Yesterday there was some conference or something. Guy that sits next to me spent most of the morning reading Engadget and watching some presentation by that guy that’s not Steve Jobs.
Him: OMG! The new versions of iOS and OSX will allow you to answer phone calls on your computer!!!
Me: Oh, like Google Voice?
Him, somewhat indignantly/sarcastically: You mean if I call your cell phone, your computer will ring?
Me: Yes.
Look, I’m sure that iProducts are nice and all, it’s just that Apple doesn’t innovate fast enough for me.
The apple thing is slightly different from google voice… With google voice, your GV number rings at your computer(s) and can also forward to other numbers. As described, the apple feature allows you to answer calls to your actual cell number from your computer.
While google voice might work like apple describes for some limited number of people (those who merged their cell/GV services), it generally works as I describe it.
That being said, I’m not an apple fanboy/apologist by any stretch if the imagination. I do use their phones, but mostly due to the wide selection of rugged cases (I regularly drop my phone onto cement from >6′, and I have yet to break an iPhone.). That, and the last two times I have gotten a new phone, the other options my carrier offered were inferior.
Since the passing of Jobs, it seems to me that Apple’s strategy in the phone space is to copy android. On the whole, this isn’t really that bad: I’ve been jail breaking my phones for several years now, and each update has shrunk the number of JB tweaks I use. If the trend continues, I might be able to go vanilla in a generation or two without loss of functionality.
Apple doesn’t really innovate. They steal ideas, figure out how to polish the heck out of them for the consumer market, slap a new UI skin on it, and jack the price up.
Later, rinse, repeat.