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The U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are reportedly both eager to investigate Apple's recent iPhone Flash rejection for possible antitrust violations.  (Source: jamiekuse)

Apple refuses to allow Flash on the iPhone -- or even ports from Flash. The U.S. government reportedly believes that it may be abusing its dominant position
Apple may have just overstepped the bounds of anticompetitive tactics

If there's one big company that knows to ruffle feathers, it would be Apple.  Apple has filed a scatter-shot suit against HTC citing patent infringement, trying to slow down Google's Android OS's momentum.  And in the app arena, Apple has been waging a war of words and actions against Adobe's popular Flash medium.

Apple has never allowed Flash Player to touch the iPhone -- that would represent a serious threat to its paid App Store.  With the release of its latest Software Developer Kit (SDK) developer license agreement, though, Apple outdid itself by slipping in a ban on using "an intermediary translation or compatibility layer tool".  That meant that any apps created with Adobe's Creative Suite 5 tool that translated Flash apps to native iPhone OS X code were banned.

Adobe responded by dropping support for the tool in coming versions of Creative Studio.

Now The New York Post reports that the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are "locked in negotiations" about who will be the first to file antitrust charges against Apple.  Both are interested in launching inquiries; inquiries are used to determine if a full investigation is needed.  An investigation can lead to big fines as Microsoft and Intel have found out.

Apple's new policies not only lock out Adobe's Flash, but also Sun's Java and Microsoft's Silverlight/Mono.  Josh Kosman, author of the piece in The Post wrote, "Regulators, this person said, are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry.  It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, 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."

Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple recently accused Flash of crashing Macs and committing other sins.  Adobe's CEO fired back a response, calling the claims "patently false".  Adobe is championing Google's Android smartphone OS in response to the Apple rejection.

Apple thrives on a rebel/underdog image, but in reality it's bigger than Walmart -- the biggest retailer in the world.  The company currently has an incredible $237.6B USD market cap.

The company is also currently being investigated due to Eric Schmidt and another Apple board member's possible conflict of interest serving on both Apple and Google's boards.

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About damn time.
By EasyC on 5/3/2010 12:10:22 PM , Rating: 5
I was getting sick of Apples monopolistic immunity.




RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By EasyC on 5/3/2010 12:17:32 PM , Rating: 5
Be that as it may, they've had special consideration on multiple occasions and seem to think they can file any frivalous suit they please.


RE: About damn time.
By reader1 on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By EasyC on 5/3/2010 12:54:09 PM , Rating: 5
Ok now you're just trying too hard.


RE: About damn time.
By satveeraj on 5/3/2010 2:16:48 PM , Rating: 3
Oh cmon lets just give the fruitful reader1 his 10 sec fame on anything apple cant be wrong :-)


RE: About damn time.
By RjBass on 5/3/2010 1:24:47 PM , Rating: 5
I see, so by desperate and talentless you must also be referring to Photoshop, Dreamweaver and a plethora of other programs that Apple owners prefer to use solely on Mac's as opposed to PC's? Adobe has in the past made strides to ensure that their products work better on Mac's then on PC's, but yet they are desperate and talentless.

You are such an Apple Fanboy that you are obviously to blinded by everything Jobs says to pay any attention to common sense.


RE: About damn time.
By ArcliteHawaii on 5/3/2010 10:40:47 PM , Rating: 5
You raise a good point. If anything, Apple should be grateful to Adobe for keeping them in business a decade or even 5 years ago, when there was no other reason to buy apple products. Instead, they're dissing them.


RE: About damn time.
By AssBall on 5/4/2010 9:17:32 AM , Rating: 3
Can you imagine the amplitude of the whine that would arise if Adobe dropped OSX support for photoshop and dreamweaver, etc? Jobs would sure shut up about Adobe then.


RE: About damn time.
By pxavierperez on 5/5/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By RjBass on 5/5/2010 1:04:16 PM , Rating: 4
And Adobe in turn gave back to Apple by making it's most popular programs easier to user and more powerful on a Mac. It seems to me that both company's have been helping each other over the years and now Apple, being the elitist that they are these days, have chosen to shut Adobe out. That is just fine with me, I use a PC and welcome the fact that Adobe is now concentrating more on the PC and Android side of the market.


RE: About damn time.
By Mitch101 on 5/3/2010 12:17:54 PM , Rating: 5
I think on first boot the Apple system should ask me what Internet Browser I want installed by default. ;)


RE: About damn time.
By EasyC on 5/3/2010 12:22:28 PM , Rating: 5
Someone should alert the EU that they can start exploiting Apple for money now too!


RE: About damn time.
By dnd728 on 5/3/2010 1:43:10 PM , Rating: 5
OMG, they have just the cash to save Greece!


RE: About damn time.
By PAPutzback on 5/3/2010 1:45:48 PM , Rating: 2
You beat me to it. I assume they are waiting on Android to come out on the tablets and mainstream PCs before going after Google.


RE: About damn time.
By dtm4trix on 5/5/2010 2:53:44 AM , Rating: 3
Word......in addition if the EU can make MS give up its code to others Apple should be made to do the same.


RE: About damn time.
By Iaiken on 5/3/2010 12:20:01 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Apple has no monopoly anywhere. There are many, many alternatives to iPhones, iPods, etc. The fact that they have a commanding marketshare is irrelevant to whether or not they have a monopoly.


Yeah, it kinda does... :P

Go back and read the anti-trust law, Apple is specifically abusing it's position to cause damage to another (rival?) software company (in this case adobe).

you + reading + comprehension = A winner is you!


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By lightfoot on 5/3/2010 12:52:31 PM , Rating: 5
You don't need to have a monopoly in order to run afoul of anti-trust laws. All you need is a dominant market share in one area that is abused to gain market share in other areas.

quote:
Specific categories of abusive conduct were listed, including price discrimination(section 2), exclusive dealings (section 3) and mergers which substantially lessen competition (section 7).


Apple may be guilty of "exclusive dealings" by preventing the use of Flash for the appearent purpose of forcing the users to buy all content through iTunes.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By nafhan on 5/3/2010 1:04:52 PM , Rating: 2
I think the point is that you don't need a monopoly or complete control in order to abuse the legal and economic system in a way that hurts the consumers. Apple may be abusing the system.
Anyway, there's not suit against Apple, at this point. There's talk of an investigation to see if a suit is warranted.


RE: About damn time.
By JediJeb on 5/3/2010 3:59:28 PM , Rating: 1
I don't see that it is an abuse of either the legal or economic system.

If the iPhone software was written so that Adobe would never be able to work on it(totally incompatible coding), could Apple be forced to rewrite it just so Adobe could work on it even if that meant it would not work correctly on the iPhone? Just to prevent a monopoly?


RE: About damn time.
By sviola on 5/3/2010 10:37:49 PM , Rating: 5
Wasn't Microsoft sued because of that kind of practice?


RE: About damn time.
By someguy123 on 5/3/2010 11:11:04 PM , Rating: 5
The issue is that adobe developed flash CS5 to be able to generate multiplatform content that conformed with apple's developer standards, and then apple decided to alter these standards right before the release, essentially banning it and any similar software from apple devices.

I think people are confusing the issue with apple's decision not to support flash. Flash CS5 would've generated multiplatform content that was compatible on the iphone and did not require flash. By banning this apple is abusing their dominant position to force developers who're worried about their budgets to develop solely for the iphone since they have no cheap multiplatform solution.


RE: About damn time.
By JediJeb on 5/4/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By Helbore on 5/4/2010 12:52:22 PM , Rating: 5
That's kinda the point, though. iPhone has a large enough market share that a small developer would be foolish to not develop on it. Everyone who knows economics knows that your market is everything.

A small, budding business will have to go for the biggest market available. Preferably, that is to develop on every platform available. A multiplatform compiler will allow them to do this. But by shutting out the opportunity to use a multiplatform compiler, Apple are effectively saying "develop for us alone, or not at all."

There's a very obvious reason why Apple would want to do this. They have the market share to make ignoring their platform very risky for developers and keeping as many developers exclusive to their platform means you reduce other platforms chances of encroaching on your market.

It is a big boy intentionally pushing around smaller businesses, in an attempt to keep their competitors from gaining market share.


RE: About damn time.
By someguy123 on 5/4/2010 5:34:02 PM , Rating: 3
The reason monopoly laws are in place are so companies can't abuse dominant positions. The reasons developers can't refuse to develop for the iphone is because they would lose a massive amount of customers due to iphone market dominance. Apple realizes this and is abusing this fact to force developers into remaining loyal to the platform, rather than developers choosing to remain loyal.


RE: About damn time.
By omnicronx on 5/3/2010 1:16:35 PM , Rating: 3
Its a closed system in which they have a dominant market position, whether its open or closed is irrelevant.

Either way this has not even reached the investigation phase, they are merely deciding who gets to inquire about a possible investigation.


RE: About damn time.
By Rugar on 5/3/2010 2:09:06 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
...my point is that I see nothing wrong with Apple forcing everyone to buy apps only thorugh the App Store/iTunes if that's what they want to do.


Change that around just a little bit to read:

...my point is that I see nothing wrong with Microsoft forcing everyone to use Internet Explorer if that's what they want to do.

How does that sit with you? Is it easier to be upset when it's the evil empire than when it's Apple? Regardless of what you think, Microsoft was punished soundly by the EU for much less than forcing people to use IE.


RE: About damn time.
By FaaR on 5/4/2010 6:09:26 AM , Rating: 2
If the US gov't wants to sue Apple specifically for Flash threatening the iTunes store, then they also have to sue Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft respectively for their paranoidly controlled estores on their respective games consoles.

There's undoubtedly also a lot of other similar situations out there.

Is it actually against the law to exercise the control over your own closed hardware platform? I could see a reason if there was little in the way of alternatives, but as others have pointed out, Apple isn't in a monopoly situation...

And no, I don't like Apple or its tactics (and I don't own any iphones, macs, pads etc), but let's be reasonable people here ok and not just get blinded by Apple hate. :)


RE: About damn time.
By icrf on 5/4/2010 7:37:52 AM , Rating: 4
You're missing the point. The investigation isn't into whether or not they can have a closed app store, it's whether or not they can dictate the terms of how a developer goes about creating compliant code for that app store. This move is done solely to stifle cross-platform toolkits, which developers choose because it's easier to use than what Apple provides, which Apple won't admit, and/or so the code they write can be exported to the Android Marketplace, and whatever other mobile application stores are around/supported. This latter reason is why they're being investigated.

The official Apple response is that they're afraid of one of these toolkits becoming too popular, and then dragging its feet on supporting new features. You don't have to look any further than HTC's Sense UI on Android on devices like the Hero. Version 2.1 has been available for months, but HTC still hasn't ported their changes over. Maybe it is an honest rationale, but the anti-competitive bonus may be too much.


RE: About damn time.
By MrTeal on 5/3/2010 1:06:36 PM , Rating: 5
Coca-Cola might not have a monopoly, but they could still exert anti-competitive pressure. The case in this example isn't as strong since Pepsi is a formidable competitor, but Coke could still be anti-competitive without a monopoly. If they refused to allow stores to stock their product if they carried other brands, or sold at a lower price to stores that ran exclusive Coke products, they would be doing what got Intel in trouble.

Apple is doing basically the same thing with their policy change. For a small developer that doesn't have the budget to rewrite an app, Apple is taking away the ability to write it in Flash and make it cross platform, and are instead forcing people to choose between using Apple's tools, or being locked out of the iPhone/iPod/iPad market.

If Toyota came out and said that Exxon and Shell make crappy gas that causes our cars to accelerate uncontrollably, so from now on you can only use Toyota-branded gas or lose your warranty, there would be an uproar. You can say (as people do in this case) just don't buy Toyota, but people have a significant investment already. That's why companies aren't allowed to do such things.


RE: About damn time.
By JediJeb on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By Smilin on 5/3/2010 3:39:40 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
So does that mean that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are anti competitive because their games are not interchangeable across platforms? Developers have to write three different versions of the same game to make it work on all three of those.


Nintendo, Sony, and MS do not have fine print in their products that says if you developed for a different product you are not allowed to port. That's the difference.

You can write a flash app that is native on one platform (say Android) then use tools to port it over to be native on a different platform. Apple has said you are not allowed to do that...you must instead rewrite the application from the ground up thereby incurring enough cost that it deters the practice.

It is indeed anti-competitive and if Sony, Nintendo, MS did the same they would get into trouble.


RE: About damn time.
By JediJeb on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By Smilin on 5/3/2010 4:45:47 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
The agreement say you can't port a Flash app to the iPhone, but does it actually say you can't port an iPhone app to Flash?

So developers are not allowed to write apps for cross platform unless they write it natively in flash? That's kind of the point of the complaint. It's anti-competitive.

quote:
If Apple made the only smartphone on the market and their patents excluded others from making smart phones, and it was required that everyone own a smart phone, then that would constitute a monopoly and anti trust behavior

I don't think anyone is claiming apple has a monopoly. One is not required for anti-competitive or anti-trust behavior.

quote:
By this Microsoft is in trouble because you can not port applications written for Windows to Linux.


Don't confuse a technological hurdle with a legal one. MS does nothing to prevent the porting of apps.


RE: About damn time.
By sviola on 5/3/2010 10:44:45 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
By this Microsoft is in trouble because you can not port applications written for Windows to Linux.


No, you can port any .NET application using Mono (.NET for other plataforms, in case you don't know...), which was developed by a 3rd party and MS has given their ok to it.


RE: About damn time.
By Smilin on 5/4/2010 5:27:52 PM , Rating: 3
I figured there was something out there already but didn't want to claim as I wasn't sure.


RE: About damn time.
By Smilin on 5/3/2010 3:39:40 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
So does that mean that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft are anti competitive because their games are not interchangeable across platforms? Developers have to write three different versions of the same game to make it work on all three of those.


Nintendo, Sony, and MS do not have fine print in their products that says if you developed for a different product you are not allowed to port. That's the difference.

You can write a flash app that is native on one platform (say Android) then use tools to port it over to be native on a different platform. Apple has said you are not allowed to do that...you must instead rewrite the application from the ground up thereby incurring enough cost that it deters the practice.

It is indeed anti-competitive and if Sony, Nintendo, MS did the same they would get into trouble.


RE: About damn time.
By Smilin on 5/3/2010 4:39:22 PM , Rating: 2
Far out... a double post. Ignore.


RE: About damn time.
By The0ne on 5/3/2010 1:25:50 PM , Rating: 2
Yea, Pepsi? Have not seen it in China, yet :) Coke? It's everywhere LOL


RE: About damn time.
By ChugokuOtaku on 5/3/2010 2:05:27 PM , Rating: 2
wow... when's the last time you went to China?
Coke barely has a market there anymore... Pepsi's everywhere buddy.


RE: About damn time.
By wiz220 on 5/3/2010 4:46:55 PM , Rating: 2
I actually watched a cool documentary on this subject and it turns out that Coke just put in a lot of time and money figuring out the tastes of people in different parts of the world and invested heavily. They might have been first out of the gate but it doesn't necessarily mean that they were being anti-competitive. As another user stated, Pepsi is now gaining market share internationally.


RE: About damn time.
By akugami on 5/3/2010 5:14:02 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, they first need to determine if Apple is "dominant" and different countries use different metrics to determine dominance. I'm no lawyer and not really that familiar with the laws governing antitrust but I believe the US has much looser laws governing this front than the EU. The other issue is if Apple was acting in concert with others, basically a cartel, to restrict the market in some way. In this case, there doesn't need to be "dominance" just proof of collusion.

Whether Apple will be fined and have to change its ways is not that clear cut. We can rule out collusion. It will largely depend on whether the investigators feel Apple's position in the smartphone market is "dominant" and whether Apple's actions are harmful to consumers.

Speaking from a neutral perspective, I think Apple has a pretty good chance of proving it is not a monopoly. Hell, Apple is the sole gatekeeper of all things iPhone related but the iPhone is a smartphone and Apple's share in the smartphone market is not that great. nVidia has a much larger dominance in the video card sector than what Apple has in the smartphone market and the shenanigans with PhysX lockout is just as bad as what Apple is doing by restricting consumer choice. The difference is Apple's business is more widely noticed by the public and media.


RE: About damn time.
By HrilL on 5/3/2010 7:35:28 PM , Rating: 2
I wouldn't rule out collusion just so soon. Seems like a lot of collusion with big media companies because lots of sites have pirated movies and TV shows that play in flash. There are also legal alternatives that play in flash that are free. Seems to me that these companies would stand to benefit more if you had to buy the movies and shows you want to watch on your iPhone from iTunes.


RE: About damn time.
By omnicronx on 5/3/2010 1:10:30 PM , Rating: 3
The term 'Monopoly' is always up to interpretation. By definition Microsoft is not a true monopoly either..

The fact remains Apple's app store certainly dominates the market as it currently stands, especially in terms of paid apps. Thus the case can be made that they are using this market position to push out their competitors..

Is this reaching a bit? Most definately, there are other 'open' platforms available like Android, nobody is forcing anyone to code for the iPhoneOS platform, but is it out of the realm of possibility that a suit could arise.. no.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By ipay on 5/3/2010 1:34:58 PM , Rating: 5
Microsoft weathered numerous lawsuits that accused it of being a monopoly. Do you believe those were unjustified as well?


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By omnicronx on 5/3/2010 3:23:49 PM , Rating: 3
Convicted of being a monopoly? I think not, that ruling was appealed. In the end Microsoft was settled for monopolistic activity, for abusing their market power to thwart competition (i.e this was just an antitrust case, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the monopolization rulings).

As I said, by definition Microsoft is not a monopoly, but as others have noted this is not a requisite of an antitrust case. This is what you seem to be missing here, the fact Apple does not have a true monopoly is completely irrelevant.

So to say that Apple is not in the same position as MS is very not really true. They are very close, and I can easily see why one can make the case that the Apple is using their app store power to thwart competition. That being said, I don't think the case is nearly as strong and even if this did go to court it would take years to litigate.


RE: About damn time.
By omnicronx on 5/3/2010 3:33:29 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
In the end Microsoft was settled for abusing their market power to thwart competition (i.e this was just an antitrust case
(i.e not for monopolistic activity)

Gah wish there was an edit button..


RE: About damn time.
By Shadowself on 5/3/2010 10:09:31 PM , Rating: 3
I wish SOMEONE would get this right.

Microsoft was convicted of using monopolistic power (with about 95% marketshare for the desktop OS market at the time it was legally defined as a monopoly according to the court and it was defined as having monopolistic power) to expand its power into an area where it had none (it was decided by the court that Microsoft had minimal market share in the browser world before it tied IE into the OS itself). That conviction was never overturned.

What was overturned was the penalties. The original judge ordered that Microsoft be broken up into smaller companies. Microsoft appealed and the appeals court found the penalties excessive and remanded it back to the lower courts (and a new judge) to have new penalties formulated.

The final penalites were basically hightened oversight by the US Government and an agreement by Microsoft to never do such a thing again. That is all.

Everything else that happened to Microsoft as a fallout of this was due to the European Union, not the U.S. Government.


RE: About damn time.
By fsardis on 5/4/2010 5:53:53 AM , Rating: 2
But why? There are so many alternatives to Windows out there. There is a billion distros of Linux, there is BSD and there is Mac OS. Microsoft has never been a monopoly by your logic since there were always myriads of alternatives.
I say their conviction was wrong and all the money from fines should be returned to them with interest. And they should be allowed to pack whatever browser they want in Windows. Then we can let Apple off the hook too. Don't like it? Use linux. They are not monopolies after all.


RE: About damn time.
By Sazabi19 on 5/3/2010 4:08:40 PM , Rating: 2
Reader1 does...


RE: About damn time.
By lightfoot on 5/3/2010 2:13:23 PM , Rating: 2
A patent, by definition, is a legal monopoly on an idea or product. Apple has many patents that may (or may not) present barriers to enter the markets in which they compete. Is having a patent illegal? Not by its self, no. But if you use a patent to create a legal monopoly, you can not then use that monopoly to create additional monopolies.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: 0
RE: About damn time.
By AmbroseAthan on 5/3/2010 3:28:39 PM , Rating: 2
The point you are missing is this is not about Apple's physical products. This is about there active assault on Adobe Flash and the banning of it from their mobile products.

Apple is creating a barrier for entry for competing Apps to be used on their mobile products by not allowing Flash to be used as a programming tool, let alone actually allowing Flash on the devices.

This barrier of entry is an anti-competitive practice and is the result of monopolistic behavior in their marketplace, which is the dominate form of distribution meant for their devices.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By Reclaimer77 on 5/3/2010 6:37:10 PM , Rating: 2
You know Moto, you disgust me. Your analogies have been piss poor. And you siding with closed sourcing everything and screwing over the consumer is really despicable. You deserve every -1 you got here.

quote:
...the barrier of entry is on Apple proprietary hardware. Which has always had Flash banned on it.


The Apple vs Flash debate is the very definition of muscling out the competition. Steve Jobs owns the codec that will be used in HTML5 and is abusing his position to eliminate the threat of Flash competing. This is wrong and illegal, hands down. And it's far more blatant than anything Microsoft has done, for which you ironically condemn them for.

quote:
My microwave has never allowed novel java programs to be run on it, even though it could probably do it. Does that mean I get to sue the microwave manufacturer?


Are you retarded?? Terrible analogy. Nobodies microwave runs software dumbass. Were you trying to make a point??

Here is an analogy for you involving microwaves that would actually make sense. Tony's and Janes are the two leading cookware manufacturers in the world. But instead of just making cookware, Tony's also makes microwaves. One day Tony is threatened by Jane's profits, so he engineers his microwaves to ONLY work with his own cookware. If you try to use Janes cookware on it, your food won't cook, the plate/containers could fail, and your warranty is void. When questioned on this, he claims Janes cookware causes his microwaves to "crash", that they aren't as high quality as HIS, and etc etc.

Now THAT is an analogy. Your post read like a retarded 12 year old with diarrhea of the face. Shut the hole under your nose you stinking fanboi.

quote:
It's a closed system. Apple has control. You don't like it, buy a Droid. Or whatever. Your choices are not limited.


Microsoft, the largest software firm in the world, doesn't "have control" over how their products are used. Why should Apple be any different? When you get as large as Apple, sorry, you no longer get away with this kind of dirty underhanded bullying and consumer railroading.

Apple is using it's position in the portable devices market to cripple or kill a competing software company. No other possible conclusion can be made.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By HrilL on 5/3/2010 7:56:23 PM , Rating: 2
Just to let you know there is a clause in the DMCA that allows you to unlock your phone in order to use it on a different carrier. So you legally can buy and iPhone and use it on T-Mobile if you chose. Most likely after your contract has ended so you're not stuck paying hefty ETFs. The downside is that T-Mobile in the US decided to use a non standard frequency the 1700mghz band that is not supported on the iPhone so you'd have to use it is Edge mode only.


RE: About damn time.
By Reclaimer77 on 5/3/2010 6:50:05 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
My microwave has never allowed novel java programs to be run on it, even though it could probably do it. Does that mean I get to sue the microwave manufacturer?


Yeah maybe you should read this again and realize how idiotic it is. Java might have been "originally intended" to run on microwaves, but how in the hell is that grounds to sue again? And what in the name of Zeus does this have to do with the argument on hand?

Face it, you were making a completely kneejerk emo statement with no logic, reasoning, or sense behind it. You lose.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By Reclaimer77 on 5/3/2010 8:07:14 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
A microwave manufacturer does not *have* to let you put your own Java programs on it - even though the microwave might have the capability to run said Java program


Grrr No. NOBODY END USER PUTS PROGRAMS ON A MICROWAVE ! Do you understand you fucking idiot ??

quote:
By the same token, Apple doesn't *have* to let you run Flash, even though the phone could do it.


NO, again. This is not the same thing. Hey "by the same token" doesn't cut it when you are trying to connect two dots that have nothing to do with each other.

Hey, I can't load Java onto my toothbrush, so Apple is fine. Is that the logic here ??

And you can keep screaming "they aren't a monopoly" all you want. You don't have to be a monopoly to break anti-trust and anti-competitive laws. Apple is clearly being anti-competitive and no matter how much you suck them off, you can't escape that face.

Now go cook up more moronic analogies that have nothing to do with reality. Hey how about electronic scales? Why don't THOSE have Java apps as well !?!!

quote:
I was pointedly making a, well, point about the fact that a manufacturer doesn't have to just open up every product to let you do whatever you want to with it.


Nobody is saying that and you know it. That's not what this is about. If you would take Job's dick out of your mouth for five seconds and think, you would see how clear this situation is. Apple owns the APP store. This isn't about how people "use" their products. They want 100% of the profits on apps as well by ensuring nobody else can write them for their devices. Which might sound fine to you, except they are also a major software company, and they are using these devices to lower the market share of a competing company.

Not by consumer choice. Not by natural market forces. But by artificially controlling a market via their own position. This practically DEFINES anti-trust and anti-competitive.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By karlostomy on 5/3/2010 11:12:15 PM , Rating: 2
I have read your comments throughout this thread, Motoman.

Gotta say, dude, well done with the mac fanboyism and propagation of the mac double standard.

Truth is, though, you haven't addressed your own faulty logic, Moto.
All you do is keep talking and repeating what you said ten posts ago. It seems you think the more you talk, the more right you become.
Well, you're wrong there, dude.
Sorry.
None of what you said holds any water.

Apple is abusing its position of being the dominant mp3 and iphone market player, NOT through the popularity of its perpherals, but instead by withholding the ability of competitors to compete fairly on its platform.
It seems such a simple point, but you are just not quite getting it, are you.

Apple is seeking to promote its own interest by restricting other competitors' rights to compete.
There. Simple.

Another company, in a similar legal situation was FORCED to include other software options, as a result.
Why should Apple be special and different?

Please, Moto, don't reply.
You have done enough talking and replying.
No amount of Mac defence will change the facts.
Maybe try being quiet and thinking, for a change?


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/4/10, Rating: 0
RE: About damn time.
By themaster08 on 5/4/2010 4:53:41 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Microsoft doesn't have to make Windows Update work on OS X for the same reason that Apple doesn't have to allow Flash to run on it's devices - because it's a proprietary service. Riddle me this - what about all the other phones on the market that don't support Flash? There's lots of them you know. It's not just iPhones that don't support Flash. Why is no one forcing them to support Flash?

You're really not seeing past this point, are you?

Everybody is aware of what you're saying. No one has a problem with that, and that's not what everyone is disputing. Apple can reject Flash all it likes on its devices. That is absolutely fine. You don't need to have a monopoly to be influential in a market. Just look at the iPhone. It doesn't have a monopoly, but look at the competition it has spawned.

Again, monopolistic practices is not the point here. The point is that Apple is using the influence it has in the market to attempt to rid the world of Flash completely in favour of HTML5. They have admitted they want to kill flash. They are suffocating Adobe with public statements, etc. In other words they are stifling Adobe. That is illegal, and that is the entire point here. Do you get it now?


RE: About damn time.
By MadMan007 on 5/4/2010 5:52:29 AM , Rating: 1
I have read all your posts in this thread and it is clear you are missing the point because you keep mentioning 'Apple allowing their devices to run Flash' which is not at issue whatsoever. Try rereading the article, specifically paragraphs 2 and 5, to understand what the possible inquiry is about...it's not about whether the devices run Flash itself or not.

If you are unable to understand the issue I will be happy to explain it to you even though it looks like others have attempted already.


RE: About damn time.
By Reclaimer77 on 5/4/2010 3:03:32 PM , Rating: 3
You lose Moto. You lose.

quote:
Why aren't you complaining that Windows Update doesn't update OS X?


Bad stupid Motoman analogy number five hundred and thirty six. Again, please tell me how OS X and Apple's market position has been hurt by Windows update not serving OS X. Also, you do realize how retarded that statement was and how it has NOTHING to do with this issue right?

No. As I and others have said, you just don't get it. Apparently you think if you keep repeating the same thing, and ramming home the same stupid incorrect analogies, you'll get your point across.

Well you actually HAVE gotten your point across. It's just wrong. Sorry, deal with it.

quote:
Apple is not in a monopoly position


And for the hundreth time on this thread, APPLE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A MONOPOLY TO ENGAGE IN ILLEGAL ANTI COMPETITIVE PRACTICES ! Do you freaking get that ??

quote:
Microsoft doesn't have to make Windows Update work on OS X for the same reason that Apple doesn't have to allow Flash to run on it's devices - because it's a proprietary service.


*rubs forehead* sigh

APPLE would not allow Windows update to patch OS X because APPLE CHARGES IT'S USERS FOR UPDATES. Allowing Windows Update to work with Apple would be unacceptable to Steve Jobs because it would constitute a lack of total control over his software.

God you are STUPID. Look around man, EVERYONE is telling you that you are wrong. We can't all be on the wrong side here.

quote:
Apple is not in a monopoly position. Period.


Again ! Will you STOP repeating this?? It doesn't matter. PERIOD.

quote:
Apple has the right to control it's proprietary system. Period.


That is true, up to a point. Until you start engaging in anti-trust practices with the goal of killing competition. PERIOD.

quote:
No one has the right to force Apple to do support something it doesn't want to. Period.


This remains to be seen. We'll see how the court case goes. But historically speaking, people DO have the right to force you to support something you don't want to in this industry. Especially when your reasons for lack of support have nothing to do with technical aspects, and everything to do with furthering your own market share.

Stop looking at this through the eyes of a child Moto. If that's at all possible.


RE: About damn time.
By wiz220 on 5/3/2010 4:53:26 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed. The term monopoly is reserved for a company that has completely cornered the market. For example Standard Oil owning the railroad and every other piece of the process, going way outside of their core business of oil production.

Now the laws are meant to prevent that before it gets anywhere near that far. I think Apple was definitely heading in that direction, locking everyone into their technology from start to finish.

It seems to me that in the rush for the most profit possible (every corporations stated goal) it would be the natural thing for a company to do, control as much as possible and do whatever you can to prevent true competition. Luckily we have laws that try to stop this before it hurts consumers.


RE: About damn time.
By mm2587 on 5/3/2010 3:48:51 PM , Rating: 1
so you also believe that Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly?

Being a monopoly has absolutely everything to do with market share and nothing to do with the number of different competitors.

If you sell 10 million of something (made up numbers) and 1000 competitors each sell one unit. You have a monopoly regardless of the fact that you have 1000 competitors.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By KeypoX on 5/3/2010 8:57:50 PM , Rating: 2
actually they do have a monopoly, mp3 players, itunes and drm was the case. And have been found guilty for anti competitive practices. By EU and US.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 9:33:00 PM , Rating: 2
I believe you are lying. Link?


RE: About damn time.
By Ragin69er on 5/14/2010 3:33:00 AM , Rating: 2
Nope he isn't lying. Originally itunes music files were encoded with Apple "fairplay" DRM and thus wouldn't play in any other music players or software. Completely locking people into Apple's fold forever or face losing their entire purchased music collection. We can thank Norway, Denmark, and Sweden for forcing Apple to do away with that nonsense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#Legal_di...


RE: About damn time.
By dtm4trix on 5/5/2010 2:49:31 AM , Rating: 1
ya the same could have been argued in MS' case as well and that was proven false and they were held liable. to me it seems like its been a long time coming. Steve Jobs needs to get kicked off his high horse. I say bring on the investigation and let the bullets fly, hopefully one of em hits steve right in his scrawny lil ass.


RE: About damn time.
By jonmcc33 on 5/5/2010 12:27:32 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Apple has no monopoly anywhere. There are many, many alternatives to iPhones, iPods, etc.

The fact that they have a commanding marketshare is irrelevant to whether or not they have a monopoly.


So, by your definitions then Microsoft is not a monopoly either? I mean there are many alternatives to Windows and Office. The fact that they have a disturbing command of the market share is supposedly irrelevant as well?

You might want to tell the EU this. They were the ones that forced Microsoft to advertise other web browsers on their OS due to claims of a monopoly.


RE: About damn time.
By reader1 on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By rudolphna on 5/3/2010 1:08:15 PM , Rating: 5
Uh, what exactly has adobe done wrong? They've tried for months and years to get flash on the iphone and ipod touch, and time after time apple has stopped them. It isn't adobe's fault. It's ridiculous.


RE: About damn time.
By CU on 5/3/2010 1:13:48 PM , Rating: 1
This is not just about flash on the iPhone. This is about cross-compilers. Do you know some of the best selling apps use cross-compilers. And once OS4 hits they are violating apple's terms. Who thinks they will remove them? This was apple's attempt to stop Adobe from making cross platform apps easy to design. But in doing so they will have to kill some of their top selling apps, or convince the developers to rewrite them.


RE: About damn time.
By themaster08 on 5/3/2010 1:49:11 PM , Rating: 4
Apple is stifling Adobe. That is illegal. There's your case.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By themaster08 on 5/3/2010 3:23:40 PM , Rating: 4
There's no issue with Apple refusing to use Flash, but using their influence to try and phase Flash out of the market altogether would be known as stifling.


RE: About damn time.
By Motoman on 5/4/10, Rating: -1
RE: About damn time.
By themaster08 on 5/4/2010 5:02:26 AM , Rating: 3
Missed the point entirely. Flash won't run on any devices whatsoever if Apple continue to stifle Adobe. It will be dead.

Apple are not just refusing to use Flash on their devices. They are intentionally trying to kill flash altogether. They have admitted this. They are now cutting Flash off entirely and using public statements to encourage others' to dump Flash. That is stifling. That is illegal. That is the entire point!

What on earth has a monopoly got to do with anything? The iPhone does not have a monopoly. You don't need a monopoly to be influential. Apple is using that influence to commit anti-competitive practices. Why is it so hard for you to understand this point?


RE: About damn time.
By Ragin69er on 5/14/2010 3:38:47 AM , Rating: 1
Nobody is stopping Microsoft from putting Halo on the Wii is the point. If Microsoft wanted to put Halo on the Wii for whatever reason it could do so and Nintendo would be happy about it.
Preventing a competitor from even using a their own compiler to write code for your platform is a massive stretch legally. It would be like Microsoft saying, I don't think we should let Java run on our computers anymore because you can develop apps for any OS using it, not just ours.


RE: About damn time.
By akugami on 5/3/2010 5:03:32 PM , Rating: 1
I understand where you're coming from but IMHO, this will ultimately result in nada happening. I think Apple has a strong case in arguing that it is not a monopoly and so its practices are not subject to monopolistic rules.

Keep in mind that I hate Flash but want that option for some web sites that require it in order to properly function. The smart thing would have been to have Flash in the iPhone but have it disabled by default. Hell, make it a bitch to enable if you want. I use Firefox with Flashblock at all times on my normal computer browsing [b]but[/b] I have the option of enabling Flash for the sites that do require it. Let the user decide.


RE: About damn time.
By pxavierperez on 5/5/2010 12:56:43 AM , Rating: 1
another idiot, boy this sites is just full of idiots.

apple is not a monopoly of anything. and by supporting this you are suggesting that i should also sue my playstation that does not support flash. do you know how a close system that box is much alone the requirements to program for it?

oh, i forgot, you windows users lack any brains to know anything of value. well, stay in that basement and keep playing games.


Not bigger than Walmart
By nafhan on 5/3/2010 12:58:19 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
it's bigger than Walmart -- the biggest retailer in the world. The company currently has an incredible $237.6B USD market cap.
Apple is certainly not bigger than Wal-Mart. By pretty much any measure other than market cap, it's smaller. Market cap is amazingly fluid and generally not a good way to indicate the "value" of a company. Maybe be more specific and limit your statement to saying that Apple has a bigger market cap.

Apple:
Revenue ? $42.91 billion (2009)
Operating income ? $11.74 billion (2009)
Profit ? $8.24 billion (2009)
Total assets ? $47.50 billion (2009)
Total equity ? $31.64 billion (2009)
Employees ? 34,300 (2009)
Market cap: 243.11B

Walmart:
Revenue ? US$ 404.16 billion (2009)
Operating income ? US$ 22.80 billion (2009)
Net income ? US$ 13.400 billion (2009)
Total assets ? US$ 163.23 billion (2009)
Total equity ? US$ 65.285 billion (2009)
Employees approx. 2,100,000 (2009)
Market cap: 201.82B

The above is copied from Wikipedia and Google finance.




RE: Not bigger than Walmart
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 1:02:48 PM , Rating: 2
Yup. Market cap can go away overnight. It's important to pay attention to, but to use it to suggest that Apple is "bigger" than W-M is retarded.


By Descenteer on 5/4/2010 12:49:01 AM , Rating: 2
I noticed a number of times that market share for the Mac OS has come up a number of times. Market share is, I propose, an irrelevant comparison to make between Microsoft and Apple. Why?

What company's products will Microsoft allow you to install and use Windows XP/Vista/7 on?

Acer, Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, eMachines, Sony, Apple, NEC, Lenovo, Voodoo PC's, Micron, IBM, etc etc etc.

What company's products will Apple allow you to install and use OSX on?

Apple.

Hmmm. I'm no expert, but methinks this might be ONE reason Apple has poor market penetration. I will grant that Microsoft likely plays dirty in pressuring the listed companies to use Windows exclusively. However, by making OSX exclusive to their own brand/hardware, Apple isn't even trying to compete with Microsoft.

Rain fire down on Microsoft for any number of reasons. I cannot see any sense in bringing Apple's market share verses Microsoft's share into the argument though. Apple's own policy with OSX would give any competitor an edge, regardless of said competitor's business practices.




Had to happen, but..
By DKantUno on 5/4/2010 1:05:17 AM , Rating: 2
I understand the ground on which an anti-competitive investigation may be pursued. With the SDK agreement update, Apple was essentially pitting XCode against CS5 (that's the one, right?) and saying "This is the ONLY development tool you can use". I read Steve Jobs' "Thoughts on Flash" and agree with almost everything he said. But that said, the choice of sticking with a possibly inferior development tool should be that of the developer, as pointed out in several weblogs already. And with this SDK agreement update, Apple is certainly eliminating that choice. Besides, I really don't think apps transcoded from Flash will ever be a huge threat to native apps. Maybe Apple thinks differently.

However, Apple certainly has every right (in my book) to block Flash in Safari or in WebKit (on iPhone) in general. Because for a consumer there is absolutely no compulsion of any sort to purchase an iPhone-OS based device. If they are that concerned about using Flash, they can switch to an Android, WebOS or Windows based device - as many users already have to my knowledge. This falls - according to me - in the same boat as - say - Linux not supporting DirectX (far as I know). It is a proprietary technology that NO company - not even Microsoft - has the legal or competitive obligation to support on every device or platform they put out. That said, an anti-trust investigation on THIS count too, cannot necessarily be ruled out. Call me alarmist, but I suspect lobbies might kick into action at some point in this 'battle'.




Great !
By PoohPall on 5/4/2010 7:45:00 AM , Rating: 2
Maybe the U.S. Gov can make Apple vanish and make the world a little better.

:-P




This ia none Issue
By Computer Ed on 5/5/2010 8:19:50 AM , Rating: 2
I dislike APple and it's methods as much as the next guy but to me this is really a none issue. Apple is just saying that the inclusion of these programs in usage with their phones OS have a number of issues.

If Apple wants to limit what software works on their stuff they have the right to do so. If people want the restricted material they have other phone options.

There is no monoply here.




You know why Apple did that ?
By chick0n on 5/3/2010 11:38:57 PM , Rating: 1
Cuz in Jobs Eyes, Adobe and its Flash is Not Great nor wonderful nor magical nor incredible.

who cares if you, Adobe, kept Apple alive back in the days. Now Im rich and I can be a bitch ! DIE Adobe ! DIE !




Apple and the Revolution
By Tony Swash on 5/4/10, Rating: 0
Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
RE: Not sure about this...
By bohrd on 5/3/2010 12:40:27 PM , Rating: 5
What about Microsoft?

It's product is not a public service yet it faced antitrust lawsuits. Heck they were just forced to have a ballot in the EU for internet browsers. Doesn't Microsoft have the right to put whatever software they want in their OS? If you don't want to play by Microsoft's rules then there are alternatives...right?


RE: Not sure about this...
By carniver on 5/3/2010 12:53:52 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe Microsoft dragged Apple into this by saying they also support HTML5 :)


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 12:58:58 PM , Rating: 1
That's because to really participate in the computing world, you have no reasonable choice but to run on Windows.

Mac is 4% of the market. Linux is prolly 1%, and other BS doesn't count. Essentially all the software (and hardware) on the market is built such that it only works on Windows.

That's how MS gets to a monopoly position with its OS. Apple is not in that same position. You can use any other competing product instead of an iThing without incurring any penalty.


RE: Not sure about this...
By CU on 5/3/2010 1:22:46 PM , Rating: 4
But you can write one piece of software that runs on windows, OSX, and linux, etc. using cross-compilers. And some software is written like that. Look up wxWidgets for some examples. It complies to use the native gui on any support platform. MS doesn't prevent you from doing this. However, apple is preventing you in OS4. That is the wrong and hopefully ruled illegal part. If apple wants that much control they need to keep all the development work in house. Not say no you can't build it that way. I don't care if all the 1's and 0's end up being the same in the end.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 1:28:03 PM , Rating: 1
Can? Sure. Do? No.


RE: Not sure about this...
By JediJeb on 5/3/2010 6:15:08 PM , Rating: 2
But writing something that can be cross-compiled will usually cause you to take a hit in performance on at least one of those systems if not all. Say if some application would really benefit from ActiveX controls or maybe DirectX, it will either have to be rewritten to work with those controls or take a hit in performance because those can not be used in Linux. In that case to make the application really work well on all platforms you would need to rewrite it for each platform. Otherwise most games would be ported to Windows, OSX and Linux. Look at Quake, that game had to have a complete rewrite of the engine to work well with Linux.

There are many examples of limited interoperability which so not qualify as anti-trust and I think this is one of them. Again it simply comes down to programmers wanting the easy way of doing things. Since there is a way for them to write an App for the iPhone then rewriting it for other platforms you can't call what Apple is doing anti competitive, it is merely keeping it from being easy. There is a difference between making it impossible to compete and making it difficult.


RE: Not sure about this...
By lightfoot on 5/3/2010 2:32:24 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Apple is not in that same position. You can use any other competing product instead of an iThing without incurring any penalty.

Apple controls over 70% of the MP3 player market. The nearest competitor (SanDisk) controls 11%. The iPod peaked at 92% market share.

iTunes controls 88% of the legal music download business. They are also sell more music than anyone else in the United States.

Apple also controls 18% of the global smartphone market.

Apple has several monopolies, and they are a dominant player in several other markets.

Apple is in exactly the same position as Microsoft was.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 3:01:40 PM , Rating: 1
No, they are so far from the same position you can't even see it from there.

MP3s...can be played on umpteen million different players with no penalty. Stuff that can be bought on iTunes can be bought at umpteen million other places with no penalty. There is zero barrier to entering that market.

Smartphones - there are enormous numbers of smartphones on the market. Any number of capable devices from a multitude of vendors on many different networks. The market is saturated with options.

Neither of the above can EVER be monopolies. Ever. It's a physical impossiblity, and anyone who thinks that someone can have a monopoly in, say, the .mp3 market has fundamentally demonstrated that they have no idea what a monopoly actually is.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Smilin on 5/3/2010 5:38:22 PM , Rating: 2
First: Let me say that I agree with you overall. Apple does not have a monopoly.

But..you do not have to have a monopoly to be guilty of anti-trust violations. (see "per-se" and "rule of reason" concepts relating to the 1890 sherman anti-trust act)

that said..
quote:
MP3s...can be played on umpteen million different players with no penalty. Stuff that can be bought on iTunes can be bought at umpteen million other places with no penalty. There is zero barrier to entering that market.


There is a great deal of barrier to entering that market.
1. AAC format "lock in"
2. Lack of accessories for non-iPod mp3 players.
3. Certain artists being exclusively iTunes.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 5:50:21 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
1. AAC format "lock in"


That's your own problem for being a stupid consumer. Other formats are available to you that are standard. Use them.

quote:
2. Lack of accessories for non-iPod mp3 players.


BS. Assloads of accessories are available that work with any and all .mp3 and other music players. A pair of computer speakers will work with any music device ever made.

quote:
3. Certain artists being exclusively iTunes.


So? Certain TV shows are only shown on certain networks. That doesn't mean that you can sue ABC because they don't air The Sopranos. Regardless, you can buy .mp3s from iTunes that work on any and all devices if you want to - or, you can buy the CD and rip to .mp3 yourself, which is perfectly legal per fair use laws.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Smilin on 5/4/2010 5:21:16 PM , Rating: 2
Wishing away the barriers to adoption won't make them go away.

quote:
That's your own problem for being a stupid consumer. Other formats are available to you that are standard. Use them.


If a consumer is stupid for buying AAC so be it. The barrier to switching to another product still exists. Note that the consumer may or may not know that AAC results in a lock in but you know who DOES know? Apple.

quote:
BS. Assloads of accessories are available that work with any and all .mp3 and other music players. A pair of computer speakers will work with any music device ever made.

That's funny I can't seem to get my computer speakers to display my playlist the way in-dash car audio in an Audi does. Don't be so retardledly obtuse. You know exactly what I mean.

quote:
So? Certain TV shows are only shown on certain networks. That doesn't mean that you can sue ABC because they don't air The Sopranos. Regardless, you can buy .mp3s from iTunes that work on any and all devices if you want to - or, you can buy the CD and rip to .mp3 yourself, which is perfectly legal per fair use laws.

Who said anything about suing? It's a barrier to adopting another manufacturers mp3 player. Maybe the barrier is very high (you can't have this) or maybe it's low (you gotta take the effort to rip instead of just clicking a button) but the fact is it's there.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Tony Swash on 5/4/2010 8:43:56 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
Apple controls over 70% of the MP3 player market. The nearest competitor (SanDisk) controls 11%. The iPod peaked at 92% market share.

iTunes controls 88% of the legal music download business. They are also sell more music than anyone else in the United States.

Apple also controls 18% of the global smartphone market.

Apple has several monopolies, and they are a dominant player in several other markets.

Apple is in exactly the same position as Microsoft was.


Its very important to realise that its not just being a monopoly or major player as such that is the problem its whether the existence of a monopoly is being used to block competition.

If other MP3 player makers can make an MP3 player which can have an equal chance as an Apple iPod has to play MP3s then its not being blocked.

If an MP3 listener can listen to that MP3 on any device of choice then the consumer is not being blocked.

Even if you buy DRM protected music from iTunes all you have to do is to burn it to CD to create an MP3 format that can be played on anything anywhere.

When Microsoft controlled 95% of the desktop and told OEMs not to install any other browser - that was abuse of a monopoly.

By the way arguing that a product that has 18% of a market is a monopoly is just silly.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Reclaimer77 on 5/3/2010 6:46:53 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
That's because to really participate in the computing world, you have no reasonable choice but to run on Windows.


This statement annihilates all your previous arguments. Just as there are other smart phones, there ARE other OS's. You are being so goddamn hypocritical.

quote:
Linux is prolly 1%,


Yeah right! Maybe for home users, but pretty much all serious servers run on Linux based OS's. Workstations. You name it. Stop making up numbers. Linux is alive and well in the business world.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 9:56:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
This statement annihilates all your previous arguments. Just as there are other smart phones, there ARE other OS's. You are being so goddamn hypocritical.


No, I'm not. There is effectively no penalty for using a smartphone other than an iPhone. There is a massive penalty for not using Windows - as in, the VAST majority of hardware and software won't work with anything other than Windows. You'll never actually understand that differentiation though...so I'm not sure why I bother.

quote:
Yeah right! Maybe for home users, but pretty much all serious servers run on Linux based OS's. Workstations. You name it. Stop making up numbers. Linux is alive and well in the business world.


...pretty much all serious servers eh? So you think if you visit the data center of Fortune 1000 companies they'll be full of Linux servers? Sorry, you lose again. Serious companies run next to nothing on Linux. Essentially none. Close to zero. Nearly non-existant.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Redwin on 5/3/2010 12:48:03 PM , Rating: 5
I'm not a lawyer, so I won't try and offer any sort of legal opinion on wether not Apple is breaking the law, but I think requoting your first couple statements with a few substitutions could be illuminating:

quote:
...although the totally proprietary nature of the Microsoft ecosystem is one big reason why they are inherently teh suck, I am not sure there's any legal reason why Microsoft can't pick and choose what browser to allow on it's OS . Windows (is) not a public service. You don't have a right to own (it), and you don't have a right to force Microsoft to support whatever stuff you want them to support.


Note: I'm not trying to say you're an Apple fanboy or anything, for all I know you probably also agree (as do I) that there was no good anti-trust case against Microsoft either, but my point is if governments can abuse the law to force MS to include browser ballots and such, there's no reason to believe they won't do the same to Apple over Flash.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/10, Rating: 0
RE: Not sure about this...
By Redwin on 5/3/2010 1:15:17 PM , Rating: 2
You make a valid point, Microsoft enjoys a significantly greater market saturation with its OS than Apple does with its mobile phone, but I honeslty think its enough that it doesn't matter.

Apple currently has about 25% of the mobile phone market. (source: http://mashable.com/2010/02/09/android-iphone-mark... )Nobody has more than 50%, though RIM comes closest. If you consider that Blackberry is dominated by business customers (companies buying the device and payign the bill), then the public perception of modern consumer-driven app-capable "mobile phones" pretty much reduces to iPhone and WinMobile, though Android is coming on strong. In that context, Apple has closer to half of the "nifty app-laden consumer mobile market".

Further, it important to remeber that public perception often colors legal outcomes (especially if juries are involved, though I am not sure if that would be the case here), and the public PERCEPTION of Apple's "Mind Share" is far higher. Even if you don't own one, everyone knows what an iPhone is. I would bet if you polled people they would think Apple's market share was much MORE than 25%, becasue of their clever marketing and brand recognition.

Soo.. again I'm not really disagreeing with you. I think Microsoft was and is a much more entrenched monopoly than Apple. You do have more options in the mobile arena than you do in the PC-OS arena, this is undeniable. I just think Apple is now enough of a "big boy" in the public eye that The government will easily be able to get away with a monopoly lawsuit over the Flash issue, and nobody will really object, for the same reasons they didn't over the Microsoft browser debable.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 1:29:58 PM , Rating: 2
...relentless media coverage is why the public thinks Apple is an actual competitor in the personal computer market.

They have 4% marketshare. Which is negligible. However, the propaganda that Apple creates and which the media regurgitates for them makes them seem like they are an actual contender in that market.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Redwin on 5/3/2010 1:45:18 PM , Rating: 2
100% agree with you here. Apple's spin machines are second to none. If they ever decided to package their advertising methods and sell them under the iSpin brand name, Madison Ave would likely vanish in a Flash (but it wouldn't be rendered by Adobe!)

I'd be interested to know what public perception of Apple's Mac OS market share was before and after the iPod/iPhone came on the scene. As you say they are steady around 4%, but now that Apple and iWhatever is a household name, I bet your average joe thinks half the world uses Macs.


RE: Not sure about this...
By rocky12345 on 5/3/2010 2:06:37 PM , Rating: 2
Not that I am totally disagreeing with you on some of your points here but how is Microsoft abusing it's monopoly position. MS has never said you can not install any other browser they do not try to stop you in any way to do things like that. Apple on the other hand tries to dictate what can & can not be installed on most of their hardware. Yes MS has a bigger market share in the desktop market who cares I don't. What I do care about is companies like Apple trying to tell me what I can & can not use on the hardware I spent hard earned money for.

This issue about locking out code so it is only made with Apple tools is total BS,if I am a developer & want to code for more than one platform who the hell does Apple think they are to tell me well you can't if you make an App it can only be on our platform if you want it in our app store. To me & many others Apple has abused it's position a hell of a lot more than Microsoft ever did & I hope the Gov does go probing into Apples business just to show them they are not above the law if nothing else.

Right now Apple has been under the radar by the gov types & maybe if Apple see's that the Gov types are starting to take notice they may learn from this & treat their customers a bit better & their dev's as well.

Lets face it flash is here now & will be for quite some time most of the websites work with flash,& for Apple to totally block that on their mobiles is totally a control issue. It is not up to Apple to decide what we will install or not install. If I want flash on my device & should be prepared to use more battery power & have less time between charges. But Apple decided well it uses more resources we think our users will be much better off if we just block it from our devices. Well I am sorry but that is just wrong & is using their market position to get what they want. Yes Adobe can improve on their flash & maybe if Apple had allowed it on their mobiles a year ago or 2 flash would be that much more improved now on the mobiles. So in this sense this is being anti competitive & acting like a monopoly on Apples part.

They can have as closed of a system as they want but when they start acting so anti competitive like this & telling dev's you tow the line or else or blocking a whole platform for multimedia from a device that is used by over 90% of the worlds websites that is for sure acting like a monopoly & it is things like this that makes government bodies take notice. thanks


RE: Not sure about this...
By iFan on 5/3/2010 2:31:43 PM , Rating: 3
Lets face it, the real reason Apple are doing this is because you can do all sorts of stuff with Flash (you may think it sucks, runs slow etc etc but it can be used through a browser to run pretty full-fledged apps) and Apple wanna control their monopoly. I suspect this investigation (or pre-investigation really) is to do with Apples "monopolistic practices". I am not sure if they allow Silverlight on anything other than the desktop but it has a smaller penetration/usage than Flash so its not a concern for them at the moment but it could be given enough time.

Part of me sides with them to an extent (see my M$ bit below) and part of me wants them to get bent over and taught a lesson but the bottom line is... you don't like it then buy another phone/PC/overpriced-useless-pointless-great-big-fuc k-off-iPodMaxi. :)

When M$ got nailed by the European Union I hit the roof. As far as I am concerned, its their OS and they can do what they want with it. They were not stopping anyone creating an alternative browser, they just bundled their own one which is their right as far as I am concerned.

As someone else mentioned... when are we getting a browser ballot for OSX / Linux / FreeBSD etc etc?


RE: Not sure about this...
By Smilin on 5/3/2010 3:46:06 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Lets face it, the real reason Apple are doing this is because you can do all sorts of stuff with Flash (you may think it sucks, runs slow etc etc but it can be used through a browser to run pretty full-fledged apps)


This.

If you can go to say geico.com and get a fancy car insurance tool via flash to pop right up then you don't need to go to the app store to buy the equivalent app.

Apple wants to make sure they get paid for things that are free.


RE: Not sure about this...
By Motoman on 5/3/2010 5:52:51 PM , Rating: 2
I agree fully. There is no reason whatsoever for Apple to ban Flash from it's devices other than to force you to buy similar apps from them.

...but it's their right to do so, because you bought into their walled garden.

Once you sign your contract with the devil, it's too late to complain. The deal is done, and it's all over but the crying.

If anyone wants to make any difference, convince the sheeple of the world to not buy Apple products. That is the one and only way they will see any need to change.


RE: Not sure about this...
By hiscross on 5/3/10, Rating: 0
RE: Not sure about this...
By Shatbot on 5/4/2010 10:04:12 AM , Rating: 2
This has got nothing to do with a monopoly. This has got nothing to do with iPhones running Flash.

If I make a "game" - call it The Adventures of Ceiling Cat. For simplicity it's a text game like days of yore.

quote:
10 Print [Would you like to see what Ceiling Cat is doing? Y/N]

20 If input = N goto 10, if input = Y goto 30

30 Print [Ceiling Cat is watching you masturbate]

40 goto 10


Now, clearly computer coding isn't my cup of tea, but if I wrote this in Flash and ported it over, the result would probably be the same. BUT if I tell Apple I made it with Flash and ported - it's banned. Banned because of the totally unrelated process I used to make the app. And that is what's breaking the law.

It's kind of a form of coding 'racism'.

I have a dream,
that my four little Apps will one day live in a System where they will not be judged by the code beneath their skin but by the content of their usefulness.


Flash
By icanhascpu on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
By CU on 5/3/2010 1:27:20 PM , Rating: 4
Does Adobe force you to use flash, or do you want to look at content that people make in flash. I have never heard of Adobe preventing people from using other technologies to create content for the web.

They are investigating the right company.


Why is this a government issue?
By drycrust3 on 5/3/10, Rating: -1
By lightfoot on 5/3/2010 2:42:28 PM , Rating: 3
Look up the "Sherman Antitrust Act." Capitalism only works when there is competition. It is a well established fact that markets can be distorted by large abusive companies, and it is precisely the government's role to protect the people from such abuses.

The "Sherman Antitrust Act" made Monopolies and Cartels illegal in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act


By wiz220 on 5/3/2010 5:19:51 PM , Rating: 3
What part of the world are you from? It's not as though the US is special in this regard. Look at what the EU is doing to Intel and Microsoft. They have very strict anti-trust laws.


RE: Why is this a government issue?
By jrb531 on 5/11/2010 3:29:10 PM , Rating: 1
I own my Ipod Touch. It's mine and I should be able to do ANYTHING I want with it.

I respect that Apple can elect or not-elect to offer Porn or Flash or whatever THEY want on THEIR store but....

Give me the software so I can install whatever "I" want on "my" Ipod Touch!

Apple has no right to modify their device to keep me from installing things that I want. This is where they cross the line IMHO.

Apple will lose this and will be required to offer us a way to install things from our computer directly without going through their store. Then companies will start selling software outside Apples store without paying the royalties.

Me thinks Apple may win the short-term Flash war but lose in the end. Instead of losing sales for just flash based programs they will lose everything as companies elect to distribute software without going through Apple's rip-off store in which Apple take a huge chunk of the profits.

Imagine buying a computer and having the company that made the computer tell you that you are only allowed to install programs that "they" feel that you should use!


"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer











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