MacDailyNews Note: Please see: Apple faces U.S. antitrust investigation over iPhone OS programming tool requirements? – May 03, 2010
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “As the Post sees it, the new policy ‘kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion.'”
MacDailyNews Take: The operative words above? “As the Post sees it.” The NY Post. On their next page they probably see flying saucers helmed by Pamela Anderson fembots mooring atop the Empire State Building.
Elmer-DeWitt writes, “To win a Sherman Antitrust case against Apple, the government would have to prove both that Apple’s market share constitutes a monopoly — itself not illegal — and that it has abused that monopoly power in ways that damage its competition. While it is true that Apple controls what apps can run on its mobile devices and even what tools developers can use to write those apps, it’s going to be harder to show that it has a monopoly of the smartphone market or that its competitors have been harmed…”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Much ado about nothing.
A simple inquiry into a practice, not an investigation. The Post is a poop rag not fit to wrap fish in (my opinion).
@ Ubermac,
“If you have declared Marxists in the government, tyranny is just around the corner.”
That’s not necessarily so. In Canada we had a declared Marxists in the government. He was our Prime Minister. Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
He only declared war on one of our ten Provinces. He had troops patrolling the streets of just the biggest of the Province’s cities. He rounded up and imprisoned only 500 or so of the province’s foremost intellectuals.
And, irony of ironies, when he caught the ringleaders of his anti-government conspiracy, he shipped them to Marxist Cuba.
So you see, while tyranny is just around the corner, it won’t be much of a show.
well…Apple has a good offensive line and their quarterback has the arm to get it deep to those wicked fast receivers, but the U.S. has a dominating defense and we all know –say it with me–“defense wins games”.
All Apple has to do is keep the game within reach and make it a respectable contest–they’re healthy and the backups are rested, so that should bode well for them in the post season.
Coach Jobs is a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame a successful playoff run and championship win this year could make him a fist ballot shoe-in.
“…has abused that monopoly power in ways that damage its competition.”
I would think that this move would drive developers away from Apple to Android, Windows, etc. That should help the competition. So what’s the gripe?
There’s nothing that stops developers from developing apps for both Apple and other platforms…they just have to work a little harder. So I guess developers are fundamentally lazy.
Now if Apple made developers sign some sort of exclusivity contract, there might be a case.
Not go off on a tangent but I hate these crappy government lawsuits that are title “people of the state of___” or American people vs ____.
hey how about a ” a select few, sanctomonius, elitis who have nothing better to do but abuse their authority under the name of
the people vs ______. Definately do not throw me in this melarky!
I’m just curious how this differs from the situation in the software industry in general. It’s not like you can run the same application on OSX, Windows and Linux. Is this also a problem, then?
BULLSHIT premise. It is not an antitrust violation to require participating vendors to write platform-compliant apps. Apple is not required to support any cross-platform development tools. Get real.
HAHA … I’m going to say Apple. Until the U.S. decides that they’ve had enough. Then they’ll do something stupid at which point the remaining winner will still be …uhum… APPLE!
@MCCFR
I agree with your sentiments and would point out that the cognoscenti refer to “Avenue of the Americas” only as Sixth Avenue (even if it state otherwise in the formal address)!
I find this whole thing a bit funny and wonder what lobby group is pushing this. There is nothing in the Dev agreement that says you cannot develop an app for multiple platforms just that if you want your app on the iphone you must use native code and not wrap it in a translation layer. It doesn’t even mean that you have to use xcode which is free. This is just apple trying to protect it’s image to users buy not letting substandard apps on the platform, and encourage dev’s to take advantage of the newest features. Anyone who thinks adobe would have kept flashes iphone compiler up to date with the latest features apple puts out is just fooling themselves.
Obama needs to get in there and stop Apple from making any more money. We need to re-distribute the wealth!
As Obama said… now is not the time to make a profit.
@ ubermac: I think you mean Statist, not Marxist.
@ Chrissy1: Is the iPad full of eels?
I read the NY Post story and other articles. I do not yet understand the argument here. Is it about Flash? Is it still about iTunes and apps? Is it about iPhone/iPad’s closed system? Until we really know the theory about what is allegedly wrong here (the government may kindly tell us one day), it is hard to realize analyze this.
With that said, suppose I run a PC box assembly, and I only install Windows, and I have a EULA that prohibits installing any other system software on it, am I engaging in anti-competitive behavior? Does it make a difference if I have 20% market share? 40%? 80%?
In addition, suppose Windows agrees to grant me a universal license to be the sole worldwide distributor of Windows, and I only permit Windows on my hardware. If anyone wants to write programs for Windows, they have to give me 20% of gross sales. Is that an antitrust violation? More generally, is that anti-competitive (I must assume yes here–every attempt to control or limit a product is anti-competitive)? Is it illegally anti-competitive? Just thinking out loud.
Does Apple force developers not to develop for other platforms? This is Apple’s responsibility to ensure that any developer who wants to code on the iPhone/iPad must follow guidelines. If they don’t want to do so, Apple is not going to put a gun over their head. They can leave and join other platforms. Is this too much to ask for? Does the US timidly allow terrorists to enter into the country and violate its laws?
STOP PRESS: The Wall St Journal has been ordered to change the size of the paper on which the famous financial journal is published. According to press reports this is because ads formatted for other broadsheet papers won’t fit in the narrower columns of the WSJ. “Ads should be able to run everywhere without reformatting” claimed a representative of one agency. The WSJ declined to comment…
@Big Als MBP
Don’t forget that Gilles Duceppe, federal leader of the Bloc Quebecois party was also a declared Marxist and look what happened there.
Nothing. Zippo. Nada (well he will get a nice pension when he retires)
You are right. It would be a poor show indeed.