Quote:
Originally Posted by
Stevie 
Nope. We are not talking about a manufacturer in this context. Apple is not the manufacturer here - the devs are the manufacturers.
But lets go with your example. If Coke had the dominant beverage distribution company, and refused to supply stores that also sell a competitor's beverage in store-owned coolers, the analogy would be vastly better, albeit still very imperfect.
Dude, I know; obviously you don't get all the subtle layers to some of these analogies. Whatever way you want to use any or all of these analogies, it's not that difficult...
It doesn't matter WHO the manufacturers are, Apple can basically stock its OWN vending machines, its OWN brick and mortar stores, its OWN virtual stores, its OWN hardware and its OWN platforms with ANYTHING it wants to. Apple owns the store AND the vending machine. They are not, however, trying to dictate someone else's store.
You are right that Coke
might have a problem if they refused to supply other peoples' stores that stocked a competing beverage -- this is what MS did with Windows. (Although, restaurants seem to have exclusive deals, so anyhow.)
But you are still quite backward on this. It's APPLE'S OWN STORE / PLATFORM. If Coke had stores, they could refuse to stock Pepsi in them. So, must MS put Apple stuff in its stores (both of them [edit: it looks like 3 now])? Oh no, Radio Shack has a "monopoly" over its own stores -- better tell all the electrical goods producers to get in line to make sure their products are represented equally in all Radio Shack stores; the multinational tech companies better revolt against the oppressive overlord Radio Shack. Oh, wait a minute, the manufacturers can sell their products through Amazon, Walt Mart, Best Buy, or a million other places. It's irrelevant if no-one wants to patronize those other places due to the lax customer care and lack of vision. If consumers all flock to Radio Shack instead, there might be a good reason for it. Does it make a difference if Radio Shack makes good decisions and suddenly becomes a retail sensation overnight, with world's most profitable stores per square foot?
Devs also have somewhere else to go. If, for example, they insist on using Flash to "develop" apps, then there are countless places they can go -- why, didn't you know, Flash is welcomed everywhere as the most essential ingredient of the real internet. Flash developers haven't become dependent on Apple only to have Apple pull the rug out from under them. In fact, by a dev's insistence upon developing in Flash or using Admob, it signals they are using a one size-fits-all approach that was primarily developed for NON-Apple products. It signals that they are in it for the money and not to make a great app for the consumer; it signals that they obviously have somewhere else to sell their apps or to make money (such as through Google ads on their own websites -- surely they will get more eyes on their own websites than on that awful Apple app store that everyone despises). Devs can even sell their products from their own personal websites and still reach the same global market that Apple reaches -- Safari doesn't block the sites! But I guess they figure that Apple does them a service with the app store.
Sure, Apple cannot (probably) dictate to Best Buy to drop Dell products if Best Buy wants to carry Macs. That's an abusive MS tactic -- upon the "partners" that were dependent on MS. On the other hand, Apple doesn't have to sell Macs in Best Buy at all. Best Buy is not dependent on selling Macs in the same way that Dell and Acer are dependent on having Windows on most of their machines. Apple has not got that kind of hold over the computer industry
So, I take it that you think every Mom & Pop store should carry anything and everything the local protection racket (Google) comes around and tells them to carry? What happened to all this freedom Apple critics are supposedly in favor of? Last time I checked, store owners could carry whatever the heck they wanted to carry. If they didn't like the way a supplier did business, they switched suppliers. Google claims the whole internet as its private market and it wants to bully Apple for staking out its own little corner [paraphrased from an article I just read but can't find right now].
Hey, I just read another article in which Adobe announces they think Flash will be on some 200+ million mobile devices by 2012. Obviously, the Apple game isn't the only game in town. Even if it were, Apple is not holding a gun to anyone's head -- devs come because it is profitable and has great terms and Apple knows what it is doing.
... uppity-websites posing as hardware entrepreneurs are harmful for consumers. Worse... they are the biggest cowardly scumbag losers on the planet for their blatant cheesy knock-off of the iPhone. They should be ashamed of their pathetic shallow existence, worse is their non-stop instigating of the DOJ because they are mad at Apple for not giving them everything.
