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Google's new voice-powered search lets you search for things on your iPhone without tiring your thumbs. It also breaks Apple's developer agreement.  (Source: Peter DaSilva for The New York Times)
Google confirms it's in violation of Apple's iPhone mandates

Apple is known for ruling its electronics kingdom with an iron fist.  From killing Mac clones to trying to "brick" unlocked iPhones, the company has not been afraid to resort to extreme measures to maintain complete control and exclusivity over its products. 

However, when it comes to the App store and iPhone/iPod Touch developer community, Apple is presented with the unique and almost impossible challenge of trying to control is fiefdom against not one method of unlocking, but a myriad of different complex challenges to Apple's authority.

Google has become the showcase of this struggle when developers pointed that Google's hot new voice-powered search, available through the App Store, violated Apple's rules.  The Apple iPhone's developer agreement which comes with the Software Development Kit given to Google and others has many strict provisions, which are often broken by developers.  One of these provisions is that apps can only use the APIs provided in the SDK and cannot use "private code" -- Apple's unreleased APIs.

One of these APIs contains a function to start recording voice if the users face is in close proximity to the phone.  This is used by Apple's voicemail.  When Google realized the only way to implement its desired functionality was to get this function, it hacked into the iPhone's code and plucked it out.  After all, iPhone apps can use "private" APIs, they just aren't technically allowed to, and these APIs are undocumented.

Undeterred, Google succeeded in implementing the voice feature and in doing so violated its developer agreement.  CNet's Tom Krazit recently conversed with a Google spokesperson and he writes, "A Google spokesman confirmed Tuesday that Google Mobile uses undocumented APIs (application programming interfaces) in order to use the iPhone's proximity sensor to prompt a verbal search."

Google is not alone in this seemingly brazen act of defiance; blog site Daring Fireball's John Gruber writes, "Occasional use of undocumented methods in public iPhone frameworks is actually pretty common in third-party iPhone apps."

So what might Apple do?  Well some are expecting Apple may disable the function that powers Google's code.  However, this might break the app, one of the App store's most popular, and might risk losing the developer support of Google, which perhaps ironically has become one of Apple's most powerful partners.

On the other hand if Apple does nothing its setting another equally unappealing precedent -- that it will let some features live while blocking others, a move many will likely equate to favoritism.  Apple has shown no qualms with killing iPhone apps in the past, but in this case it has kept silent and not made a decision either way yet.

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eh?
By sprockkets on 11/27/2008 11:30:58 PM , Rating: 5
It be funny if apple decides to mark this app as rogue, remotely kill it, and if history is any indicator, people will complain about it, bad pr will happen, then apple will cave in and restore it.

The fiasco with the podcast app is enough for me to stay away from the iphone. Knowing them, they'll prevent the upcoming Core Player mobile from being on the phone, perhaps on the basis that it "duplicates" the built in media player.




RE: eh?
By astrodemoniac on 11/28/2008 3:58:53 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
The fiasco with the podcast app is enough for me to stay away from the iphone.


Apple is enough for me to stay away from the iPhone. That and the fact it's one of the most functionally castrated 3G smartphones in the market [-/


RE: eh?
By kristof007 on 11/28/2008 4:24:13 AM , Rating: 3
I am not an apple fanboy but the functionality of the actual 3G as far as wireless web browsing has gotten better and better with each firmware update. Also there were a myriad of dropped calls and those have been reduced to virtually nill (at least in my experience). So it might still be lacking fundamental features (such as multimedia messaging), it still is a nice phone.


RE: eh?
By astrodemoniac on 11/28/2008 5:16:35 AM , Rating: 5
I just don't see what's so 3G from a phone that cannot do video calls, can't send MMS (standard) and it's got a slower data rate than all the other "3G" phones.


RE: eh?
By jtesoro on 11/28/2008 9:18:03 AM , Rating: 5
No cut and paste! Can't forward SMS!! Can't send SMS to multiple recipients!!!

It can have the slickest, best-est, incredible-est apps and UI, but until those get fixed, it'll still be unusable-est to me.


RE: eh?
By HrilL on 11/28/2008 4:46:54 PM , Rating: 5
You can sms to multiple people now. they fixed that with one of the updates for the old iphone.

Your other 2 complaints are completely warranted though. I wish I could use those 2 things.


RE: eh?
By paydirt on 12/2/2008 9:35:40 AM , Rating: 2
at least from the start of iPhone 3G you could SMS to multiple recipients.


RE: eh?
By HrilL on 12/2/2008 2:57:57 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah. It is even better than my old phone. It maxed at 10 people the iPhone doesn't seem to have a limit that I am aware of. I sent "Happy Turkey Day!!" to about 30 people on thanksgiving without a problem.


RE: eh?
By HrilL on 11/28/2008 4:52:20 PM , Rating: 2
Yes Apple has been working hard at make the phone function correctly like it should have from the start. But what can you really expect from Apple. They beta test with their customers.

I am able to make calls on 3g now. Before I couldn't without everyone dropping after 20 seconds. The battery life with 3G on is a lot better. And the speed has gone up quite a bit. I've speed tested at up to 1.5Mb/s which is not bad at all. Its not the speeds they are getting in Europe but that is At&t problem.


RE: eh?
By AlexWade on 11/28/2008 9:12:25 AM , Rating: 5
Well, Apple can fix their bad PR with a "I'm Apple and I'm Google" commercial. Just imagine:

"I'm Apple,
and I'm Google.
Hey Google, what are you doing?
Just trying to subvert the rules."


RE: eh?
By sgtdisturbed47 on 11/28/2008 12:59:02 PM , Rating: 2
Apple alone is enough to keep me away from buying an iPhone, but the fact that the iPhone is simply an MP3 player that makes calls is also a good reason for me to avoid it.

I'm waiting to see how far the Google Phone goes.


RE: eh?
By BruceLeet on 12/3/2008 10:01:37 AM , Rating: 2
You're not seeing the full picture buddy.

They are not taking it offline due to the fact that it makes money, now what kind of business model does that?

;)


The big news here is that...
By GaryJohnson on 11/27/2008 9:31:20 PM , Rating: 5
The iPhone can tell when your face is near it.

Hopefully google will never find the hidden 'mind reading' API.




RE: The big news here is that...
By MonkeyPaw on 11/27/2008 10:41:17 PM , Rating: 5
It doesn't read your mind, it irradiates it in iSmug.


RE: The big news here is that...
By quiksilvr on 11/28/2008 4:19:11 AM , Rating: 3
"Though most cities have survived the smug storm, it seems that San Francisco has been destroyed and shoved up its own asshole."


RE: The big news here is that...
By technohermit on 11/28/2008 12:59:59 PM , Rating: 5
From what I gather, they like it that way.


RE: The big news here is that...
By quiksilvr on 12/1/2008 2:18:56 AM , Rating: 2
WhataFurBurger: Just like you like it!


Undocumented APIs
By AnonymousDeveloper on 11/28/2008 9:26:03 AM , Rating: 3
I am a tiny third-party iPhone developer. I used an unreleased API in my released application, and my application was accepted.

There is an undocumented function called _imageScaledToSize: interpolationQuality: that resizes an image in one jump. The alternative was something like 20 lines of code I didn't understand. I used it, it worked perfectly, and nobody complained.

Just in case Apple wants to retalitate for some strange reason, I'm not using my name, but figured this would be of interest. I don't think Apple is strict about things like this as long as the use is not malicious.

Of course I do wonder why this isn't a regular API function since it is very useful and there doesn't seem likely to be anything unusual or dangerous about it.

D




RE: Undocumented APIs
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 11/28/2008 10:31:22 AM , Rating: 5
Well, I think the most ironic answer to all of this is that Microsoft gets sued for having any undocumented API calls to Windows that would give Microsoft Software teams an advantage over third party developers on the platform. What Apple is essentially admitting to doing the same thing Microsoft is accused of doing on Windows by the EU. Interestingly while Apple is not a PC monopoly, they have been considered one in the music player industry. Depending on how you classify the iPhone as a Phone or Music Player, you could stretch it to include that as well, and thus bring penalties against them much like Microsoft.


RE: Undocumented APIs
By HrilL on 11/28/2008 5:00:03 PM , Rating: 3
That is a very good point. Hopefully the European Union will take it up since our anti trust system is so deeply flawed I don't think apple will ever get in trouble. I don't see how they can currently get away with blocking applications that "duplicated functionality" Hiding APIs is one thing but blocking out competition completely is another. Apple needs a legal spanking.