Apple spurs an antitrust investigation
According to the New York Post, The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are negotiating which of them will launch an inquiry into a clause in the iPhone OS 4 SDK that bans the porting of software originally written for Adobe's Flash, Sun's Java or Microsoft's Silverlight/Mono to the iPhone OS.The issue at hand is this: Does the restriction kill competition by forcing developers to create applications that only run on Apple's devices rather than work with other operating systems and hardware like those from Google and RIM?
Adobe had been working on a feature in Creative Suite 5 that would allow Flash applications to be ported to the iPhone. Under this rule, those apps would be rejected.
This comes days after Apple published an essay from Steve Jobs explaining why his company's devices do not support Flash. In the essay, Steve said that Flash "...is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content."
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen responded in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal, saying that Apple's adherence to a single platform is a detriment. He concludes that Adobe's concept is best for most developers, as it allows them to distribute apps out to many places rather than forcing them to pick one. Narayen then warned developers against the "cumbersome" nature of having two workflows, one for Apple and one for everything else, while Jobs suggested that Adobe abandon Flash and adopt open web standards like HTML5.
Note that launching an inquiry does not mean the beginning of formal proceedings. Inquiries are conducted to determine if formal action should be taken. In any case, this won't be settled quickly or simply.
[Via AppleInsider]
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According to the New York Post, The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are negotiating which of them will...
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Dear Steve Jobs,
Suck it and then keep on sucking it.
Grusic
Sent from any of a number of non-Apple devices I own
"In any case, this won't be settled quickly or simply."
Sure it will:
Justice Department Guy 1: "Hey, should we pursue anti-trust proceedings against Apple?"
Justice Department Guy 2: "Are they a monopoly?"
Justice Department Guy 1: "Nope, there's RIM and Microsoft, and Palm/HP, and Google..."
Justice Department Guy 2: "Then no. How about we go after Ticketmaster..."
This is meaningless. I think most people see the word ANTITRUST in big bold letters and proceed to react and miss the the point of this inquiry entirely. Especially those that harbor irrational levels of Apple hatred.
Apple requiring developers NOT to use middleware in no way stops that developer from writing apps for competing platforms.
They will inquire (which is fine), but it will come to nothing.
I get the feeling Apple will come out of this investigation just fine.
May 03 2010 at 5:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou mean I can't use Sony's PS3 development tools to write Xbox 360 games? It's the same thing.
May 03 2010 at 5:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyNo... It's not the same. It's more like allowing your neighbor to take over all your yard care and landscaping and house mantenance.
May 03 2010 at 11:03 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyYou mean I can use the Unreal engine on both the Xbox 360 and the PS3? Great analogy...
May 03 2010 at 11:47 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replyhow exactly is this anti-competitive. I can legally make an iphone AND an Android app if I am willing to do the work. Apple isn't legally required to make it easy for me to do so.
Also, you commented earlier that Apple is supposedly the number 1 smartphone maker at the moment. Trick is that you can be number 1 without having a major power. There are what 5 major OS's for mobile devices. Collectively they are like 90% of the market (the dozen or so minor OS's sharing the other ten). The breakdown is something like 20%, 19%, 19%, 18% and 17%. Not some huge 50% while everyone else has 10%. if the latter were the case then there might be something to any claims but even then it would be about allowing any apps on the iphone, not the other way.
If Apple is forced to allow apps based on this framework, I can see them just breaking all those apps with every update. Apple doesn't want to be held back by any 3rd party frameworks written over theirs so if they must change something that would break these hodgepodge apps, then so be it I say. Enough developers would be sick of their stuff breaking all the time and abandon this Adobe way of development.
May 03 2010 at 2:20 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyThis isn't just about Adobe. There are a lot of really good tools out there, such as Unity3D, that are going to be affected by this. Besides, the majority of apps on the store are no better than your average Flash game anyway. I mean, iFart? Please.
None of this even matters. The app store is the next dot-com bubble or MySpace just waiting to happen - the bandwagon isn't going to roll on forever once people realize it's literally akin to panning for gold. The odds of making a reasonable profit from an iDevice app are very slim, and on top of that you have to endure Steve Job's enormous, utterly dickish ego dictating to you what is and is not acceptable. Can you say "tipping point?"
Mark my words, within the year the landscape is going to change and developers will have a choice - Develop for a single, closed platform that is piled high with arbitrary restrictions, rejections, limitations and low return on investment, or they can put their resources into a build-it-once, deploy everywhere ELSE strategy, without the ridiculous restrictions on content AND the ability to use third party tools. There's almost no question which they will choose.
where in the agreement does it say that if you create an app for the iphone you are forbidden, by the agreement, to create a version for any other device.
no where. because it's not there. THAT would be restricting competition.
Otherwise it's all on me and whether I'm too lazy to recode. If I really really want there to be an iphone, android, webos, windows version then I will do what I have to do to make each one. And if I'm a good developer I will want them each to be optimized for the OS in question so I won't have an issue with using native code top to bottom.
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