Saturday, September 25, 2010

Official Google Voice app coming to iPhone soon?

My bet is that Google isn't going to bother. Apple took too long playings its silly little games. Google had likely written their first version of the app in a fairly simplistic form. It was for a prior version of iOS. Now that the Google Voice app for Android is deeply integrated with the system and has several updates and enhancements, anything released for the iPhone now would seem primitive and clunky when compared to the Android version.They'd probably want to enhance it and possibly rewrite some parts of the code that have been sitting around for a while, unused and rejected... but at what cost? That Apple might reject a later version down the road for being "too integrated"?Right now, if you want to write a game or fart machine for the iPhone, it's a pretty safe bet. If you want to write something for the iPhone which really changes some core functionality of the phone (for the better), you're playing a risky game. Any amount of resources (time or money) you put into the application can be lost at the whims of Apple's future plans for their policies. It's just too much risk for what it's worth.At the time where the iPhone was the clear #1 and Android was the risky bet, the risk might have been worth it. Now, however, although the iPhone is still #1, it is losing steam and Android appears to be the safer bet more and more these days.Google might have felt it needed the iPhone back when it tried releasing the Google Voice app the first time. Now, it's not so much of a "need" anymore and is more of a "like to have".I'm sure that *eventually* the Google Voice app will be released for the iPhone, just for the sake of the users. However, I don't think Google is going to be falling all over itself to rush an app to the iPhone. Besides, there are already some worthwhile third party apps on the store now. Let *them* take that risk.

GOOGLE GOOGLE FORMFACTOR FISERV

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