Murphy Mac

Should the FCC Force Apple to Stock Competitive Products in Its Own Store?

@ jmmx

Google Voice is not VOIP. The calls are completed by making an outgoing voice call or receiving an incoming voice call. If you're using Google Voice to talk to someone using your mobile phone you are consuming your cellular voice minutes. It's not "freeloading" as you suggest.

SMS is another story. Google Voice can be used to completely bypass AT&T for SMS in the U.S. You don't need the app to do this, but it makes it easier and more convenient with an app.

Should the FCC Force Apple to Stock Competitive Products in Its Own Store?

Some of your points make sense with regard to Apple, but not with regard to AT&T. AT&T is one of four carriers who control approximately 90% of the U.S. market.

A Google Voice app is mostly a threat to AT&T's SMS business, as it allows sending and receiving of free SMS messages. Goodbye twenty dollars a month for unlimited texting. Indirectly, Google Voice as a whole is a threat as people can use their landlines for free long distance instead of chewing up cellular minutes.

With that in mind, I'm happy to see the FCC poke a stick at this. I doubt anything will come of it. But maybe someone besides Senator Herb Kohl will question why the carriers have established twenty cents as the cost of an SMS message when industry experts claim the actual cost is negligible. That price points to collusion by the monopoly carriers.

AT&T might rethink their whole stance: Google Voice could make using voice services bearable again, a goal the carriers have not lifted a finger to achieve. Voice minutes are hugely profitable, especially when the plans require purchasing more minutes than someone wants to use. I suspect Google Voice will lead to me using voice minutes more often. It would be interesting to know what AT&T thinks of that possibility.

Does Palm's Pre Have Anything on the iPhone or Storm?

I don't think Paris Hilton was the driving force behind runaway iPhone success. It'll take a lot more than shots in People Magazine to compete with iPhones and Blackberries.

iPhone is just getting started. Do you know how many times analysts declared the iPod space was saturated - nobody left to sell them to? Wrong quarter after quarter. Repeat coming with iPhones.

Blackberry users rival Apple fans in terms of loyalty. Not quite as loyal - but it would take a lot for them to consider switching to Sprint for a device that may or may not be part of a company (Palm) on the verge of bankruptcy.

Microsoft's Mobile Misfortune

MS is easily distracted. They've been late for three parties:

Browsers.
Search n' Cloud.
Mobile

I think their late arrival in mobile will underscore their inability to innovate and mark the beginning of a steady decline.

NT was an incomplete copy of UNIX, (read Show Stopper) Zune is an uninspired copy of the iPod.

Nobody has ever used a significant percentage of the features MS forced us to buy in overpriced Office. Office isn't a must-have anymore - alternatives are aplenty. Windows is far less important than it was ten years ago.

If someone developed serious competition for Exchange MS would really be up against the ropes.

The Ongoing Smartphone Revolution

Robx couldn't be more right. You provide virtually zero basis for your claims. It would help if you conceded that maybe, just maybe, the iPhone has more than marketing to account for its success.

This article is little more than a user comment on a gadget blog.

Why don't you go write it again and try a little harder. I'm interested in why I should want a Google phone instead of an iPhone. I'm also interested in why a non-technical user would be better off with the Google phone.

And have an editor read it before you post it.

Microsoft's Office for the Web Will be Ready No Time Soon

Yeah - often Apple does announce things and then they're ready today. But a lot of people wouldn't call it a benefit to consumers. It's hard to plan big ticket purchases without a road map.

There's more than just the buzz to benefit Apple: You unwittingly buy a product at the end of its lifecycle and can't resist the urge to upgrade it immediately. Apple gets two sales where there might have been one.

What Should Google Do Next?

Google is taking all the visions Bill Gates had ten-plus years ago and making them a reality. How did MS miss this boat??

Buy, Sell or Hold: Apple's Cohesive Strategy to Survive and Thrive

RLLH -

I think the netbook market would be better served by a tablet twice the size of an iPhone. More portable.

Netbooks could catch on, but I think it's more of a fad or an in-between product to tie us over to tablets that truly deliver. For what you describe, even a netbook is overkill. And it still runs Windows. Yes - some run linux. That's a whole other set of issues for non-technical users. Unless it's TOTALLY built and presented like an appliance.

That said, for Apple to ignore the netbook would be a mistake.

Buy, Sell or Hold: Apple's Cohesive Strategy to Survive and Thrive

JonT is right. Twice.

Further, Mac bashers love to say they won't pay for a pretty case. They condemn a new advance like the unibody. If Apple didn't make these advances, nobody would. These people remind me of the patent office guy who said everything had been invented already.

I'll pay for a unibody. It adds value. So does a magport power connector. So does a built in camera and a magnetic latch that's not as vulnerable to failure.

Stupid you say? You might change your mind when you're without your computer for 3 days while the latch is repaired.

Many Mac bashers haven't used a Mac. And again, the Mac is far from perfect. But its user experience - for the way most people use a computer at home - is far superior to Windows. Steve Ballmer will tell you that too.

Buy, Sell or Hold: Apple's Cohesive Strategy to Survive and Thrive

Horacio -

I really enjoyed your description of the windows user experience, especially with regard to something like checking movie times. Leaders like Gates are always looking ahead to a day when it really is convenient to check movie times on a computer - they even think it's here. Sadly, it's not here because the computer takes over and does things like update AV software and prompt with questions you don't want to be asked - interfering with your task.

Computers seem to know when we want to check one thing, or worse yet, print one thing, before we run out the door. Which plays into the hand of the iPhone.

The iPhone lets you check as you walk to the car. And for tasks like weather, movie times, a glance at email - it beats opening a laptop. With the iPhone in your pocket there's no need to print.

I think about the user experience you describe all the time, how computers still fall just short all these years later. Apple is better than MS in this regard, but not perfect. Many times I've tried to sync an iPod before running out the door. Many times I've been punished.

You hit the nail on the head with your description of real-life user experience. Apple and MS still have plenty to aim for.

Can Anything Displace the iPhone in Consumer's Eyes?

I agree with comment #1 - Peter Cooper. It's so easy to forget who really makes up the user base. Most iPhone customers are far more interested in the fact that it now comes in white than whether or not it's open. Eavesdrop on some conversations in the Apple Store and you'll know, they don't even know it's NOT open, or what open is.

Android will appeal to the linux boys. But the iPhone has the Apple marketing machine behind it. Macs are stealing market share from Windows at an amazing rate, not linux. I'd expect Android to experience the same thing.

Did iPhone Sales Pass 10M Already?

erstwhile said Apple is TRYING to morph into a retailer. Hello - they generate more revenue than any other retailer. How long have the others (Gap, Sony, Bose, J. Crew) been at this retail game? How many other PC makers have tried retail and failed spectacularly?

Apple is a tiny ball right now, but it's a snowball Mr. erstwhile. This blip will pass....

9 Feature Comparisons: G1 vs. iPhone

Your feature by feature list omits the phone's standard 3.5mm headphone jack. Because it doesn't have one!

Half-baked phone.

Android: It's No iPhone, But It's Close

Did you actually LISTEN to music on it? Because this G1 phone doesn't have a standard 3.5mm headphone jack included. Oops.

This thing is still totally experimental, not even a blip on the iPhone radar screen. (no, iPhone doesn't have radar. yet.)