“The Federal Trade Commission has nearly 200 pages of records related to a purported complaint by Adobe against Apple for banning iPhone developers from using its authoring tools to make iPhone apps,” Ryan Singel reports for Wired. “But, in what might be the most-official confirmation that regulators are probing the ban for antitrust violations, the FTC declined to make them available to Wired.com, saying doing so ‘could be reasonably expected’ to interfere with its ‘law enforcement’ duties.”
“Wired.com sought a copy of Adobe’s complaint by filing a Freedom of Information Act request in early May, which was denied in whole in a July 23 letter,” Singel reports. “We have located 189 pages of responsive records, all of which are exempt from the FOIA’s disclosure requirement,’ wrote Joan A. Fina, the FTC’s assistant general counsel. ‘These records are exempt… because disclosure of that material could reasonably be expected to interfere with the conduct of the Commission’s law enforcement activities.'”
Singel reports, “The language all but confirms that the FTC is actively investigating Apple, which was heavily criticized for the ban put in place earlier this year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple (which has nothing resembling a monopoly, by the way) along with every other company on earth that so desires, has every right to protect their platforms from lowest common denominator crapware that fails to take advantage of unique OS hooks. We don’t want generic ports excreted by lazy developers on our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches and neither should the FTC or any other government entity.
Is the FTC, in all of their collective brilliance, going to probe Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PlayStation), and Nintendo (Wii) for “antitrust violations,” too? Sounds really stupid, right? Because it is.
@MDN Take. For some reason, it doesn’t sound as stupid when Adobe says it. Maybe it’s because of the cash bribes err… lobbying.
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Excretion software is the correct term to use. All they do is excrete shit software.
FTC = The lowest form of ambulance chasers in existence.
Adobe is crying because they spent big big bucks for Macromedia just get Flash and now Flash is being over taken my better technology. Once the Porn industry moves to HTML 5, Flash will be DEAD!
Why isn’t my login working on the iPhone app? MDN, did you write this with an Adobe compiler?
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All joking aside (except for the REALLY can’t login on the phone part), I will never buy anything from lazy developers who want to use Adobe compilers to write for all platforms. It shows your lack of programming talent.
MW: without — the iPhone will survive WITHOUT Adobe shitware.
There are times when I truly greive for what America is becoming. It is pitifully sad when the pioneering spirit of a nation is replaced by one of entitlement.
I agree, can live without adobe software on my iPhone… It’s all just junk software anyways
Is “excretion software” just another term for “fart apps?”
…excretion software…
Sounds nasty to me too.
Apple has 3% of the phone market. Anti-trust doesn’t apply. Nothing to see here people.
Usually, stupid never concerns me, but… stupid has never prevented the government from doing something.
This is all a bunch of nothing. It’s caused by the fact that most people, including those at the FTC, know virtually nothing about technology. So, it takes them a couple of hundred pages of rambling around to come to the same conclusion that is self evident to the rest of us.
Nothing here, this is a non issue. It’s never going to see the light of day.
Oh, and BL5? The drama is way overdone.
Yeah, Apple is SO anti-competetive.
Sure, Adobe wants to seize control of the entire iOS platform and transform it into one big advertisement for Flash, Action Script, and their over-priced authoring tools…
But Apple’s the one being anti-competitive somehow.
Rescue us, somebody! Rescue us from the freedom of not being locked into the Adobe hegemony!
“Is the FTC, in all of their collective brilliance, going to probe Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (PlayStation), and Nintendo (Wii) for “antitrust violations,” too?”
MDN, your take is valid to a point (which I agree with). But I think the issue is, no body complained about Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. The problem is Adobe is having a hissy fit and lodged a formal complaint against Apple.
Personally I think we should follow Apple’s lead and ban buying/using Adobe’s software. I make my living using their software, so I don’t say this lightly, but enough is enough. Adobe stopped adequately serving the Mac community a decade ago. I say, it’s time to kick them to the curb.