Hacker News Reader

Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

If the Vonage app doesn't replace the native dialer, then it's certainly possible that it could have been approved while GV hasn't been.

Remember: it's not an objection to VOIP in general. It's an objection to the replacement of core iPhone functionality.

EDIT: Hey everybody. I'm just repeating what Apple said. The GV announcement said nothing about VOIP, it just said "replacement of core functionality." Thanks.

View on HN

Remember: it's not an objection to VOIP in general. It's an objection to the replacement of core iPhone functionality.

Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, but I would have thought that the piece of software in the iPhone that makes it usable as a phone would be closer to "core functionality" than the dialer. VOIP is definitely treading on the former, though how it deals with the latter is obviously a question of interface rather than of protocol.

Conceptualizations of what constitutes core functionality in products and software have become increasingly shallow and less feature focused. I don't know if this is because of a somewhat less "business" driven mindset, or because Apple is absolutely brimming with UI freaks, but the mentality seems to at present be that the imitation of a dialer in software rather than the actual ability to make calls is what is most important to "protect".

I appreciate Apple's attempts maintain integrity in the UI interface but their hysterics over something like this make me wary.

That's not true.

AT&T has always limited iPhone VoIP applications to WiFi to cripple their usefulness. They just announced today that they were extending VoIP apps to 3G, most likely due to pressure from the FCC.

Also, you can't replace the native dialer or any core functions on the iPhone. Google Voice implemented its own dialing interface and was rejected for duplicating the built-in dialing and voicemail functions.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ATT-Extends-VoIP-to-3G-bw-7675...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_voice#Rejection_from_iPh...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com