Submitted by Well, this is interesting, and, I must say, rather surprising: the New York Post is reporting that the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission are looking into launching an antitrust probe into Apple’s policies. You’d expect this to be about iTunes, but that’s just the thing: it’s about the Adobe-Apple spat. Update: Since I’m not familiar with the entire US media landscape, I was unaware the New York Post is considered less than reputable. Still, Reuters has confirmed the Post’s report, so maybe it’s true after all.
Some people still see Apple as the underdog, but this is a very, very flawed way of looking at the company. Apple currently resides in the top ten of the world’s largest companies (by market capitalisation), so calling Apple small is about as accurate as calling unicorns stupid animals – it just makes no sense.
As such, it’s only natural that regulators would keep an eye on Apple. However, you’d think that regulators would look into how Apple locks people into iTunes – iTunes and the iPod own 70-80 percent of their respective markets, and just as Microsoft was forced to open up for interoperability reasons, you’d think the same would happen to Apple (no, seriously – EU, where are you?).
According to the Post, however, the possible investigation has to do with Apple banning third-party development environments from the App Store. “According to a person familiar with the matter, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple’s new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple’s programming tools,” the Post claims.
It is important to note that an investigation doesn’t mean steps will be undertaken against Apple – it just means they’re going to look into it. “Regulators are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry,” the further claim, “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 RIM.”
As much as I disagree with Apple’s restrictive App Store policies, I don’t think they warrant an antitrust investigation. Apple is anything but a monopoly in the smartphone market (RIM is bigger, and Android is rising in popularity and sales like crazy), so that’s not an angle. You really have to try very hard to come up with a market where Apple could be considered a monopoly, but it’s possible (far-fetched-alert!): Apple owns the mobile app sales market (I warned you). Far-fetched indeed, since Android’s application portfolio is growing very rapidly – App Store or no.
Taking that into account, it could very well be that the Post is trying to score a little on the wave of Adobe-Apple news. We’ll know soon enough.
Great news. Hopefully this dev lock-in garbage will have a bullet put in it early, so MS won’t get similar ideas with its new gadget.
I’ve never really understood the fascination Apple has with trying to persuade the world to use Apple computers anyway.
Take MS, they don’t really care about selling hardware, and they’re making way more money. If Apple would just get on board with the dev’s, the iPhone would be even more popular than it already is.
Open development turns a cult device into a legend.
I see four glaring problems here.
One, what’s not to understand about a hardware company wanting people to use their hardware? That’s called selling a product, and it’s what companies do.
Two, MS is different because MS is a software licensing company. They don’t make an appreciable selection of hardware, and they don’t make any money from what they do. Microsoft is not selling hardware, and McDonald’s is not selling cars.
Three, Microsoft is no longer significantly more profitable than Apple is, and their outlook for growth is very grim. They make all their money licensing updates for Office, Windows, and Server, all of which rely on the stagnating desktop computer market, and all of which are constantly under siege from free and/or better alternatives in equivalent products, and now from new mobile products that replace their functionality as well. All of their attempts at growing into new markets, in both online services and personal electronics, have been spectacular boondoggles.
Finally, every company that has tried to compete in Microsoft’s niche, as you seem to be suggesting Apple should, died a quick, dramatic death. OS/2, BeOS, and NeXT are all the way of the dodo, while Apple’s short-lived clone program contributed significantly to its brush with death in the late ’90s. There is no market for retail OS sales, and Microsoft owns the monopoly on the market for OEM licensing. It’s only by offering a complete, unique package that Apple can stay alive in any corner of the desktop computing space, while having a huge reliability and infinite economical advantage only serve to keep Linux going at the fringes. Any company wanting to build a business around OS sales, that ship sailed in 1982, and right now it’s finally beginning to sink.
So while you may not like Apple’s methods, they have absolutely no use for your business advice.
It worked with the IBM PC clone. It is not working in phones. Maybe this will change if the carriers are forced to reform their business practices, but there’s no reason to think Apple wouldn’t then change as well.
That sure was quite a rant. You kinda blew away your own point on a couple of occassions, so let’s clear things up.
Firstly, this conversation is about PCs. Apple’s attempt to force dev’s onto PC’s, we’re not really interested about what Apple does with the rest of it’s devices, because you’re not doing dev on your iPhone. At least, not if you’re sane.
When it comes to PC’s, Apple is not a hardware company at all. They are selling you a regular PC, with OSX. You’re not buying it because it’s pretty (I hope), but because it has OSX.
In the PC game, they’re already just selling software, so why not just sell OSX?
From money.cnn.com:
“Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) said its profit climbed 60% from a year earlier to $6.7 billion, or 74 cents per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31. The Redmond, Wash.-based company’s sales snapped a three-quarter streak of declines, jumping 14% to a record $19 billion.”
Quater results this year: Microsoft: 6.7bn, Apple: 3.38bn. MS is almost doubling Apple’s profits this year.
They’re already competing directly with Microsoft’s niche in the PC market. Seen any “I’m a PC, and I’m a Mac” ads lately? All of the ads from Apple are boasting about the features of OSX over the features of Windows. Why? Because the only different thing about Apple PC’s these days is … OSX.
Not working in phones eh? You might have heard people talking about Android? From techwatch.co.uk:
“Google’s Android operating system has carved itself a significant slice of the mobile market since its inception. …
The sale of Android smartphones has increased hugely in the last month, mainly due to the launch of big names such as the HTC Desire and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. …
In the total mobile market (not just smartphones) for the month of April, GfK reckons that Android has increased its share from 1.6% to 6.7%. Which is more than quadrupled.
Almost 20% of smartphones sold in the UK now run Android.
And that number is set to get bigger, with more Android handsets on the way, such as the aforementioned Nexus One from Google, which Vodafone is now offering (finally).”
It’s game over man! It’s game over!
//I’ve never really understood the fascination Apple has with trying to persuade the world to use Apple computers anyway. //
Um .. you’re kidding, right?
Get em!
I agree… go for it. Apple deserves it, they’ve been real assholes lately and their control is getting ridiculous.
Edited 2010-05-04 01:43 UTC
A good model to compare against is in the console market: regardless of the programming tools used, the companies that make the consoles have their way with how developers develop for and sell for their platforms. Note that it is often that developers develop for multiple consoles at once, and, due to the major differences of the console’s hardware and OS, there’s a lot that’s simply not cross-platform capable. I’m not aware of any government entity taking them to task, because it’s their dedicated platform, and they don’t exert requirements on developers for their consoles and the software they write that they can’t develop for other platforms.
This is, while not a perfect match, perhaps, a close enough match with Apple in regards to what it is doing. Apple is in no way restricting developers from developing for other phones: they’re merely requiring a certain restriction about how they can develop apps that Apple will allow in their store. It has been well-established in the past that stores aren’t required to stock whatever customers want, regardless of what customers want. If developers want to create an app that violates all those requirements, sure, they can develop it, but it won’t be sold by Apple in the AppStore, sorry, but Apple in no way prevents developers from preventing for other devices.
Developers don’t have to like it: they can take their toys and go elsewhere, Apple isn’t stopping them from doing so, and as a result of Apple’s policy, apps are more probably going to be developed to use the OS and hardware/software capacity built-in to the Apple iPhoneOS platform, as there’s no good reason not to, really, so users are likely to get better apps, assuming the apps aren’t written by lazy developers, and otherwise do what users want, because developers don’t have a bigger incentive to write once, run as the lowest common denominator everywhere. Sadly, this does nothing to prevent apps from being crap, as crap can be created anywhere for anything.
As usual : sure, there’s no problem with apple not selling some app in their store because they dislike it. The problem is when they forbid any other store to sell it.
That’s where your console analogy is deeply flawed : if I can’t sell my Xbox game in the one and only Microsoft store in the world (yay ^^), I can still sell it in another store. If you don’t find Bioshock in a Microsoft Store, you can buy it somewhere else. Can you say the same about apple’s App Store ? No ? Then clearly something looks wrong.
Edited 2010-05-04 05:12 UTC
1. I didn’t say it was a perfect match, and explicitly said it was an imperfect match.
2. Where your dispute is flawed in regards to consoles is that game companies simply can’t sell console games for a given console without licensing/permission from the console maker, so, really, it’s a better match than you think, as such games, while perhaps not sold in exactly one store, are still sold only with permission/licensing of the console maker.
The point is, that you can develop games for consoles on any device you wish. In any language you wish. The restrictions the console manufacturers impose are very narrow. They are more to assure that the game sells and it’s enjoyable. For exclusive titles, console manufacturers will even support the games.
But then again, that is the market that was like that from the beginning.
What Apple is doing is 180degree turn in the middle of the game, witch is not allowed when you are a dominant player.
Imagine, if Microsoft tomorrow said that any software developed for Windows had to be developed using HP hardware and servers could be only run on Dell hardware.(That would be an example of a dominant player changing the rules in the middle of the game)
How long do you think, would it take for the competition authorities to sue Microsoft?
You can design apps that will install on iPhones/iPads/iTouches that reside outside of the App store and are deliverable via any web browser.
No, your analogy is flawed: No matter where you buy your game, it will always have to be approved by Microsoft (and pay a license fee for every game you develop).
Following the monopoly-idea that Apple is supposed to have, I know of a few other ones:
– Texas Instruments has a monopoly in Texas Instruments calculators
– Casio has a monopoly in Casio calculators
– Toyota has a monopoly in Toyota cars
– Mercedes has a monopoly in Mercedes cars
This way, every company has a monopoly some how…
Yes they have. What’s your point? Monopolies are not illegal.
Antitrust law is not about monopolies.
They don’t have a stranglehold on all smartphone application distribution, but they do have one on iPhone application distribution. I would argue that that is a pretty large market by itself. Also, I would argue that the market for iPhone toolkits must be large enough to call a market, since there are already several competing vendors in that space. Thus, Apple is coming in and using its clout from its distribution monopoly to bolster it’s application toolkit business.
Except that Apple does not have a toolkit business, all the tools they develop are free and are built to support their hardware & software.
That’s like saying that Microsoft doesn’t have a browser business…
They have like the 98% or 99% of the mobile application sales last year(across all brands, phones, OS’es…). So I would imagine that would constitute a dominant position in mobile application market.
unicorns kick ass!
itunes may suck out loud but they still let you put your mp3’s in your library and add them to your device.
that’s a lot better than giving you an app library and only letting you choose from what you’re allowed to put on.
Since Apple only owns a small percentage of the total cell phone market in the US, I wonder what the problem is. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that its a cell phone use publicly owned airwaves. Maybe there are FCC rules about competition with the phone? Seems like a bit of an odd thing for the government to be looking into. Of course this could tie in with the laws about limiting usage of equipment by a network provider (the Bell phone case). Maybe limiting software is the same as limiting the brand of phone you use on land lines.
At first, I rejoiced, but then I stopped to think.
I’d prefer it if nothing were done, and Apple’s draconian walled garden came back to haunt them.
Imagine the resulting backlash if Android were to overtake iPhones, and Windows phone series 7 got a decent share as well.
People would be choosing between android, windows mobile, and RIM. (Maybe HP WebOS by then, too)
Everybody would say no to Apple, as it wouldn’t run most things; developers would simply reject the iPhone because it’s better to target 3 or 4 smaller platforms which together make up a larger share than 1 individual platform.
Unless you can use a cross-platform frameworks and have no problem with all applications being geared to the lowest common denominator, then your assertions make no sense from a business POV, because each platform that’s different requires an added amount of development work to cater to it, as well as testing, marketing, etc. and all these things cost time and money. There’s a reason (not the only one!) the iPhoneOS market is as big as it is, from a commercially-viable POV: there’s been very little fragmentation for developers to deal with. Couple that with a known place every user has to go looking for apps that’s self-consistent (zero effort to know where that is) and the fact that apps are dirt cheap compared to most platforms, largely because of that scale, well, it all adds up on the bottom line: developers have a chance of making a living selling things cheap by sheer volume of apps sold. Which, of course, means with the number of apps that have been created, you now need to focus more on making people aware your apps exist and are better for something than others, because everyone knows where to get them, but… well, it’s all a balancing act.
The Apple investigation is great news.
I’d also like to see the MPEG-LA outfit investigated – the body which owns the h.264 video codec. They sure as heck look like a monopoly as well. Surely an anti-trust case could be built against them.
Busting MPEG-LA would be *great* for open standards and a great victory against proprietary lock-in.
Edited 2010-05-04 03:05 UTC
Hang on! This is a report of rumour/speculation.
Im not religous about Operating Systems or Computer vendors. At this point in time I selectivly choose to use Apple gear over other manufacturers because it offers me the choice that sucks least.
I support Apple in endeavouring to ensure the best end user experience on their mobile products.
Lets not forget that Microsoft got where they are by ruthless monopolist practices.
Apple got where they are by out designing all competition.
Nobody is forcing you to own Apple’s products, if they dont meet your needs, move on & spend your money elswhere. If Apple want to ensure the highest quality product, that’s their choice.
Edited 2010-05-04 03:21 UTC
What happens when other products no longer suit your needs because of Apple’s new app store policies? The implications of Apple’s new restrictions on application development for their mobile devices reaches further than “If you don’t like it don’t use it” because Apple’s mobile app store is probably the most widely used store and hence probably the most targeted platform by developers. When it’s no longer profitable or feasible for a developer to produce their applications for multiple platforms (because Apple has locked out cross platform frameworks) the app store will probably win to others which means the competition is being shut out and my choice as a consumer is being limited.
Wake up! This has nothing to do with the best user experience or how much flash sucks.
That is part of the issue. Apple should not decide which applications are good for the consumer, it should be up to the market/consumer to choose. If I create a crappy app, the market will determine its death. If Apple has a crappy app, and prevents a better app from reaching consumers since the appStore is the only conduit to consumers, then they are controlling the market unfairly. Once Apple opened up its SDK for others to develop apps and created the appStore, then they created a market.
in iPhone application distribution. Yes, it is a niche market they have created themselves but nonetheless Apple do satisfy (1) the definition of a monopoly in this market. They are now trying to solidify the monopoly by closing any remaining loop holes in their application store and use it (2) for fighting the Adobe’s Flash in a market they do not control (the web).
So, yes, these practices (1&2) do fall under antitrust laws and Abobe has right to go after Apple. However, this situation would not simply happen if there was no DMCA in the first place. On one hand we have a law (DMCA) that specifically encourages creating digital monopolies, on the other hand we try to fix the damage caused by it by imposing antitrust laws.
Steves distortion field is a powerful thing. If you let him talk to you it’s already too late.
If he could convince Apple devs after coming back from NeXT venture that their almost ready OS sucks and should be replaced, he can convince one court he’s not breaking any antitrust laws
Someone’s been watching recent Lost episodes!
You’re right though, Steve Jobs is perhaps the most charismatic and appealing CEO I’ve ever heard and seen. I think it’s mostly that he really does love his company and its products. Apple is his life, period.
Though I don’t care for his stance on Theora and keeping the Web open, I still respect him for his dedication to Apple.
What the hell are you rambling on about?
Seeing as I was there and you weren’t, Steve was the last person brought in on merger talks.
The talks were weeks in the making and both CEOs were last in discussion.
Apple’s CTO and a few systems engineers and sales engineers at NeXT started the merger idea.
Two distinct problems here… first Unicorns don’t exist, so it really doesn’t matter what you call them.
Secondly, the comments from the NyPost are misguided… Apple’s licensing terms do not require developers to only use Apple’s Tools. The section in question forbids any language other then C/C++/Objective C (or JavaScript in WebKit) to link to the documented API’s, of which… none of these are specifically Apple’s. You could argue something about the API’s themselves as a restriction, but that applies to every other platform on the market.
Honestly this seems to be much todo about nothing… Developers can always choose another platform for their applications if they feel the language restrictions are an issue. In this way, the restrictions are almost the opposite of what Anti-trust is created to prevent, which is anti-competitive behavior. If developers absolutely cannot live without a language not on this list, they can just choose to develop for another platform… and Apple loses/competitor gains.
If an application already meets the requirements, then… nothing is really gained or lost.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t both Android and BlackBerry apps written in Java exclusively? This, to me, seems even more limited than coding for the iPhone OS.
I’m not saying Java is a bad or limited language, mind you. I just mean that on the iPhone you can code in more than one language.
Just as you can use HTML/CSS/JS for iphone apps, you can use the same for Android apps as well.
That’s pretty much the best option for cross platform mobile development. A HTML5 web app can be developed and deployed to the iPhone, Android, WebOS and Windows Phone 7 (when it is released)
You’re right, but I was specifically referring to so-called “native” apps, i.e. apps that don’t depend on the web browser, and that have access to the device’s APIs.
I agree though, in most cases what these devices are designed for can be accomplished with web apps, and all the major platforms now have (or will have very soon in WinMo’s case) capable browsers.
You do have access to native APIs using something like PhoneGap or Appcelerator Titanium, and they are cross platform.
Using HTML5 & JS and these tools, it is possible to make moderately complex cross platform apps.
Of course, this won’t cover everything, especially apps that are much more complex. But I firmly believe that such complex apps should be developed using native tools.
You keep getting modded down for bringing up the inconvenient truth that you can deploy cross platform apps to the iPhone via web apps.
This New York Post article is link bait…
Reporting that some bureaucrats are “Thinking” about whether they should investigate. And not even that far, more like, “Hey should we get John over at the DoJ to look at this or Phil at the Federal Trade Com. to have a look?”
Wow! The real story here is that there are bureaucrats thinking.
.
The NYP has never been known for its editorial standards, and I’m a little disappointed that such an article was put on the main page. Linking to the NYP for news is like linking to The Sun.
But hey, in this day and age, the infotainment biz is always a step ahead of serious journalism.
You do have to have to realise that me being Dutch and all, I’m not familiar with the standings of US media. Apart from the big names (WSJ, NYT, etc.), it’s impossible for me to know who’s reputable and who’s not.
I hadn’t realised you wouldn’t have known that, I should have warned you. The article seemed iffy right away, and if some official announcement were due in a few days (as the article stipulates), then I was happy to wait.
Don’t feel bad, Thom. I was born and raised here in the U.S., and I can’t tell which sources are reputable either. I tend to stick to Associated Press, Reuters and NPR to stay informed.
True, true! My apologies, I should have thought of that when I worded my comment. After all, it is the Internet, not the Uninet.
I had to read through the article more than once to realise that there really was no news there. Just some water cooler gossip about routine gov. work where Apple and Adobe’s name came up.
The NYP article is FUD, but that is not to say that an investigation will not at some point in the future occur, also the discussion about Apples obsession with control is the discussion most people want to voice out about.
But as stated in the article, there are many other reasons to have the antitrust look at Apple’s policies.
Before the iPhone getting any updates for my phone would have been a miracle. Apps for a phone were really hard to find, i used to use handango, but the apps where sometimes not quite right on my phone etc. The app store + itunes has brought apps to the phone market in a big way, along with proper upgrades to the phones OS.
I don’t see the problem in Apple wanting to ensure apps are released as top quaility as they can ensure. Sure there are some crummy apps on the app store (something apple cannot do anything about, as the app store is open), but at least the under pinnings of the crappy app are in a native format. Java apps on phones used to be a nightmare, slow clunky and buggy. I can see what some developers might want to use the flash tools to cross platform, however as pointed out, if apple were to introduce a new feature then the developers would have to wait for the 3rd party tools to be updated and even then they might not take advantage of it, as platform x doesn’t yet support it. I think apple are trying to push developers to take advantage of the new technologies introduced with each OS revision.
As for the platform itself, yes you do have to own a mac, but a mac mini can be picked up for peanuts and Visual Studio professional (not the expresses, as they are missing features for serious development) is about the same in cost and sometimes a little more. The dev tools are the mac are freely available.
“I don’t see the problem in Apple wanting to ensure apps are released as top quality as they can ensure.”
Do you really believe that it’s Apple’s intention here? I do not think this is Apple’s point. I think that they fear developers putting their AAA, system seller, app on other handsets and help their sales. Simple reasoning: they want exclusive Apps that can only be found on their handsets.
Let me ask you this. Is the iTunes App Store broken for you right now? Void of any top quality app that really makes great use of the iPhone? All software you see on there right now was developed without this new restriction on programming languages used.
You might even have played games or used applications that make heavy use of “banned” technologies… LUA (or other scripting languages) or 3D app that used the Unity3D engine… such applications would not be accepted now because of that new restriction.
Edited 2010-05-04 10:09 UTC
You could go even cheaper and build or convert an existing machine into a Hackintosh for development purposes. I’ve found that Xcode installs and runs just fine on my system. Of course, if you object on a moral or legal basis then it may be worth the extra few hundred for the Mac mini. In fact, the newest ones with the nVidia chipsets are amazing little machines for the money; I’d swap my Hackintoshed beast for one in a heartbeat, and I have similar specs with much greater expandability.
Doesn’t the latest version of Virtualbox also support OS X as a guest now? If that works it’d be even cheaper, as all you’d need is a copy of OS X and you could be up and running.
I could be wrong – often am – but I think it only supports OSX virtualisation on a Mac.
You are right, and I was a bit disappointed when I saw that. But, I guess that keeps it somewhat within the bounds of Apple’s SLA i.e. it is ultimately still running on a true Mac.
I will be surprised if this supposed anti-trust action was pursued and astonished if it succeeded as Apple is not selling a product that is a monopoly in any market or market segment (with the possible exception of the iPod but I can’t see any monopoly practices there).
Apple’s approach to the App store and the banning of cross platform development tools should be seen in the context of the fundamental revolution currently taking place in the realm of computing and information technology. This revolution is the move from the desktop to the mobile device as the primary computer technology and it is associated with a closely related secondary revolution which is the move from the mouse/keyboard interface to the finger/touch interface. We are at the beginning of this revolution and there is everything to play for, by the time the revolution will have run its course the old desktop computing configuration will still exist but will be a minor player (in economic terms) compared to the mobile space. All the big bucks in the next five to ten years are going to be made in the mobile space (compare HP’s total revenues and profit margins on PC sales to Apples revenues and margin’s on iPhones).
In this new mobile space the first major player out of the gate was Apple – for many reasons, including Steve Job’s willingness to see and embrace the new, its very strategic and cohesive corporate management and the way the company has always had expertise in developing software and hardware into new devices. Apple’s first move into this new phase of computing was the iPod and since then Apple has systematically rolled out one iDevice after another building a huge and profitable presence in the new mobile sphere. So far the only other major player to follow them has been Google. Microsoft is nowhere and its dependence on the old desktop monopolies will almost certainly mean it will be a marginal player in the new mobile markets (but time will tell). HP have bought Palm because it can see the way the wind is blowing and so may be a player (time will tell).
Apple have the right industrial design skills, they have the best retail distribution and support apparatus for the new devices and they have tremendous corporate focus on strategic implementation. And these factors have all helped Apple to succeed in the new mobile space. But the key factor in Apple’s success in this new mobile space is to build devices that ordinary consumers find attractive and easy to use. It sounds so simple but it is actually so very hard to do.
Apple have understand what consumers want. They want sleek design but they also want utterly dependable little devices which come on instantly, stay on a for a long time running on batteries with the minimum of fuss, can be operated from day one with out reading a manual and (and this is one of the most important features) devices that are safe.
Safety is so important because the most wide spread consumer experience of the previous desktop phase of computing was of being not safe. Computers crashed all the time, data was lost, viruses attacked, purchased programmes were ridiculously expensive and often crap and often fucked up your computer. The whole experience for the huge majority of computer consumers (who are not techies) was a bad experience, a fearful and stressful experience. Who wants that in their pocket – its bad enough in the den or the office.
So the Apple approach to iDevice app development is to put a great big safety sieve on the whole process by being a gate keeper to all apps (except for those installed by the tiny minority of techies willing to hack their devices). Now iDevice consumers know they can easily download and install and uninstall endless inexpensive apps in almost complete safety. When was the last report of an iPhone app being sold that crashed the iPhone?
The result was the almost instantaneous and explosive appearance of an entirely new and huge market – the app market. Once consumers knew it was easy, cheap and above all safe to buy the apps they did so in their millions and bought billions.
Apple also knows that because the new mobile market is going to develop so incredibly fast – it really is going to be a tsunami of technical change in the next five years – that in order to stay ahead of the game it must roll out a steady stream of iDevice upgrades (hardware and software and remember how closely they are intertwined) as well as new categories of iDevices. In order to do that it must be sure that the whole app developer ecosystem will follow and quickly implement the changes as they are rolled out, and support the new devices as they appear. Apple has given developers very good and relatively inexpensive tools to develop for the iDevices but Apple has a long history with much to learn from, and one recurring theme in that history is that when ever Apple has lost control of the development process to third parties it has suffered very badly. So now that it is supremely important at this moment of maximum business opportunity and threat, this moment of revolution, to ensure that the Apple iDevice ecosystem is the best and biggest the one thing it will not allow is a third party coming in and sitting between it and its developers. The disruptive threat is just too big.
Personally I have no problem with their approach. If people don’t like Apple devices buy a device built using a different system. Apple’s approach is not monopolistic (i.e. preventing other people selling better products though a domination of a market) but competitive (make better products and get them to market first).
I hope they succeed because if the new mobile space ends up being just like the old tedious desktop space I think I would truly weep.
How about iPhone SDK? They had competitors and they just wish them out of business by changing the dev agreements… How is that not creating a monopoly? The simple fact that you, I, or the mass market consumer isn’t interested in buying iPhone software toolkits doesn’t mean that they aren’t a real market that has (again, until Apple killed them) several competing forces. (Bah. I had to edit. I’m horrible about using the structure “Just because ….. doesn’t mean that ….”. It doesn’t make any sense.)
Edited 2010-05-04 12:07 UTC
But Apple are not insisting that developers use their SDK just that they use the official Apple API’s and use them directly.
The actual new restrictive clause reads as follows:
“3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”
They are only insisting that developers use Apple approved publicly available API’s and must use a certain range of programming languages. It seems to me that if you want to ensure the maximum stability for your platform then banning unofficial API’s is a good idea. Similarly if you want to make sure that new features introduced into the iPhone OS or new iDevices are supported by developers as soon as possible preventing the spread of unofficial API’s or unofficial extra programming stacks sitting above the API’s ( which may well not support new features from Apple) is perfectly sensible and not very objectionable.
Are people really arguing that Apple insisting on developers only using officially approved API’s is somehow a threat to freedom or a monopoly practice? That would seem a bit of stretch to me.
This is a direct targeted attack on all of their competitors. You cannot, with this phrase in the dev agreement, use a flash or c# to iPhone compiler even if the code that it makes uses only Apple-documented APIs to the system.
Edited 2010-05-04 12:37 UTC
Actually, that is not correct either. Suppose you write an application that can access the maps API to find addresses, pinpoint your location, etc., what Apple wants is for that program to access those APIs directly, not through some compatibility layer. Basically to get from point A to point B you shouldn’t have to go through point C.
Adobe and Mono could write a developer program that makes development easy, that also contains cross platform compilers, but when you compile for the iPhone it accesses the APIs directly and creates the appropriate code that could be edited manually if desired.
The problem is right now if you develop a program using Adobe Flash for the iPhone, you call Flash’s instructions from your program, which then calls the Apple API. Apple wants to avoid this. If for some reason they need to change that specific API they could just tell developers to change the affected code and recompile. If developers were using a product like Flash to develop they would have to wait for Adobe to release an update which could be the next day, the next month, or even the next year. Apple doesn’t want to be held to another companies update schedule to keep progressing.
The problem is that such statement by Apple is too broad.
What if I wrote my OWN portable scripting tool, your step C, and I developed my applications with that tool as I optimized it for multiple platforms?
By those licensing terms my apps built with my own scripting tool would not be allowed.
You say… you cannot use a “step C” to go from A to B… Apple could change its public API’s… I think you see the flaw in your reasoning now…
Since I developed “step C” it is fair to give me the burden of updating it to reflect Apple’s changes. Even without using my fictitious scripting language I would have to update my app if Apple changed the SDK anyways.
Also, you said:
“Apple doesn’t want to be held to another companies update schedule to keep progressing.”
Why would they be slowed down by other companies’ update schedules? Because of developers’ backlash?
The irony here is almost delicious… so, Apple keeps on upsetting developers to avoid upsetting them if they change the SDK and the middleware provider does not update its middleware fast enough?
Even if that were true, and it is not IMHO, it sounds so paternalistic and patronizing to make it quite upsetting.
If a middleware provider does not react to Apple’s changes the developers using that provider will bitch and moan to such provider and not Apple…. and such provider will lose its userbase, not Apple.
Also, I am afraid that people are letting their negative feelings for Adobe and their development practices (and the pace they update the Flash player at) into this… this is not just an Apple vs Adobe thing… not unless Apple changing the clause to mention Adobe specifically.
Edited 2010-05-04 14:06 UTC
That is fine for developers that know where the problem lies, but that is not fine for the end user that knows nothing of the development process. All they would know is that Apple comes out with an update and all of sudden several of their apps stop working, they would bitch and moan to Apple not the developers. Apple’s primary customer is the end user, not the developers.
Look, this is not dependent on me using a middleware or writing my App originally in C/C++/Objective-C only. You, the user, are not any safer if I use my own scripting language to code my iPhone App or if I code it in Objective-C directly. What makes you think that?
If Apple makes a big change to a public API, my application WILL break or malfunction if the change in the API produces some nasty side-effect in my App’s logic.
Whether through a middle layer or using Objective-C code directly, my App will use Apple’s public API expecting them to behave a certain way. If Apple changes those API’s significantly, my App will break regardless if there was a middle layer calling those API’s or not.
Developers are given SDK and OS “stuff” way earlier than end user are… it is to make sure our App are prepared for the API changes.
Apple’s primary customer is the end user, but it’s quite a lot thanks to third party developers if the platform is that appealing to those users.
“There’s an App for that” slogan… should tell you that Apple knows that too… if you add “… only on iPhone” you get a little bit closer to the way Apple thinks IMHO
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Edited 2010-05-04 15:31 UTC
Remember the history – and Apple has a lot of history and you can be sure that Steve Job’s in particular knows every bit of that history and has assimilated every lesson is has to offer.
History Lesson One: Apple makes lots of big changes and moves fast. Just think only five years ago Apple kit ran on PowerPCs, iPods didn’t do video and nobody had heard of an iPhone, a touch interface or an iPad. In the next five years (as we leave the age of the desktop) Apple will probably move even faster and make even bigger changes. When it makes its changes it wants its developer community to be able to keep up by just ticking a tick box like they could with the switch to Intel if they were using Xcode to write their apps. Apple doesn’t want anybody slowing down their developers so they cannot keep up with the changes.
History Lesson Two: We have all been here before. This is quote from John Gruber at Daring Fireball – great example of the sort of past experience that is shaping Apples current position.
“One such “painful experienceâ€, from Apple’s perspective, would be Metrowerks’s PowerPlant framework. PowerPlant was a GUI toolkit and application framework for the classic Mac OS, which shipped with Metrowerks’s CodeWarrior compiler and IDE. It was very good, and very popular — many popular Mac apps were built using the PowerPlant framework.
The problem came several years later, with the move to Mac OS X.1 PowerPlant wasn’t designed with Mac OS X in mind, and didn’t take advantage of Mac OS X’s latest advances. For example, Carbon Events support didn’t come to PowerPlant until 2004. There was no easy or straightforward way for PowerPlant-based apps to make the transition to best-of-breed native Mac OS X apps. Leaving Cocoa aside, PowerPlant apps couldn’t take advantage of the latest and greatest the Mac OS X Carbon APIs had to offer.
Now, the comparison isn’t quite apples-to-apples, because one of the biggest differences between classic Mac OS and Mac OS X is that classic Mac OS didn’t have a built-in One True App Framework like Mac OS X does with Cocoa. (And, it’s worth emphasizing that Carbon was a first class toolkit for Mac OS X for the first half of the decade — Cocoa wasn’t really officially positioned as the One True Framework until, arguably, WWDC 2007, when Apple abruptly cancelled 64-bit Carbon, which had been announced for Mac OS X 10.5 just 9 months earlier at WWDC 2006.) The Metrowerks developers who created PowerPlant couldn’t have foreseen Carbon and Mac OS X, let alone foresee Cocoa, and the Mac developers who decided to use PowerPlant weren’t spurning any sort of “No, this is what you should be doing†advice from Apple.
But because PowerPlant (a) was popular and (b) didn’t keep up with the latest platform advances in Mac OS X, it became an anchor attached to Apple, which slowed them down. Apple expended significant time, money, and effort trying to support PowerPlant developers and bring them forward to where Apple wanted to take the platform.
So my comparison here isn’t to say that PowerPlant was bad or that developers who depended upon it did anything wrong. Rather, it’s that Apple learned that there were significant risks to letting any technology get between Apple’s APIs and third-party developers. Apple couldn’t fix PowerPlant. They couldn’t port it to Mac OS X themselves. It was out of their hands, and Motorola (which bought Metrowerks in 1999) had other priorities.”
“Safety is so important because the most wide spread consumer experience of the previous desktop phase of computing was of being not safe. Computers crashed all the time, data was lost, viruses attacked, purchased programmes were ridiculously expensive and often crap and often fucked up your computer. The whole experience for the huge majority of computer consumers (who are not techies) was a bad experience, a fearful and stressful experience. Who wants that in their pocket – its bad enough in the den or the office.
So the Apple approach to iDevice app development is to put a great big safety sieve on the whole process by being a gate keeper to all apps (except for those installed by the tiny minority of techies willing to hack their devices). Now iDevice consumers know they can easily download and install and uninstall endless inexpensive apps in almost complete safety. When was the last report of an iPhone app being sold that crashed the iPhone?”
Apple also understand that another feature selling their devices and one of the things people buy an iPhone for are the Apps… the third party apps that developers make and which are mistreated by this latest policy change.
Also, I like the iPhone and all… I agree that the App Store, while having some obvious bottleneck issues, does have major benefits for lots of consumers. Still, liking the App Store and the iPhone platform and praising what they are achieving does not mean that everything Apple does is good and is a direct cause of the positive effects you were talking about.
You are praising the current Apple App Store and the current iPhone platform… so obviously things have worked well before this new compiler/programming languages ban took effect (it has not taken effect yet).
The restriction regarding private API’s is something I think has done less harm than good, but this new rule is just out of fear that developers will help other platforms to grow by having great apps run on Android too for example.
You could have an application with cleanly separated display and logic components. The logic components written using a very portable middleware (which makes use of say LUA, C#, etc… internally) which links against Apple’s public API’s and is well optimized for all platforms it is designed to run on. The display components would be, for example, one coded in Cocoa Touch and being designed with the iPhone in mind and the other one coded for Android’s UI system.
Such an app would be banned by the new rules and it would not be because the App is misbehaving or because it is not using the hardware efficiently. It would be banned because it also helps Android devices sell just by virtue of running on them basically.
(Yeah, cliche by now, but actually took a second to dig up the transcript).
Edit: Because the video was again presented here:
http://www.itworld.com/offbeat/105778/vintage-tech-ads-the-15-funni…
Edited 2010-05-04 13:39 UTC
The App store is a “trust” in the traditional sense that “antitrust” laws were written to make illegal.
It forces all vendors to sell through the “trust”, and buyers likewise are forced (through legal and technical means) to go through the “trust” in order to buy from any vendor in the marketplace.
Except it isn’t the app store that’s at the heart of this, is the development platform, and by that analogy we should be launching anti-trust investigations into governments who impose mandatory internet filters because they’re requiring we obtain our internet data through the one source.
I don’t think Apple will have any issues getting through this. Right or wrong (and I happen to think that part of the new wording shouldn’t be there) they will use a “think of the children” type defence that’s used by governments and major corporations to defend their actions and position on many things these days. It will be tied to security of the platform and being able to protect users, and they will put forward a convincing argument that has at least some basis in accepted “truths”.
It seems useful to apply antitrust law more forcefully.