PC World - Big Brother is a little late in arriving, having been expected by 1984 at the latest. But he has shown his face twice recently in the world of mobile technology: First, in the mass removal from Amazon Kindles of George Orwell's 1984 (oh, sweet irony) and Animal Farm e-books. Second, when Apple banished all Google Voice-related apps from its App Store--including one excellent app, GV Mobile, which Apple had approved and which had been available in the iTunes store since early May.
Amazon's move was by far the more outrageous of the two. If you'd purchased Orwell's e-books from Amazon's Kindle store, you'd have awakened one fine July morning to find that an entity more powerful than you had spirited those e-books away in the dead of night, like dissenters in a totalitarian regime.
Okay, so that metaphor is a bit over the top--but so was what Amazon did. Amazon says it took this drastic action because Orwell's publisher changed its mind about distributing the late author's works as Kindle e-books. People who downloaded Orwell books to their Kindles received a refund--and Amazon CEO Jess Bezos ate a big slice of humble pie after the public hue and cry. But the point from this escapade was clear: Through digital rights management, your ability to read, view, listen to, watch, or use a digitally downloaded product can go poof at any time.
GV Mobile Missing in Action
And then there's the case of GV Mobile.
About a month ago, I paid $3 to install developer Sean Kovacs's excellent GV Mobile app from Apple's iTunes store on my iPhone. The app made it possible to use many of Google Voice's features on my iPhone, using an iPhone-like interface.
GV Mobile first appeared in the iTunes store in early May, says Kovacs. He offered both a basic free version and the $3 version. But then, on July 27, Kovacs says he received word from Apple that it was removing GV Mobile from iTunes because it duplicated features inherent to the iPhone. Apple has sent into Siberia other Google Voice iPhone apps, such as VoiceCentral, and has rejected Google's own Google Voice app. It's not a stretch to suggest that AT&T, which is the exclusive U.S. wireless service provider for the iPhone, was none too pleased with Google Voice apps potentially taking revenue out of its pocket.
If you already have GV Mobile installed on your iPhone, it should continue to work as before, Kovacs says. (And indeed it does, at least for me.) But for how long? Apple has the technical ability to remotely disable apps on individual iPhones, having added a "remote kill switch" to the iPhone 2.0 OS--though not many people outside Apple seem to know exactly how it works or what it does. Steve Jobs has said its purpose is to allow Apple to retroactively disable an app that is malicious or objectionable in some way.
Free Insider GuideCopyright © 1994 - 2012 Computerworld Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Computerworld Inc. is prohibited. Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are trademarks of International Data Group Inc.
