siglesias

A possible workaround would be a cumbersome two-way permissions system ("can app X access app Y?" [and, for purposes of apps asking the AI to ask follow-up questions] "can app Y access app X?", ad nauseam), but this is something of an impractical solution, because the AI would need to be granted permission every time the user installs a new app to access that app.

So yes, Apple makes it the job of the OS. This is a design compromise that mitigates the risk that the user is overburdened with confirmation dialogs, choice dialogs, and/or permission dialogs. And for an AI that just works, I would say this is pretty key.

Edit: And this is to say nothing of profits.

I've been observing people using phones in the wild and anecdotally a frequent one handed use case is while eating, which, if you're eating alone or on the go, is a really good time to use it. I've seen a lot of big phone users forced to get their lunchtime emailing, checking, texting, etc, out of the way before eating, while lots of iPhone users can get their things done while they eat. Why hobble yourself for .3 inches?

Being an iPhone user myself, it's kind of strange to think that almost any time I want to do something with my phone that I basically need to be handcuffed to it: brushing my teeth, holding onto a rail in the metro, drinking a cup of tea, referencing something while cooking, holding a bag, writing something down, etc. Is the extra real estate worth the forced modality?

Now, placement is a different issue and we can argue why these designers chose to put them where they put them. But it has nothing to do with the button being hardware versus software.

Edit: Appears to have been corrected, but point still stands.

B doesn't follow from A. First off, it's untrue that nobody else had the software expertise to challenge Apple: there's Microsoft, RIM, Palm, plenty others in 2007. Apple had 1% of the market and no monopoly. But let's pretend that none of that is true and that Apple did come to dominate the market. The dependence was mutual, and Apple would have every reason to fear dependence on Google as visa versa. This should have rationally encouraged cooperation. Apple's only alternative for search and web services would have been Microsoft, even more of a direct competitor (then, in 2007), and one to both Apple and Google at that! Undesirable.

Second, Google's handing out bullets to its competitors like candy and is hurting its ability to lock down mobile. In China, Baidu has ripped out core Google services from Android and has replaced it with Baidu services. Amazon has done the same thing for Fire and replaced Google with Bing. If Facebook were to ever build a phone, it wouldn't have to look much farther than Android. And of course Google on iOS isn't long for this world.

Third, the dependence on a single dominant player still exists. Samsung owns the Android space and can hold Google integration hostage for all kinds of goodies. It's pretty much back to square one re: Apple, except Samsung has OS alternatives (including forking Android [hey, who made S Voice?]), where Apple didn't have Google alternatives. HTC is in the dumps and Google is in a tough spot with privileging Motorola, its new baby, for fear of angering aforementioned Samsung.

So no, in short, it's not clear at all to me that this was a rational move.

Apple either sends users and data to the belly of the beast that decided to complete head-on with them (making Android better, by the way) or figures out how to do this stuff themselves and offers beta products. I would say that Apple doing the latter given Google's aggression makes a lot more sense than Google's aggression in the first place.

And I disagree with you about what the balance of power would have been in a hypothetical Apple-Google cooperative partnership. What were Apple's alternatives if Google were to withdraw as a backend services partner--perhaps a direct competitor in phones? That doesn't seem too palatable. Doing their own backend services? How's that working out for Apple today?

Seems like a hell of a good reason to me.

Was entering the mobile market a bad thing? was it not allowed? is it for Apple alone and no one else's?

Google and Apple had a symbiotic partnership, like WinTel, which dominated for the better part of two decades. Microsoft stayed out of chips, Intel stayed out of doing an OS. If one decided to take 100% and get into the market of the other, it would create a nasty situation where both were forced out of their comfort zones to make crappy stuff. It would break trust. And yet that's exactly what Google did with Android: it had a partner that didn't have search or web in its DNA—and thus an ideal partner—and decided it could take the partner's market. Pardon the teen parlance here, but that's a little backstabby. Apple's indignation, in my view, is entirely justified.

All of this in addition to users reporting erroneous results.

1) http://www.apple.com/hotnews/openiphoneletter/

2) http://www.applegazette.com/dotmac/apple-issues-mobileme-apo...

To name a couple. Let's take a deep breath. It's going to be okay.

So we're going to pretend that market forces didn't cause this?

The miniaturization of electronics is arguably one of the most significant trends of our technological era. Many of the great science fiction writers of the 50s and 60s, despite getting so much right, in large part missed miniaturization. What once filled rooms was reduced in the 80s to what could sit on a desk, and now to what can fit in our pockets. So making a thinner, taller phone is not innovation? Why?

I know that Apple isn't popular around these parts, but let's at least have an intelligent conversation about specifically what we find fault with instead of ranting and rage-upvoting incoherent rants.

http://youtu.be/j_QtUH_zG4U