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

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

I was just thinking bit more about all this...

If I was in Adobe's shoes not only that I would do what appears that they are doing now but would also investigate possibility of second court case - case against SJ himself for making false, misleading statements and basically spreading nothing but blatant lies in his recent open later.

I am not a lawyer - but somehow I feel, having in mind SJ influential position as CEO of mega corp, that fairly solid case could be made there too

 

[MikhailT]

I was just thinking bit more about all this...

If I was in Adobe's shoes not only that I would do what appears that they are doing now but would also investigate possibility of second court case - case against SJ himself for making false, misleading statements and basically spreading nothing but blatant lies in his recent open later.

I am not a lawyer - but somehow I feel that fairly solid case could be made there too

Nope. There's no solid case to be made there. There's no false misleading lies there. You can't prove otherwise.

 

[lilo777]

Apple isn't obligated to make it easy for developers to make money by allowing everybody to cross-compile.

If this logic was legally correct then Microsoft would never have gotten sued either but they have.

 

[RaZaK]

Re: the Update

well, since a real news outlet, Reuters, is corroborating the story, this must be legitimate.

Even New Yorkers don't trust the New York Post.

 

[RaZaK]

If this logic was legally correct then Microsoft would never get sued either but they were.

your comparison doesn't make sense. When has MS ever been sued for cross-compilation issues.

 

[coleridge78]

Maybe you can explain how LLVM is not a third party layer that comes between the developer and the platform? I would say it is, and a beneficial one at that.

As would I, but that was neither your original assertion nor is it what this discussion is about.

 

[cryonic49]

They were the underdog then. Ideally, they'd wish everyone embraced Cocoa since the beginning but they didn't have power to do so. Adobe had stabbed them in the back and slept with Windows, the new winner, but they needed Adobe (Not that they ported Ps/Ai to OS X very soon, either). So they settled for Carbon. Once they had the power to say no, the ditched the whole Carbon 64 project. Unfair if you like in terms of agreements/promises, but Adobe had it coming. Knowing their record I doubt they would have done the least effort to switch from Carbon32 to Carbon64, were it available.

Lets rewind the history a little.

When Steve Jobs introduced OS X, Apple was still fighting for its life. Adobe had chosen not to invest as much resources into a a seemingly dead platform, and that does not constitute a stab in the back, it's a sane business decision.

So Adobe used Carbon. So did Apple for FCP, Quicktime, iTunes.
Everyone was expecting the transition be longer as Apple was planning Carbon64, until Apple removed it.

Fast forward to today, FCP, Quicktime and iTunes are still not full Cocoa, while Adobe has delivered PS, After Effects and premier Pro in full 64bit.

Sounds like Adobe has stuck to their own timeline and delivered it before Apple.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

Nope. There's no solid case to be made there. There's no false misleading lies there. You can't prove otherwise.

Almost every single point he made is blatant LIE and can be easily proved

Anyway, Reuters seams to be digging into this:

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust regulators are considering an inquiry into whether Apple (AAPL.O) violates antitrust law by requiring that its programming tools be used to write applications for the popular iPad and iPhone, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department enforce antitrust law, and no decision has been made on which would take the probe, said the source, who spoke privately for business reasons.

The New York Post first reported regulators' interest in Apple's policy, which essentially requires people who write apps to choose between writing them only for Apple or for Apple's rivals.

The agencies are expected within days to make a decision on which would handle the investigation, the Post reported.

"What they're (Apple) doing is clearly anticompetitive ... They want one superhighway and they're the tollkeeper on that superhighway," said David Balto, a former FTC policy director.

Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. (Reporting by Diane Bartz and Gabriel Madway; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

 

[lilo777]

Almost every single point he made is blatant LIE and can be easily proved

Anyway, Reuters seams to be digging into this:

WASHINGTON, May 3 (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust regulators are considering an inquiry into whether Apple (AAPL.O) violates antitrust law by requiring that its programming tools be used to write applications for the popular iPad and iPhone, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department enforce antitrust law, and no decision has been made on which would take the probe, said the source, who spoke privately for business reasons.

The New York Post first reported regulators' interest in Apple's policy, which essentially requires people who write apps to choose between writing them only for Apple or for Apple's rivals.

The agencies are expected within days to make a decision on which would handle the investigation, the Post reported.

"What they're (Apple) doing is clearly anticompetitive ... They want one superhighway and they're the tollkeeper on that superhighway," said David Balto, a former FTC policy director.

Apple and the Justice Department declined to comment. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. (Reporting by Diane Bartz and Gabriel Madway; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

So, it's official. FTC is indeed looking into this. Interesting.

 

[ranReloaded]

I was just thinking bit more about all this...

If I was in Adobe's shoes not only that I would do what appears that they are doing now but would also investigate possibility of second court case - case against SJ himself for making false, misleading statements and basically spreading nothing but blatant lies in his recent open later.

I am not a lawyer - but somehow I feel, having in mind SJ influential position as CEO of mega corp, that fairly solid case could be made there too

Go take your Computer Science 101. What Steve said then is accurate from the technical side. If you believe he has other reasons/agenda, that's another thing.

 

[macUser2007]

Nope. There's no solid case to be made there. There's no false misleading lies there. You can't prove otherwise.

LOL. Case closed. Because MikhailT said so

In any case, I am glad to see Steve Jobs reigned in a bit. Apple has become evil lately.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

So, it's official. FTC is indeed looking into this. Interesting.

Indeed

I also hope others join Adobe too - more the merrier!

 

[coleridge78]

But... Unity does not use any of the approved languages. I assume that it is automatically banned by this agreement then. And if it is not, then Adobe will have a solid legal case that Apple misuses the agreement to target Adobe specifically.

Wrong. One of its three scripting languages is JavaScript. It is possible to use Unity without violating the terms of the license. The Unity folks themselves know this, and are actively working with Apple to flesh out the limits.

What makes you think that targeting Adobe specifically would be a legal problem? Followup: what makes you think that it is targeting Adobe specifically, as opposed to Adobe just happens to be the one of a number of possible bad actors who are actively pressing the issue at this particular moment in time?

I say "bad actors" because, contrary to all the "poor Adobe" shilling around here, they're quite clearly engaging in an attempt to take their usual lock-in tactics to a new market by leveraging their existing "monopolies" (to abuse that word one more time) to usurp the R&D put into a project by a competitor for nearly a decade.

 

[lilo777]

your comparison doesn't make sense. When has MS ever been sued for cross-compilation issues.

I was talking in broader context. The logic may be paraphrased as follows: "MS isn't obligated to make it easy for Netscape to make money by not providing a free internet browser packaged with OS". The devil is in the details. The same action may or may not be illegal depending on the market share.

 

[MikhailT]

If this logic was legally correct then Microsoft would never get sued either but they were.

Except MS was forcing vendors to only include Windows computers, bundle their IE into their OS with a bad API that screws with other browsers and that's what started the anti-competition activity. If MS required developers to code in Visual C++ for web browser on their OS, that's not anti-competition either. If MS provided Visual C++ APIs start screwing with the third party browsers to make their IE seem more stable and better performance, that's anti-competition.

What would get Apple in trouble if they start messing with the APIs that would make the cross-compiled applications suffer on their devices, that'll be anti-competition. If they only require that developers to code in one language, that's not anti-competition, that's just a requirement.

I was talking in broader context. The logic may be paraphrased as follows: "MS isn't obligated to make it easy for Netscape to make money by not providing a free internet browser packaged with OS". The devil is in the details. The same action may or may not be illegal depending on the market share.

Here's what I meant. MS isn't obligated to make it easy for Netscape to make money by allowing Netscape to code in any language other than Visual C++ and Visual Studio. Netscape can continue to develop their software and have no problem from MS about it. The only problem that would get MS in trouble if MS starts messing with the APIs that Netscape use and make it crappy on purpose to make MS software much better.

MS can mandate that Visual Studio be only used to create Windows applications for their OS only, and won't allow it to compile for Linux or Mac. That's not anti-competition either.

 

[AllGaussian]

Can anyone point me to a list of these 100+ apps that are currently on the app store that were created with flash. I want to make sure I don't purchase any of these.

Link to at least some of them:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

It has been brought up by others but, I looked at some of those in the app store. Thing that struck me (other than they were not free [the ones I looked at)], was they were about 10Mb.

I took a look at the apps on my device and out of the 90 only 30 were above 5Mb. Only 5 including Navigon and Dictionary.com were above 10Mb.

I also noticed I had a metronome (7.8Mb) in my guitar toolkit app (8Mb). If you know the toolkit it is a lot more than a metronome.

Seems like there may be a bit of extra sauce in my opinion.

 

[macsmurf]

As would I, but that was neither your original assertion nor is it what this discussion is about.

I did not write those exact words but wrote abstract layer instead. However, the point is the same, i. e. Steve says third party layers that come between the developer and the platform results in substandard apps. In the case of LLVM this is not true.

Thus, Steve is wrong about this.

 

[Reed Rothchild]

Can you support the assertion that he said that "third party cross compiler will yield poor quality software", and that it was either the only or primary reason for the change?

Wow man. Every post of yours in this thread is so spectacularly wrong that I think you've achieved a new personal best! Only another dozen or so more for a new world record. Come on, you can do it .

 

[coleridge78]

I did not write those exact words but wrote abstract layer instead. However, the point is the same, i. e. Steve says third party layers that come between the developer and the platform results in substandard apps. In the case of LLVM this is not true.

Thus, Steve is wrong about this.

LLVM is not between the developer and "the platform", it is part of the platform. Thus, you are a silly person.

Also, one more time, he didn't mention "cross compilers".

 

[coleridge78]

Wow man. Every post of yours in this thread is so spectacularly wrong that I think you've achieved a new personal best! Only another dozen or so more for a new world record. Come on, you can do it .

Amusing! Care to point out an error? There are definitely a few, since I'm human. Help me out.

 

[pmjoe]

Apple chose not to allow cross-compilers, third party development tools or whatever. They have to live with the consequences of that. I don't see where they "should" get punished for that. Less developers means less revenue for them and less potential customers for them. Companies have the right to choose. If we start telling companies what they can't do (not directly related to laws), we'll be killing innovation and everything else that makes companies success. We have to let the free market decide for themselves.

But this is a misstatement. In Apple's model, companies are forced to invest more money in Apple's intellectual domain than they might otherwise do. More developers develop expertise in non-reusable Apple specific APIs skills - that model is inherently anti-competitive, and kills innovation.

 

[coleridge78]

But this is a misstatement. In Apple's model, companies are forced to invest more money in Apple's intellectual domain than they might otherwise do. More developers develop expertise in non-reusable Apple specific APIs skills - that model is inherently anti-competitive, and kills innovation.

That's a side-effect of the modern world of API-driven programming. No different for people whose chosen environment is Flash or .NET or a myriad of others. While it is literally anti-competitive, it's also just a fact of life across the board.

 

[ranReloaded]

Lets rewind the history a little.

When Steve Jobs introduced OS X, Apple was still fighting for its life. Adobe had chosen not to invest as much resources into a a seemingly dead platform, and that does not constitute a stab in the back, it's a sane business decision.

It is a stab in the back since Adobe flourished thanks to the Mac platform.

So Adobe used Carbon. So did Apple for FCP, Quicktime, iTunes.
Everyone was expecting the transition be longer as Apple was planning Carbon64, until Apple removed it.

Fast forward to today, FCP, Quicktime and iTunes are still not full Cocoa, while Adobe has delivered PS, After Effects and premier Pro in full 64bit.

Sounds like Adobe has stuck to their own timeline and delivered it before Apple.

That's a small sign that the sides changed. Finder is Cocoa now, and Apple delivered QuicktimeX. Adobe is being pushed now. Still, Flash on the Mac is third grade citizen, intel support came only in CS3, the CS UI is made in Flash (possibly changed now, finally, but can't tell).

 

[Reed Rothchild]

Amusing! Care to point out an error? There are definitely a few, since I'm human. Help me out.

Ahh, good sport. Sorry - I'm just joshing with you. I disagree with your points on cross-compiling, but hey in the grand scheme of things it's all pretty much irrelevant. I'm more interested in how the actual antitrust inquiry pans out (if it ever gets there...).

 

[Berio]

I was thinking more in terms of developers, 3rd party companies, legislators.

ok, i can see what you mean, makes sense. i didn't mean to single you out specifically
i was just wandering how all these old-underdog-myths and disappointment about apple get mixed into a debate about business practice. it is odd for me to see emotion about a corporation get mixed in with debate about antitrust regulations, monopolies, etc. apple is not a mother, rather a corporation that make good products and aim to make profits. i don't see them selling less units because of their business attitudes, indeed i wonder how many developers will abandon apple because of their public image.

furthermore i agree with the points made above: if somebody wants to develop for apple's platform & other platforms -> it is reasonable to put in the extra work to make apps for each one. if developer does not "have the time" -> employ somebody or develop only for one platform or do something else. surely no one is suggesting that they have a "right" to write once and sell on multiple platforms?