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

[jliverse]

Amicus Briefs

Anyone think that Apple will have some corporate support from, say, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft? If the Adobe Flash export-to-iPhone functionality was to become a hit (excluding the new terms of the App Store), you'd have the possibility that Google could just buy Adobe and then cease updating the iPhone export software to orphan all of the popular apps. The fact that the XBox, Wii and PS3 all require some level of signed code is on par with the iPhone doing it too. So what's the difference? Should consoles be required to run any third-party disc loaded onto the drive? Should Java applications be signed? How about websites? ATM machines? Voting machines? Do you get a pass when making hardware that you can stipulate what kinds of software it runs? Why should Apple support people calling in because their Adobe-generated Farmville app is freezing? Or handling lawsuits if the app doesn't allow users to call 911 if you haven't harvested your apples or whatever?

 

[Art Mark]

exactly -

They have have an inquiry. But APple will not lose this. The Govt. is doing due diligence, but there is no case.

Adobe may have to find a way to compete in the marketplace and not use the Govt. to help them fund their CEO's pension.

And please you Flash Camp folks, learn a real language and stop hoping that scripting is the best solution for everything.

While this is a good move I just don't see how Apple could lose.

iPhone is far from a monopoly, and surely Apple can dictate what tools are used to develop with? Developers are quite welcome to drop Apple mobile development and be quite happy to continue with other smartphone platforms.

 

[Speedy2]

Do you think General Motors would get away with it when they forced their customers to buy tires and gas only from them? I don't think so.

As a German you should know that a car company can impose any limitation on you if you want to keep your full warranty. And they have every right to do so since you can always buy another brand if you don't like it.

As for forcing you to buy special gas... I want to see one car company that wants to try that. They'd be out of business in less than a year because they wouldn't sell a single car.

 

[Eidorian]

I don't think this will be on the news tonight.

 

[marksman]

This is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard.

I hope these two "watchdogs" actually used the word "gizmo" in their discussions.

Apple's change does not prevent people from making programs for as many platforms as they want. If Apple required iPhone authors to only write software for the iPhone and nothing else, that might be a legitimate complaint. What is going on here is not relevant, and I can't believe they would be wasting their time on deciding who might "inquire" about it, let alone pursue it.

 

[ranReloaded]

You are also forgetting that Adobe don't have access to certain things like they do on the Windows platform, e.g. hardware acceleration.

WRONG. Adobe has access to Quartz/Core Animation (Hardware Accelerated) just like everyone else since Tiger. They just want to get away with their own lazy "Write once, run everywhere" mantra.

I would never expect to get away with "porting" my Cocoa skills to, say, Linux and have a translation layer ready for me, with no performance costs at all. I'd rather learn the Linux libraries. But everyone else wants a free lunch at the AppStore with their Actionscript/Ruby/C#/whatever. Go figure.

 

[NoahK17]

Smack their (botty?) over what? The iPhone is their product. They can do whatever they damn well please with it. There are a ton of alternatives; no one is holding a gun to anyone's head, forcing them to buy into the Apple product cycle. Users or developers can jump ship and go to the other side whenever they please. This is just a big show of drama.

Sometime similar happened with Microsoft over Windows OS, remember? IE was the default browser in Windows, and that led to an anti-trust lawsuit. It was Microsoft's product, and according to your argument, they should have been able to do whatever they wanted, as there were other choices out there, Macintosh, Linux, etc. But many, many people disagree with your argument, and that's why Apple will be forced to allow 3rd party developed apps into their store if they meet other approval requirements.

 

[Fraaaa]

Do Wii, XBox, PS3, PC and Mac developer use the same programming language to compile game for these different platform?
Is this ever been an issue for the past 20 years?

 

[Eraserhead]

Same can be said about the Windows users/Apple haters. Rather than re-write it, I just fixed it for ya.

There aren't exactly many of them these days.

Perfect.

Federal "regulators" turn a blind eye as Wall Street robs the country blind and brings the economy to it's knees...but they're all over this.

Keep up the great work!

Well I'm sure the EU will be following suit shortly. They may as well get some money out of it as well.

Alternatively Apple could just reverse course and allow this.

 

[jimbobb24]

Finally

Once the government gets involved things should improve dramatically. What could possibly go wrong with government interference in rapidly evolving markets and technologies?

 

[coleridge78]

What a bunch of bull. You have no clue and just repeat Steve's nonsense arguments.

I am a developer myself and I don't need to be "protected" in my choice of development tools. I am very well able to pick the language of choice, the IDE I like and balance the pros and cons. I don't need someone to tell me whether I limit my possibilities of making full use of the iPhone's hardware.
It's only the quality of the final product that counts, and the fact that people download it and like it.

If Steve wants oh so much quality on his platform, why doesn't he ban the fart apps, or the beer apps or whatever he happens to deem non-quality? This is about full control over the whole App food chain and leveraging the current massive lead the iPhone has in terms of developer power. He wants the good, expensive-to-make apps only on his platform and not on other platforms (compare to gaming consoles, where multiplatform development is very common). Steve could just be honest and say that, but instead he's making up these ridiculous claims.

You're comparing Apples (pun intended) to oranges. There is a legitimate case to be made for cross-platform tools in some areas. Games are at the top of the list. They are qualitatively different from other applications in many ways but a primary one is that they use (almost exclusively) their own UI. They aren't using OS widgets and high-level interactions except sometimes for things like settings screens (and there only rarely). Many don't even take advantage of the OS's API for low-level interactions, like capturing a mouse click--game programmers (or game engine/toolkit programmers) may write their own mouse event handler so they can reuse it across platforms, rather than relying on separate APIs for each.

This is totally different from other classes of application where you are actively frustrating 95% of users if your app does not conform to the environment's standards. This isn't about the iPhone, it's a truism of interface design. By extension, enabling a third party to come in and disrupt your platform by encouraging non-standard interfaces is a Bad Idea (the world has been there and done that and it always suck for both user and developer--as well as the owner of the platform--in the end, as discussed in dozens of the more sane articles on this topic in recent weeks).

The argument that you are free to choose is misleading at best and dishonest propaganda at worst. You are "free to choose" if you discount inertia and lock-in and an assortment of other factors. Which, of course, is similar to freshman physics discounting everything except Force = Mass x Acceleration and 9.8 m/s/s; it makes it easy to make your point, but if you rely on it in the real world you're going to get someone killed.

 

[kdarling]

Does Windows ship with no web browser preinstalled these days?

In Europe, Windows displays a choice screen with something like a dozen browsers to choose from.

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

If you find or build the tools for it, you can. People do compile Objective-C on Windows. There's also attempts to port Cocoa (CoCoTron?) for the same reason.

It's not prohibited to try, which is the whole point here.

 

[Speedy2]

And this is somehow different from what Microsoft has been doing for years??

It is different because the claim made by the other poster that Apple "controls" 90%+ of the smartphone app market is completely made-up (I want to avoid the term 'lie' because it implies intent). Android is already approaching the 50.000 app count, and there are still plenty of business-specific apps for Windows Mobile.

 

[mcmlxix]

Perfect.

Federal "regulators" turn a blind eye as Wall Street robs the country blind and brings the economy to it's knees...but they're all over this.

Keep up the great work!

Wall Street robs the country? True up to a point. Where to you think that money ultimately ends up? A lot of it is in the hands of the administration and Congress....and the more money the plutocrats have, the more power they have to get more money.

And talk about monopolies...what about the Federal Reserve System?

 

[WilliamLondon]

No-one forced you to use Internet Explorer either, but Microsoft was still forced to now offer you an options screen.

Not quite that simple - along with IIS, Microsoft used its dominant position to lock people in to IE for the controls that only ran on their browser.

 

[Darkroom]

WRONG. Adobe has access to Quartz/Core Animation (Hardware Accelerated) just like everyone else since Tiger. They just want to get away with their own lazy "Write once, run everywhere" mantra.

I would never expect to get away with "porting" my Cocoa skills to, say, Linux and have a translation layer ready for me, with no performance costs at all. I'd rather learn the Linux libraries. But everyone else wants a free lunch at the AppStore with their Actionscript/Ruby/C#/whatever. Go figure.

Unity 3D...

 

[Speedy2]

No, it is NOT native.

MonoTouch and Unity create 100% native ARM code. No Flash runtime or anything similar involved.

Anyway, what does it matter how it's done? Let the customer decide what's good and what's slow+resource hungry+generally bad.

 

[kdarling]

I would never expect to get away with "porting" my Cocoa skills to, say, Linux and have a translation layer ready for me, with no performance costs at all.

Oh pooh. Few apps need such a minor performance boost.

For that matter, why write in Objective-C, which can be slower than C++? Heck, why not require ARM assembler?

But everyone else wants a free lunch at the AppStore with their Actionscript/Ruby/C#/whatever. Go figure.

Yeah, darn those people who want to use a standardized API and languages. Like that guy Steve Jobs, who is pushing HTML5 and its slow Javascript.

Oh wait, Javascript is allowed under the iPhone SDK rules.

That's because PERFORMANCE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE RULES. It's all about control.

 

[hitekalex]

Before every one parrots on what Jobs said about substandard apps made with third party frameworks - think of this:

If Apple is so concern about third party frameworks not adopting new features, then Apple should work with third party framework developers ahead of time, let them know the coming changes, so third party frameworks will in much better positions on adopting these changes when Apple finally releases new hardware or APIs and etc. If these frameworks don't adopt, developers simply would not write more applications based on them.

The secret nature of Apple is TOXIC to third party developers. Apple doesn't really post roadmaps, and frequently surprise everyone with drastic changes. The whole Carbon 64bit debacle is a good example - Everyone rags on Adobe for taking so long on transitioning to Cocoa, but the fact is, even Apple's own Pro Apps was caught in surprise.

To date, Apple doesn't have full Cocoa Final Cut Pro, Snow Leopard is forced to have two Quick Time versions, one legacy and one modern to facilitate multi year transitions, iTunes is still a Carbon application. Apple even ridicules Adobe for being Lazy when major CS5 applications are now 64bit. Note, I am not saying Adobe doesn't have its own faults (its handling of security issues in Acrobat and Flash is atrocious).

I don't know what crack Apple is smoking, the cross-compling ban is also a real low blow. Adobe has been, for months, drumming about the cross compiler (or frameworks) in Flash, and Apple pulled the rug out right before CS5 release with a little text change in developer's agreement. No prior announcement about their concerns with third party frameworks, nor any post-announcement after the developer agreement changes until the public discovers it. This is JUST LOW.

Not only does this change affect Adobe, but other excellent third party frameworks such as Unity 3D are put in a limbo state. If Apple really dislikes third party cross complier, they should have better communications from the start. Publicly stating their opinion on the Flash Obj-C complier when it was first announced by Adobe would have been sufficient.

Apple is now burning bridges with everyone (Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and many small time developers). It may be the hottest thing right now (Hey, I own everything Apple: MBP, ACD, iPod, iPad), but in the long run, everyone will turn on Apple if it doesn't learn how to communicate.

Thank you.. finally someone with common sense and knowledge of the subject matter.. welcome change from a bunch of Jobs' monkeys who just parrot his "party line".

Whether Apple's recent actions are "legal" or not will (hopefully) get tested in the court of law. However, legality of their recent business practices aside, they have certainly done a lot to alienate even their most loyal customers, developers and media..

There are different ways to do business, and Apple's secrecy, paranoia and desire to exercice 100% control over their product and what the customers can do with them will ultimately hurt them in the market place. The only question is if this will happen due to legal means or just people abandoning their platforms in droves for other alternatives..

 

[Maxipeg]

Certified Apps?

What Apple could do is to certify apps that have been programmed according to their standards. Uncertified apps still could be installed displaying a warning that this is not an app officially supported by Apple, and that installation may result in instability, decreased performance and increased power requirements, possibly even damage to the phone by overheating.

 

[Prynce]

Yes

If justice exists in this world it should smack Apple's botty rather hard here!

Saying that, I wouldn't dev for it in any case, not any more, so can't care less about final outcome...

In any case - bring it on please!

Im sorry no company should be forced to let insecure programs on their devices. If you want flash go buy an Android.

 

[coleridge78]

MonoTouch and Unity create 100% native ARM code. No Flash runtime or anything similar involved.

Anyway, what does it matter how it's done? Let the customer decide what's good and what's slow+resource hungry+generally bad.

"Let the customer decide" is, 99.9% of the time, code for "let inertia, lock-in, and backroom deals determine some limited field from which the costumer can have the appearance of choice".

Allowing Packager wouldn't increase choice in any meaningful way. It would just introduce a second giant party trying to control the environment. It would still be a walled garden, except the customer wouldn't even get the sometime-benefit of a well-maintained walled garden.

 

[tdmac]

But it is not native code...it is cross compiled. It may run at a great speed, but it won't necessarily take advantage of all the API's that are included in Apples SDK.

Precisely the point and why it is a bad idea.

Nobody's forcing you to use Internet Explorer either, but look where that argument got Microsoft.

Apple should let you have another store and flash... just give you the ability to turn them on and off and make a deal with Adobe that it will be disabled when a new OS is released until Adobe updates it for that version.

As other have said, Microsoft used their monopoly to force computer manufactures, etc to restrict other competitors products from computers. Thus extinguishing the competiton. Also, they used tactics to cause issues when using other browsers. If all Microsoft did was bundle IE there would not have been an issue. IE would not have been anywhere near as popular without these tactics.

The part that infuriates me is the argument you make in the second paragraph. Listen its a take it or leave it. Either you like the platform and the closed ecosystem and store that fosters reliablity, cohesiveness and a great user experience or you hate it and don't buy it. Period.

There is not, I wish that I could have this cool device but I should be able to use it the way I want. That is not what was offered, never was offered and not going to be offered. Unless I guess you jailbreak and then I guess you have your option. But then you are also at the mercy of a third party to have the ability to jailbreak future versions and phone to take advantage of latest OS.

The only reason to make your argument above is that you know that the iPhone is head and shoulders above the competiton. Or you bought one hoping things would magically change. Otherwise, why do you care that it is not open, does not have a secondary App store and does not run flash. Right now no smart phone runs flash so that point is a mute one.

If you want those things go buy the Android and stop trying to make the iphone into what the Android is and will become. A more open device that has no app store approvals and will so be able to run flash. Otherwise what you are suggesting is not the iphone at all. You can't have everything. There is a tradeoff between Openness vs. Closed (reliability, security and ease of use, etc). Apple sells the latter.

Also, while you keep mentioning flash, this has nothing to do with flash. It about Abobe's compiling software to take apps created in flash to run natively on the iphone. Not run flash.

 

[Darkroom]

What Apple could do is to certify apps that have been programmed according to their standards. Uncertified apps still could be installed displaying a warning that this is not an app officially supported by Apple, and that installation may result in instability, decreased performance and increased power requirements, possibly even damage to the phone by overheating.

please, there's enough memory leaking junk on the app store written in objective-c already. we don't need certified fart apps.

 

[ct2k7]

What Apple could do is to certify apps that have been programmed according to their standards. Uncertified apps still could be installed displaying a warning that this is not an app officially supported by Apple, and that installation may result in instability, decreased performance and increased power requirements, possibly even damage to the phone by overheating.

Or they could assert total control, like what we already have, the app store.