ear smile. > > Today, such warmth is in short supply. Mr. Jobs, Mr. Schmidt and their companies are now engaged in a gritty battle royale over the future and shape of mobile computing and cellphones, with implications that are reverberating across the digital landscape. > > In the last six months, Apple and Google have jousted over acquisitions, patents, directors, advisers and iPhone applications. Mr. Jobs and Mr. Schmidt have taken shots at each other’s companies in the media and in private exchanges with employees. > > This month, Apple sued HTC, the Taiwanese maker of mobile phones that run Google’s Android operating system, contending that HTC had violated iPhone patents. The move was widely seen as the beginning of a legal assault by Apple on Google itself, as well as an attempt to slow Google’s plans to extend its dominion to mobile devices. > > Apple believes that devices like smartphones and tablets should have tightly controlled, proprietary standards and that customers should take advantage of services on those gadgets with applications downloaded from Apple’s own App Store. > > Google, on the other hand, wants smartphones to have open, nonproprietary platforms so users can freely roam the Web for apps that work on many devices. Google has long feared that rivals like Microsoft or Apple or wireless carriers like Verizon could block access to its services on devices like smartphones, which could soon eclipse computers as the primary gateway to the Web. Google’s promotion of Android is, essentially, an effort to control its destiny in the mobile world. > > While the discord between Apple and Google is in part philosophical and involves enormous financial stakes, the battle also has deeply personal overtones and echoes the ego-fueled fisticuffs that have long characterized technology industry feuds. (Think Intel vs. A.M.D., Microsoft vs. everybody, and so on.) > > Yet according to interviews with two dozen industry watchers, Silicon Valley investors and current and former employees at both companies — most of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs or business relationships — the clash between Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Jobs offers an unusually vivid display of enmity and ambition. > > At the heart of their dispute is a sense of betrayal: Mr. Jobs believes that Google violated the alliance between the companies by producing cellphones that physically, technologically and spiritually resembled the iPhone. In short, he feels that his former friends at Google picked his pocket. > > [snip]RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress> > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > ----- End forwarded message -----