I’m beginning to despise Google.

I started noticing that Google appears to have disabled YouTube when its embedded in a web page for mobile safari. Used to be that on the iPhone it would show a graphic of the video, and when tapped would open the YouTube app. On the iPad, it would actually play in the webpage, with the option to go full screen. As of now, so far as I can tell, nothing appears at all.

Please let me know in the comments if you’re experiencing the same thing. Just scroll down a few entries and tell me if you can see the video of me reading the Declaration of Independence on your iPhone or iPad.

It strikes me as awfully suspicious that they should do this simultaneously with launching the new mobile YouTube site. I’m guessing what they’re trying to do is to get you to log in to your Google credentials in your web browser so they can associate your mobile web surfing with your desktop web surfing. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google shut down the YouTube app altogether. In fact, I’d be surprised if they didn’t.

Google really is evil.

Is the iPhone “open” or “closed”? In a sense it seems like a silly question. Clearly it’s both, the iPhone has a proprietary layer built on top of an open source core, FreeBSD. The fact that its API is published and that they let 3rd party developers write software for it makes it open as well, though not open source. Which is really the only critical difference between it and Android. Android makes the layer they build on top of Linux open source. But this really shouldn’t matter anyone other than network operators.

The real question is does Apple support open standards, and it’s hard to argue that they don’t. HTML5 is fully integrated, and developers are free to build HTML5 apps and have users install them with shortcuts on their iPhones and iPads. In fact, when the iPhone first came out, that was how Jobs wanted all development on the iPhone to occur. AT that time, the iPhone really was a closed platform since it had no public API to write native applications to it. But Apple changed direction, and now it’s hard to say that the iPhone isn’t an open platform in that sense.

But what about Flash? Well Flash is a proprietary standard, and Apple has no obligation to develop a Flash plug-in or executable for it. They do prevent Adobe from developing a version for the iPhone, but this is largely due to battery life and CPU issues. Which brings me to my next point.

Mobile devices have constraints that desktop devices do not. Constraints include battery life, storage, and CPU. An application that hogs the CPU, runs down the battery and eats up all your memory is going to ruin the mobile computing experience. And the party that will get blamed for that is the brand name on the device. Just witness the row over tethering. The iPhone has had tethering since iPhone 3.0 was announced over a year ago. iPhone tethering is available internationally, but AT&T forbids it. But who gets the blame for a lack of tethering in the US?

Apple.

Hence the App store, ostensibly. Apps which would ruin the mobile experience are essentially forbidden from being installed on the device. And that includes anything that would run down the battery quickly or hog the CPU. For that reason, runtimes are not allowed. This much I understand.

What I don’t understand is the censorship. What does stopping porno have to do with assuring a decent mobile experience? I agree that such apps are a stupid waste of time, that there’s more porno to be found using Safari than anyone could ever want from buying iPhone apps. But still, why ban them? It only creates confusion as to what the App store is about.

But what’s worse in my mind, what’s truly unforgivable, is the fact that there are no shortage of apps out there that have bad reviews not because people didn’t enjoy the app or anything, but because the app crashes or is buggy. That I do NOT understand. If Apple isn’t testing these apps to see that they work, to see that they don’t ruin the mobile experience, then what the hell are they doing? In fact the opacity of the App Store approval process is the only element of the iPhone ecosystem that truly is closed.

So Apple needs to do two things, pronto. 1) they need to provide a clear set of guidelines as to what is being tested in the App Store approval process. That set of guidelines should be published somewhere on apple.com for everyone to see and understand. And 2) they need to stop censoring for content. If that means they need to open an adult section of the app store, so be it. But censorship can never be a black and white, open affair. Just look at the legal definitions for obscenity for an example.

I think if they take those 2 steps they can end this “open vs. closed” debate and put it behind them. But so long as the app store approval process remains opaque and broken, this openness question will continue to dog Apple.

I have to admit that I’m deeply confused about Google’s moves right now. It seems to me that a war with Apple can only be destructive towards Google’s ends. Google appears to be letting the acquired Android division lead the company, rather than vice versa. I do not see this ending well for Google.

Google bought Android in 2005. That’s 2 years before the iPhone came out. The logic at the time was sound. Namely, Google is in the advertising business, and since nobody had hitherto come out with a smartphone that could display mobile advertisements in a reasonable way, Google would just go ahead and build the platform for that to happen, and then give it away to anyone who wanted it. It held a certain logic.

Even after the iPhone was released, it acted as a certain insurance policy. It in effect said to Apple, “Don’t mess with us, because if you don’t let us put our services and ads on your device, we’ll release our phone OS to the world…” And Apple seemed to make every effort to integrate the iPhone into Google’s services, like maps, email, and search. So there really should have been no conflict.

But now Google has declared war on Apple, over principles that really, make no sense. Google has always been about open standards, and yet they choose to take a stand over supporting Flash, a proprietary standard if there ever was one? They choose to support Flash despite the obvious battery life problems it causes? Just to stick their thumb in the eye of Apple? What?

They call their platform open because they release the source code? But then they tell developers they shouldn’t use undocumented APIs? How is that open? They have an app store, just like Apple, which 99% of installed apps come from, and yet they’re open because of the 1% that come from elsewhere? What?

In reality, the issue for consumers isn’t the phone and how open it is or isn’t to developers, it’s the network, and the extent to which they cripple the hardware that they sell and try to funnel users into using bullshit “Vcast” type online music services and whatnot. Apple’s biggest coup with the iPhone wasn’t just the hardware and the software and how well it all works (though that is no small achievement). It’s that they got AT&T to let them sell the phone that they wanted to sell. From all accounts, Verizon wouldn’t let them do that, so intent on selling Vcast crap they couldn’t abide by a phone that let people install stuff (like music even) not bought from Verizon. So no iPhone for Verizon.

None of what Verizon is up to benefits the consumer in any way whatsoever. The consumer wants a phone as designed by the phone engineer, not as crippled by the network. And Apple was the first to deliver that. Now an open source phone will have appeal to a network operator, because it will allow the network to build their Vcast crap right into the OS, and to cripple 3rd party software and whatnot. But that doesn’t appeal to the consumer. To be crystal clear about this, consumers, myself included, would rather have phones built and designed by the likes of Microsoft that are sold as originally conceived and designed than have the best phone ever built that was crippled by the network operator.

Google’s open source “advantage” is that it lets the network operator cripple the phone. Good luck with that business model.

Meanwhile, Google pisses off Apple, and throws away the ability to sell ads on the iPhone. Google may not strictly speaking be forbidden from doing so, but they will never get the well-oiled integration that Apple provides. What’s more, Google may well be thrown off the iPhone in every other capacity. I’m predicting that maps and search will be gone within a year. And will Google even be allowed to sell ads on their own Android phones? I wouldn’t count on it. I would think that Verizon and company will get into that business themselves. “V-ads” they’ll call them.

I don’t quite see how this ends well for Google. I suppose their strategy may work better in the international market where carriers can’t dictate which phones are allowed on their networks, and thus crippled phones are not an option. But domestically, I think Google is hanging themselves for the sake of glory for the Android division. Seems really foolish to me.

When magicians use the term “Misdirection” they are referring to the practice of directing the audiences eyes to one location, while the trick is actually being performed elsewhere. Misdirection is precisely what Apple is doing now.

I simply can’t believe that all these leaked iPhones are accidental. Yes, the front facing camera is cool, and it looks like there will be a white iPhone. But other than some minor difference in form factors, what else is there? Frankly, Apple already released the big news in announcing iPhone 4.0, which will have multitasking. The front facing camera is interesting, but really, what else is there? We always knew that the next iteration would be faster with more memory, so who cares?

No, Apple is intentionally leaking images of the iPhone at this point. They may have figured the jig was up after a prototype was stolen some weeks back, but I suspect that these leaks were always in the works. Because Apple has something much bigger they’re announcing.

Now what that is I don’t know. But I can guess. And I suspect it’s that AppleTV will cease to be a hobby. I suspect that the new AppleTV will be based on the iPhone OS, and that it will run iPad apps beautifully. It will probably come with a new touch screen remote that enables you to “touch” your tv screen from a distance. And it will put Google’s TV efforts to shame, and put Apple and Nintendo on a much more direct collision course.

The new AppleTV may be a PVR or may even provide some sort of streaming TV service over IP. It will be offered in a stand-alone box, but it could be integrated into a television set sold by Apple. Whatever it is, it won’t be on sale until the fall, and dev kits for the new Apple TV will be distributed at WWDC.

I have no inside information obviously. But Steve Jobs himself is saying that something big is coming down the pike. Which leads me to wonder what it is that nobody is looking at. And I think the answer is AppleTV.

So I downloaded the new free Kindle app for iPhone and figured I’d try downloading a book to it to see how it is. The app itself downloaded fine. So I went to find and download a book. But even though I’d signed in with my Amazon username and password, it said you couldn’t shop for books through the Kindle app. So whatever, on the iPhone there’s also a distinction between the iPod app and the iTunes store. So I promptly went to my Amazon store app to download a Kindle book. I could search for Kindle books there, but it informed me that I would need to be at a desktop in order to buy one. What the heck?

Color me unimpressed.

My dog just chewed on my iPhone. I literally had my back turned for a brief moment. It still works, everything but the home button. So to switch applications, I need to turn the iPhone off and then on again.

Step 1) Get muzzle for dog. He can’t be trusted any more.

Step 2) Go to Apple store and beg for this to be covered by my AppleCare extended warranty thing I bought.

Any guesses as to how this turns out?

Like many people I suspect, I wind up finding most of the YouTube videos I watch by means of blogs. Typically, these videos are embedded into these blogs. Even more typically, I come across these blogs by means of Google Reader. And given that YouTube is blocked at work, I more typically have to watch these videos on my iPhone.

To reiterate the progression, it’s iPhone : Google Reader : Blog : YouTube.

So far so good. Whenever I would click on a YouTube link within Google Reader, it would take me to the YouTube app, where I would watch the video.

However, starting today, it no longer does that.

Google appears to have made two changes to their reader application, both questionable. The first one is that when you click through from Reader to go to a blog, it strips the blog down to just the basic blog entry and comments. No background, template, ads or anything. This is ok I suppose in that it makes the page load faster under AT&T’s craptacular so-called 3G network. But it’s still inappropriate for them to redirect from the page I think I’m going to to instead view a stripped down version of said page.

The second thing they do is redirect you from YouTube to a “Mobile YouTube” site, which the iPhone apparently doesn’t recognize. This means that I literally get a web page from YouTube (m.youtube.com) telling me that I can’t display the video I’m trying to access. This is unacceptable. Google needs to fix this pronto, or I’m exporting my OPML file and switching to another newsreader.

If anyone else is experiencing similar problems, please let me know.

So I walked the dog this evening. And given that it’s now officially fall, it’s dark at 6:30 or so. This means that it is difficult to see the dog poop when it comes time to pick it up.

Typically I make the dog go on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and then just count how many doodies he makes, and approximately where they are, and then I use a flashlight to aid in finding the stinky morsels and properly dispose of them.

Unfortunately, tonight after I thought the dog had completed his business, he snuck behind me and went again on the front lawn of the house I was standing in front of. This meant that I couldn’t easily determine where exactly he went. But I swear he dropped two morsels on the front lawn. Unfortunately, I could only locate one of these.

Surely, technology can help here. Someone ought to make an infrared viewer so as to easily spot the recently dropped morsels, whose temperature should be significantly warmer than the cool grass onto which they are deposited. This viewer could be made into something wearable like glasses, but they don’t need to be. In fact, if the iPhone camera can detect infrared, the dog poop tracker could be written for the iPhone as pure software.

Does anyone know if such a thing exists already? And if it did, would you be interested in purchasing such a device?

So I ordered some DVDs. I wanted to watch these videos on the train by ripping them from my Mac to my iTunes, and then placing them on my iPhone. So I proceed to rip them using HandBrake, and I successfully place the videos into iTunes, as I’d done with other DVDs I own many times before. Then, I proceed to copy these videos onto my iPhone, except that they won’t copy over. Any idea what’s wrong?

It could be that iTunes won’t move any video other than DRMed video purchased from the iTunes store. But that doesn’t seem like it would be right. Otherwise, how would anybody be able to carry home movies with them on their iPhone? The other possibility is that I sipped the files at too high a bitrate, and thus the videos wouldn’t fir on the phone. I admit that I did use the AppleTV bitrate settings, and not the iPod settings, but again, can iTunes not scale back the bitrate for varying devices? This would mean that I would have to rip everything twice, once to be able to watch it on my AppleTV and again to watch it on my iPhone. Same for home movies.

So what gives?

Any help would be appreciated.

So AT&T cleverly charges $5/mo to get 200 SMS messages on your iPhone. So who do I talk to to get a refund for the following unsolicited message?

Hi, fcu86 invites u 2 mobile chat on DELETED. Join them by going to http://DELETEDSITE.com on your phone. Download & try for free

The message arrived from the nonsense number 008801719917137. Any ideas?

Frankly, some amount of SMS Spam will always get through. But is it necessary for me to pay for it? or to have to jump through hoops to get a credit back?

So when I first got my iPhone 3G, the 3G service worked well all times of the day. Then it only would work in the morning, but would stop working in the afternoon. I’d be connected, but get no data from it. But the phone would work fine if I switched to Edge. Then, 3G stopped working entirely, and I had to switch to EDGE 100% of the time. Now, even EGDE service yields no data. It would appear that AT&T has way oversold their network, and are not remotely equipped to handle the data requests of the iPhones they’ve sold.

Is anyone else out there experiencing this? Who do we talk to to get a rebate on our crappy AT&T service?

UPDATE: So after spending nearly 1/2 hour on the phone with AT&T and going through various phone menus to get to someone who can handle a data problem, they tell me that there is in fact a service outage. So I tell the woman I would like a rebate. She replies, “But I’m from Apple, not AT&T. I can’t do that for you. Would you like me to transfer you to AT&T?”

“Yes,” I reply.

I’m unceremoniously dumped into the beginning of the phone menu again, unsure of where to navigate myself to get to someone who both knows there’s an outage and can give me a credit for it. What utter douchebags.

So as you may have gathered from my previous post, I have procured an iPhone 3G. It’s pretty cool, and I’ve downloaded a few applications and bought a mahjong game too. But there are some things that are missing.

First up is a flight tracker. I assumed that something similar to the widget available for the mac would have been built for the iPhone, probably by Apple. This would have been handy in picking up my wife at the airport. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist. There did appear to be one application doing flight tracking and much more for an astounding price of $60. British Airways has one that only tracks British Airways flights (naturally). And Travelocity had an application that enabled you to look up flights, but didn’t give you tracking capabilities. This is an oversight that somebody needs to correct. Ideally, it would connect in with gate information too so you could navigate your way around an airport and know where to go to catch your connecting flights.

The AIM application is nice I suppose, but like mail and SMS, it doesn’t let you operate the program lengthwise. Typing heavy applications should all enable you to use them lengthwise because it’s so much easier to type lengthwise. Also, the AIM application insists on informing you when you’re signed in at multiple locations, which for me is almost all the time. That makes it not much more than an irritant. AOL should dispense with that ASAP. Frankly, I wish they’d just make Adium for the iPhone.

I’ve spoken about voice dialing before. Walt Mossberg points us to an application that performs voice dialing locally. Apple ought to do something official about it, either by building their own app or using my suggestion.

Mossberg also points out an application that does movie listings. I downloaded one called Box Office that looks good and purportedly lets you buy tickets too. I haven’t tested that out. Mossberg suggests another program called movies. It seems to me that movies and flight tracking are common enough things that Apple should have built apps for them right out of the box.

And does OpenTable (online restaurant reservations) have an application? If not they should.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say as time goes on. Overall I’m very happy with my purchase.

ONE MORE THING: AT&T’s coverage is spotty at best. I live in an area that according to the AT&T map has 3G coverage in what they depict as their second highest signal strength. But I only get one bar at home. It’s adequate, and in the few conversations I’ve had on it thus far I haven’t lost a call. But on the bus ride to Harvard this morning, I passed through areas where I only got Edge service, when it should have been 3G.

I’ve been thinking about voice activated dialing on cell phones lately. So I thought I’d share my thoughts on the matter.

One of the principle complaints of the iPhone is that it does not include voice activated dialing. Indeed, with California being the latest state to mandate the use of headsets while using a telephone while driving, everyone faces a greater need for voice activated dialing. My issue with it is that I don’t think it should reside on the client device.

I’ve had voice activated dialing on my phone before. It sucks. You have to train it to understand your voice, and the slightest sound throws it off. The problem is it takes up too much memory and computing power to do voice recognition correctly.

That having been said, Goog411 from Google offers excellent voice recognition over a 1-800 number. Basically, you tell it what you’re looking for, and then it connects you. Makes perfect sense; they have essentially unlimited memory and computing power at Google – way more than my client handheld will ever have. So my question is, why doesn’t Goog411 hook into my address book when I dial in? It makes sense that it would. Let Google know my cell phone number, and when it sees my caller ID, it offers to look up numbers from my address book and connect me to those numbers as well. If Google isn’t your thing, then perhaps Apple should offer something similar via their new MobileMe service.

Either way, someone needs to offer this service pronto.

With WWDC coming up on Monday, now seems like a good time to make some predictions. Ready?

• 3G iPhone, of course. This time the iChat phone I’d predicted earlier will come to pass. Front-facing camera, video chat capabilities. It will probably be ever so slightly thinner than the last iPhone. And let’s say it has GPS as well.
• Something tells me that there will be a simple phone released too. Something akin to the shuffle, just a nice, easy to use phone for people who only want a phone with basic features. I’m guessing it’ll handle SMS, and prolly play music as well, but that would be its limiting factor.
• PowerPC phaseout will be announced. Not sure if it will be an official OSX 10.6 announcement, or if such a thing would be called “Snow Leopard”, but expect it to be announced that the next iteration of OSX will no longer support the PowerPC chip.
• There will be no tablet computing device unveiled.
• Mobile Me will finally be unveiled, and it will replace .Mac. Mobile Me will be fully Google and Yahoo compatible, and act as a portal from which you can configure all your accounts to your iPhone. For Mac users, it will enable you to access your iPhoto and iTunes and maybe even iMovie libraries as well. Some basic version of this will be free to iPhone users. Some advanced version with Mac only features will be available for an additional fee.

That’s about all I got. I have a spotty record with these predictions. So take what I say with a grain of salt.

This article is a doozy:

Apple Inc. and longtime partner Adobe Systems Inc. are at a flash point over the iPhone.

Since its debut in June, the iPhone’s mobile Web browser has been off-limits to nearly all videos delivered over the Internet. That is because the browser isn’t compatible with Flash Player, an Adobe-made media player used to view Internet videos.

Except for YouTube, of course. Apple has a separate application for watching those.

Videos for the iPhone have to be specially formatted to a file type that Apple endorses. Google Inc.’s YouTube is the only video provider now doing this, and only a handful of videos are available.

It’s an open video format, unlike Flash video, which is proprietary and owned by Adobe. No wonder Apple won’t play that game.

Adobe’s patience appears to be wearing thin. “No one aside from [Apple Chief Executive] Steve Jobs has any idea if or when it’s coming,” Ryan Stewart, Adobe’s chief spokesman for its Internet-based applications, wrote on his blog last week. “Everyone I talk to doesn’t know anything.”

In other words, it ain’t happening.

The iPhone’s history is already marked by Apple’s demands scaring off would-be partners, including Verizon Wireless, jointly owned by Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC, and China Mobile Ltd. Now it appears the same tactics are straining Apple’s relationship with Adobe.

And how, exactly, does saying “I don’t want to do business with you any more” entail scaring anyone off? Saying “No” isn’t the same thing as being unreasonable. And evidently, Apple wasn’t so unreasonable as to not get a deal done. They got a deal with AT&T, and Verizon must deeply regret not getting that deal now. IN fact, all the telco’s are revamping their business models to revolve around data instead of voice. Too bad for everyone else the most popular mobile browser in the world is mobile Safari.

The standoff could be resolved by the end of the month, when Apple is due to release iPhone software tools that may include a way to make the iPhone compatible with Flash Player. That would cheer investors; any Adobe-iPhone tie-up would erase a lingering concern and likely give a lift to Apple’s shares. But the failure to end the stalemate raises the volume on the issue and puts even more strain on the companies’ relationship.

We threaten you with scary talk about dumping your shares for rejecting Adobe, but we might buy your shares if you do what Adobe wants.

Seriously, give it up.

Apple shares rose $1.64, or 1.3%, to $123.82 in 4 p.m. composite trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market, well below a 52-week high of $202.96, reached Dec. 27.

Adobe, which had about $3.2 billion in sales in 2007, hasn’t disclosed how much of its business comes from Apple. Apple has a small share of the world-wide personal-computer market, however, so it isn’t Adobe’s biggest client. If the iPhone adds Flash, it could lift the pressure slightly on Adobe’s stock, down around 19% for the year.

Adobe has been locked out of the hottest new platform to come around in a decade because they acted like assholes to Apple in the past. Now they’re hoping for love because their stock price could use a boost.

The lack of Flash Player is an oft-cited reason for not buying the iPhone, according to a number of Apple online user forums.

Bullshit. Cite just one quote.

An Apple spokeswoman said the company values its relationship with Adobe but had no additional comment, other than to point to a comment by Mr. Jobs in July about eventually adding Flash. An Adobe representative echoed the same sentiments about the partnership but also had no additional comment.

Wow, lots of quotes about people holding back on buying an iPhone because of a lack of Flash. Wow.

With the companies generally keeping mum, it has been largely left to outsiders to suggest why the two seem at odds.

Here’s a hint. Flash for the Mac sucks, and Adobe took their sweet time in releasing Universal versions of their popular apps. I’d expect some serious tribute to be paid before Apple lets Flash come anywhere near an iPhone.

Andru Edwards, who writes for the Gear Live blog, says it is strictly an Apple business decision. He believes criticisms that the Flash Player uses too much processing and battery power are red herrings.

Another theory is that Apple may be developing its own player, given that Adobe’s products for cellphones are essentially the only choice now available.

What does that even mean? Only choice for what? Certainly not for video. Certainly not for creating games. Maybe she’s talking about intrusive strobe-light style advertising…

The companies have a history of strained relations. Several years ago, Adobe dropped support for Apple’s Macintosh computers and then introduced other software products that were only compatible with Microsoft Corp. software. Then, Apple made some product changes affecting the distribution of Adobe’s software products.

With the new tensions over the iPhone, it appears the two may be drifting further apart.

“They really needed each other 10 or 20 years ago. That’s clearly less important now,” said Jeffrey Tarter, former editor of software-industry newsletter Softletter.

Did we really have to read through that entire rotten article just to get to the truth tucked in at the end? Man…

I’m getting an iPhone at the end of March when my plan runs out. And if for some god-forsaken reason Apple chooses to make Flash available as a download I, for one, will be skipping on it.

Read the article for yourself here.