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There are some problems with your analogy. For one, if you lived in Russia, and you disagreed with Stalin, he would have you killed or sent to Siberia.

It wasn't an analogy, it was a metaphor.

How about this for an analogy: computing with Apple is like going to Disney World. When you are there you are subject to their rules. If a vendor wants to sell you something while you are there, they have to abide by Disney's rules. If you don't like the rules, you don't have to go.

Except that I am not visiting the Disney World 365 days a year.. or "computing at Apple Store" by your analogy. Once I buy a piece of hardware - it is my property and not Apple's. I should be able to do the things that I want with my property. In an example of iPhone (or iPod Touch/iPad) - that would be buying software, content or services directly from 3rd parties.. Without Apple dictating what software, content or services I can or cannot buy.

As long as Apple doesn't keep you from computing the way you want to, which you can with any Windows/Linux/ alt OS out there, then how can you complain?

As a long time customer of Apple and someone who have invested tens of thousands of dollars into Apple products over the years.. It is perfectly within my right to express my unhappiness with Apple's recent ways and the direction they are heading.

If more people get vocal about fundamental problems with Apple's behavior, and convince others to abandon iPhoneOS products (like I already have) - that's the only chance of influencing Apple to change their behavior.
 
This is fairly common in all sorts of business agreements and contracts. You negotiate contracts in good faith and in private. You don't publically scream and cry to negotiate. Most people don't appreciate that kind of negotiating and won't stand for it. That is why this is common. If you can't man up and negotiate / settle a contract like a normal person, they don't want to do business with you.

There is NO "negotiation" with Apple anymore than there is with Wal-Mart. They sit down and DICTATE to you the contract. If you don't like it, you can leave the room and do business with someone else because it doesn't matter how big you are; they are bigger. Rubbermaid was in danger of going out of business when they tried to strong-arm Wal-Mart after WM demanded they offer cheaper products to them, even if that meant moving all operations to China to do it. WM said they could take a flying leap and they almost did. I'm sure you believe that is perfectly "fair" and all but it's 100% against the spirit of Capitalism, which dictates that competition is always best. This "sorta" competition of insurance companies, banks and iPhone developers is closer to Communism, really. Look at China for the perfect example. They have "businesses" over there. They also have a government that will kill you dead if you step out of line (or maybe you just commit 'suicide' in the case of iPhone leaks :eek: )

Let's face it, "We The People" is DEAD in the U.S. It is now "We The Corporations" and that's it, folks. Nearly every single person in Congress is under someone else's thumb and that's the way the shadow government likes it...figureheads. Or do some of you really think an ACTOR with the initials RR was actually running the country? He did put on a good show pretending to be President. Maybe there's a reason each of his three names was 6 letters long. It's the mark of the 'beast' or as Tolkien put it, the 'ring of power' or as I'd prefer to call it, the machine. You put the ring on and someone else is controlling your actions from a distance. Could Palin get elected? Why not? The Vice President runs the country in the Republican Party (they learned with Bush Sr. that it's better to have someone with Charisma in there and put the real guy in the VP spot out of sight and out of mind). So welcome my son. Welcome to the machine.
 
However contracts that are of limited negotiation value (take it or leave it), heavily biased to one party (like the owner - Apple), and contain privacy clauses (NDA’s) are perfectly legal and violate no laws.

Such contracts are actually sometimes unenforceable if they are particularly biased to one party ("unconscionable") and if there is no negotiation ("contracts of adhesion"), actually.

Typically, however, such contracts are invalidated only when they involve "necessities" of life (food, housing, whatever). In some cases, however, such contracts have been invalidated if they've been particularly onerous.
 
Uhhh Magnus? Non negociable contracts have been around a lot longer than the US and they are only a problem when you have a Monopoly situation. The mobile arena has lots of competitors - Apple has a really small market-share. They are in no way comparable to WalMart.
 

...yeah...ok....

tin_foil_hat_cat_man.jpg
 
Such contracts are actually sometimes unenforceable if they are particularly biased to one party ("unconscionable") and if there is no negotiation ("contracts of adhesion"), actually.

Typically, however, such contracts are invalidated only when they involve "necessities" of life (food, housing, whatever). In some cases, however, such contracts have been invalidated if they've been particularly onerous.

You are right. I was more or less talking about so called dummy contracts as an extreme. But a 70-30 split isn’t what I would call “onerous” anyway. And that part was public knowledge years ago. Lots of other things like the kill switch have been known for years too.

I was speaking very broadly though.
 
You are right. I was more or less talking about so called dummy contracts as an extreme. But a 70-30 split isn’t what I would call “onerous” anyway. And that part was public knowledge years ago. Lots of other things like the kill switch have been known for years too.

I was speaking very broadly though.

It's not the split that would be onerous. It would be the one-sided nature of other provisions ($50 maximum damages, for example). In fact, that one, more than any other, really jumps out at me. It reeks of a liability waiver, and such provisions are heavily disfavored by the courts.
 

You are again right. I was not aware of that. I amend my posting with those caveats. However I still contend that Magnus’ posting is still rubbish - “take it or leave it” is not anything new and Apple’s “leave it” position isn’t depriving leaving people worse. Apple’s developer agreement only can deprive you of the normal costs of doing business. I would argue that if you do not like Apple’s terms the worse you are out of is the initial investment costs.

It would be bad if nobody else had a development platform, but that is not the case by far.
 
It's not the split that would be onerous. It would be the one-sided nature of other provisions ($50 maximum damages, for example). In fact, that one, more than any other, really jumps out at me. It reeks of a liability waiver, and such provisions are heavily disfavored by the courts.

Disfavored, but not illegal though, correct? I mean, nobody said that Apple’s terms have to fair. If I don’t like those terms, I presume I can walk away and develop for another platform. May not be as profitable, but that is a risk with any contract I suppose.
 
Disfavored, but not illegal though, correct? I mean, nobody said that Apple’s terms have to fair. If I don’t like those terms, I presume I can walk away and develop for another platform. May not be as profitable, but that is a risk with any contract I suppose.

Certainly not illegal. But a liability waiver in a take-it-or-leave-it contract has a fair shot of getting thrown out if tested in court. I'd certainly take that case.
 
Apple is able to get away with a lot of things because they have NO COMPETITION for their products in terms of either the software and its distribution (for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch market) and hardware (for the Mac market).

That's not how you define a market. If that were the case, then every manufacturer that ever existed could be said to have NO COMPETITION in the products they produce.

In other words, they have you over a barrel if you want to use one of their products.

Again, this is not novel or useful to point out. It is the way things work. What is your alternative to this?

They tie the hardware and software together in such a way with their licenses

What does that mean? That makes no sense. And tieing has a very specific definition in anti-trust legislation that hasn't been established with Apple.

as to extort money out of developers (give us 30% of your profits or go home)

Again, there is a very specific definition of what extortion is, and this doesn't come close. One business is offering a contract to do business with another with specific terms. You know, the way the whole world works.

or sue competing hardware companies out of business (e.g. Psystar).

They have no problem with competing companies. They do have a problem with stealing. So should you.

If you have NO COMPETITION within your particular market place, then you can charge as much as people will bear with no competition or oversight to control costs.

True. This also depends on how you define market. It's also called an enviable business position. For the group that owns the only Mona Lisa, they sure are glad that if they wished to sell it, they could price it for what the market will bear with no one dictating to them what reasonable profit is.

It's kind of like the health care industry.

This is nothing like the health care industry.

Yes, there are OTHER insurance companies out there, but they're not actually doing much competing with each other in those markets so the customer gets the SHAFT. In the case of insurance, it's a lack of competition within given markets (like states)

Actually, if there was only one insurance company in a state, and all hospitals and doctors were forced to deal with that company, it would probably result in better prices for customers. Doctors, pharma companies, and hospitals are better able to negotiatie high prices with weak insurance companies because there is so much competition.

and in Apple's case, it's a matter of having the best smart phone,

Is this a complaint?

but leveraging that to screw software developers into bad license agreements.

Do you know what "leveraging" means? Bad for who? Isn't that up to the developers to decide if it's bad or not? When does it stop being bad? 25%? Who decides that? What are the better alternatives?

They are two separate markets (hardware and software)

You state this like a fact, but it isn't even remotely true. Just because in the Windows PC market, hardware is sold by a different company than the OS doesn't make this an established fact that ALL hardware and software must be sold this way. Even Microsoft wouldn't agree when it comes to thier XBox hardware and software.

so this SHOULD be illegal under existing anti-trust legislation which only requires proof of anti-competitive practices where products are being tied artificially together by contract, but apparently the Justice Department has no interest in enforcing the law (big surprise given they let the entire country go into a recession due to a total lack of oversight of the credit and banking industries).

That's a new one to me. I think a lot of the blame is spread variously to the banks, consumers, regulators, investors, and insurance companies, but I hadn't thought to blame the Justice department.

Welcome to the United Corporations of America and the end of your Constitutional rights as a citizen (well more like they've given corporations the same rights as a human being so in the next election we may very well see General Electric running for the Senate and Texaco running for a House Seat.

This isn't about individuals' rights. This specifically is about one profit seeking entity's contract with another profit seeking entity. Again, we were talking about contract law for a while, so I'm surprised we're now in the realm of constitutional law. That's a different class.

Maybe they will appoint Apple to the Supreme Court for life (which could be indefinite since Corporations don't die natural deaths and the terms are for "life") where they can destroy all the Laws from the bench with no one to stop them. I'm confused. Is it 2010 or 1984?

Did you read that book?

Seriously though. It's been fun.
 
Certainly not illegal. But a liability waiver in a take-it-or-leave-it contract has a fair shot of getting thrown out if tested in court. I'd certainly take that case.

Question, wouldn’t the case have to be about liability specifically? Heck, I wonder what such a case would revolve around and how much wiggle room you have.

I mean, if a developer violated the terms of the agreement in some blatant way, Apple shouldn’t be at fault. I mean if the developer shot themselves in the foot, that isn’t Apple’s fault.
 
Certainly not illegal. But a liability waiver in a take-it-or-leave-it contract has a fair shot of getting thrown out if tested in court. I'd certainly take that case.

Do we know Apple's response to an attempt to negotiate the contract? Perhaps, if challenged, they drop this clause. Which is to say, this is just the sucker's version of the contract.
 
Do we know Apple's response to an attempt to negotiate the contract? Perhaps, if challenged, they drop this clause. Which is to say, this is just the sucker's version of the contract.

Well Apple probably knows that there is some wiggle room. After all NASA spilled the developer terms through a FOIA - that would surely trump the NDA portion of the contract that NASA signed with Apple.

I mean dummy contracts do work sometimes. Guess who the dummy was?
 
Do we know Apple's response to an attempt to negotiate the contract? Perhaps, if challenged, they drop this clause. Which is to say, this is just the sucker's version of the contract.

I know of no way to even challenge it. I suspect that only someone with tremendous market power could even try (EA?)

Question, wouldn’t the case have to be about liability specifically? Heck, I wonder what such a case would revolve around and how much wiggle room you have.

I mean, if a developer violated the terms of the agreement in some blatant way, Apple shouldn’t be at fault. I mean if the developer shot themselves in the foot, that isn’t Apple’s fault.

The case would have to involve liability for liability to be an issue. Here are some hypotheticals:

1) apple encourages people to write apps in a particular category. They spend money doing so. Apple then refuses to allow the app.

2) apple mangles the app somehow in distributing it, hurting a developer's goodwill.

3) apple badmouths (libels) an app or a developer.

4) apple fails to allow a timely bugfix which thus causes customers financial injury, resulting in liability for the developer who then seeks compensation from apple.

5) apple fails to pay a developer his 70%.

I think I could come up with compelling enough fact patterns for each of those that most people would say there might be a legitimate case.
 
That's not how you define a market. If that were the case, then every manufacturer that ever existed could be said to have NO COMPETITION in the products they produce.

You seem to be telling me that hardware and software are one and the same market. That's total RUBBISH. That's like saying making printers and making printer paper are the same market because they function in the same machine.

See: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sherman+Anti-Trust+Act

Look under "tying" (or search printer or paper). Just because software runs on hardware that does not make them the "same" market. Manufacturing hardware and writing software are two entirely different fields. If one company does both, they better not tie them together in an anti-competitive way.

Again, this is not novel or useful to point out. It is the way things work. What is your alternative to this?

It's the way things work? LOL. You've never heard of buying software and hardware separately? You've never heard of buying hardware from anyone you want and putting an operating system on later, including multiple operating systems? How is that different from putting different types of paper in a printer? It's not. They're two different markets. You cannot force sales in one market to those in another market. It's a violation of the Sherman/Clayton Anti-Trust Act TYING provision. No monopoly is required for this violation what-so-ever.

What does that mean? That makes no sense. And tieing has a very specific definition in anti-trust legislation that hasn't been established with Apple.

I just established it for you since you apparently cannot make the (obvious) connection. See the above link.

Again, there is a very specific definition of what extortion is, and this doesn't come close. One business is offering a contract to do business with another with specific terms. You know, the way the whole world works.

If you mean that it's normal for a company A to tell another company B that they must sell their product ONLY in company A's store and this will ONLY cost them 30% of their sale price or get out of the neighborhood, then yes, I guess that's how the world (or was it the Mob?) works....

The point is that it's NONE OF APPLE'S BUSINESS if someone wants to make a game for their operating system. We have free and open commerce in this country. Apple insisting you MUST use THEIR STORE and give them 30% of your profits or you're not allowed to write that software sure sounds like racketeering/extortion to me. I'm sure if you live in Communist China you probably think that's normal.

They have no problem with competing companies. They do have a problem with stealing. So should you.

What did Psystar "steal" pray tell? They legally purchased OSX. So no I don't have a problem with Psystar. I have a problem with companies that think they can violate anti-trust laws out of pure greed.

This is nothing like the health care industry.

Yeah, you backed that one up really well there with that line. I might as well just reply back "Oh yes it is!" LOL. :rolleyes:

Actually, if there was only one insurance company in a state, and all hospitals and doctors were forced to deal with that company, it would probably result in better prices for customers. Doctors, pharma companies,

Several states are pretty close to that already. What you fail to comprehend about businesses is that they are GREEDY. They don't lower prices out of the goodness of their hearts! They raise them because there are no alternatives and dump high risk patients to maximize their profits!

and hospitals are better able to negotiatie high prices with weak insurance companies because there is so much competition.

Hospitals are out to rip both you and the insurance companies off. Or do you think an aspirin should cost $30 EACH?

Do you know what "leveraging" means? Bad for who? Isn't that up to the developers to decide if it's bad or not? When does it stop being bad? 25%? Who decides that? What are the better alternatives?

The alternative is just like regular OSX. You let the developer install their own software through an install process, not tie it to iTunes and then refuse to sell software they don't "like" or "approve of" and then charge 30% off the top because they know you have NO ALTERNATIVE. You ask what the alternative is. That's the point! There is NONE.

You state this like a fact, but it isn't even remotely true. Just because in the Windows PC market, hardware is sold by a different company than the OS doesn't make this an established fact that ALL hardware and software must be sold this way. Even Microsoft wouldn't agree when it comes to thier XBox hardware and software.

They are two different markets. Read the Sherman/Clayton Act I posted above. You CANNOT tie them together with a license like that to forbid competition. This is not rocket science to figure out that the consumer is getting screwed on choice for hardware if they cannot buy it from HP instead of Apple or that they cannot buy Microsoft Office for their iPad because Apple will not approve it because it competes with iWork and Apple wants you to buy iWork. You apparently think that's OK and Apple should be able to tell competing software companies to take a hike if they would rather the consumer buy Apple software (or in the case of Macs, HP hardware to run OSX on).

Sorry, but some of us believe in consumer protection laws, not laws that let corporations screw everyone over or do things like drive health care costs up artificially at 2-3x the costs of other countries because the government lets them get away with it. Why should Apple be allowed to dictate what software other companies are allowed to write for the computer you bought?
 
The case would have to involve liability for liability to be an issue.
Figured

1) apple encourages people to write apps in a particular category. They spend money doing so. Apple then refuses to allow the app.
Right. It’s possible. I wonder how much wiggle room this offers though... I imagine that Apple doesn’t encourage specific categories outside of games. Of course Apple might have an out based on the SDK terms like for example emulators. Plus Apple arguably would have the responsibility to reject games of other legal reasons - like trademarks violations.

2) apple mangles the app somehow in distributing it, hurting a developer's goodwill.
Most plausible scenario im my book. I wonder what the requirements for that would be. Apple only advertises things after they approval and they don’t guarantee anything. This sounds pretty wide open.

3) apple badmouths (libels) an app or a developer.
Not to say “impossible”, but I doubt that Apple would be that stupid - they would stick to factual information if they talk about particular developers.

4) apple fails to allow a timely bugfix which thus causes customers financial injury, resulting in liability for the developer who then seeks compensation from apple.
This is another good one! My guess is that this is a minority situation though...

5) apple fails to pay a developer his 70%.
I doubt that that would happen unless the account that the dev provides is closed or something like that. :D

I think I could come up with compelling enough fact patterns for each of those that most people would say there might be a legitimate case.
That’s the question. Nobody has tried to go after Apple in 3 years. Either nobody has bothered, Apple has enough wiggle room in their terms, or something else. We won’t know until it’s attempted.
 
Indeed. But Apple also tries to control my own device that I've paid for. I don't agree with that. I bought my Touch after Apple announced that there would be an SDK, but before the announcement that everything would be locked down. I have no intention of buying another such device until I can run what I want on it.

If you don't agree, return it and move on with your life. Being able to jailbreak your Touch is not a constitutional right.
 
As a paid and registered iPhone developer, I entirely understand the EFF's concerns and fears.

I too fear the day when iPad-type computers are entirely prevalent, and a kid won't have the same open access to modifying their computer that I did...

At the same time, I support the iPad and iPhone, and I love capitalism :). It's really good to see both sides of this argument, though. People should seriously look into what the EFF stands for, as opposed to picking on their favorite electronics company. The people in this forum are sometimes just total dorks.
 
As a paid and registered iPhone developer, I entirely understand the EFF's concerns and fears.

I too fear the day when iPad-type computers are entirely prevalent, and a kid won't have the same open access to modifying their computer that I did...

At the same time, I support the iPad and iPhone, and I love capitalism :). It's really good to see both sides of this argument, though. People should seriously look into what the EFF stands for, as opposed to picking on their favorite electronics company. The people in this forum are sometimes just total dorks.

Amen!
Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
As a paid and registered iPhone developer, I entirely understand the EFF's concerns and fears.

I too fear the day when iPad-type computers are entirely prevalent, and a kid won't have the same open access to modifying their computer that I did...

At the same time, I support the iPad and iPhone, and I love capitalism :). It's really good to see both sides of this argument, though. People should seriously look into what the EFF stands for, as opposed to picking on their favorite electronics company. The people in this forum are sometimes just total dorks.

While I understand the basis for your concern, I have to disagree that it is worth worrying about. I know people hate car analogies, but I think this is apt. What you are concerned about is the same complaint that car-people were voicing when engines started getting too complicated to diagnose and fix without a computer. I say it's not a worry, because in the US at least, <10% of cars sold are even manuals, much less being wrenchable in a garage. And yet if a kid is interested, there are ways for him or her to learn about engines.

I predict that in the future, the same percentage of kids out there will be interested in learning how a computer acutally works as there was when I was a kid which was small.

So what is wrong with letting everyone else have an "automatic" computer?
 
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