[Reuters] Regulators mull antitrust look at Apple: source

You saw what happen to Blu-ray vs HD. I mean if you have a big company like Apple chooses one the other just might follow.

 

You don't have to actually have a monopoly to be guilty of anticompetitive business practices. What Apple is practicing is essentially anti-competitive tying ... they want to vertically integrate everything including content and lock in developers in a way that directly harms others in the market and prevents others from competing. Their license terms essentially make it impossible to port an app written for the iPhone to another platform without rewriting it from scratch, or vice versa. That is anticompetitive behavior, and that's why the feds are now getting involved. Besides, they may not have a majority of the smartphone market now, but they definitely have a majority of the market for smartphone applications and by far a plurality when as far as sheer revenue is concerned. People thought I was just needlessly griping against Apple when I talked about this before.

 

One of the reasons I converted from a PC user years ago to using macs is because of reliability. Now, I have to use them for the work I'm doing but I still use them for personal use because of that.

If you can contend that this won't affect stability, I'll be all for it. But for those of you who are defending google's inclusion of bad software that can and will crash, that's ****ing r****ded. I don't want to have to research mobile software like a dumb game to know if it will crash my phone.

As for HTML5, youtube is already using it for people who opt in. One of the video aggregaters we work with are getting there's ready for launch later this year. Rumor is that hulu is working on it.


I don't know enough about programming to tell you if flash is better for website and games but I can tell you unequivocally that h.264 is a billion times better than flash for video.

 

Apple force Ellen to apologize for this video. What a douche.

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I'm no antitrust lawyer, but shouldn't they be able to make a phone/device that runs software the way they want to? No one is forcing anyone to buy the device, or the apps, for that matter. I can't see what they've done as being antitrust. Tightfisted, and closed minded, perhaps, but antitrust? A ruling like that would seem to open doors for a lot of other companies not being able to control the products they make, if I am understanding this right?

Also, I'm a bit confused... are antitrust questions being raised because they aren't adopting flash (which still isn't mobile ready, regardless whether someone likes the software or not) or because you have to use their kit/method to produce the software that would run on their hardware, or because they have to approve software before it's sold on the app store?

Perhaps what might come of this could be a more open iphone where other apps can be written for the device (use whatever tools you want, but the end result does need to run on their OS/device) and installed outside the itunes spectrum? I could see that, not that I necessarily think it's a good idea for them, and I can understand why they'd have set things up to the contrary, for control in both bad and good ways.

What I don't get is that anyone would think they can be sued/ for not using flash. No one else does yet. Why them? Because he has taken a stand on it (regardless his true reasoning)? Further, even if you forced them to "open" the phone, they don't have to change their OS to make everyone in the world happy, do they? Apps would still need to be written to the platform, just like any other platform, regardless how it's accomplished, yes?

I guess I don't understand all the ruffled feathers.

 

The whole Ellen thing is ridiculous. As for Adobe, they get no sympathy from me. So they are upset that Apple won't let them co-opt the iPhone OS?

I thought that if you coded in C or C++ for most of your app using an Ojbective-C layer to access the iPhone OS APIs you could still be cross platform, though not as easily as with flash. I think this is how Wesnoth, a popular free software project, does it. On the other hand, if you go HTML 5, CSS, and JavaScript, you have an easier path toward multiple platform development? Apple hasn't totally locked it down. They are just screwing Adobe royally.

According the the wall street journal, the big deal might end up being Apple's restrictions on allowing apps to collect user data to share with mobil ad services. Since Apple has launched it's own ad service that probably collects user data, this track looks more like anti-competitive tying (tying the iAd service to the iPhone devices) than telling devs they have to use a particular programming language.

Anyway, contemporary EULAs read more and more like something from a Richard Stallman short story. I think he even predicted personal computing devices would become more restrictive similar to game consoles.

 

You're right about Chrome not crashing as much. Do you know why? Because Chrome will let whatever stupid flash ad, graphic, intro crash on it own but still allow the browser to run with a little dead flash icon. It maybe because I experience a lot of headaches with flash daily but don't make excuses for it...move on to a more stable product developers. Please.

 

You have to remember Apple's dominate market share in the "IPOD" market.

 

Does anyone with a symbian phone buy and use phone apps?

 

I'm guessing Apple will be found guilty. Their ability to dictate whether another company's product can be sold seems straightforward but I'm no expert.

I get why they do it. #1 - Profit. But also #2 - the ability to limit 'bad' apps that will reflect poorly on their own product. I think there's a reasonable logic there. Apple has always maintained one of their selling points is ease of use and having everything 'just work'. Reading how Android users frequently need/use 'app killers' seems archaic for example (I'm still undecided on which smart phone to get).

The most egregious part to me is developers spending time to make an application with absolutely no knowledge that it will be accepted or rejected until it is finished. That is a large gamble. Granted, they know that going in. On top of that, Apple's guidelines are not transparent.

As for Flash, I don't have a problem per se. It's their choice. Let them pay the price if it hurts them. One unintended benefit is Apple is ushering in an open platform vs a proprietary one.

For desktop computing I overwhelmingly prefer OS X. There was a rumor that Apple would develop an app store model for that too. It would definitely make me reconsider if I would stick with them considering what effects it could have in the future. Fortunately this rumor was shot down rather quickly.