Google Latitude Arrives For the iPhone — As a Web App 195
An anonymous reader writes "After months of waiting, the Google Latitude social maps service finally arrived for the iPhone ... but thanks to an Apple rejection of the natively developed app, it's a web app. Says Google on their blog, 'We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone.' But it gets worse for iPhone users: 'Unfortunately, since there is no mechanism for applications to run in the background on iPhone (which applies to browser-based web apps as well), we're not able to provide continuous background location updates in the same way that we can for Latitude users on Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile.' Latitude has been sprouting new features lately and is an interesting take on social networking, but it looks like Apple is determined to ensure its users only get a seriously crippled implementation compared to the Android and WinMo versions. PC World put it less politely than Google did, saying, 'Google's new Latitude Web app for iPhone is so hamstrung that Apple customers may be wishing they had a BlackBerry or Android handset instead.'"
Apple needs to re-think some things (Score:3, Insightful)
Happy iPhone user here.
Although I couldn't give less of a crap about this particular application (it's pretty worthless overall, in my opinion). They do need to open up the API a bit or they are going to be passed by.
Frankly, I think they will. Steve Jobs isn't one to be outdone by competition.
Is there a way to filter out anything "iPhone"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another iPhone discussion that includes "apple will not allow [X]"... They are starting to bore and depress me as they are rather futile. The Apple fans will always blindly support and back the Apple position. People who disagree with the Apple position will always see things as they do as well. Neither side will win the other over. And if it did, Apple would just kill the iPhone project completely.
I have to wonder if there is ever anything "apple fans" ever complain or disagree with Apple about? I'd like to hear from Apple fans to know if they are actually independent or completely sold into the Apple view. I remember some faint complaints about the change to OSX but those didn't last long. The "classic" mode also raised a bit of ire and frustration as I recall. But is Apple "simply perfect?" Can Apple do no wrong?
Re:Look into the crystal ball (Score:5, Insightful)
And this relates to Apple limiting their own customers from being able to do things that the other 'big' phones can do how? Sounds like the one a step behind is Apple. This IS about features that are being rolled out for other phones that Apple refuses to allow on the iPhone, the only one playing catchup is Apple here and from the article it's less catchup and more sit on your ass and take a nap.
Re:Look into the crystal ball (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is there a way to filter out anything "iPhone"? (Score:0, Insightful)
If you don't like the way your Motorola Razr organizes contacts, or displays menu items, what can you do? Answer: nothing
If you don't like the fact your LG lacks a photo sync feature, what can you do? Answer: nothing
If you don't like the fact that your Blackberry Storm is still quite a bit buggy and desperately needs a firmware update, what can you do? Answer: wait and hope
If you don't like the way the iPhone does X, what can you do? Answer: jailbreak. Takes about 3 minutes. You can unjailbreak at any time. You can still buy and use iTunes store apps. It's all still there for you, but now you can download apps, and springboard managers, and whatever the hell else you want for the phone.
Jesus, what is it with the Apple haters? 100% freedom is about 5 mouseclicks away for any iPhone user, yet somehow "the man" is holding all iPhone users down, and you haters are here to tell us all about it, over and over, ad nauseum every fucking day. Get bent.
Re:Is there a way to filter out anything "iPhone"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another iPhone discussion that includes "apple will not allow [X]"... They are starting to bore and depress me as they are rather futile. The Apple fans will always blindly support and back the Apple position... I have to wonder if there is ever anything "apple fans" ever complain or disagree with Apple about?
You're committing the no true scotsman fallacy here. You define Apple fans as people who will support anything Apple does and then question if Apple fans will ever complain or disagree. There are plenty of people who like a lot of what Apple does, but still are happy to complain about what Apple does that they don't like. If someone is complaining about Apple here, how do you know if they're an Apple fan on other topics?
Apple has restrictive and problematic policies that make it difficult or impossible for some applications to work properly. This is certainly a problem. At the same time, those same policies are preventing the iPhone experience form being overrun with a million really crappy applications that degrade the normal user's experience and present huge security and performance problems. Those people complaining that Apple is not competitive when you look at a laundry list of features other smartphones have are completely missing the point. That's not why Apple products become successful. Apple is good at creating a good user experience for normal people and providing only the subset of features they can do well and which contribute to making the overall experience better. Apple wants long battery life, apps sandboxed from one another for security, and apps quality and security checked through a single pipeline. So far a lot of normal users really like that. When they can do other things well enough they'll add those, but they aren't going to rush to add new things just because other phones have them, if Apple doesn't think it will be an overall benefit. If you don't like that, you're probably not their target market.
P.S. I don't have an iPhone and am not really their target market either. I can just appreciate the value of what they do for normal users.
Flamebate-tastic (Score:2, Insightful)
but it looks like Apple is determined to ensure its users only get a seriously crippled implementation compared to the Android and WinMo versions.
I think a more accurate replacement for this line would be, "but it looks like Apple is unwilling to make exceptions to their developer agreement for Google. Unfortunately, this means a crippled implementation compared to the Android and WinMo versions."
This summary makes it seem as though Apple conciously went out of their way to cripple the app, instead simply being inflexible in it's design restrictions. Everyone and their cat has an opinion on Apples "1 app at a time" policy, and that's fine. Bash that if you want to, theres plent of anger and frustration over that to go around. However, intentionally misrepresenting the issue here is counter productive, and prone to start a flamewar at best.
Re:this should be the tipping point. (Score:0, Insightful)
"This should be the point at which everyone realizes that If a google app gets rejected, there's no point investing time and money into an iphone app.
Business isn't going to make a product which can't be sold."
"As of July 14, 2009, there are over 65,000 third-party applications officially available for the iPhone and iPod Touch on the App Store" [wikipedia.org]
Re:Is there a way to filter out anything "iPhone"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Apple needs to re-think some things (Score:3, Insightful)
Google and web apps (Score:5, Insightful)
This must be a tiny bit embarrassing for Google. They're staking their reputation on Chrome OS, an OS based on the principle that native apps have had their day, and that everything we want to do can be done perfectly well through web apps.
Yet everyone's describing Google's web app as "crippled" on the iPhone, solely because Apple wouldn't allow them to release the native version of it. Why did they even deem it necessary to write a native version in the first place?
Incidentally, is there something in the Slashdot terms and conditions which means the site has to get worse every day? I can't even interact with the comment box with my mouse any more, it just ignores all clicks as if there's another HTML element overlaying it. This is truly pathetic.
Re:Is there a way to filter out anything "iPhone"? (Score:2, Insightful)
My impression was that the appstore is already a morass of crap anyway (the crap in the store might not present resource or security problems, but that doesn't mean it is useful).
I agree with your assessment that Apple tries to sell a good experience, but from what I can tell, the Appstore suffers from the same plight as pretty much every freeware review site, inclusiveness is favored over editorial opinion (they sort of have to do this is they are going to sell the phones in a state that is locked to their store, but there really wouldn't be any big ramifications to letting Google offer their own store).
Re:Why wait for Apple? (Score:2, Insightful)
You are absolutely correct. There are absolutely no legal ramifications there. Feels great to live in a FREE country :)
What's up with Apple lately? (Score:4, Insightful)
Breaking iTunes compatibility on Linux and Blackberry and now they're crippling a Google app. What up? I'm sure there's a strategy here, I just can't see it.
I don't think trying to Balkanize their services and regulate iPhone users is going to ultimately be good for them or their user base. The iPhone user demographic may not have the same brand loyalty as the Apple faithful.
Beyond that I've always been impressed with Apple's execution...until recently. Instead of their usual suave and polish, always being ahead of the curve in packaging and style, lately they seem to be heavy handed and bumbling around a bit. Reactive instead of their usual proactive. Being reactive and heavy handed reminds me of Microsoft and even though I'm not a Mac fan myself I really appreciate what Apple did well.
I hope they right themselves and implement a service strategy with the same quality they've shown in other areas. If they start trying to make iPhones the AOL of cellular services, then Google and other providers are going to out-maneuver them with superior service offerings on a wider range of devices.
Maybe it's some flashback to the OS wars. Instead of a big market share and being the dominant player in the field, Apple is setting themselves up for a smaller but more loyal market share. Which could be either good or bad depending on how you feel about them tying their OS to their hardware.
Re:Apple needs to re-think some things (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a real balance out there. The reason for the tight control is to prevent damaging software, which is a good thing. However Apple needs to lay off on apps that compete with the phones defaults. Sure their stuff is good but it doesn't always quite feet the need where a new app could.
I personally think their process should just check to insure the app doesn't kill the phone or slow it down way to much. And that it is age related. But besides that, let the honest companies make software without worry that they will get denied just because of some app approver with a God complex.
Re:Is there a way to filter out anything "iPhone"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple fan since '91 here, and yea, I have some complaints.
No MMS on the iPhone. Video I don't give a rip about, but the lack of MMS is annoying.
The USB keyboards have always been too damned small.
The USB mice have always sucked from Apple, the ADB mice rocked though.
Moving power to the side of the MacBooks/Powerbooks also sucked.
Documentation has lacked for a decade or so too.
Re:Look into the crystal ball (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple does run apps in the background, just not apps that suck battery power. If every app you download wants to continuously run in the background then you're phone only runs for 3 hours, everybody complains what a piece of crap the iPhone is due to its bad battery life (which is rather low as it is, without actually trying to use all the apps apple displays on every commercial). They allow the ipod to run in the background as well as the clock, but those are two very low power programs. One reason they don't want IM apps in the background (before their push service) was the constant need to have the 3g/wifi antenna running all the time to poll for messages. Beside the display, the connectivity sucks the most juice.
Monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does Apple get away with that as an excuse when Microsoft gets sued billions of dollars for simply including a web browser or media player with Windows? At least in Windows you can install a different browser!
Re:No iphone? (Score:4, Insightful)
...Latitude is the 'service' where Google gets to track pretty much every move you make, right? I'm still at a loss why people are so enthusiastic over this.
Re:AT&T is likely crippling the iPhone (Score:3, Insightful)
Banning Latitude is almost certainly just another mundane example of carrier oligopoly abuse. The federal government needs to legislate to stop cell phone carriers from crippling phones.
Wrong solution!
The federal government needs break up the oligopoly to allow real competition to thrive. In a competitive market, we can have the features we want without the government having to decide what features those should be, which always causes problems. Verizon can strip wifi out of your phone because they know you're not going to switch to another carrier that supports phones with wifi. There are plenty of reasons why it wouldn't be easy for you to switch - and THAT'S the root of the problem.
Re:Look into the crystal ball (Score:4, Insightful)
How do Windows Mobile and Android manage running background apps perfectly fine? Does Apple have some inferiour programmers who cannot implement a proper scheduler?
Re:Monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Look into the crystal ball (Score:3, Insightful)
The iPhone is just a Darwin machine, which all of us here should know is based on FreeBSD. It, therefore, has a very good scheduler (one of FreeBSD's best features is that the system stays usable and responsive, seemingly no matter how high the load on the CPU is).
Apple's own software multitasks just fine, where it is useful to do so. They just don't let third-party apps run in the background.
My jailbroke iPod Touch (same hardware, more or less) works just fine as a multiuser Unix box, background apps and all. There's no compelling reason why I couldn't install Apache, Postfix, and BIND on it, and make a silly little Internet-facing WiFi-connected server (with a built-in UPS!) out of it, except for the fact that I'd rather do that on real hardware if I had a need to do so.
Re:What's up with Apple lately? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has always been like this. It's Steve Jobs' style.
Sometimes it's maddening. But my overall experience with Apple products is still overwhelmingly positive, which is why I keep buying and using them.
Apple doesn't care for "marketshare" as such -- they care about profits. So as long as they get the biggest profits, it doesn't matter what kind of marketshare they have. Indeed, they might have only a small marketshare, which is perfectly fine. That's why Apple refuses to compete at the lower end of the market.
Re:Apple will allow for the app (Score:3, Insightful)