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

[richman555]

I think they should allow users to use these flash apps at their own discretion however I believe it is just like a jailbroken phone. I agree with an earlier post to add a ton of verbiage before a user downloads this stuff, otherwise it is completely NOT supported by Apple in any way shape or form.

 

[smarch]

So don't install it.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it should be "banned".

This is the sort of thinking that needs to be stopped. Our hardware is no longer ours as long as they can dictate what runs on it!

you bought hardware with software limitations. enjoy the amazing features of the product you purchased and stop telling everybody what to build into the devices THEY are creating and selling to you. down with busy bodies running our lives and especially the lives of productive people and companies. I'm glad you know what the "thinking that NEEDS to stop" is. stop telling people what to think and start participating in the market. "antitrust" is a big steaming load of...

 

[coleridge78]

As a programmer, I am glad we are forced managed memory. I think it's not a big deal to release everything you alloc, and it is good as discipline. If your program is so twisted you can not track the allocs, then it is likely a design flaw.

I certainly don't know how smart garbage collectors have become these days, but I find it hard to believe they know better than you your program's overall structure.

Nevertheless, some feature that wraps the mallocs/frees and recycles memory could be good. Allocating fresh memory can be expensive.

Cocoa had those wrappers even before Obj-C 2.0. And I disagree with your bondage-and-discipline argument. Humans are not good at tracking many copies of a nearly identical mundane detail. It simply isn't what our brains evolved to do. Computers, on the other hand, excel at it. It's... I won't say "ridiculous", but the next best thing to argue that manual memory management (in cases where the overhead of alternatives is not a problem) somehow puts hair on your chest.

There are different sorts of programs, and different sorts of programming. Managing low-level details for all of them is unnecessary and wastes cycles that could be used on improving the architecture and design in ways that benefit the user.

 

[Eraserhead]

Microsoft had 90%+ market share of ALL COMPUTER OSs at the time the antitrust case was opened. You didn't have a choice when you bought a new PC(*).

Apple has a 99% share of mobile applications.

 

[tdmac]

If a game or app is badly designed and slow, and there are PLENTY of other apps around that are fast + fun, no one's blaming Apple. Read the app reviews and see for yourself.

Secondly, the alleged issues with multitasking are only an entirely unsubstianted claim and not a fact. If they really run poorly, people will use native apps instead.

That is true and not true.

If there is only a small handfull of apps then no one is going to blame Apple. It would squarely fall on the developer.

But if there was MANY apps that had issues then people would start to take it out on the device. There would be no reason to have the device if all it can do is run apps that have issues.

 

[macrumorsMaster]

Jobs' argument rests on the claim that adding a middle layer between the iPhone OS and applications would result in an unsatisfactory user experience and hamper developments

Didn't Gates say something similar about Internet Explorer a couple years back

Seems like Gates and Jobs are two apples from the same tree

 

[wilycoder]

Flash-to-iPhone REQUIRES that a Flash virtual machine be embedded within the app.

Apple has a case here because of the virtual machine issue.

If adobe can make flash-to-iphone produce an objective C app that DOES NOT need a VM then it should be allowed.

The presence of the VM puts adobe in charge of the phone, not apple.

 

[lucasgladding]

I'm with Apple on this one. The bit about adding a middle layer to the development process is right on. Why should Apple, who made the iPhone platform what it is, be forced to give up the ability to control how it works? If you think Adobe's CS5 Flash compiler is going to be able to produce the same quality of apps as XCode you're dreaming!

There could very well be better Flash apps than those built with Xcode. What Apple is saying is that the same developers should be able to produce better apps with Xcode than with Flash. What the company is saying is: learn Cocoa.

 

[Outrigger]

I have to side with Apple on this one... it's their "gizmos". If the FTC has an issue with cross compilers being banned, then why don't they have an issue with apps requiring approval in the first place?

Thats like saying its ok for MS to only allow IE to run on their OS and no other browsers. They didn't win that one either and its THEIR OS.

 

[coleridge78]

Thats like saying its ok for MS to only allow IE to run on their OS and no other browsers. They didn't win that one either and its THEIR OS.

96% of the "smartphone" users in the world aren't forced to use the iPhone whether they like it or not.

To not recognize this difference is to be ignorant or dishonest, either way not anything a person should be trumpeting to a crowd of strangers.

 

[RaZaK]

Your Federal Tax Dollars "at work"...

I mean, "being wasted"....This won't be a fanboy rant....I'm just p-o'ed that ANY legal action is being considered.

How could Apple disallowing applications, built on a platform BEFORE IT IS EVEN GENERALLY AVAILABLE, be considered anti-competitive?!?!?

The Apple App Store is already FULL of useful as well as completely useless apps. Oh yes, consumers do not have ANY choices...

Besides, Apple's actions INCREASE competition in the market by motivating Adobe's users to develop their applications for COMPETITIVE platforms like Android.

Please Federal Government. We are supposedly just getting out of the recession. Can you please spend OUR money in a less asinine manner?!?!?

I hope the names of any elected official who gets involved in any of these legal proceedings are publicized so that they can be voted out of office.

 

[firewood]

Bingo! Apple has a monopoly in the app market. They control something like 90%+ of this market.

That's a funny use of the word control. How does Apple control what I do with my Android, Blackberry or Nokia phones (of which far more customers own than any Apple product)? How do they control what apps I can develop for those other (majority of the world market) phone platforms. They don't.

If there are 100 grocery stores in town and I own only 20 of them, I don't have control of the grocery store market. If 99% of people in that town prefer my stores (because I refuse to stock food containing rat droppings), I still don't have control, because those customers could potentially shop in any of the other 80 stores. After those other 80 stores go bankrupt and close, then I have control of the market.

So please raise your point again after Google, RIM and Nokia go bankrupt and close shop.

 

[pdjudd]

Apple has a 99% share of mobile applications.

Cite please - they don't.

 

[ericmooreart]

Most everyone has this so wrong it's fustraiting

what people are failing to understand is that this isn't just about Flash CS5 (which is not the browser plugin). Its about any application that will compile an app for multiple platforms.

Apple CAN dictate what programing language is used on their devices.

Apple CAN NOT dictate what development software you use to compile the programing language

 

[Otaviano]

Apple has a 99% share of mobile applications.

That doesn't mean anything, they don't have anywhere near a monopoly on the mobile market. All that means is all the other mobile companies suck at getting people to buy apps from them. That's no Apple's fault.

 

[cwoloszynski]

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

Sure, using Cocotron, you can run on Windows.

 

[OllyW]

96% of the "smartphone" users in the world aren't forced to use the iPhone whether they like it or not.

To not recognize this difference is to be ignorant or dishonest, either way not anything a person should be trumpeting to a crowd of strangers.

But 99.4% of mobile app sales go to Apple.

 

[ranReloaded]

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

C:¥ install windows

Please Choose your web browser. Enter:
A - for Internet Explorer
B - for Mozilla Firefox
C - for Opera
D - for Safari

C:¥ B

Are You Sure? (Y/N)

C:¥ Y

Are You Really Really Sure? (Y/N)

C:¥ Y

I mean, Do you really want to enjoy the full interactivity of the web with extreme performance, unparalleled graphics, and an even more improved security? (Y/N)

C:¥ Y

Thank you for choosing Internet Explorer!

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.

I wasn't being serious, but thanks for the info. I can also use OpenGL on windows, is it still a fake layer on top of DirectX (and therefore, performance-handicapped) or did that move fail?

 

[RaZaK]

I am no lawyer, but my mother was relatively high up in the anti-trust division of the Justice department and she used to talk to me about what her job was meant to accomplish. I believe some people posting here have hit the nail on the head - this is not about the end-user experience of the iPhone. It's about the development environment. Apple sells its development environment and then concocts a rather absurd license agreement that excludes its competitors' cross-platform development environment from being used for the iPhone. That's an anti-competitive practice that certainly should be looked into, particular since the iPhone is such a large market. All Adobe has to do is demonstrate that their cross-platform product is capable of running a simple program as fast as one coded in Apple's development environment and Apple will be in deep doo-doo.

In any case, I think all of this makes Apple look silly. If I were a developer I'd be quite angry that the App store is judging apps not on the end-user experience, but on the tools that were used to make them. I dare say that using some C and its variants does not preclude poor programming & wasted CPU cycles, nor does it necessarily follow that a cross-platform IDE leads to detectably poorer performance. As somebody noted, if you want truly optimized code, abandon C and its variants altogether and program in assembly language...

isn't Xcode free? Apple isn't selling a dev environment...

Also, Apple is concerned about the end-user experience. If these cross-platform compilers don't adequately take advantage of the OS' capabilities, there could be negative consequences such as improper power consumption.

in the long-run, Apple's decisions present an opportunity for WebOS and Android. I'm sure they will welcome Adobe and its users with open arms to give consumers INCREASED competition, NOT decreased competition.

That's the purpose of anti-trust legislation, to promote CONSUMER choice.

 

[VulchR]

...
How could Apple disallowing applications, built on a platform BEFORE IT IS EVEN GENERALLY AVAILABLE, be considered anti-competitive?!?!?
...

Like I noted above, I doubt this is about the final iPhone applications, but the selling of development environments. By banning the competitors' cross-platform environment, Apple will be able to sell more of its own because it has an unfair advantage.

By the way, no doubt Adobe pays corporate taxes and deserves protection from anti-competitive under the law just like any company.

EDIT [Added to prevent double posting]

isn't Xcode free? Apple isn't selling a dev environment...

Don't you have to pay to be a registered developer and then you get it for 'free'? In any case, perhaps you have a point.

 

[fifthworld]

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.

For example a certified fart app, could be exclusively streaming SJ farts. Live.

 

[SayaSe]

That doesn't mean anything, they don't have anywhere near a monopoly on the mobile market. All that means is all the other mobile companies suck at getting people to buy apps from them. That's no Apple's fault.

So uh, just like Opera etc. suck at making good browsers?

 

[darthvapor]

That's why iPhone Apps are made with HTML5, CSS, and Javascript, too... oh right.

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs has become increasingly vocal over his company's views on Flash, arguing that the future of Web content delivery lies in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript and not in Flash."

 

[firewood]

Apple has a 99% share of mobile applications.

But they have no control over that share. How can they when they don't even sell apps for the majority of smartphone owners?

 

[coleridge78]

But 99.4% of mobile app sales go to Apple.

Now, explain precisely what that statistic represents (it isn't what you seem to believe it is), and how it is relevant. One or both of us will probably learn something new.