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Apple Finally Approves Google+ App For iPhone 162

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the mark-zuckerberg-makes-angry-face dept.
CWmike writes "Apple approved the Google+ app for the iPhone on Tuesday, and posted it to the App Store. It's unclear whether Google has created an iPad-specific app. Two weeks ago, a Google employee said that the company had submitted Google+ to the App Store ... on July 4. According to that timeline, Google's app took twice as long as the majority of submitted apps to win Apple's approval."
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Apple Finally Approves Google+ App For iPhone More

Apple Finally Approves Google+ App For iPhone

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  • !news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:03PM (#36816804)

    Seriously, how is this even remotely news? Why would Apple not approve Google+ app when there are Facebook app and tons of other social networks apps? Why would it be important to note that it took twice as long as statistically approval process takes, especially when there were major holidays during that timeframe? Please explain me. It's not like Apple has any kind of relationship with Facebook. Microsoft does, and I would still be fairly certain that even Microsoft would accept it to Windows Phone 7 app store.

    Oh, it's ComputerWorld and I guess they needed some visitors from slashdot again.

    • Why would Apple not approve Google+ app when there are Facebook app and tons of other social networks apps?

      For their own mysterious/nefarious purposes. Why would they initially not allow users to change the background on the iphone? Apple likes control.

      Why would it be important to note that it took twice as long as statistically approval process takes, especially when there were major holidays during that timeframe?

      Perhaps Apple was deliberately holding up the app to sabotage Google + launch. Major holidays? Give me a break. Had apple been playing nice to Google and iphone owners, this would have been fasttracked for approval.

      • Re:!news (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Altus ( 1034 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:36PM (#36817064) Homepage

        You really believe that not being able to change the background initially was because of control and not simply because they had limited developer time and decided that time would be better spent on a different feature or on fixing bugs?

        • Yes. For one thing, it's not complicated. For another, it's one on a long list of standard features missing from the iphone that were introduced only after great delay.

          • Yes. For one thing, it's not complicated. For another, it's one on a long list of standard features missing from the iphone that were introduced only after great delay.

            You realise that lots of small tasks can quite easily take more time than a few large ones? I would much rather they spend time getting the large things right than fucking about making sure I can change my desktop rather than receive send an SMS.

            • And yet they've managed to design and ship one of the least reliable phones for actually using as a phone. So apparently they don't give a damn about arbitrary major features either. And if you just say "Well, the features they shipped with - those are what they cared about, and you should be satisfied with that," well that's pretty useless too, isn't it? I mean, if some company released a word processor without support for bold type, because they spent time getting the large things like saving a document t

              • And yet they've managed to design and ship one of the least reliable phones for actually using as a phone. So apparently they don't give a damn about arbitrary major features either.

                While I know geeks love to bash them for this, I don't think I've ever met a single iPhone user (yes, even 4 users) who has an issue with their phone working well as a phone. Looking at it too, I don't see any issue - are there really phones out there that are easier than simply making one gesture and typing a few letters from the name of the person you want to call?

        • You really believe that not being able to change the background initially was because of control and not simply because they had limited developer time and decided that time would be better spent on a different feature or on fixing bugs?

          I believe you can look at the iphone (and almost all apple products) as if they were being tailor-made for SJ himself. I say this in a respectful way, and in fact it appears to be a very successful strategy since the man obviously has fairly good and well-accepted taste in what makes a great device.

          I would suggest you are correct in that certain seemingly essential features were dropped because SJ either didn't think it was necessary or like you said, prioritized other features. In the case of the ability

    • Why would it be important to note that it took twice as long as statistically approval process takes, especially when there were major holidays during that timeframe?

      The app was submitted ON the 4th. What "major holidays" were from July 4th to today?

      It's not like Apple has any kind of relationship with Facebook. Microsoft does, and I would still be fairly certain that even Microsoft would accept it to Windows Phone 7 app store.

      Who said it's about Apple's relationship with Facebook? It's about Appl

      • You mean like the Google maps app that comes with every iPhone? Or the fact that Google employees use either Linux or Macs, and not Windows PCs?
        People seem to want a soap opera with every relationship. Each company may have issues with the direction of the other, due to vastly different business models, but "antagonistic" describes human relationships.

      • The app was submitted ON the 4th. What "major holidays" were from July 4th to today?

        Actually in the European sense, the major holiday was the week of the 4th - in that a lot of people take that week off, undoubtedly app store reviewers too.

        However my money is still on the poster who said that he thought the delay was because of a flood of Lion apps on the app store.

      • The app was submitted ON the 4th.

        Wrong. Read the original announcement [google.com] again, and check the date.

        sometime prior to today

    • It seems silly to expect larger v1 apps to be approved as quickly as the average shovelware. It's obviously going to contain a lot more new code and functionality than the average app.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chemisor ( 97276 )

      Of course it is not news. It is merely an additional opportunity for us all to beg for invites. me@gmail.com pretty please? Oh, shucks! They are on to us...

    • Apple and Google do not like each other even though they share some board of directors. Google lost out on really valuable Nortel patents (which could have immunized Google against threats of lawsuits against Android) to a consortium of companies that was funded in large part by Apple. Also, don't forget that Apple is also suing HTC, Samsung, and other large manufacturers and importers of Android smartphones.

      Perversely, Microsoft makes more money off Android than it does off Windows Phone 7. It's estimated

    • Seriously, how is this even remotely news? Why would Apple not approve Google+ app

      Because Apple maliciously chose to block Google's previous apps (Voice, Latitude etc) due to their spat with google, abusing their power over the iOS marketplace to attempt to shut out a competitor. So they may have chosen to block Google+ with some spurious explanation too. Thus the fact that it was accepted is news as Apple may have become a bit more reasonable with their reviewing process.

    • Why would it be important to note that it took twice as long as statistically approval process takes, especially when there were major holidays during that timeframe?

      Nothing to do with statistics - this is clearly a high profile app, so your first level drone isn't going to approve it herself. That means it has to be bumped up to the higher level panel which inevitably takes a bit longer.

      Nothing to see here - just an artifact of the approval process.

    • >Why would Apple not approve Google+ app when there are Facebook app and tons of other social networks apps?

      Retaliation for the million and one proxy wars they have with Google right now? Not sure if you guys know about this thing new called Android, but its pretty hot, and Apple is competing against it the only way it knows how: via patent lawsuits.

  • I understand Apple's philosophy of only allowing the best apps in their istore. However, what they don't realise is that exactly the same can be achieved with decent rating system if it's done relatively well (Slashdot, or download.com though not perfect, spring to mind). That way, people can choose the best, and we don't have a mild form of censorship. It also cuts out the maintenance.

    • Aww that's just Apple being Apple. They understand how to make your user experience better than you do.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Cabriel ( 803429 )

      This requires aging and use before an app can be determined to be good and/or malware-free. Many early adopters will get the short end of the stick which they will blame on Apple instead of their own idiocy.

      Apple took the approach that made the most business sense because it also keeps up the reputation of their products, and *that* is their goal here. The same cannot be done with Slashdot's rating system.

    • what they don't realise is that exactly the same can be achieved with decent rating system

      Please cite an example of a competing app store which has been anywhere near as successful and generated $2.5bn in revenue for developers by using such a rating system.

      To help Apple 'realise' I'll then drop them a note with the details to apple.com/feedback

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by robmv ( 855035 )

        Amazon, I hear that a lot of people buy applications there and better yet, they get something called a physical disk that they can resell later if they want

        • Wrong example, that doesn't compete with Apple's app store (iPhones and iPads and Android equvilants have no use for a physical disc, but even if they did you'd have to wait for the disc to arrive in the post vs immediate download)

    • Re:Mild censorship (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Missing.Matter ( 1845576 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:40PM (#36817092)

      I understand Apple's philosophy of only allowing the best apps in their istore.

      Have you been on the appstore lately? Since its inception it's been filled to the brim with crap. Finding decent apps consists of downloading featured apps or looking at the top 100 list. Anything beyond that is probably junk. Make no mistake the app approval process is all about control of the content on the app store, not the quality.

      • Have you been on the appstore lately? Since its inception it's been filled to the brim with crap. Finding decent apps consists of downloading featured apps or looking at the top 100 list. Anything beyond that is probably junk. Make no mistake the app approval process is all about control of the content on the app store, not the quality.

        While I do not dispute your assertion in general, it implies that Apple's review process does nothing to improve matters. Which is very easily to verify if you just look at the free-for-all Android Market. And guess what? The amount of crap there is so overwhelming that App Store is a Japanese rock garden in comparison.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )

          Ok, so on either platform you can find good stuff in the top 100, and lots of garbage after that. What benefit does Apple bring?

          This sounds like complaining that you ran a Google search and hit the next button to get to page 185, and you found a lot of irrelevant stuff.

          I don't look at the garbage in the Android market, just like you don't look at the garbage in the App Store. The difference is that if I want I can install an alternative Email client or browser....

          • The difference is that if you do a search on something you're interested in, e.g. "RPG", in App Store you'll find most results to be relevant, even if some might be crappy. In Android Market, you'll find a few actual hits interspersed between spam submissions (same app submitted N times, slightly renamed) and downright malware and porn.

          • Er...there are plenty of alternative browsers on the App Store. What are you on about? I personally prefer Atomic (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/atomic-web-browser-browse/id347929410?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)

            Email clients? ... well I don't know because I've never looked. So you might have a point there.

    • Precisely what leads you to believe that Apple doesn't realize this?

  • iPhone ONLY. (Score:3, Informative)

    by jaskelling ( 1927116 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:08PM (#36816842)
    Does not support or work on iPod Touch or iPad. Makes this app completely worthless to me. The rest of Google's apps support them...why the *$#( doesn't this?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Does not support or work on iPod Touch or iPad.

      Maybe that's why it took so long.

      I believe part of the criterion for approval is it must work on the iPad (using 1x and 2x mode for non-iPad, non-Universal apps) and possibly iPod Touch as well (unless it uses features that are iPhone only - e.g., SMS, dialer). Perhaps most of the 2 weeks (which I thought was the average time for app approval - has Apple gotten the turnaround down to 1 week already?) was spent dicking around with Google on why their app only wo

    • It -is- still in beta. Real question is why has facebook still not put out an ipad app? The iphone app scaled up is just plain ugly.

      • Real question is why would you need an app? These are websites, they ought to just be tailored for specific mobile devices.

        • Real question is why would you need an app? These are websites, they ought to just be tailored for specific mobile devices.

          A mobile website can't access the camera to upload a photo, or send you push notifications when you get a reply, for starters. Facebook's mobile website is good, but there are uses for a separate app.

          • I thought these problems were solved for iOS devices back when Apple wasn't even going to let you write real apps.

            On platforms with flash this ought to be solved with flash.

            WTF?

      • They are working on an iPad app.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trolan ( 42526 )

      Checking the app's plist, it's iPhone only because Google's developer on it decided that it would require the following:
      - gps (includes GSM/CDMA iPads)
      - location-services (all devices since wifi can give you some form of a fix)
      - sms (iPhone)
      - telephony (iPhone)
      - wifi (all devices)

      As the only items which match all of it are iPhones, that's all it'll install on. Now why they decided it required telephone and sms, and didn't just gracefully downgrade when they're lacking, I have no idea. It's kind of sloppy.

      • Re:iPhone ONLY. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by wisnoskij ( 1206448 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @06:14PM (#36817318) Homepage

        And yet my computer does not have all of those and they still allow me on G+.

        • You can perfectly well just use the mobile web app from Mobile Safari. So far as I can see, the only reason to get an app is to have push notifications (it does have them, I hope?).

      • Sounds like they've got 'app permissions' and 'device requirements' muddled up, if you ask me.

  • Boo-urns, no iPad/iPod Touch version. Why?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Trolan ( 42526 )

      Because the Google dev decided that they absolutely needed sms and telephony, and the app shouldn't work if those two items weren't there. At least they specified such in the proper way, so it'll at least tell you at install-time that you're SOL instead of bombing out randomly.

  • Approval time is around 2 weeks for all right now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cstromme ( 1401527 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:14PM (#36816886) Homepage
    We've had several apps awaiting approval the last weeks, and it all seems to average out to around 10-20 days. So it's not some special delay for Google. My guess is that they're swamped with updates for Mac OS apps before Lion hits tomorrow.

  • So? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lysander7 ( 2085382 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:14PM (#36816894)

    I loathe Apple. There's been evidence time and again of their questionable (to put it mildly) business tactics. However, I fail to see why this matters in any way whatsoever. In the end, Apple still approved it. Sure, they took a while. Perhaps there was a reason? They could just pull a Facebook and try to impede G+ by not allowing it at all (though in the end it wouldn't do much). ...or we can all be outraged in typical /. fashion at how evil this corporation is, regardless how pedantic the reason might be.

    Yeah, let's go with that.

    • So you're saying Google, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and others are all really nice people who play fair with others?

      Google's Android is the main competitor to iOS, they are entitled to closely examine Google+ just in case they have slipped in something that would hurt Apple's own business.

      Perhaps if Apple, Google and Microsoft all stuck to just building OSes and let everyone else do the software then things would be fairer.

      • just in case they have slipped in something that would hurt Apple's own business.

        Personally, I don't think it's possible to hurt Apple's business. They have a near religious following that can see no wrong in Apple or their tactics. If Apples products started exploding and removing people's appendages in the process, these same amputee's would go right back to Apple to get a replacement, and pay to dollar for it in the process, just so they could log back onto /. to defend Apple's honor.

        I've been around a long time, but I don't recall ever seeing anything like it. Certainly, I like Appl

  • Is it any suprise this is from"Android Power" blog (Score:4, Insightful)

    by joeflies ( 529536 ) on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:18PM (#36816922)

    the author clearly states his bias - the name of the blog is called "Android Power". His bio states he's out to irk apple fans.

    there is no information in the article whether the delay is Apple's fault or Google's fault. Yes, you can have delays in the approval process of your own doing, not because of a conspiracy that Apple caused.

    And all in all, google+ is not even a service that's available to the majority of people. It's in limited beta, meaning that the affected user base who didn't have access to the "delayed" client is small.

  • Slashdot must be hard up on money or something to post such an incendiary topic title?

    2 weeks from submissions to Apple to release is hardly worthy of a "FINALLY", 2 weeks is about the normal lenth of time for new app review by Apple.

  • Maybe it took so long to get through because the Apple people kept having it crash on them.

    I experienced my first crash using the Google+ app for 2 min... I mean... I know Google is the "Beta" Company but come on now! Between the few friends I have on Google+ with iPhones, and myself, I think we've racked up maybe 10 to 15 crashes on the first afternoon of use. We've also experienced issues with it properly updating comments and such.

    Hopefully they will get crackin and improve the stability quickly.

    • If you were one of the first to get it, Apple released an early buggy version for the first 2 hours roughly. There was a better version available, but not used for the market until 2 hours after launch.

      Suggestion was to delete and reinstall.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JanneM ( 7445 )

      From the developers [google.com]:

      We discovered an issue with the version of the iPhone Google+ App that was on the App Store. When we launched, the App Store started serving a previous test version of the App which didn't have the stability and fixes that the latest version had. It started serving the correct version a little later. If you downloaded within the first 1 hour 40 mins, you may have downloaded the older test version.

      To check:
      - Click on the gear icon on the top left of your App's homescreen and look right ab

  • Not available on the Canadian app store. Is it only in the US?
    This is ridiculous.

  • So I was looking at the program on my iPhone and ready to download it when it suddenly disappeared from the store. That was about 3 hours ago when 400 users said it seemed OK.

    Now it's back at the store and I'm downloading it. About 900 users gave it the same average (3 of 5 stars).

    I have no idea what I'll do with it, but I suppose it's a bit of history that I can tell the grandchildren I was a part of. Damn shame I missed Woodstock.

    Woohoo, it's here! And it wants a username and password and god knows what e

  • I bet it's cause Apple decided to pick thru the code line by line in a desperate attempt to find something, anything they could use against Google -- either a reason to deny the app or even better, sue them for some patent or copyright infringement.

    Cause y'know, if you can't beat 'em, sue 'em.

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