Apple Facing Antitrust Inquiry Over Flash-to-iPhone Compiler Ban?

[Swift]

Apple has been acting like a d*ck lately so it comes as no surprise. They seem to think that they can do anything they want.

I think this like the flash debacle, the iPhone storm troopers breaking down the door of gizmodo and the like is that they're no longer the media darling.

Appalling how propaganda takes over little minds like yours. These weren't "iPhone storm troopers", these were police with a search warrant. Whether the search was legal will be settled in court, too. I think it likely was, because it isn't about the Gizmodo story, it was about whether felony theft and trafficking took place.

 

[slffl]

For anyone who wants to see how crappy games made with flash and ported to the iphone would be, look no further than All-in-1 Gamebox

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/all-in-1-gamebox/id330759313?mt=8

30 of the biggest pieces of crap ever made. Not even worth $1

 

[rstansby]

It's like me telling you you should be driving cars that run on my new fuel, (which may be better in the long term) but there are almost no filling stations that offer it.

Apple isn't telling anyone what they should do. People choose to use and develop for the iPhone.
Companies do manufacture cars that run on alternative fuels that are not available at most filling stations. The government hasn't started an anti-trust case against them for not allowing people to use the standard fuel.

 

[pmjoe]

I did not see this coming, but I do think such a case has some teeth. Apple is using their roughly near-monopoly status in the mobile app market to basically dictate that developers cannot reuse their work from other devices on the iPhone platform. In any other market, such terms would never be heard of unless there was some kind of contract with a non-compete clause (and in software such clauses are normally for competing software products, not platforms). The idea that Apple is effectively forbidding me to cross-compile work from projects on other platforms is anti-competitive.

To look at it another way, under the hood, it's all code. Apple is basically telling me that I must hire another programmer manually convert code to another programming language when some other means may be cheaper, more accurate and/or produce better code. That sort of demand from Apple is out-of-bounds.

What's next, if they don't like what code editor I'm using, they'll force me to use the one built into Xcode? I'm sure I could show statistically that what editor a developer uses has some resulting impact on the code that eventually ends up on the iPhone (the one built into Xcode is actually pretty crappy).

 

[stuffradio]

What business is it of the government to decide which programming language is used tom write code for a computer?

The Government isn't deciding which programming language is used to write code for a computer (or iPhone in this case). The Government is deciding if Apple has a right to restrict people from using other languages that can be compiled into the native coding language.

 

[dagomike]

Apple has a monopoly on mobile Application sales though.

"Having a monopoly" implies Apple is restricting competition. There are a number of platforms and nothing is stopping anyone from making apps on those platforms. Apple was first to market and Google fosters a marketplace of free apps which is a disincentive for investment. That's why Apple dominate the market.

 

[coleridge78]

The piechart is pretty clear...

You seem to think so. So you shouldn't have any problem explaining what it means. Start by defining the terms they use, there are only a couple of them.

 

[ikir]

Apple is getting ridiculous. Apple is getting Horst with this attitudes. For me the new Microsoft is apple do know what i men.

Some they day they start to ban applications on mac too. apple you get what you choose.

LOL, i think you don't know all the mess Microsoft done. Anyway Apple is right on Flash, and all limits you have with apple software are legal or commercial. If you consider that Apple is a commercial company, probably is more open that all others.

 

[ValSalva]

It's an inquiry. Nothing may come of it. In fact it's unlikely anything will come of it.

Someone from Adobe has a friend in the Justice Department or the FTC. I'm sure Apple has their own purchased public servants and politicians so the end result of this is that more lawyers will make more money. That's it.

 

[Eraserhead]

What business is it of the government to decide which programming language is used tom write code for a computer?

Because Apple sells over 99% of mobile applications, which gives them a monopoly on the market, and they are deliberately excluding certain tools from that store and are introducing those restrictions after establishing their AppStore monopoly.

 

[cryonic49]

Love your signature. I wonder if you participated in a similar discussion in 1998 when Apple forced you to not have the ability to use your Floppy Disks and use only USB Keyboards, Mice and Printers (FYI as of March 31 2010 Sony Discontinued Floppy Support). I don't remember such a fuss at that time. If Adobe was so interested in what Apple is doing they should have gotten the hint back in 1997 when Apple first put the writing on the wall.

The distinction is this: you could still go out and buy a USB floppy disk drive, so people were generally happy that Apple to moved on with newer technology.

You can't really got out and buy a Flash App(or Silverlight, or JavaVM for that matter) in the app store. Or in this article's case, the tools they like to develop with is now in a limbo state (Unity3D, monotouch). There is no choice and that's why some people are in discontent.

If Adobe taken note of Apple's tactics and stop investing on the Mac platform, there would been a even bigger backlash from the Mac creative community. Honestly, if you were the CEO of Adobe, would Apple's move to abandon USB indicate Adobe applications not allowed on one of Apple's platforms 10 years later?

 

[stuffradio]

Apple isn't telling anyone what they should do. People choose to use and develop for the iPhone.
Companies do manufacture cars that run on alternative fuels that are not available at most filling stations. The government hasn't started an anti-trust case against them for not allowing people to use the standard fuel.

People choose to use and develop for the iPhone because if they don't, they're losing people to others who will. People partly also choose to do it for personal wants, but as a freelancer if I don't learn to program for the iPhone... I'm losing potential clients.

 

[macsmurf]

Can I build windows apps with Objective-C/Cocoa API?

Yes.

http://www.cocotron.org/

 

[zacman]

In other news:

Jobs comfirmed that they are going after Ogg Theora because of patents infringement.

Remember: Ogg Theora was the codec to become the standard for HTML5 videos until Apple blocked it at the W3C. Now they obviously want to kill the open source codec completely. Apple (and the MPEG LA) plans to ask for royalities for H264 from 2016 onwards and it's easier to do so when there is no free alternative obviously.

http://hugoroy.eu/jobs-os.php

http://www.osnews.com/story/23233/Jobs_Patent_Pool_Being_Assembled_To_Go_After_Theora

 

[ranReloaded]

Wow, I'd be happy with a 24 foot iMac too.

Sorry for the mis-spell...

Where I was born we have trouble with barbaric units

 

[dagomike]

I did not see this coming, but I do think such a case has some teeth. Apple is using their roughly near-monopoly status in the mobile app market to basically dictate that developers cannot reuse their work from other devices on the iPhone platform. In any other market, such terms would never be heard of unless there was some kind of contract with a non-compete clause (and in software such clauses are normally for competing software products, not platforms). The idea that Apple is effectively forbidding me to cross-compile work from projects on other platforms is anti-competitive.

If an app development can't stand on its own on another platform, that's not Apple's fault.

 

[rydewnd2]

Unfortunatly that's not the case TODAY.

Almost every video review someone links to about an Apple product is being displayed via Flash.

It's like me telling you you should be driving cars that run on my new fuel, (which may be better in the long term) but there are almost no filling stations that offer it.

Yes, but if nobody buys the cars, why would the filling stations switch to your fuel?? It's a chicken and egg scenario, and Apple has the money, power, influence, mindshare to cause the paradigm shift (it's already happening.. starting with the big players and trickling down to your mom and pop sites).

 

[Eraserhead]

You seem to think so. So you shouldn't have any problem explaining what it means. Start by defining the terms they use, there are only a couple of them.

They have a monopoly on Appstore distribution of applications for mobile platforms. I suppose you could argue that loads of people are getting their applications from other sources for other platforms. But they haven't exactly been incredibly successful.

"Having a monopoly" implies Apple is restricting competition. There are a number of platforms and nothing is stopping anyone from making apps on those platforms. Apple was first to market and Google fosters a marketplace of free apps which is a disincentive for investment. That's why Apple dominate the market.

The EU and many other bodies thought differently with regards to Microsoft, and similar arguments could have been made then.

 

[Speedy2]

Apple has a monopoly on mobile Application sales though.

Yes, a completely meaningless one because it is constructed from an arbitrary sales figure.
They don't have a monopoly in the smartphone market and they don't have one over available apps. People have plenty of choice on what to buy and where to buy. How exactly is Apple limiting that choice with their App Store terms?

Also, you completely disregard the fact that Android and other App Stores are just picking up. So it would only be natural that Apple has a huge lead in 2009 because they were the only ones with a properly stocked App Store over the entire year. The numbers for the current year will look entirely different. Apple will still have a big lead, but not even remotely as huge as in 2009.

 

[Swift]

I love your signature, a lot of folks are hating on flash, just because Apple is saying it's cool to do so. If Apple came out today and said: Okay, we've worked something out with Adobe, we support flash now! Most of the flash haters would stop hating it...

(Keyword being "most". So I don't want anyone coming back at me with a rebuttal saying: I'd still hate flash!!! )

I have a love hate relationship with Apple. I love their products and OS X, but some of their actions make me go....what the....?

It has nothing to do with irrational hatred. Flash is a pig, especially on the Mac platform, because Adobe stopped developing for the Mac in the '90s. They never really began again until very recently. They gave us cheesy, secondhand version of Flash for 10 years. They never moved over to the Cocoa platform for their CS suite until 9 years after the launch of OS X, making their applications slower and buggier than they had to be.

Flash is still on the Mac, and I'm running a 10.1 beta now, with hardware acceleration. Finally, equal citizenship. There are still large problems, however. Some pages show the animations in layers, and a dialog will pop up behind the video, making it unusable. After 10 years, couldn't they do better?

 

[spazzcat]

Because Apple sells over 99% of mobile applications, which gives them a monopoly on the market, and they are deliberately excluding certain tools from that store and are introducing those restrictions after establishing their AppStore monopoly.

You can't have a monopoly on your own store. It's not Apple's fault people don't buy apps from the several other mobile app stores. Maybe if those stores had the same quality requirements people would buy more apps...

 

[Eraserhead]

You can't have a monopoly on your own store.

And Microsoft can't have had a monopoly on their own OS.

Yet the EU thought differently.

 

[dagomike]

The EU and many other bodies thought differently with regards to Microsoft, and similar arguments could have been made then.

What similar arguments?

 

[Eraserhead]

Yes, a completely meaningless one because it is constructed from an arbitrary sales figure.
They don't have a monopoly in the smartphone market and they don't have one over available apps. People have plenty of choice on what to buy and where to buy. How exactly is Apple limiting that choice with their App Store terms?

The same arguments could be made for Microsoft's case against the EU, which they lost.

Also, you completely disregard the fact that Android and other App Stores are just picking up. So it would only be natural that Apple has a huge lead in 2009 because they were the only ones with a properly stocked App Store over the entire year. The numbers for the current year will look entirely different. Apple will still have a big lead, but not even remotely as huge as in 2009.

Well that's for the courts to decide.

 

[Eraserhead]

What similar arguments?

All the crap about their being competition against Windows/IE etc.