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Black Swan brings Google Voice back to the iPhone without the App Store

Filed under: iPhone, App Review

Google Voice on the iPhone has been something of a sore subject for me. If you need a full-recap of the whole sordid iPhone/Google Voice story see this story from December or more of our coverage. I even started a little site devoted to waiting for Google Voice on the iPhone called IsGoogleVoiceAvailableForTheiPhone.com.

It has been 6 months and 19 days since Apple claimed it had not “rejected” Google Voice but was “studying” it. During the course of Apple’s “study” the company moved to purge all existing Google Voice apps from the App Store.

There were three reactions to this from developers:

Google revamped the Mobile Google Voice page so that it looks a lot nicer on the iPhone.

GV Mobile released its app for free on Cydia for those who have jailbroken iPhones.

The folks behind Voice Central went a different route. They decided to make a web app instead. I’ve been using it in beta for the past few months, but as of today it has been released to the public as Black Swan.

The difference between the Mobile Google Voice site from Google and Black Swan is that Black Swan is stored locally on your iPhone, like Pie Guy from Neven Mrgan of Panic.com. Riverturn calls this a “weblication,” which is a fairly awful name, but apparently they aren’t the first ones to use it.

An obvious benefit is that Riverturn doesn’t need to wait for Apple to approve any changes, or wait for Apple to finish “studying” Google Voice. Simply go to the website and download it to your iPhone.

It works really well, much better than I had initially expected it would. You can easily access voicemails to listen to them or read the transcripts. The “Call Details” page offers a button to call or SMS them back either from your iPhone or through Google Voice. There’s a list of recent calls just like the regular iPhone app. Without question Black Swan is the best way to use Google Voice on your iPhone. If you pre-loaded this on an iPhone, I doubt most people would even realize that they aren’t using a “regular” iPhone app. It even works in landscape mode.

The only bump in the road for me was that it does not use the contacts list on my iPhone, but instead uses the one from my Google account. I presume this is necessary because they can’t access the Contacts list through a “weblication” and the good news is that you can setup the Address Book in OS X to sync with Google Contacts. The only ones who lose out are those who are using Google Apps, as a regular Gmail account is required for Google Voice.

There are two versions of the app available: a free, ad-supported version and a premium edition for $10/year payable either through Google Checkout or PayPal. Currently they are offering a discounted price of $6/year.

In addition to removing the ads, the Premium version also adds some features including support for Contact Photos, enabling/disabling “Do Not Disturb” and direct customer support. My general rule of thumb for things like this is to use the free version first to see if you actually end up wishing you had the premium features. Personally I found the ads were distracting enough that $6 seems like a bargain, especially knowing that Apple can’t yank the rug out from under them again. There is a 7-day trial of the premium version; just stick a reminder in iCal for +6 days from now to remind you to evaluate if it’s worth $6.

Who knows, maybe in a year’s time Apple will have finished “studying” Google Voice. Ha ha! But seriously, I don’t really expect that will ever happen. The good news is that as of today, most people will miss a native application a lot less.

TUAWBlack Swan brings Google Voice back to the iPhone without the App Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Should we continue using an app that Apple has rejected?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone, App Store

It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but not too long ago you’d hear about a new offering arriving in the App Store that would stir up a little controversy (the NetShare tethering app springs to mind). They’d enjoy some fanfare and a ton of purchases for a few days before being summarily removed, never to return and often without a thorough explanation from Apple. A relatively small number of users would retain possession of the app and would take a bit of pride in knowing that they were in the right place at just the right time to snag a copy of the app before it was yanked.

When I got the email from our very own Mike Rose regarding the release of GV Mobile, I was pretty excited. I’d been wanting to more fully adopt the Google Voice service, but had wanted a more iPhone-ish experience in doing so and GV Mobile seemed to have just what I was jonesing for. I paid the three bucks right then and, like The Giving Tree, was happy.

My adoption plan for Google Voice didn’t pan out quite like I’d hoped for a while after that. I’d use it occasionally, but I had trouble moving it from the number I gave to sales people to the number I gave to my mother-in-law. But, despite the absence of the app in the App Store, I still had a perfectly working copy of it on my iPhone, ready when I was – or so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago, I had decided that it was time to make Google Voice a more central part of my communication workflow. Having not launched GV Mobile in a while, I fired it up to reacquaint myself with the interface, capabilities, etc. Trouble is, I couldn’t authenticate with Google. I triple-checked my credentials but the app would just throw an error on launch and that was that. A couple of people on Twitter had mentioned having the same issue and a quick Google search informed me that, sure enough, the app no longer worked. Apparently, Google had modified the Voice API such that authentication now worked differently than it did when GV Mobile was written. Because the app no longer had Apple’s seal of approval, I had little recourse because there obviously weren’t going to be any updates to the app anytime soon.

Which raised the broader question – how heavily should we rely on “orphaned” apps? If they’re self-contained (which is to say, they don’t rely on any web sites or services to function properly), it probably isn’t a big deal, but if you’re a heavy Google Voice user and GV Mobile is how you got your work done, is it really a good idea to hang your hopes on an app that will likely never see any type of upgrade or bugfix release?

I can confidently say that this little hiccup has seriously cramped my plans for more completely adopting Google Voice. Is the same true for you? Have you experienced this type of dilemma with any other now-missing App Store purchases? Tell us about it in the comments!

TUAWShould we continue using an app that Apple has rejected? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I-O Data’s SEG Clip brings 1seg mobile TV to iPhone and PC

Softbank’s own 1seg tuner / battery charger was a novel idea, but leave it to trained assassins at I-O Data to really expound upon the concept and concoct something nearly worthy of relocating to Tokyo for. The new GV-SC310 SEG Clip is a relatively vanilla USB 1seg TV tuner that plugs into one’s PC in order to pull down some of Japan’s finest OTA programming. Once captured, users with an iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPod touch can download a TVPlayer app (shown after the break) that enables them to wirelessly watch whatever content they’ve stored. Think of it as TiVo for your iPhone, but only for those lucky enough to live in the Land of the Rising Sun. Not too shabby for ¥6,615 ($68), huh?

[Via Akihabara News]

Read – I-O Data press release
Read – Hands-on

Continue reading I-O Data’s SEG Clip brings 1seg mobile TV to iPhone and PC

Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Portable Video

I-O Data’s SEG Clip brings 1seg mobile TV to iPhone and PC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hands on (a little late) with GV Mobile for jailbroken phones

Filed under: iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnage, App Review

After writing about the GV Mobile situation on TUAW the other day, a helpful TUAW reader sent me a Google Voice invite (thanks Ian M! You rock!). I set up my account, hopped over to a jailbroken 3.0 iPod touch and downloaded a copy of the software via Cydia. I then copied it off the touch via sftp, signed it with my developer credentials and installed it through iTunes on a non-jailbroken iPhone to see what I’d been missing.

GV Mobile offers a pretty nice feature set. You can use it to set your Google Voice preferences, such as your preferred phone, so that when calls come through the right phone rings. That’s an awesome feature on-the-go. Yes, the same option is available at the Voice website, but I really like the simple interface GV Mobile offers to switch that number with just a couple of taps.

You can dial directly from the app out to other phones. You still use your AT&T minutes but you avoid having to navigate through the Google Voice command interface. When the call is over, you return to the application.

The SMS and voicemail features are also very nice, each offering a dedicated screen and easy to use interfaces. A lot of design thought went into the program and it shows, especially in these two options.

Unfortunately, since the application was ported for a jailbreak install, it would no longer remember my user credentials between sessions. Be aware this approach works fine for review but isn’t meant for a day-to-day bypass of the App Store, unless your Google username and password are trivial to type over and over again.

Despite the excellent number setting, SMS, and Voicemail features, I felt that most of the application features really needed to be integrated at the OS level, which they presumably will be in Google Chrome or Android. Apple provides its own OS-level telephony system and using this app for outgoing calls really felt more like work than time savings. Yes, the outgoing International rates are superb on Google Voice and the connection quality far exceeds that of Fring’s SIP-based services or Skype’s iPhone app. That said, I think the application could have benefited from a greater focus on the SMS/voicemail features with the telephone portion being pushed back in prominence.

The program does exhibit a few minor quirks. For example, when I tap on the call history tab, I’d prefer that it gave me a button to load that history from Google Voice rather than do so automatically and trap me, especially when I meant to hit another tab.

All said, I really did enjoy using GV Mobile. I think it has good functionality and must have been a really good App Store offering, while it was there. If you do have a jailbroken iPhone system to test it on, it’s certainly worth a spin. And if you find you use it, the application is donationware.

TUAWHands on (a little late) with GV Mobile for jailbroken phones originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Voice app GV Mobile ported to jailbroken iPhones, web app version in the works

So well-mannered, straight-laced iPhone users got a pretty big slap in the face yesterday by way of Apple’s (and AT&T’s, no doubt) total Google Voice rejection. Looks like jailbreakers are picking up the pieces, as GV Mobile developer Sean Kovacs — whose app was in the iTunes store for some time before being yanked yesterday — has ported the Voice client over to Cydia free of charge, although donations are gladly accepted. Even more interesting, but less concrete, Kovacs said he was already working on a web app version, possibly for submission to Palm’s app catalog. No word on the fate of GVdialer, an app that was also unceremoniously pulled, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it followed in similar footsteps.

Read – GV Mobile now on Cydia
Read – Sean Kovacs on Twitter

Filed under: Cellphones

Google Voice app GV Mobile ported to jailbroken iPhones, web app version in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can AT&T Handle The iPhone?

You almost have to admire AT&T’s consistency. They are consistently finding new ways to screw up almost daily now.

The latest issue involves the story we covered yesterday about apps using the Google Voice service getting pulled from Apple’s App Store. In a follow-up post, we didn’t exactly go out on a limb suggesting that it was AT&T and not Apple, that was responsible for the app being pulled. After all, word is that Apple VP Phil Schiller personally ushered one of those apps, GV Mobile, through the approval process initially. And today brings word that the apps were indeed removed at AT&T’s request. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber cites a “reliable little birdie” on the news, and we’ve just heard the same thing from a source as well.

While some found it very hard to believe that AT&T would be the ones behind something like this, given that it allows Google Voice apps on other phones on its network, those kind of contradictions are nothing new when it comes to AT&T with the iPhone. It’s the same contradiction that prevents the SlingPlayer iPhone app from working on AT&T’s network, while it works just fine on other AT&T devices. And the same one that is likely to cripple a Hulu app, if it ever gets released.

It’s well known that iPhone users consume a lot more data than other smartphone users, and so all of this seems to be a case of AT&T getting more than it bargained for when it signed the exclusive deal to be the iPhone carrier in the U.S. And while you might think that it would be a nice problem to have, a number of sources have indicated to us that the iPhone’s rapid growth is what is responsible for AT&T’s network degradation over the past several months, particularly in places like San Francisco, where iPhone usage is very high.

Now just imagine the service nightmares if AT&T permitted high-use/high-bandwidth services on the device. While it has been laughably slow to roll out its official tethering option for the iPhone, I shudder to think of what it will do to the network when it does become available later this year. Of course, AT&T is expected to charge and arm and a leg for the option, in a move that is undoubtedly, at least in part, to limit the number of users who will sign up.

And that’s what it has come to for AT&T with regards to the iPhone: Restrictions, restrictions, restrictions.

AT&T is constantly promising that network upgrades are coming, but Apple keeps selling more and more iPhones. While it would never admit it, I think it’s beyond time to wonder if AT&T can handle the exclusive iPhone partnership anymore. I’m not saying that the situation would be different had it been Verizon who got the exclusive deal, I’m simply stating what is on everyone’s mind: AT&T is simply not working the way it should be for customers who are paying close to, or in excess of, $100 a month.

Certainly, losing the exclusivity would hurt the company’s bottom line, and would hit the customer base pretty hard, but losing the iPhone exclusivity may end up being a good thing for AT&T. Good in that it’s network may finally work again.

Of course, AT&T is said to be working hard to extend the exclusive deal with Apple beyond next year. But that will be a nightmare for everyone involved. We have no shortage of sources, some very close to Apple, now telling us that as mad as all of us (the customers) are with AT&T, Apple is just as mad, if not more so. Apple can speak in platitudes all it wants during earnings calls about its partnership with AT&T — behind the scenes, trust me, they hear our complaints loud and clear.

But the one hot new wireless partner that is always mentioned, Verizon (since it is the biggest network and generally considered to be more reliable), looks like it is still playing hardball. This morning it officially announced that it would be getting the Palm Pre in early 2010, and it’s playing up its RIM partnership and its own app store. That’s what you call leverage in negotiating with Apple, which it is.

Still, even the iPhone on another, smaller GSM carrier, like T-Mobile, would undoubtedly help ease some of the strain on AT&T’s network. Again, AT&T would never admit it, but the era of iPhone exclusivity may have to be ended over sheer strain. And when that happens, we may just see AT&T approving of Google Voice apps and SlingPlayer apps on the iPhone again. AT&T has painted itself into a corner, and it’s fighting hard to keep itself there, but it’s simply not a viable option anymore for any of the parties involved (Apple, the customers, and even AT&T).

When I asked for a comment from AT&T on this latest fiasco, here’s what I got:

Nope – Apple is the one who can talk about their App Store.

That would seem to suggest that AT&T is saying Apple is in complete control over all of this. But we know that’s simply not the case. Is AT&T in denial? No, I think that they think we just can’t handle the truth. And I think that truth is that they can’t handle the iPhone, anymore.

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Google Voice iPhone app rejected, current GV apps lose connection with iTunes

Perhaps the big G spoke to soon when it said its new Google Voice service was coming to iPhone. First, GV Mobile developer Sean Kovacs relays a phone call he had with Apple where he was notified of his app being removed from the iTunes store for duplicating built-in iPhone features — an app that was originally and purportedly approved by Phil Schiller himself. Next out the door was GVdialer, and if you thought that was all bad, now comes word that Google’s official Voice app was flat-out rejected by Cupertino. Now it’s hard to say with certainty who’s to blame for these app rejections, but a good many fingers are pointing to the cellular carriers — and given AT&T’s previous statements about the SlingPlayer app, it’s hard to argue with that. For its part, the company hinted at finding a workaround via web apps, much like they did when Apple gave Latitude a cold shoulder — but doesn’t that feel just a little 2007?

[Via Apple Insider]

Read – Official Google Voice App Blocked from App Store
Read – GV Mobile is getting pulled from App Store
Read – Sean Kovac’s Twitter status on Schiller

Filed under: Cellphones

Google Voice iPhone app rejected, current GV apps lose connection with iTunes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core, And It’s Likely AT&T’s Fault

Earlier today we learned that Apple had begun to pull all Google Voice-enabled applications from the App Store, citing the fact that they “duplicate features that come with the iPhone”. Now comes even worse news: we’ve learned that Apple has blocked Google’s official Google Voice application itself from the App Store. In other words, Google Voice — one of the best things to happen to telephony services in a very long time — will have no presence at all on the App Store. If there’s ever been a time to be furious with Apple, now is it.

A Google Spokesperson has told us the following:

We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users — for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.

Of course, it’s not hard to guess who’s behind the restriction: our old friend AT&T. Google Voice scares the carriers. It allows users to send free SMS messages and get cheap long-distance over Google Voice’s lines. It also makes it trivial to switch to a new phone service, because everyone calls the Google Voice number anyway. Carriers have known about Google Voice for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that it began accepting new users, and there has still been some hassle associated with actually using the service. Smartphone apps like GV Mobile remove many of those hassles, which is why AT&T is keen to keep them off the iPhone (Google already has official apps available for BlackBerry and Android).

Here’s another testament to just how ridiculous this move is: GV Mobile’s developer Sean Kovacs says that the app was personally approved last April by Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing — the man who often takes the stage during Apple keynotes when Steve Jobs isn’t around. Kovacs says that Schiller called him to personally apologize for the delay in initially getting the application approved. Now, I’m sure Apple has laid out in its terms of service somewhere that you’re not allowed to mimic the iPhone’s functionality. But when you’ve got a blessing from that high up, that would seem like a pretty good indication that the application belongs in the App Store.

The thing that really bothers me about the move is that Apple is now actively stifling innovation. Google Voice is the kind of service that can actually have a positive impact on your life, and not in a frivolous, entertainment-related sense. It makes it easier to connect with people, and to manage those connections. Apple can point to the App Store’s 50,000 applications all it wants, but how many of them could truly be called groundbreaking? Are they really putting a dent in the universe?

All the more upsetting is that this comes from the company that Steve Jobs built. The company that once made record labels bow to a flat 0.99 pricing structure for years longer than they would have liked is now screwing customers because AT&T asked them to. They’re trying to limit what I can and can’t run on my mobile phone — a phone whose marketing is largely based on its extensibility.

Back when the App Store first launched there were some warnings about its walled garden approach — could developers trust Apple to maintain a fair marketplace? Until now, Apple has managed the store in a generally benevolent, if not somewhat incompetent manner, occasionally leaving even Google with egg on its face after unexpected delays. But now things are taking a turn for a worse. From a handicapped Sling app to blocked apps from Qik and Google Voice, it’s becoming clear that Apple is doing its best to keep many of the iPhone’s most game-changing apps away from users. Palm, if you’re looking for marketing material — take note.

Image by brankomaster.

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