Hey Apple & Google: This Is Not Middle School

(image) I’m the father of three children, and two of them are girls. And while my first was a boy, and therefore “broke me in” with extraordinary acts of Running Headlong Into Fence Posts and Drinking Beer Stolen From Dad’s Fridge Yet Forgetting To Hide The Bottles, nothing, NOTHING, prepared me for Girls Behaving Badly To Each Other Whilst In Middle School.

Those of you with girls aged 11–14 know of what I speak: Middle school girls are just flat out BADASSES when it comes to unrepentant cruelty — and they are almost as good at forgetting, often within a day (or an hour) the rationale or cause of their petty behaviors. On one of my daughter’s wall is a note from a middle school friend. It says — and while I may paraphrase, I’m not making this up — “Hey Girl, I’m so glad we’re best friends, because I really hated you before but now we’re best friends right?!” And my daughter *pinned this* to her wall — her ACTUAL wall, in her bedroom!

Anyway, every so often girls in middle school end up squaring off — and the result is an embarrassment of small-minded but astonishingly machiavellian acts of cruelty. Little lies are let loose like sparks on a pile of hay, and soon a fire of social shunning rips through the school. Invitations are made, then retracted vigorously, and in public. Insults are veiled as compliments, and a girl’s emerging character strengths — a penchant for science perhaps, or a love of kittens for God’s sake — are expertly turned against her.

But this post isn’t really about middle school girls. Because we all know middle school girls — with love, patience, and copious wine (for the parents) — eventually grow up and out of such behavior.

Apple and Google? Not so much. And as an avid consumer of both these company’s products, I’m tired of it.

It’s the little things that pile up, the unnecessary lies and petty inconveniences. Like the fact that you need to install a javascript or browser extension to make Gmail the default mail application on your Mac. Because, you know, everyone knows how to do that. Or that you need a third party app (and a degree from General Assembly) to make music and movies purchased on Google Play work in iTunes, or vice versa. Or that Apple won’t let Google index apps in the iTunes store, because, you know, that Google mission of making the world’s information useful and accessible sounds suspicious, right?

Or — and yes, this is the one that pushed me to write this post — that you have to follow an utterly convoluted five-step process just to make group texting work between iPhones and Android users — only to learn it doesn’t really work every time, and in fact, if you’re expecting an important text from someone with an iPhone, well, you better just man up and buy a f*cking iPhone too, loser.

I’m not even scratching the surface of the bullpucky these two companies are putting us through to create “user lock-in” and discourage consumer choice. I mean, we gave up on the easy stuff, like, oh I don’t know, a universal power cordthat can charge any phone. Because, you know, why have standards when you can take forty bucks from some poor loser every time he misplaces his charger? Or, if you wanted to change your default browser to Chrome, you had to root around in Safari to do so (Google has since gotten around this)? And don’t get me started on Apple Contacts and Calendar…and getting them into Google’s universe. Yeah, it’s supposed to work. And no, it really doesn’t, not so much, and not so well. I’m six months and thousands of dollars into trying to make that work. Um, Google — tell me please why there’s no Google Calendar app for iPhone? Is it because…you know, Apple’s not cool anymore? Gah.

I bet I’ve missed tons of examples, but given the state of diplomacy in the Apple and Google worlds, I’m not expecting a solution anytime soon. The two companies clearly don’t want to play nice — Apple’s DNA is to lock you into their pristine, walled garden user experience, and Google certainly isn’t eager to encourage Android users to interact with iOS. Apple has kicked Google out of the default position for mapping in iOS, and many expect search to be next. The walls are getting higher, and the middle school girl behavior is likely to get worse.

To Apple and Google, I say simply this: For the sake of folks who love both of your product lines: Grow up. Please!

(cross posted from Searchblog)