Cool Beans

Recent rejection of the official Google Voice application from the iTunes App Store has prompted me to write something that's been grumbling in the depths of my soul. (Well, not quite that deep, but still, grumbling.)

Google has, once again in their spirit of giving paradigm-shifting technology, given away for free a telephony system called Google Voice. Basically it's a service that consolidates all your varying numbers into a single number. Not a new idea, but with things like voicemail transcription, and the long-wanted but hardly ever implemented phone blocking/screening features, I must say it's far and away one of the most useful free telephony services ever to be given to the eager public.

Android (an open mobile operating system created by Google) developers and Blackberry developers have already released applications to utilize this great system natively on supporting phones. But the question always comes up, "When is the iPhone app going to be ready?"

This is a sticking point for me. A thorn. Yes, the iPhone is unbelievably amazing. Usability of the OS alone makes it stand out as the ultimate take-everywhere device. If I am not at my computer, I am probably holding my iPhone if not thinking about holding it. It is undeniably a market leader, the standard by which all are compared.

But there's the despised side to Apple. It's their controlling side. They've played it well by having super-secret product development, generating buzz and causing a frenzied cult following for anything latest-greatest to come out of their Chinese factories. They've kept their design elements uniform, and their development environments very well-integrated; they've controlled their features by constantly simplifying, doing away with the superfluous (what they deem superfluous) and forcing users to realize that they don't need things like LPT ports, PCMCIA slots, and Firewire 400. And so with these undemocratic decisions, still keeping a pulse on usability design somehow, they've managed to provide us with products we admire and covet, even to the point of forsaking features we used to really like.

This, of course, has nothing to do with Google Voice, which merely hopes to give you free calls and better services than AT&T, but Apple has pulled the plug on any apps that use this service, citing duplicated features, and arbitrarily rejecting something we all could really (and do want to) use on our take-everywhere device.

It's really time for Nokia and Android to step up. I wanted to write a more comparative post about the pros and cons of developing on each platform. Having hammered out code in each environment, I've come to appreciate and dislike some things about each. But with this latest F-U from Apple, I'm just going to get to the gist of competitors:

• Android needs to fix its garbage collection so the performance doesn't suck so much.
• Android needs a UI guru.
  

I mean, it's a great system. A pleasure to write in (albeit a bit legacy Java-like), and best of all, it's so free! And I don't mean let's go download it for free, free-- but free as in code what you like free. With some terms-of-service exceptions Android development involves no App Store bonehead who is going to axe your months-of-labor baby because it competes with their existing official app or irks the carrier. As for UI, let's face it. If I'm dragging a tab with my finger, and it freezes for a half-second, then jumps and makes me select something else accidentally, that's just plain annoying. Annoying to the point of not wanting to use the phone anymore. It's that much of a deal-breaker.

So no matter how great the OS is, if it doesn't perform in a usable way, it will ultimately be set down in favor of what Just Works™.

• Nokia needs to quit meandering in J2ME and linux wannabe obscurity (and S60 inaccessibility), set out some  welcoming development tools and, once again, design awesome usability.

Thing about Nokia S60 (and Win) development is you have no real crazed following of "for fun" side-project-turned-startup developers. I try to find programming resources in these areas, and they don't hold up a candle to the deluge of iPhone-- and now Android-- dev resources. User groups are easy to find in those other non-Nokia platforms, too.

Nokia and Blackberry’s hardware and carrier focus has thus far led to lack of investment/interest/capability in software SDK design & developer support.

Diesel McFadden in response to an article by Christine Gonzalez

Inaccessibility, and developer pain, are not a ways to build a kickass mobile OS. I'd really like to see this major mobile player kick developer-friendliness up a few notches and quit being so arcane.

The more Apple does stuff like this, the more it is a loud call, a superb opportunity, for other competing OS providers to come up with a superior user experience and draw more into their fold. What better way to create a following than to have thousands of determined coders evangelizing for the greatness and intuitive ease-of-use of your products.

Apple can also see this as an opportunity to lighten up, and to let people have what they want even if it doesn't agree with Apple superiority. But I have a feeling that might be asking too much.