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They have a 95% share of the mobile app sales market...

Yes, but those are not all Apple applications. Also, it just means that the other platforms do not have a large number of customers buying applications for their phones. If you were saying that Apple's App Store is anti-competitive since it is the only store allowed to sell applications you can install on the iPhone then you would have a better argument, but that is not the issue that is being discussed which is the policy of allowing developers to use cross compilers.
 
Just because that pie chart keeps getting referenced, here's the pie chart from the article linked by someone else (sorry, lost the post) to debunk it.

appstore-usage.png


jW
 
.... You know by thentime this is fought out in court there will be another 100k non-flash apps in the app store. So even if Apple looses, they win

The time when people cared about flash apps will be over.

As far allowing a browser plug-in. That will never happen since they. Don't do that for even themselves. Standards will win there.
 
They have a 95% share of the mobile app sales market...

Apple has less than a 20% share of the mobile app market. Just because they sell more 10x apps to their tiny share of customers doesn't give them any control over the other 80%+ of potential smartphone app buyers or developers for those customers.

Microsoft couldn't say the same because IBM compatible PCs were 90+% of the PC market, and the competitions platforms, Apple (et.al.), all together had less than 10%.

When Google, Nokia and RIM app stores shut down, come back and talk.
 
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.

I think the policy sucks and there's more to it that the lame "reasons" given. However, I'm on the fence as to whether it's anti-competitive. In the usual sense of anti-trust, the situation would be reversed - where Apple would be preventing a third party tool to port native apps over to other platforms. That would damage Apple's competitors. Here, that's not the case - the policy only hurts Apple themselves - they're actually self-limiting their own product offering.

Software companies may also incur damages, but is that really Apple's responsibility? I don't know. Just conjecture, as I'm sure it takes teams of lawyers to sort it all out.
 
i am not feeling to good and am not thinking very clearly, so apologies if i am off base.

the Adobe iPhone App compiler, would allow an app to be built without the use of the iphone SDK? am i right???

thats why i think Apple, has changed the license agreement...Apple were trying to protect their own development software??

would it not mean that anybody with Flash CS5 build and app, and submit it??

am i making some kind of sense??
 
OMG! Lot of you people need to stop drinking that Apple KOOLAID!

First off, Anti-compeitive and monopoly are two separate things. Apple does indeed have a monopoly in several areas.

- Digital Music Players (iPods)
- They have the largest share in Mobile Web Surfing (iPod, iPhone & now iPad)
- Largest online music retailer (iTunes)

And all three of these I see clearly how Apple is extremely anti-compeitive and tries to limit consumer choice.

I'm happy to see regulators are now focusing attention. Apple is super evil when it comes to anti-compeitive practices. .

This inquiry doesn't just target the iPhone, if you all forgot iPod also! which BTW DOES HAVE A MONOPOLY!

Apple does not have a monopoly anywhere. Just because you can read what a monopoly is on Wikipedia, obviously doesn't mean you understand it.

You do not understand what you are talking about.
 
Of course not. You go and buy an Android phone. What is this nonsense of grouping ALL apps from every mobile platform and call it an 'Apple Monopoly'?

Last time I checked the Unity website said they believe they're not affected. Personally I don't like these "Fill in with your 3D models and you have a finished game" engines, a la Unreal. I do appreciate a lot the work of the Cocos2d/SIO2 community. That's the difference between "middleware" and "library".

And to those that say that "Apple banning the Flash Packager is different from Apple banning the Flash runtime on the iPhone/websites", I call BS. Go check what the Packager outputs. So much for cross-compiling.

Maybe I didn't state my position, my position Apple is being too secretive and heavy handed that it's burning bridges with lot of companies, and in the long run, Apple will feel the heat.

So, no I am not saying that Apple is a monopoly, and I am not sure if this anti trust case will even fly.

And about Unity, last post about apple is under April 13th (http://blogs.unity3d.com/2010/04/14/unity-and-the-iphone-os-4-0-update/) which says, they think they will be okay, but they are talking to Apple about it. So I think I was correct that they are in a limbo state.

I am not low level programmer, but from how Adobe describes its compiler, it compiles directly into ARM code. So yes, it is a a compiler. From Adobe site:
"We created a new compiler front end that allowed LLVM to understand ActionScript 3 and used its existing ARM back end to output native ARM assembly code. We call this Ahead of Time (AOT) compilation—in contrast to the way Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR function on the desktop using Just in Time (JIT) compilation. Since we are able to compile ActionScript to ARM ahead of time, the application gets all the performance benefits that the JIT would offer and the license compliance of not requiring a runtime in the final application."
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/logged_in/abansod_iphone.html

Also, just because you are not a "fill a 3d model and you have a finished game" person, it doesn't mean that there is no need for developers to have rapid development frameworks and spend more time on designing the game and less on writing support code.
 
OMG! Lot of you people need to stop drinking that Apple KOOLAID!

First off, Anti-compeitive and monopoly are two separate things. Apple does indeed have a monopoly in several areas.

- Digital Music Players (iPods)
- They have the largest share in Mobile Web Surfing (iPod, iPhone & now iPad)
- Largest online music retailer (iTunes)

And all three of these I see clearly how Apple is extremely anti-compeitive and tries to limit consumer choice.

I'm happy to see regulators are now focusing attention. Apple is super evil when it comes to anti-compeitive practices. .

This inquiry doesn't just target the iPhone, if you all forgot iPod also! which BTW DOES HAVE A MONOPOLY!

Any antitrust issues with iPods+iTunes have been put to bed years ago, both in North America and Europe.
 
There's an Android app store with almost 40,000 apps.

And consider this:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2010/0...0000-applications-sometime-in-september-2010/

It's a reasonable point you raise. Android is doing quite nicely as far as app development goes (not sure on the quality, but I'm sure there are some great ones in there). They've done this while keeping a pretty open "ecosystem" and without the aura that inevitably surrounds a Jobsian birth. It may also help Apple in any future antitrust inquiry, but I worry that longer term the disillusionment felt by the developer community, third party companies, even some consumers may come back and bite them.

While Apple is currently milking the cash cow for all it's worth, as with all good things (to them) they must come to an end. Now would be a good time for Apple to spread some love. They can't rely on the underdog tag any longer. People are starting to notice.
 
Apple is embracing Clang and LLVM for its compiling and runtime toolchain, which makes your juvenile assertion obviously wrong.

That's weird. LLVM is a virtual machine, an abstract layer, between the CPU and the code. Steve says that's bad.
 
i am not feeling to good and am not thinking very clearly, so apologies if i am off base.

the Adobe iPhone App compiler, would allow an app to be built without the use of the iphone SDK? am i right???

thats why i think Apple, has changed the license agreement...Apple were trying to protect their own development software??

would it not mean that anybody with Flash CS5 build and app, and submit it??

am i making some kind of sense??

Adobes tool builds an Application that runs inside a wrapper that runs on the iPhone platform. It's an application within an application that only allows the application developer to use specific futures of the Apple SDK based on what Adobe has permitted.

Apple gives you the tools pretty much for free. The are saying no to the wrapper part of the Adobe tool.
 
iPhone is far from a monopoly, and surely Apple can dictate what tools are used to develop with?
Apple is said to have over 95% of the mobile device application sales -- which can certainly be considered a monopoly, and a huge one at that.

They're using that monopoly to force developers to use Apple's products only to develop, including the price of purchasing a Mac and keeping the OS up-to-date. That's not even included in the $100 per year for the privilege to even run applications on a physical iDevice. They're also using that monopoly to, now, force developers out of markets on other devices.

They're setting up a situation that goes like this:
  1. Apple has 95%+ of the mobile application market.
  2. Developer wants to create a mobile application. Pretty much has to produce a product for iPhone for success.
  3. Developer can either write two versions entirely from scratch (almost twice the work), or develop solely for the product that gives them 95% of the market. They'll often choose the latter for more profits with less work.
  4. Apple now has 95%+1 of the mobile application market, pushing more developers out of competing markets (hurting the products of competitors severely with "We have the most apps, buy our phone!" campaigns).
If that's not abusing a monopoly to lock out competitors, I don't know what is. Without this clause the developers had the option of using a cross-platform development kit (such as MonoTouch, Unity, or the Flash compiler) to eliminate some of the duplicated work -- now they don't.

It also isn't even smart/logical from an 'application quality' perspective. Most applications that are cross-developed for multiple platforms are running on touch-based platforms, such as a two-platform application for iPhone and Android. They're both multi-touch interfaces, and all it takes, at most, is a bit of tweaking to make it look like a native application for both platforms. The actual interface gestures, touches, etc. would be near-identical for both to begin with, no matter what tools created it. Second, they're locking themselves out of the game market to a large extent, just as they're trying to inspire developers to create for it. No developer in their right mind would write a full game engine from scratch in Objective-C, in XCode.

It's just another evil corporation abusing a monopoly, which hopefully gets smacked back down into its place.
 
Nothing but an Op-Ed by the Post

Sorry, but nothing in this article has meat.

It's all fantasy. It's a fishing expedition with only 2 sentences of merit:

Officials at both the Justice Department and FTC declined comment. Apple did not return calls seeking comment.

By the way, the same 3 players are currently involved in dealing with lawsuits between Apple vs. Nokia/Nokia vs. Apple, etc.

How this turns into Ban on Flash for iPhone being investigated is nothing but fantasy.
 
i am not feeling to good and am not thinking very clearly, so apologies if i am off base.

the Adobe iPhone App compiler, would allow an app to be built without the use of the iphone SDK? am i right???

thats why i think Apple, has changed the license agreement...Apple were trying to protect their own development software??

would it not mean that anybody with Flash CS5 build and app, and submit it??

am i making some kind of sense??

Adobe's compiler compiles into straight ARM code, skipping the SDK mostly. Adobe claims that over 100 apps written with Flash CS5 beta were already accpeted into the App Store.

Apple then silently (and suddenly) changed the licesne agreement after IPhone OS4 announcement and weeks later, Steve Jobs publically stated that thrid party cross compiler will yield poor quality software and that's why they are banning it.

There is now a lot of contention about Apple's decision and whether if it's Apple's or developer and users' best interests.
 
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).

I actually saw this coming, and I am glad it is happening.

Anyone not drunk on Kool-Aid understands that Jobs does not want Flash or Java, because Flash and Java can break the wall of his walled garden and allow iPhone/iPad users to obtain apps and media without paying 30% to Apple.

Anyone who is not an idiot understands that banning cross-compilers is a way to keep Android from getting iPhone/iPad apps. Jobs sees Android as the iPhone's first real competitor, and want's to kill it.

An investigation is a good thing for all consumers.
 
So let's review.

Apple releases a niche phone. It does a second version a year later and adoption ramps somewhat. Another year later it releases a third version and sales ramp substantially, but still a tiny niche player.

Apple releases a pad with a walled garden development environment as an OPTIONAL item for OPT-IN users.

End users are free to "jailbreak" the device which is NOT formally tied to a carrier, because it is unlocked, and use any development environment they want.

The only folks in the garden are folks who opt-in and need, want, or tolerate the features and benefits.

Last and certainly not least. The device has been out for LESS THAN A MONTH and an anti-trust investigation is initiated?

This does not even pass the smell test.

Rocketman

It's the New York Post. What do people actually expect? Credibility?
 
There is now a lot of contention about Apple's decision and whether if it's Apple's or developer and users' best interests.

Well outside of the investment of a Mac to develop in the first place (which Apple has always recommended, Apple doesn't stand to benefit financially since developers have to pay 99 bucks no matter what tools they use in order to distribute.
 
Obviously an increasing amount of people are seeing Apple's way of doing business as abusive or anti-competitive. A lot of people here seem to be in denial of the fact that there is a serious problem which will only get worse as time goes on. Whether or not you think this is fair or just isn't all that relevant. Whether or not this is exactly the same as the MS cases is also irrelevant. The problems are the similarities. One thing that really drove the cases against MS was massive corporate lobbying from competitors, which may be what is brewing. The MS case just made people more confident in doing this and more sensitive to this behavior. Arguing over whether or not they have a monopoly doesn't really address this problem.
 
That's weird. LLVM is a virtual machine, an abstract layer, between the CPU and the code. Steve says that's bad.

Wit is not your mark in the world. Any compilier is an abstraction layer between the CPU and the code.

An abstraction of an abstraction to obfuscate functionality dictated by the second abstraction is not what Apple will tolerate, again.
 
And that is the big thing everyone is missing. Apple has a monoploy on apps. They may not have a lock down on phones but having a lock down on apps hurts everyone else when they are force to choose between developing for apple or everyone else.

They didn't exert monopoly or market power over other providers. They simply made a better mousetrap that was so good literally most people leaned toward them. If it was the other thing, the competitors long time advance entry to market would have sealed their position.

Sometimes better is just better. Really.

The developer agreement change is so recent, it certainly did not impact or cause the series of events we are already observing right now, which any pending anti-trust inquiry would view.

Rocketman
 
OMG! Lot of you people need to stop drinking that Apple KOOLAID!

First off, Anti-compeitive and monopoly are two separate things. Apple does indeed have a monopoly in several areas.

- Digital Music Players (iPods)
- They have the largest share in Mobile Web Surfing (iPod, iPhone & now iPad)
- Largest online music retailer (iTunes)

And all three of these I see clearly how Apple is extremely anti-compeitive and tries to limit consumer choice.

I'm happy to see regulators are now focusing attention. Apple is super evil when it comes to anti-compeitive practices. .

This inquiry doesn't just target the iPhone, if you all forgot iPod also! which BTW DOES HAVE A MONOPOLY!

Please don't tell me you have a university degree. Your entire line of reasoning is devoid of fact.
 
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