I think the important question is whether Apple is taking steps, either in its developer agreements or in the iPhone OS, that would favor iAd over other ad networks? If not, I doubt they'll have a problem with the FTC. If they are, they should be made to stop.
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U.S. Federal Trade Commission Looking Into Apple's iAd?
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Excuse me!?
First of all they charged me double for exactly the same hardware, made in exactly the same country (China) as what other manufactures would do.
Then they gave me only 1 year guaranty on it while all other manufactures (at least here in Europe) are giving me 3 years instead.
Then equipment started to fall apart as soon as it got out of guaranty brackets (my MBP power adaptor failed after 14 months - had to buy new one, my MBP so called SuperDrive doesn't read disks anymore, my MBP logic board died, admittedly due to NVidia issue but still - and my 20" Cinema Display is dead after only 15 months of use)
Then they lock me into their crap iDevice eco system literally forcing me to JAIL BREAK out of it (what a appropriate name for it!)
Then they limit my experience by not allowing Flash and therefore full internet experience...
Then they lie into my face with some crap "open letters" that kid of 10 could see through and rip apart (yes, I am referring to recent SJ letter)...
Then they impose recent draconian licence agreement rules...
Then they stage open attack on freedom of press by Raiding Gizmo office and taking their computers...
And this is just scratching the surface...
Being unfriendly to customers!?!?!
LOL
Indeed!
And I am not surprised if we see more court cases and similar investigations coming our way in near future...
Apple's been acting like a real cock - towards industry as a whole, towards partners, towards press, towards users and customers... and they deserve everything that came and is coming their way...
If you really think you have a point, why do you continue to lie and exaggerate to defend it?
Makes me wonder if Apple would use those points if it has to defend itself from the FTC?
And who made your purchase the apple products? No one. You chose to purchase it on your own. Companies have a right to charge whatever they want to for products.
The same way you have a right to go any company. With your logic i guess i can get mad because GM charges more for something that honda or ford charges less for?
They should really just officially change the title of this blog to MacHaters and be done with it.
I don't know about that, the way I see the policies by Apple they do more to protect their customer both in the quality of the applications available and the use of the information that Apple collects on their customers. They may not be as developer friendly as they could be, but then again in other industries like audio/video you don't see a lot of cooperation on giving your competition access to the way their components "communicate" between one another, and as others have pointed out there are a lot more restrictions in the dev kits of the video game consoles than those placed on iPhone OS developers with this latest move.
Can you blame Apple for the policy? Their business is selling hardware, and the software market that exists around their products helps them sell that hardware. To make it easier for the developers to produce applications on competing platforms is not in their best interest, especially if the development platform may be skewed to provide better performance on the competing hardware platform, which if we look at Flash today as a benchmark then this is indeed the case. This could help to erode the iPhone/iPad/iPod brand in the eyes of their customers as software reviews for the products come out comparing performance on the iPhone vs. Android for these applications favors the Android platform. The customers probably will not know or care what development environment that the software was written for only that the performance of the software on Android is better than the same software released for the Apple product.
Also the software market does not exist without the hardware. Apple could have kept development for the platform closed, or only allow select partners to develop for the platform. This policy does not eliminate competition but ensures that the software developed for it are using the tools that are optimized to take full advantage of the platform and that those tools are kept up to date with the development of the hardware platform. This is a good thing for the customer in the end, not a bad thing.
So the investigation seems to be more about them not wanting competing advertising services on their phones. That makes sense to me. I didn't think their legal language banning it was necessary though. It would have been very easy to encourage developers to use it over the others: make it easier to implement and make it more rewarding to do so. Even if it only pays $0.01 more than a competing company I would choose that because even then it ads up.
As far as not letting 3rd party companies write development tools, can't say I care about the 3rd parties. I have taken the time to learn Objective-C for the sole purpose of writing apps for the iPhone. If someone else is too lazy to do so then I wouldn't want to use their app anyway because my question would be: what else were they too lazy to do? Debug? Design?
It's not like they're charging you for the software to code with. The sdk is free as well as all the development tools. If you want to post an app it's only $99. Big deal. A couple days working at McDonald's would pay for it. Adobe Flash CS5? $699 and you still have to buy the Apple subscriptions. Thanks, I'll take the free app. If you want to pay $800 (699+99) instead of just $99 then I have a great $20 gift card to Best Buy that I'll gladly sell you for $50.
Back to my point though: Apple will most likely change the language preventing 3rd party advertising because that's pretty much the only thing that truly violates anti-trust laws.
As far as not letting 3rd party companies write development tools, can't say I care about the 3rd parties. I have taken the time to learn Objective-C for the sole purpose of writing apps for the iPhone. If someone else is too lazy to do so then I wouldn't want to use their app anyway because my question would be: what else were they too lazy to do? Debug? Design?
It's not like they're charging you for the software to code with. The sdk is free as well as all the development tools. If you want to post an app it's only $99. Big deal. A couple days working at McDonald's would pay for it. Adobe Flash CS5? $699 and you still have to buy the Apple subscriptions. Thanks, I'll take the free app. If you want to pay $800 (699+99) instead of just $99 then I have a great $20 gift card to Best Buy that I'll gladly sell you for $50.
Back to my point though: Apple will most likely change the language preventing 3rd party advertising because that's pretty much the only thing that truly violates anti-trust laws.
Excuse me!?
First of all they charged me double for exactly the same hardware, made in exactly the same country (China) as what other manufactures would do.
Then they gave me only 1 year guaranty on it while all other manufactures (at least here in Europe) are giving me 3 years instead.
Then equipment started to fall apart as soon as it got out of guaranty brackets (my MBP power adaptor failed after 14 months - had to buy new one, my MBP so called SuperDrive doesn't read disks anymore, my MBP logic board died, admittedly due to NVidia issue but still - and my 20" Cinema Display is dead after only 15 months of use)
Then they lock me into their crap iDevice eco system literally forcing me to JAIL BREAK out of it (what a appropriate name for it!)
Then they limit my experience by not allowing Flash and therefore full internet experience...
Then they lie into my face with some crap "open letters" that kid of 10 could see through and rip apart (yes, I am referring to recent SJ letter)...
Then they impose recent draconian licence agreement rules...
Then they stage open attack on freedom of press by Raiding Gizmo office and taking their computers...
And this is just scratching the surface...
Being unfriendly to customers!?!?!
LOL
Indeed!
And I am not surprised if we see more court cases and similar investigations coming our way in near future...
Apple's been acting like a real cock - towards industry as a whole, towards partners, towards press, towards users and customers... and they deserve everything that came and is coming their way...
Good points, all.
Apple will eventually drive a lot of developers away with their attitude, one that is even worse than MS's of a decade or so ago. At least MS didn't control the hardware.
I'd guess that the first hits against Apple will come from Europe. Though it'll only take one justice department to file antitrust claims against Apple in the US for things to start falling apart.
Jobs hammering against Adobe was stupid on his part, especially with so many people being reliant commercially on flash. What Jobs should have done is worked with Adobe to have better Flash support on the Mac (Apple is the reason why Flash is such a hog on the Mac - their API sucks) and then tried to promote an alternative instead of just forcing everyone into what they want.
But I don't expect Apple to have much foresight when it comes to apps. This is the company that didn't have a proper 64 bit roadmap and led everyone, including themselves, down the Carbon 64 road.
I think Jobs will eventually lead Apple down the antitrust road and many things can happen there. They could be forced to sell off many of their own apps, like Final Cut, etc. They could be forced to open up their OS. They could be forced to open up their hardware.
Please elaborate on what this has to do with customers, friendliness, Apples customer friendliness?
Pipe.
Crack.
Open flame.
Go smoke some.
So you're on the phone with the FTC demanding that they also investigate Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft for their platforms that only allow software written in their proprietary format with their tools as well, right?
More accurately, Mercedes charging more for something that GM Honda or Ford charge less for.
I agree with you in theory, but not in this particular instance. The implications of Apple being "made to stop" would be increased distribution of information about how and where I use my device. I don't like that Apple has this information about me, but I do appreciate them limiting what information other companies have.
The only developers Apple will drive off will be the 3rd rate hobbyists, who will then flock to Android.
Frankly, I want Apple to start increasing the sophistication and professionalism of apps, and not caving to the demand for cookie-cutter, lowest common denominator app factories for use by hacks.
I look forward to a purge of the crap on the store asap.
I think that this is completely different than what Microsoft was doing. Apple's move will not "Kill" flash or make it any less relevant in the market today. It only limits it's relevance as an application development platform for Apple's device. I doubt that there will be anyone who drops Flash for internet development because of this. The fact that Apple does not allow the Flash plug-in on the platform could be considered anti-competitive but I believe that it could be argued that Apple has the right to limit it's OS to support specific standards just as they do with their hardware.
Same here.
I'm especially annoyed with the major network broadcasters. They're pushing those ads too much. When they start extending the length of tv shows, JUST to include more ads, that pisses me off. Yes, these days of TIVO/DVR, it automatically records the entire show, but there are other shows that I want to watch on other channels. Those two increased minutes of length means that, I'm missing two minutes of another show on a different channel. I used to resort to using my VCR to record the other show, until my VCR broke.
These kind of tactics, force me to turn to torrent sites, so I can watch the full episode. Not all tv shows are available on Hulu.
Just because ads are a necessary evil, doesn't mean we should just accept these kind of tactics. I hope the FTC, some other regulatory agency, or the public will not let ads get out of control, on network tv, the internet, and mobile devices.
Well, with this; and the one about the Apple only development tools - I do not see iphone OS 4 as coming out soon. The OS we have now is good enough. I think Apple should just do an interim right now and make Iphone OS 3.5 with folders and multi-tasking to make everyone happy until this gets sorted out.
Until then, my iphone version works great for me and I have all the ipads I will need for my ipad, except for a couple.
Look, AOL tried to transition into an advertising only company after Time Warner aqcuired it. Did not work out to well, and Time Warner released AOL back to it's own entity.
Until then, my iphone version works great for me and I have all the ipads I will need for my ipad, except for a couple.
Look, AOL tried to transition into an advertising only company after Time Warner aqcuired it. Did not work out to well, and Time Warner released AOL back to it's own entity.
Yup; they're getting too big for their britches. If Microsoft did this stuff, there would be an uproar on this site about how draconian they are.
Let's deal with this point by point...
Apple has always been more expensive than their competitors, so you can't really accuse them of tarnishing their reputation by doing this now.
Once again, Apple has given only a 1 year warranty for a long, long time.
Either you have really bad luck, or you don't take care of your products, because I've had quite a lot of Apple products and fewer problems than that. I did, interestingly enough have a logic board fail on an out of warranty Mac Pro a few months ago. When I took it in to my local Apple Store, they said it would be approximately a $1000 repair, and when I went back to pick it up, they told me I didn't have to pay.
Okay, there might be something to this, but it's not all that different from what their competitors are doing. Besides, you yourself just acknowledged that you can circumvent their ecosystem, and it's not like it's even hard for the customer to do.
There is no mystery here, if you bought the product, you knew in advance that it didn't support Flash. Apple hasn't even tried to keep this under wraps. Maybe they're being "unfriendly" to potential customers by not adding Flash, but as far as their actual customers are concerned, it's not like they promised Flash would be patched in and didn't deliver.
What makes you so sure they're lying exactly?
Pretty much everything that has come under fire related to Apple's license agreement affects developers a lot more than customers. There are some unreasonable seeming things that relate to customers, but I can't think of any cases of those being enforced.
This isn't unfriendliness to customers, which is the main point. Additionally, however, while you or I may or may not agree with specifics of the law or Apple's decision to have it enforced, there certainly are laws that prevent purchasing stolen merchandise, and also laws protect trade secrets. Unless you have a law degree, I don't think you're really in a position to sort this one out.
Precisely, how are they being any more unfriendly to customers than they ever have been? They still have industry leading customer service, according to consumer studies, by the way.
This isn't to say Apple has been behaving perfectly, it's just not really the customers they have been mistreating.
Well for starters i wouldn't be complaining because i use Macs pretty much for all my work. Also apple and MS are totally in totally different orbits. MS has majority OS share while Apple has 9 or 10 percent.
Ya know since Obama took office, things have really changed. the government wants to decide how businesses are run - and if they do not like it; they will take control and rip it apart. this is a perfect example of socialism (all you have to do is hear Obama's speeches lately).
I bet none of this would be an issue, if our goverment was not in the mess it is in now, and wall street and the banks had not destroyed every chance for the decent business person.
I bet none of this would be an issue, if our goverment was not in the mess it is in now, and wall street and the banks had not destroyed every chance for the decent business person.
I think they're saying that Apple is intentionally crippling other options so that they are no longer a viable alternative.