And then a second, similar situation played out again after Google created Android.
Just like Google knew it would be left out of it didn't do something, the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive at first, and Verizon was afraid they'd be left out of the smartphone thing and lose subscribers. So they bankrolled an enormous marketing campaign, which is why one fall/winter (IIRC) everyone in the US was bombarded with endless Motorola Droid ads.
The AT&T exclusive ended, of course, but it's quite possible Android might not have gotten off the ground if Verizon hadn't felt a threat too. There's definitely no guarantee Google would have spent on marketing. Back then, Google didn't really believe in advertising itself through traditional channels like TV. When Google was a younger company, word of mouth was always enough marketing for its earlier products like web search and Gmail. It's only pretty recently in the grand scheme of things (after Android's rise to popularity) that Google got into that kind of marketing.
So that's one way in which hindsight shows that the AT&T exclusive might have been a bad move for Apple. If they hadn't done that, it might have been harder for Android to make inroads with carriers (through business deals) and with customers (through advertising).
> I bet the US situation is also repsonsible for the carrier vetting of all(?) OS upgrades. Doesn't make any sense either.
I doubt carriers vetting os upgrades is something that they do just for fun. One, users often hold the carrier directly responsible when things don't work correctly on their network or device. Besides that, I'm sure there are other concerns or factors we may not be aware of.
If you try hard enough you can always imagine "factors we may not be aware of" to explain differences from the rest of the world that are in fact just caused by US policy. You'll see that with gun deaths, healthcare costs, a host of problems.
The carriers "vetting" upgrades weren't doing any actual work, it's just a shakedown. Nice phone OS you have there, shame if critical updates were... delayed.
> The carriers "vetting" upgrades weren't doing any actual work, it's just a shakedown. Nice phone OS you have there, shame if critical updates were... delayed.
The carriers do in fact test the releases prior to them being released. I'm not sure if the carriers have to pay the manufactures to provide the release but I would not be surprised if that is the case.
> If you try hard enough you can always imagine "factors we may not be aware of" to explain differences from the rest of the world that are in fact just caused by US policy.
It is not clear to me that this has anything to do with US policy as many manufacturers IIRC provide different carriers with different updates and at different times, not just in the us, but around the world.
I really don't think either you or myself are qualified to say one way or the other...unless that is you have experience on the business side of running one of these large mobile networks. Having said that, I don't think one has to think very hard to see a reason for requiring testing..one reason might just be liability.
You don’t need to run a large mobile network to observe that being cut out of the loop results in fewer profits. Carriers were in position to get a cut of all “app” and ringtone sales and whatnot. Being a gatekeeper offered tremendous profit potential that Apple took away.
I think the voicemail integration was the hardest part... And I also would presume that exclusivity is what it took to get AT&T to make the technical changes on their backend. Of course it's also the reason I never got an iPhone. You couldn't pay me to use them as a carrier again, one too many bad experiences by that point.
I got the original G1 phone when it came out on T-Mobile, and it was nice enough (the stupid ball and hump on the side, I didn't like so much), and the physical keypad was nicer imho until gesture input started working well (swype then google's).
Other Android phones started trickling in a little later.
This brings back memory of that stupid "DROID" sound effect in those ads. That sound effect was also in the original boot animation of the Motorola Droid.
A funny thing about the "DROID" sound effect is that it was just using the Mac OS built in voice called "Cellos"
Put "say -v Cellos droid" into an OS X terminal and you'll hear the exact same thing. (Might need to go to Accessibility > Speech > System Voice > Customize and download the Cellos voice. Doesn't appear to be automatically included anymore.)
Just like Google knew it would be left out of it didn't do something, the iPhone was an AT&T exclusive at first, and Verizon was afraid they'd be left out of the smartphone thing and lose subscribers. So they bankrolled an enormous marketing campaign, which is why one fall/winter (IIRC) everyone in the US was bombarded with endless Motorola Droid ads.
The AT&T exclusive ended, of course, but it's quite possible Android might not have gotten off the ground if Verizon hadn't felt a threat too. There's definitely no guarantee Google would have spent on marketing. Back then, Google didn't really believe in advertising itself through traditional channels like TV. When Google was a younger company, word of mouth was always enough marketing for its earlier products like web search and Gmail. It's only pretty recently in the grand scheme of things (after Android's rise to popularity) that Google got into that kind of marketing.
So that's one way in which hindsight shows that the AT&T exclusive might have been a bad move for Apple. If they hadn't done that, it might have been harder for Android to make inroads with carriers (through business deals) and with customers (through advertising).