Not a fair comparison. Since Apple is forcing everyone using an iPad or iPod to use the App Store, then the App Store not allowing NC-17 etc. is restricting your freedom of choice. With regular books you can walk to another bookstore and buy them from there. With iPod and iPhone and iPad you cannot.
Sure you can buy another reader, but if/when the iPod/Phone/Pad become prolific enough to be a defacto standard due to for example ebook volume being so low on other devices that very few buys other ebook readers, then it would be an issue. Sure it's an "if", but that would be closer to the point than walmart not selling porn.
Regs, Jarkko
This logic does not work. In fact nobody is "forced" to buy anything, and not especially an iPad. if you don't like the product, which includes the restrictions, then don't buy it. "Freedom of choice" is not covered by antitrust laws.
Theorizing about when the iPad becomes a "de-facto standard" is just that, pure theory.
What market are they supposedly monopolising? Not the smartphone market. The iPhone market?!
If you define the market small enough, anyone is in breach of antitrust.
This is just like the AAC stuff back in the day or the complaints about DRM & it preventing use of iTunes content on other digital players.
They like to stir the waters every now & then in hope of scaring companies into being more giving on their regulations but in the past Apple has always stuck to their guns & these guys just sort of wave their fists around & then go away.
I think it would be great if there was a way to support companies building such tools but I certainly agree with Apple that it will slow the progress of iPhone development.
You can't have your cake & eat it too, somewhere something has to be sacrificed. Apple chose to sacrifice support of 3rd party developer tools. In the long run this is really a win for everyone. Better quality product going out to end users, building more excitement & hype for the system & it's apps, spurring more sales.
With HTML5 rising I think this cross-platform issue is going to become far less of an issue as well, we're going to start seeing a lot more apps written as web apps. Then Apple might be forced to re-consider some of their language regarding web apps.
I just realized something: Apple has 100% of the market of Apple-made products. When will the FCC shut down this draconian monopoly?
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Originally Posted by Superbass
Your vacuum cleaner manufacturer probably doesn't prohibit 3rd party bags, Microsoft allows PC and Playstation games to be ported to the XBox, your car is not prohibited from consuming Exxon-supplied oil products, your daughter can speak english to anyone she wants (within reason) to without getting kicked out of school, plenty of people living in Boston root for the Yankees, etc etc.
Now imagine for a minute that Microsoft, Adobe and Avid stopped allowing their products to work on future versions of OSX, and Google stopped allowing access to it's online products via Safari, just before a major OSX + Hardware release by Apple and without warning...
Apple is NOT forbidding developers from porting apps to other OSes! I'm no developer, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but are developers really unable to recycle any code from their iPhone app to use for their Android app? Also, where does Apple say that if you make an iPhone app you can't port that app to other platforms?
Try developing a Flash app and getting it ported to all the consoles without bothering to tailor it to each platform (because that is apparently too much to expect from saintly developers who care only about the consumers). See if your game ends up in WiiWare.
The big issue here is that Apple has gone from a somewhat closed system to a ridiculously closed system, without any sort of "heads up" to a lot of companies.
The iPhone/iPad as a product and platform is gaining a dominant market share, and by springing the new development agreement with no warning, Apple screwed a lot of companies who invested a ton of money since 2007 on developing products around the iPhone. Adobe is just one of them.
Sleazy, yes. Illegal? I dunno.
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Originally Posted by Superbass
This would be akin to some sort of revolutionary electric car which could be charged from a wide range of power sources rapidly gaining 15% market share, and then thousands of charging stations springing up around the country, only for the the car company to decide after 3 years to make the car only chargeable at proprietary stations, thus killing a lot of investors' projects, and costing millions of dollars.
Doesn't sound illegal to me, just sleazy.
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Originally Posted by Superbass
Also, does anyone else think it's lame that Apple is more than willing to make iPhones and iPods sync up with and make use of PCs / earn money off PC users, but in turn is denying PC users the ability to develop for iPhones and iPads? If they used the argument that the iPhone and iPad are exclusively part of the Apple ecosystem, it would be alright to require Apple products for programming, but the fact that they make their products worth with PCs (necessary to earn a decent profit over the past 10 years), makes that requirement somewhat absurd in my opinion....
And as an aside, if Apple was as forthcoming with Adobe as Microsoft has been in terms of access to important code within the operating system, maybe Flash would work better on Apple products as on Windows PCs. Making software work with an OS is a 2-way street, and everybody placing the blame solely on Adobe is pretty deluded.
Anyways, it's an apple fansite, so I guess this is all to be expected here.
While what you cite is pretty sleazy business practice, I don't see it as illegal.
hmm, how is this related to antitrust anyway? Just because BMW enforces a stricter new rule for the parts suppliers for the popular 5 series,that makes them an unfair monopoly? it's not like the suppliers cant move on to supply parts for Mercedes, Audi and other car manufacturers.
Your example does not posit any antitrust violations. And it has nothing to do with the practices that Apple is being investigated for.
Your vacuum cleaner manufacturer probably doesn't prohibit 3rd party bags, Microsoft allows PC and Playstation games to be ported to the XBox, your car is not prohibited from consuming Exxon-supplied oil products, your daughter can speak english to anyone she wants (within reason) to without getting kicked out of school, plenty of people living in Boston root for the Yankees, etc etc.
Now imagine for a minute that Microsoft, Adobe and Avid stopped allowing their products to work on future versions of OSX, and Google stopped allowing access to it's online products via Safari, just before a major OSX + Hardware release by Apple and without warning...
How daft are you?
There is nothing that my analogies say that you can't do but without consequences. Just like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and Avid does with their products. But either they don't work at all, work poorly or they are not supported. I hope you understand what "supported" means.
For just about every major new Apple OS, virtually all the existing products worked at the time. Moreso than Microsofts releases. And Apple was ready to provide the necessary tools to assist developers to migrate their apps to the new configurations.
Most important, there was no hidden agenda to stop anybody from developing apps on the Mac. But to do so, and not to f***k up the system or anybody else's work we had to play by their rules. Not any different than playing in the National vs the American League baseball.
Apple's and every other software is developed under specific and tightly controlled guidelines by their respective OSes. And in every SDK agreement, it is specifically stated that changes can be made without warning.
Great sourcing. Too bad that some are too stupid to understand it.
Love your ignore list:
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My Ignore List (Subject to change)
In no special order: chronster Da Harder iGenius (aka Josh.B and SpotOn) Gazoobee Stonefree Tekstud AngusYoung Mactripper (aka WooHoo) Matt_s NOTE: Some have been banned.
I suspect that iGenius may have rejoined with a new name...
...I seem to detect the pattern of an overall negative theme, while asking seemingly objective questions, and offering conflicting points of view (switching sides) in the discussion.
While appearing to encourage discussion, his efforts mainly serve to promote an Anti-Apple message.
I suspect that iGenius may have rejoined with a new name...
...I seem to detect the pattern of an overall negative theme, while asking seemingly objective questions, and offering conflicting points of view (switching sides) in the discussion.
While appearing to encourage discussion, his efforts mainly serve to promote an Anti-Apple message.
Thank you.
If I may suggest, perhaps you could do the same. There are a lot more I would and probably will add. Certainly could use your assistance.
I think you are right about iGenius. If you or anybody else recognizes his new moniker, lets identify him. It is amazing how much time and space is gained by ignoring trollers.
This has been coming for a while. Whilst I'm not sure you can say Apple have a large enough market share in any market to actually warrant action, but Apple have been acting in a way that was likely to eventually have regulators sniffing around.
And sniffing (and postulating for the media) is all they will do as they don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Makes for good copy and lots of pages views though!
But, that doesn't mean apple should really disallow any third party from providing any form of alternate development environment or emulation layer or cross platform toolset. This seems like a draconian and decidedly anticompetitive response to Adobe's own poor behavior and engineering. Indeed, as written, it doesn't even make any sense.
It's not just targeted at Adobe! I can tell you, as a mac user cross platform tools may be convenient for developers, but they deliver a homogenized, crap experience for me as an end user. As an end user I could give a flip if it makes a developers life a little more difficult. Apple has set a high bar - if you want to play in our space, these are the minimum requirements. If you don't like it, suck it! Bravo! It's about time someone put the focus where it belongs - on the end user and the end user's experience!
Apple's stance makes perfect sense. Whenever you are questioning something Apple is doing, you should always ask yourself "what does this do for our customers total experience with our technology". Because I guarantee you that's the first thing Apple asks themselves internally before deciding on any feature or decision.
Apple isn't all about the developers. Yes, they are important and yes, they support them through the developers program, the developers conference, tools, technical support, etc.
But for Apple their first customer is the end user. Period! When developers buy more machines than end users, then Apple's focus should rightly change.
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It is also anticompetitive to excessively control what goes into the app store
How? Is the Apple gestapo showing up at your door to confiscate your other devices if you buy an Apple device? Is it anticompetitive that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo restrict what runs on their consoles? Is it anticompetitive that other embedded systems in anything from a car to your HVAC controller aren't open and accessible? Heck no! This jihad that everything with a microchip has to be "open" is a crock - and ironic at the same time. "Open" advocates rant about choice, and then in their own fascists ways they want restrict my choice to pick a stable, controlled environment if I want to.
These are absurd arguments. What pundits who make them are really saying is: "hey, doing user-focused development is hard and it's not fair Apple gets to ignore the feature-obsessed geeks and still be successful". Oh well - sucks to be them. Competition is hard. Apple isn't the least bit anti-competative - they aren't taking the profits from one division and using them to artificially lower the prices in another area. They don't control a dominant market position. They aren't continually pre-announcing new product to suck the oxygen out of the market and stifle competition (any of those sound familiar?)
They simply compete better with better products and a better experience.
As it should be. If HP can step up and bring it with WebOS and their tablet, bravo! We all benefit with more, better choices.
But I am sick and tired of people with either gross insecurities or no imagination tearing Apple down and trying to force them into the same crap model that everyone else is still in.
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and keeping out political content on the grounds that it will upset at least half of apple's customers
I believe Jobs already apologized for the political cartoonists app and it has been published for some time now.
But even if they did ban it, oh well - he could still have done it as a web app.
Am I totally happy with the current process? Nope - there are a couple of programs that I am eagerly awaiting to clear the app store approval process. It's still new, it's obvious Apple is (still) overwhelmed, and it will improve over time. I can state that confidently as they have made continual improvements over time, and they have shown themselves to be constant innovators.
Which is also what makes the "we need competition to spur Apple on" comments so ridiculous - Apple created the current touchscreen smartphone market in less than a year, out of thin air, as a total outsider. Such comments are wholly misplaced by irrational... I don't know what: extreme dislike? hatred? jealousy? demagoguery? Anyway, that's another topic but just another example of the irrational behavior from many Apple haters.
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is also a bizarre excess over a policy that should probably just ensure that apps are not excessively buggy, and avoid blatantly obscene content.
It is most decidedly NOT bizarre excess. It's exactly what is required to keep a platform stable and consistent. I, for one, applaud what Apple is doing with the App store, their approval process and the goals they are working towards with the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.
If you don't like it, you can go to ANY OTHER DEVICE ON THE MARKET which follows the same failed and broken "open" anything goes models. Have at it. And when I say broken, I'm referring to a consistent and stable end user experience.
Apple is trying something different with a specific outcome in mind. Even if you don't agree with their approach, if you truly are an advocate of "open" you should applaud Apple for adding more diversity and choice to the ecosystem.
What I find absolutely disgusting and disingenuous is people who are so threatened by their own insecurities over change that they want to deny someone else the benefits of a system like Apple is in the process of creating by trying to force it to either change, or tell people (Yes Cory Doctorow, I'm looking in your arrogant self-important direction) not to buy it because it doesn't fit their narrow vision of acceptable.
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Since there are currently reasonable alternatives to all of Apple's products
Which makes all the hand wringing in threads like these ridiculous - but thanks for pointing out the obvious (finally, someone has!)
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this isn't yet to the level where antitrust really plays, but Apple may not be far off from that point, particularly if Android fails and RIM stays stuck in the 90's.
Don't bank on it getting to that level any time soon. Apple is doing nothing of what Microsoft or Standard Oil did to warrant final government action. Lots of "monopoly" talk is thrown around by people totally ignorant of what a real monopoly is. Apple is no where near it. And will never be if you listen to all the hype about the "iPhone" killers, with Android being the latest killer-in-waiting; despite Androids obvious similarities to the failed Windows Mobile ecosystem - it didn't work before, but it will now because it's "Open" - sheesh, are these people serious? It's the Linux desktop arguments from earlier in this decade all over again.
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If the result is a demand to trim back some of Apple's excesses, then fine.
What excesses? Jealous of their success? Then go one-up them - no one is stopping you. Apple is successful because they earned it! And certainly not with help from the majority of the technosphere - many who seem to have an irrational dislike of all things Apple just because they come from Apple.
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If the result is to artificially push lame competitors into Apple's markets, or split up apple so they can no longer integrate cleanly across their product line, then I as a consumer will probably be off.
If idiots whining about monopolies are successful in forcing Apple to change, then yes - you as the consumer will be harmed. There will be less choice, and it will be artificially imposed.
That's what I don't understand with all the fussing. If you hate "closed" then go knock yourself out with one of the literally hundreds of other solutions out there. Why does everyone have to be following the same models? Where's the choice in that?
If you think you can do it better, go do it! But stop trying to regulate Apple into the same level of mediocrity as everyone else. It's flipping ridiculous, really...
by springing the new development agreement with no warning, Apple screwed a lot of companies who invested a ton of money since 2007 on developing products around the iPhone. Adobe is just one of them.
Apple was pretty clear from day one, if you actually read the developer agreement, that Apple intended for developers to use their tools. All Apple did with their update was make it crystal clear. People were skirting a line of ambiguity, and Apple clarified.
Really, are any of the critics of Apple's control surprised? If you are, your not very good at paying attention to your own criticism
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Toss in the fact that Adobe and Apple are competitors on several software platforms, and the whole situation reeks of underhanded business tactics by Apple.
No, it doesn't. Except for people with overactive imaginations.
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Also, does anyone else think it's lame that Apple is more than willing to make iPhones and iPods sync up with and make use of PCs / earn money off PC users, but in turn is denying PC users the ability to develop for iPhones and iPads?
Nope. Not in the least. The best development tools have always been - duh! - on their platform (the Mac). Of course they are trying to drive sales to the Mac as well. Despite all the handwringing about the future of the Mac, it's not going away any time soon.
If you are going to level that criticism at Apple, then were is your disdain for Microsoft not shipping naive C# tools on Mac OS X? If no, why are the standards different for Apple?
Remind me who has the larger market share?
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If they used the argument that the iPhone and iPad are exclusively part of the Apple ecosystem, it would be alright to require Apple products for programming, but the fact that they make their products worth with PCs (necessary to earn a decent profit over the past 10 years), makes that requirement somewhat absurd in my opinion....
Your opinion is absurd in trying to link developer requirements with general end user requirements. But nice try! A for effort - even if it ended up being some bizarre and tortured logic.
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And as an aside, if Apple was as forthcoming with Adobe as Microsoft has been in terms of access to important code within the operating system, maybe Flash would work better on Apple products as on Windows PCs. Making software work with an OS is a 2-way street, and everybody placing the blame solely on Adobe is pretty deluded.
At least we know where your paycheck is coming from now. This ridiculous argument has been refuted by others already.
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Anyways, it's an apple fansite, so I guess this is all to be expected here.
And yet you still posted. Are you paid by the word or number of posts?
Sure they are under no obligation to make life easier for the developers. Like it or not, if you read my post all the way through, it does in a way, end in Apple forcing smaller developers to develop for the App Store over its competitors by squeezing their resources.
Yet, with the App Store model, Apple has made it easier than ever for smaller developers to have easy and visible access to a major platform.
And if anything, they have dramatically leveled the playing field for small developers to really shine as big developers won't be able to just shovel existing programs over from other platforms to the iPhone OS.
If anything, what Apple is doing is the must support for small, independent developers in the history of computing. As a small developer, there has never been a better time to break into a new platform. The barrier of entry - learning a new language? Really? It would be like a professional mechanic complaining that he can only work on Mercedes and not Nissan's - sure, there are some differences but they are minor compared to the base knowledge of the fundamentals that a true professional knows.
Developers hand wringing over the toolset to develop applications more than like are not the kinds of developers Apple wan's anyway. Since when have they been focused on volume? Their focus is on quality and they are 100% correct in their objections and observations of porting tools.
Weren't people complaining about "too may fart" apps before? And now people are complaining about developers not having tools to create more "shovelware"?!?! Really? Which is it? Quantity or Quality? Thankfully Apple is (consistently) picking quality.
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I'm not the first person to make this point it seems. Lots of the articles that are popping up point to this as reasoning for the possible antitrust probe.
And the same flawed assertions being amplified by multiple parties don't make them any more relevant.
Simply repeating something doesn't make it "more correct" the more it's repeated
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And from what I've been reading, it's not as straight-forward as you make it seem to port an iPhone app to Android or any other OS.
Why is there any expectation that it should be?
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I may be wrong, but it seems like there's still a bit of rewritting to be done.
You mean writing good code that targets the strengths of a particular platform is hard and takes effort?
Get out of here! /sarcasm
Thank you for proving Apple's point for them (even though I'm sure you had no such intention).
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While it's true Apple isn't stopping it, they are making it more difficult for a vendor to bring their wares to the competition's markets.
And they are required to care about the competitions market because? Why should Apple be the least bit concerned about the easy of a developer porting their program to another platform?
Where is the angst that Microsoft hasn't ported C# or DirectX to Mac OS X?
Why is Apple being held to a different standard?
I guess you could counter that Apple hasn't ported OpenGL to Windows - whoops, except they don't have to - it's an open standard that already exists on windows!
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Which goes back to my point in that it costs the developer additional time and money to create two versions of the same app.
Oh well, that's business! Duh! If you can only do one market, pick the one where you think you are going to make the biggest return. Where is the constitutional guarantee to do multiple markets in a half-assed way?
Whining that you are being unfairly obstructed from competing because you are using porting tools to homogenize your app among multiple platforms is incredibly self-centered. As an end user of the result of such tools, it's an argument I'm wholly un-sympathetic to. Hurray for some minimum quality standards - of any kind! What a breath of fresh air in the current morass of computing.
Also, if I can point something out - this isn't an overall Apple stance. No such ban has been handed down for the Mac (unfortunately!). That's because the iPhone OS ecosystem is different. Apple has set minimum standards - and guess what, they are user focused instead of developer focused!
As an end user, I think it's wonderful! As a developer if you don't like it, go play in some other space. But stop whining that Apple should let you peddle any 'ol crap - we already have that in every other ecosystem and the experience, quite frankly, sucks. The iPhone and now the iPad are a nice breath of fresh air. I pick them up and they instantly pop on and they just work. Are they perfect? No! Do they do everything I need? No! But they do enough things and do them exceedingly well that they are very useful tools. My father loves his iPad. For the first time - ever - he is having fun surfing the Internet and using email. The fact that people want to tear that experience down because it doesn't fit their narrow version of "right" is just idiotic and selfish.
Apple had a huge head start to switch to Cocoa, since they are the ones who decided to go that route, and their secrecy rules kept everyone else in the dark until they sprung it on everyone... And yet they're still way behind Adobe in switching...
Because like Adobe, they were developing Carbon 64 ports too!
They also screwed themselves. Sure, it sucked. Sure people had to backtrack - if anything, Apple was the victim of their success with Carbon. It worked too well. While it's unfortunate they waited as long as they did to cut the cord, thank god someone finally had the balls to say "enough! Here is the line in the sand and this technology is dead - time to move on". It wasn't going to get any easier as time went on (in other words, there's never a good time to make such a change) and it would just get worse the larger the install base for the Mac gets. And looking at the acceleration of the Mac market share in the last year, they were very smart to make the cut off when they did.
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WhereTF did Stevie's credibility go when he wrote his moan-letter about how Adobe isn't keeping up?
Fair enough, although I don't think you are making appropriate direct comparisons - for example, a 64 bit Finder won't reap the benefits of 64 bit that Photoshop or Final Cut will.
64 bit for iTunes won't necessarily help either - iTunes needs to be multi-threaded more effectively, which is an entirely different problem than the maximum amount of memory it can address.
You are likely right. Many of them seems to think FUD is reference to a cartoon character that they saw in their youth and are going 'what does some guy with a weird accent who couldn't figure out if is was Rabbit or Duck season have to do with computers?'
Because like Adobe, they were developing Carbon 64 ports too!
They also screwed themselves. Sure, it sucked. Sure people had to backtrack - if anything, Apple was the victim of their success with Carbon. It worked too well. While it's unfortunate they waited as long as they did to cut the cord, thank god someone finally had the balls to say "enough! Here is the line in the sand and this technology is dead - time to move on". It wasn't going to get any easier as time went on (in other words, there's never a good time to make such a change) and it would just get worse the larger the install base for the Mac gets. And looking at the acceleration of the Mac market share in the last year, they were very smart to make the cut off when they did.
I have to wonder why Apple even indicated Carbon would go 64 in the first place as there were three signs why this was a majorly bad idea.
The fact that the Carbon API had been designed to be back compatible all the way to Mac OS 8.1 (1997) the last version of the MacOS to run on the 68K chip should have been the first sign that this API would be replaced--with the change over to Intel in 2005 being the second.
The final sign was history. According to an Apple representative that visited our Mac user club back when Copland was still being developed one of the main problems was thanks to the wild mixture of 68k assembly, Pascal, and C code in the then current OS there was lots of what had become "black box" code--code whose original function had been lost, was being used in a different manner, or worst of all affected one of the old APIs so even if the the code was never called removing it would cause the OS to promptly bomb.
Taking Carbon to 64 would have been a step back to the wild code mixture of the old days so I keep wondering why did Apple even consider it?
It's not as easy as that for Final Cut. Apple first had to write Quicktime as 64bit cocoa, which they just did - and that was a major overhaul. Presumably, Apple can now write Final Cut in 64 bit as well. What's Adobe's excuse?
Remember that Quicktime X has a very limited feature set compared to Quicktime 7 (the 32-bit version of Quicktime) and that the QTKit Objective-C framework has to hand off what ever Quicktime X can't handle (which is a lot) back to Quicktime 7.
This is why some people have problems with Quicktime X--they don't know that they need Quicktime 7 as well.
Wow four pages! All this talk and argument. All over a really poorly written piece in a second rate paper with exactly NO named sources. My take is it's completely made up. Sad part is so many will believe Apple guilty until proven innocent. Since none of this is true they will say Apple paid off the gov.
I am inclined to think this as well. The "person familiar with the matter" reads like the sort of drivel you would read in the days of yellow journalism. Remember the story came from the New York POST that Pace University in 2004 rated as the LEAST credible of the major New York papers and the ONLY one to get a "higher negative than positive rating on the credibility scale."
The only way this report could be less reliable is if it came out of a freaking tabloid.
Comments
Not a fair comparison. Since Apple is forcing everyone using an iPad or iPod to use the App Store, then the App Store not allowing NC-17 etc. is restricting your freedom of choice. With regular books you can walk to another bookstore and buy them from there. With iPod and iPhone and iPad you cannot.
Sure you can buy another reader, but if/when the iPod/Phone/Pad become prolific enough to be a defacto standard due to for example ebook volume being so low on other devices that very few buys other ebook readers, then it would be an issue. Sure it's an "if", but that would be closer to the point than walmart not selling porn.
Regs, Jarkko
This logic does not work. In fact nobody is "forced" to buy anything, and not especially an iPad. if you don't like the product, which includes the restrictions, then don't buy it. "Freedom of choice" is not covered by antitrust laws.
Theorizing about when the iPad becomes a "de-facto standard" is just that, pure theory.
What market are they supposedly monopolising? Not the smartphone market. The iPhone market?!
If you define the market small enough, anyone is in breach of antitrust.
This is just like the AAC stuff back in the day or the complaints about DRM & it preventing use of iTunes content on other digital players.
They like to stir the waters every now & then in hope of scaring companies into being more giving on their regulations but in the past Apple has always stuck to their guns & these guys just sort of wave their fists around & then go away.
I think it would be great if there was a way to support companies building such tools but I certainly agree with Apple that it will slow the progress of iPhone development.
You can't have your cake & eat it too, somewhere something has to be sacrificed. Apple chose to sacrifice support of 3rd party developer tools. In the long run this is really a win for everyone. Better quality product going out to end users, building more excitement & hype for the system & it's apps, spurring more sales.
With HTML5 rising I think this cross-platform issue is going to become far less of an issue as well, we're going to start seeing a lot more apps written as web apps. Then Apple might be forced to re-consider some of their language regarding web apps.
Your vacuum cleaner manufacturer probably doesn't prohibit 3rd party bags, Microsoft allows PC and Playstation games to be ported to the XBox, your car is not prohibited from consuming Exxon-supplied oil products, your daughter can speak english to anyone she wants (within reason) to without getting kicked out of school, plenty of people living in Boston root for the Yankees, etc etc.
Now imagine for a minute that Microsoft, Adobe and Avid stopped allowing their products to work on future versions of OSX, and Google stopped allowing access to it's online products via Safari, just before a major OSX + Hardware release by Apple and without warning...
Apple is NOT forbidding developers from porting apps to other OSes! I'm no developer, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but are developers really unable to recycle any code from their iPhone app to use for their Android app? Also, where does Apple say that if you make an iPhone app you can't port that app to other platforms?
Try developing a Flash app and getting it ported to all the consoles without bothering to tailor it to each platform (because that is apparently too much to expect from saintly developers who care only about the consumers). See if your game ends up in WiiWare.
The big issue here is that Apple has gone from a somewhat closed system to a ridiculously closed system, without any sort of "heads up" to a lot of companies.
The iPhone/iPad as a product and platform is gaining a dominant market share, and by springing the new development agreement with no warning, Apple screwed a lot of companies who invested a ton of money since 2007 on developing products around the iPhone. Adobe is just one of them.
Sleazy, yes. Illegal? I dunno.
This would be akin to some sort of revolutionary electric car which could be charged from a wide range of power sources rapidly gaining 15% market share, and then thousands of charging stations springing up around the country, only for the the car company to decide after 3 years to make the car only chargeable at proprietary stations, thus killing a lot of investors' projects, and costing millions of dollars.
Doesn't sound illegal to me, just sleazy.
Also, does anyone else think it's lame that Apple is more than willing to make iPhones and iPods sync up with and make use of PCs / earn money off PC users, but in turn is denying PC users the ability to develop for iPhones and iPads? If they used the argument that the iPhone and iPad are exclusively part of the Apple ecosystem, it would be alright to require Apple products for programming, but the fact that they make their products worth with PCs (necessary to earn a decent profit over the past 10 years), makes that requirement somewhat absurd in my opinion....
And as an aside, if Apple was as forthcoming with Adobe as Microsoft has been in terms of access to important code within the operating system, maybe Flash would work better on Apple products as on Windows PCs. Making software work with an OS is a 2-way street, and everybody placing the blame solely on Adobe is pretty deluded.
Anyways, it's an apple fansite, so I guess this is all to be expected here.
While what you cite is pretty sleazy business practice, I don't see it as illegal.
You, and many others on this thread, need to stop conflating app sales with app customers.
iPhone currently has 25% of the US smart phone market.
That means that 75% of smart phone buyers are NOT buying iPhones.
That means that 75% of smart phone buyers are NOT buying apps from Apple.
Do you see the difference?
Does anybody have any reliable data on Apple's share of the phone app market?
hmm, how is this related to antitrust anyway? Just because BMW enforces a stricter new rule for the parts suppliers for the popular 5 series,that makes them an unfair monopoly? it's not like the suppliers cant move on to supply parts for Mercedes, Audi and other car manufacturers.
Your example does not posit any antitrust violations. And it has nothing to do with the practices that Apple is being investigated for.
Your vacuum cleaner manufacturer probably doesn't prohibit 3rd party bags, Microsoft allows PC and Playstation games to be ported to the XBox, your car is not prohibited from consuming Exxon-supplied oil products, your daughter can speak english to anyone she wants (within reason) to without getting kicked out of school, plenty of people living in Boston root for the Yankees, etc etc.
Now imagine for a minute that Microsoft, Adobe and Avid stopped allowing their products to work on future versions of OSX, and Google stopped allowing access to it's online products via Safari, just before a major OSX + Hardware release by Apple and without warning...
How daft are you?
There is nothing that my analogies say that you can't do but without consequences. Just like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and Avid does with their products. But either they don't work at all, work poorly or they are not supported. I hope you understand what "supported" means.
For just about every major new Apple OS, virtually all the existing products worked at the time. Moreso than Microsofts releases. And Apple was ready to provide the necessary tools to assist developers to migrate their apps to the new configurations.
Most important, there was no hidden agenda to stop anybody from developing apps on the Mac. But to do so, and not to f***k up the system or anybody else's work we had to play by their rules. Not any different than playing in the National vs the American League baseball.
Apple's and every other software is developed under specific and tightly controlled guidelines by their respective OSes. And in every SDK agreement, it is specifically stated that changes can be made without warning.
Each platform has a specific set of developer kit setups.
SONY PS3
http://www.tmstation.scei.co.jp/ps3/info_e.html
PS2 and PSP [http://www.tmstation.scei.co.jp/]
Microsoft:
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/downloads
Developing for Windows Phone:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ff...8VS.92%29.aspx
System Setup is quite revealing:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=VS.92%29.aspx
Where is the outrage?
Nintendo:
http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/sys...en_la/EULA.jsp
They control every aspect of their Dev platform.
Control access here: http://www.warioworld.com/
Great sourcing. Too bad that some are too stupid to understand it.
Great sourcing. Too bad that some are too stupid to understand it.
Love your ignore list:
My Ignore List (Subject to change)
In no special order: chronster Da Harder iGenius (aka Josh.B and SpotOn) Gazoobee Stonefree Tekstud AngusYoung Mactripper (aka WooHoo) Matt_s NOTE: Some have been banned.
I suspect that iGenius may have rejoined with a new name...
...I seem to detect the pattern of an overall negative theme, while asking seemingly objective questions, and offering conflicting points of view (switching sides) in the discussion.
While appearing to encourage discussion, his efforts mainly serve to promote an Anti-Apple message.
.
Love your ignore list:
I suspect that iGenius may have rejoined with a new name...
...I seem to detect the pattern of an overall negative theme, while asking seemingly objective questions, and offering conflicting points of view (switching sides) in the discussion.
While appearing to encourage discussion, his efforts mainly serve to promote an Anti-Apple message.
Thank you.
If I may suggest, perhaps you could do the same. There are a lot more I would and probably will add. Certainly could use your assistance.
I think you are right about iGenius. If you or anybody else recognizes his new moniker, lets identify him. It is amazing how much time and space is gained by ignoring trollers.
This has been coming for a while. Whilst I'm not sure you can say Apple have a large enough market share in any market to actually warrant action, but Apple have been acting in a way that was likely to eventually have regulators sniffing around.
And sniffing (and postulating for the media) is all they will do as they don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Makes for good copy and lots of pages views though!
But, that doesn't mean apple should really disallow any third party from providing any form of alternate development environment or emulation layer or cross platform toolset. This seems like a draconian and decidedly anticompetitive response to Adobe's own poor behavior and engineering. Indeed, as written, it doesn't even make any sense.
It's not just targeted at Adobe! I can tell you, as a mac user cross platform tools may be convenient for developers, but they deliver a homogenized, crap experience for me as an end user. As an end user I could give a flip if it makes a developers life a little more difficult. Apple has set a high bar - if you want to play in our space, these are the minimum requirements. If you don't like it, suck it! Bravo! It's about time someone put the focus where it belongs - on the end user and the end user's experience!
Apple's stance makes perfect sense. Whenever you are questioning something Apple is doing, you should always ask yourself "what does this do for our customers total experience with our technology". Because I guarantee you that's the first thing Apple asks themselves internally before deciding on any feature or decision.
Apple isn't all about the developers. Yes, they are important and yes, they support them through the developers program, the developers conference, tools, technical support, etc.
But for Apple their first customer is the end user. Period! When developers buy more machines than end users, then Apple's focus should rightly change.
It is also anticompetitive to excessively control what goes into the app store
How? Is the Apple gestapo showing up at your door to confiscate your other devices if you buy an Apple device? Is it anticompetitive that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo restrict what runs on their consoles? Is it anticompetitive that other embedded systems in anything from a car to your HVAC controller aren't open and accessible? Heck no! This jihad that everything with a microchip has to be "open" is a crock - and ironic at the same time. "Open" advocates rant about choice, and then in their own fascists ways they want restrict my choice to pick a stable, controlled environment if I want to.
These are absurd arguments. What pundits who make them are really saying is: "hey, doing user-focused development is hard and it's not fair Apple gets to ignore the feature-obsessed geeks and still be successful". Oh well - sucks to be them. Competition is hard. Apple isn't the least bit anti-competative - they aren't taking the profits from one division and using them to artificially lower the prices in another area. They don't control a dominant market position. They aren't continually pre-announcing new product to suck the oxygen out of the market and stifle competition (any of those sound familiar?)
They simply compete better with better products and a better experience.
As it should be. If HP can step up and bring it with WebOS and their tablet, bravo! We all benefit with more, better choices.
But I am sick and tired of people with either gross insecurities or no imagination tearing Apple down and trying to force them into the same crap model that everyone else is still in.
and keeping out political content on the grounds that it will upset at least half of apple's customers
I believe Jobs already apologized for the political cartoonists app and it has been published for some time now.
But even if they did ban it, oh well - he could still have done it as a web app.
Am I totally happy with the current process? Nope - there are a couple of programs that I am eagerly awaiting to clear the app store approval process. It's still new, it's obvious Apple is (still) overwhelmed, and it will improve over time. I can state that confidently as they have made continual improvements over time, and they have shown themselves to be constant innovators.
Which is also what makes the "we need competition to spur Apple on" comments so ridiculous - Apple created the current touchscreen smartphone market in less than a year, out of thin air, as a total outsider. Such comments are wholly misplaced by irrational... I don't know what: extreme dislike? hatred? jealousy? demagoguery? Anyway, that's another topic but just another example of the irrational behavior from many Apple haters.
is also a bizarre excess over a policy that should probably just ensure that apps are not excessively buggy, and avoid blatantly obscene content.
It is most decidedly NOT bizarre excess. It's exactly what is required to keep a platform stable and consistent. I, for one, applaud what Apple is doing with the App store, their approval process and the goals they are working towards with the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad.
If you don't like it, you can go to ANY OTHER DEVICE ON THE MARKET which follows the same failed and broken "open" anything goes models. Have at it. And when I say broken, I'm referring to a consistent and stable end user experience.
Apple is trying something different with a specific outcome in mind. Even if you don't agree with their approach, if you truly are an advocate of "open" you should applaud Apple for adding more diversity and choice to the ecosystem.
What I find absolutely disgusting and disingenuous is people who are so threatened by their own insecurities over change that they want to deny someone else the benefits of a system like Apple is in the process of creating by trying to force it to either change, or tell people (Yes Cory Doctorow, I'm looking in your arrogant self-important direction) not to buy it because it doesn't fit their narrow vision of acceptable.
Since there are currently reasonable alternatives to all of Apple's products
Which makes all the hand wringing in threads like these ridiculous - but thanks for pointing out the obvious (finally, someone has!)
this isn't yet to the level where antitrust really plays, but Apple may not be far off from that point, particularly if Android fails and RIM stays stuck in the 90's.
Don't bank on it getting to that level any time soon. Apple is doing nothing of what Microsoft or Standard Oil did to warrant final government action. Lots of "monopoly" talk is thrown around by people totally ignorant of what a real monopoly is. Apple is no where near it. And will never be if you listen to all the hype about the "iPhone" killers, with Android being the latest killer-in-waiting; despite Androids obvious similarities to the failed Windows Mobile ecosystem - it didn't work before, but it will now because it's "Open" - sheesh, are these people serious? It's the Linux desktop arguments from earlier in this decade all over again.
If the result is a demand to trim back some of Apple's excesses, then fine.
What excesses? Jealous of their success? Then go one-up them - no one is stopping you. Apple is successful because they earned it! And certainly not with help from the majority of the technosphere - many who seem to have an irrational dislike of all things Apple just because they come from Apple.
If the result is to artificially push lame competitors into Apple's markets, or split up apple so they can no longer integrate cleanly across their product line, then I as a consumer will probably be off.
If idiots whining about monopolies are successful in forcing Apple to change, then yes - you as the consumer will be harmed. There will be less choice, and it will be artificially imposed.
That's what I don't understand with all the fussing. If you hate "closed" then go knock yourself out with one of the literally hundreds of other solutions out there. Why does everyone have to be following the same models? Where's the choice in that?
If you think you can do it better, go do it! But stop trying to regulate Apple into the same level of mediocrity as everyone else. It's flipping ridiculous, really...
Sooner or later it gets to the point where they need to be regulated.
What's scary to me is there are people (apparently you are also one of them) that really believe this
by springing the new development agreement with no warning, Apple screwed a lot of companies who invested a ton of money since 2007 on developing products around the iPhone. Adobe is just one of them.
Apple was pretty clear from day one, if you actually read the developer agreement, that Apple intended for developers to use their tools. All Apple did with their update was make it crystal clear. People were skirting a line of ambiguity, and Apple clarified.
Really, are any of the critics of Apple's control surprised? If you are, your not very good at paying attention to your own criticism
Toss in the fact that Adobe and Apple are competitors on several software platforms, and the whole situation reeks of underhanded business tactics by Apple.
No, it doesn't. Except for people with overactive imaginations.
Also, does anyone else think it's lame that Apple is more than willing to make iPhones and iPods sync up with and make use of PCs / earn money off PC users, but in turn is denying PC users the ability to develop for iPhones and iPads?
Nope. Not in the least. The best development tools have always been - duh! - on their platform (the Mac). Of course they are trying to drive sales to the Mac as well. Despite all the handwringing about the future of the Mac, it's not going away any time soon.
If you are going to level that criticism at Apple, then were is your disdain for Microsoft not shipping naive C# tools on Mac OS X? If no, why are the standards different for Apple?
Remind me who has the larger market share?
If they used the argument that the iPhone and iPad are exclusively part of the Apple ecosystem, it would be alright to require Apple products for programming, but the fact that they make their products worth with PCs (necessary to earn a decent profit over the past 10 years), makes that requirement somewhat absurd in my opinion....
Your opinion is absurd in trying to link developer requirements with general end user requirements. But nice try! A for effort - even if it ended up being some bizarre and tortured logic.
And as an aside, if Apple was as forthcoming with Adobe as Microsoft has been in terms of access to important code within the operating system, maybe Flash would work better on Apple products as on Windows PCs. Making software work with an OS is a 2-way street, and everybody placing the blame solely on Adobe is pretty deluded.
At least we know where your paycheck is coming from now. This ridiculous argument has been refuted by others already.
Anyways, it's an apple fansite, so I guess this is all to be expected here.
And yet you still posted. Are you paid by the word or number of posts?
Sure they are under no obligation to make life easier for the developers. Like it or not, if you read my post all the way through, it does in a way, end in Apple forcing smaller developers to develop for the App Store over its competitors by squeezing their resources.
Yet, with the App Store model, Apple has made it easier than ever for smaller developers to have easy and visible access to a major platform.
And if anything, they have dramatically leveled the playing field for small developers to really shine as big developers won't be able to just shovel existing programs over from other platforms to the iPhone OS.
If anything, what Apple is doing is the must support for small, independent developers in the history of computing. As a small developer, there has never been a better time to break into a new platform. The barrier of entry - learning a new language? Really? It would be like a professional mechanic complaining that he can only work on Mercedes and not Nissan's - sure, there are some differences but they are minor compared to the base knowledge of the fundamentals that a true professional knows.
Developers hand wringing over the toolset to develop applications more than like are not the kinds of developers Apple wan's anyway. Since when have they been focused on volume? Their focus is on quality and they are 100% correct in their objections and observations of porting tools.
Weren't people complaining about "too may fart" apps before? And now people are complaining about developers not having tools to create more "shovelware"?!?! Really? Which is it? Quantity or Quality? Thankfully Apple is (consistently) picking quality.
I'm not the first person to make this point it seems. Lots of the articles that are popping up point to this as reasoning for the possible antitrust probe.
And the same flawed assertions being amplified by multiple parties don't make them any more relevant.
Simply repeating something doesn't make it "more correct" the more it's repeated
And from what I've been reading, it's not as straight-forward as you make it seem to port an iPhone app to Android or any other OS.
Why is there any expectation that it should be?
I may be wrong, but it seems like there's still a bit of rewritting to be done.
You mean writing good code that targets the strengths of a particular platform is hard and takes effort?
Get out of here! /sarcasm
Thank you for proving Apple's point for them (even though I'm sure you had no such intention).
While it's true Apple isn't stopping it, they are making it more difficult for a vendor to bring their wares to the competition's markets.
And they are required to care about the competitions market because? Why should Apple be the least bit concerned about the easy of a developer porting their program to another platform?
Where is the angst that Microsoft hasn't ported C# or DirectX to Mac OS X?
Why is Apple being held to a different standard?
I guess you could counter that Apple hasn't ported OpenGL to Windows - whoops, except they don't have to - it's an open standard that already exists on windows!
Which goes back to my point in that it costs the developer additional time and money to create two versions of the same app.
Oh well, that's business! Duh! If you can only do one market, pick the one where you think you are going to make the biggest return. Where is the constitutional guarantee to do multiple markets in a half-assed way?
Whining that you are being unfairly obstructed from competing because you are using porting tools to homogenize your app among multiple platforms is incredibly self-centered. As an end user of the result of such tools, it's an argument I'm wholly un-sympathetic to. Hurray for some minimum quality standards - of any kind! What a breath of fresh air in the current morass of computing.
Also, if I can point something out - this isn't an overall Apple stance. No such ban has been handed down for the Mac (unfortunately!). That's because the iPhone OS ecosystem is different. Apple has set minimum standards - and guess what, they are user focused instead of developer focused!
As an end user, I think it's wonderful! As a developer if you don't like it, go play in some other space. But stop whining that Apple should let you peddle any 'ol crap - we already have that in every other ecosystem and the experience, quite frankly, sucks. The iPhone and now the iPad are a nice breath of fresh air. I pick them up and they instantly pop on and they just work. Are they perfect? No! Do they do everything I need? No! But they do enough things and do them exceedingly well that they are very useful tools. My father loves his iPad. For the first time - ever - he is having fun surfing the Internet and using email. The fact that people want to tear that experience down because it doesn't fit their narrow version of "right" is just idiotic and selfish.
Apple had a huge head start to switch to Cocoa, since they are the ones who decided to go that route, and their secrecy rules kept everyone else in the dark until they sprung it on everyone... And yet they're still way behind Adobe in switching...
Because like Adobe, they were developing Carbon 64 ports too!
They also screwed themselves. Sure, it sucked. Sure people had to backtrack - if anything, Apple was the victim of their success with Carbon. It worked too well. While it's unfortunate they waited as long as they did to cut the cord, thank god someone finally had the balls to say "enough! Here is the line in the sand and this technology is dead - time to move on". It wasn't going to get any easier as time went on (in other words, there's never a good time to make such a change) and it would just get worse the larger the install base for the Mac gets. And looking at the acceleration of the Mac market share in the last year, they were very smart to make the cut off when they did.
WhereTF did Stevie's credibility go when he wrote his moan-letter about how Adobe isn't keeping up?
Fair enough, although I don't think you are making appropriate direct comparisons - for example, a 64 bit Finder won't reap the benefits of 64 bit that Photoshop or Final Cut will.
64 bit for iTunes won't necessarily help either - iTunes needs to be multi-threaded more effectively, which is an entirely different problem than the maximum amount of memory it can address.
Or the acronym
You are likely right. Many of them seems to think FUD is reference to a cartoon character that they saw in their youth and are going 'what does some guy with a weird accent who couldn't figure out if is was Rabbit or Duck season have to do with computers?'
Because like Adobe, they were developing Carbon 64 ports too!
They also screwed themselves. Sure, it sucked. Sure people had to backtrack - if anything, Apple was the victim of their success with Carbon. It worked too well. While it's unfortunate they waited as long as they did to cut the cord, thank god someone finally had the balls to say "enough! Here is the line in the sand and this technology is dead - time to move on". It wasn't going to get any easier as time went on (in other words, there's never a good time to make such a change) and it would just get worse the larger the install base for the Mac gets. And looking at the acceleration of the Mac market share in the last year, they were very smart to make the cut off when they did.
I have to wonder why Apple even indicated Carbon would go 64 in the first place as there were three signs why this was a majorly bad idea.
The fact that the Carbon API had been designed to be back compatible all the way to Mac OS 8.1 (1997) the last version of the MacOS to run on the 68K chip should have been the first sign that this API would be replaced--with the change over to Intel in 2005 being the second.
The final sign was history. According to an Apple representative that visited our Mac user club back when Copland was still being developed one of the main problems was thanks to the wild mixture of 68k assembly, Pascal, and C code in the then current OS there was lots of what had become "black box" code--code whose original function had been lost, was being used in a different manner, or worst of all affected one of the old APIs so even if the the code was never called removing it would cause the OS to promptly bomb.
Taking Carbon to 64 would have been a step back to the wild code mixture of the old days so I keep wondering why did Apple even consider it?
It's not as easy as that for Final Cut. Apple first had to write Quicktime as 64bit cocoa, which they just did - and that was a major overhaul. Presumably, Apple can now write Final Cut in 64 bit as well. What's Adobe's excuse?
Remember that Quicktime X has a very limited feature set compared to Quicktime 7 (the 32-bit version of Quicktime) and that the QTKit Objective-C framework has to hand off what ever Quicktime X can't handle (which is a lot) back to Quicktime 7.
This is why some people have problems with Quicktime X--they don't know that they need Quicktime 7 as well.
Wow four pages! All this talk and argument. All over a really poorly written piece in a second rate paper with exactly NO named sources. My take is it's completely made up. Sad part is so many will believe Apple guilty until proven innocent. Since none of this is true they will say Apple paid off the gov.
I am inclined to think this as well. The "person familiar with the matter" reads like the sort of drivel you would read in the days of yellow journalism. Remember the story came from the New York POST that Pace University in 2004 rated as the LEAST credible of the major New York papers and the ONLY one to get a "higher negative than positive rating on the credibility scale."
The only way this report could be less reliable is if it came out of a freaking tabloid.