Can Apple be sued for its "anti-competitive" behaviours?

[Kmax82]

Actually they should help to point the platform in the right direction. If 75% of your developers are using a 3rd party library for certain functionality it seems to me that your platform is incomplete.

Eh.. I'm not sure I agree with this. Just because I would use a cross compiler doesn't mean that Obj-C and the like aren't complete, but maybe that I'm lazy because I don't want to spend the time to learn it?

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Eh.. I'm not sure I agree with this. Just because I would use a cross compiler doesn't mean that Obj-C and the like aren't complete, but maybe that I'm lazy because I don't want to spend the time to learn it?

That doesn't make you lazy, that makes you smart. Why learn another language if you can get by with what you know? This move by Apple is the height of arrogance and totally indefensible. There have been thousands of man-hours pumped in to making iPhone development accessbile to as many people as possible and this piece of shit Steve Jobs has spit in the face of the people involved. In the words of Lee Brimelow, screw you Apple.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Some Top 100 apps that already break the new TOS
DinerDash - contains Lua files that are not even compiled.
Angry Birds - contains compiled Lua files
Skee-Ball - Unity3d
Ragdoll Blaster 2 - contains Lua symbols in the executable
Zombieville USA - Unity3d
Monster Trucks Nitro 2 - Unity3d

Steve Jobs demos Tap Tap Revenge, that uses non-compiled Lua - a violation of even the current TOS and definitely ruled out in the new 3.3.1.
Source

If Steve Jobs isn't lying about the motives behind this ("intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform") then we should see many of the top apps dropped from the App store. If this doesn't happen then it's not a technical issue, it's a "Steve Jobs being a piece of shit as usual" issue.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

dp

 

[senseamp]

Wow, the issues with Adobe go back to 96...

Payback is a motherfucker...

http://innerdaemon.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/sorry-adobe-you-screwed-yourself/

It could be a mofo the other way too. If Apple doesn't succeed in killing off Flash, not having it will be a persistent disadvantage to other platforms like Android and WP7. You can bet manufacturers of these devices will be always ready to point out in ads that Apple lacks support for Flash games. Farmville and similar Flash gaming is taking off online and have built a large following. It will be a counterargument competing platforms can use to neutralize Apple's app store advantage. Sure you can have your 150K apps, but you can't have Farmville and such to go. Adobe will likely deprioritize Apple platform support now that Apple made quick work of their investment in CS5. Should Apple start losing share to other platforms, and decide they do want Flash on iPhone after all, it's not clear they will get it. In the meantime as a consumer who is picking a phone for the next 2 years, I gotta decide if I want to bet that Apple wins this war against Flash fast and all the apps written for Flash will migrate to iPhone in very near future, or that I am going miss out on Flash content for a significant portion of my device's life. Simplest solution is to avoid this whole Apple-Adobe drama entirely and get an Android device and watch from the sidelines.

 

[TheWart]

It could be a mofo the other way too. If Apple doesn't succeed in killing off Flash, not having it will be a persistent disadvantage to other platforms like Android and WP7. You can bet manufacturers of these devices will be always ready to point out in ads that Apple lacks support for Flash games. Farmville and similar Flash gaming is taking off online and have built a large following. It will be a counterargument competing platforms can use to neutralize Apple's app store advantage. Sure you can have your 150K apps, but you can't have Farmville and such to go. Adobe will likely deprioritize Apple platform support now that Apple made quick work of their investment in CS5. Should Apple start losing share to other platforms, and decide they do want Flash on iPhone after all, it's not clear they will get it. In the meantime as a consumer who is picking a phone for the next 2 years, I gotta decide if I want to bet that Apple wins this war against Flash fast and all the apps written for Flash will migrate to iPhone in very near future, or that I am going miss out on Flash content for a significant portion of my device's life. Simplest solution is to avoid this whole Apple-Adobe drama entirely and get an Android device and watch from the sidelines.

Let's see what happens first, flash running across all versions of Android smoothly or all worthwhile flash games coded for the app store and online videos displayed using html5, lol. Gonna be a toss up

 

[senseamp]

Let's see what happens first, flash running across all versions of Android smoothly or all worthwhile flash games coded for the app store and online videos displayed using html5, lol. Gonna be a toss up

Apple made the process of converting Flash games to App store all the more complicated with this recent TOS. Now they will have to be rewritten from scratch instead of recompiled in CS5. That will take a very long time, while competitors are going to be advertising that they support Flash games like Farmville and Apple doesn't. They don't need Flash supported on ALL versions of Android to do that, just the one on the devices they are selling. Gonna be another Droid Does, iPod Doesn't.

 

[TheWart]

Apple made the process of converting Flash games to App store all the more complicated with this recent TOS. Now they will have to be rewritten from scratch instead of recompiled in CS5. That will take a very long time, while competitors are going to be advertising that they support Flash games like Farmville and Apple doesn't. They don't need Flash supported on ALL versions of Android to do that, just the one on the devices they are selling. Gonna be another Droid Does, iPod Doesn't.

Yea, whatever phone brands itself as being "farmville compatible" will surely be a juggernaut. Especially as the smartphone+farmville demographics overlap so much, haha.

 

[ViRGE]

It could be a mofo the other way too. If Apple doesn't succeed in killing off Flash, not having it will be a persistent disadvantage to other platforms like Android and WP7. You can bet manufacturers of these devices will be always ready to point out in ads that Apple lacks support for Flash games. Farmville and similar Flash gaming is taking off online and have built a large following. It will be a counterargument competing platforms can use to neutralize Apple's app store advantage. Sure you can have your 150K apps, but you can't have Farmville and such to go. Adobe will likely deprioritize Apple platform support now that Apple made quick work of their investment in CS5. Should Apple start losing share to other platforms, and decide they do want Flash on iPhone after all, it's not clear they will get it. In the meantime as a consumer who is picking a phone for the next 2 years, I gotta decide if I want to bet that Apple wins this war against Flash fast and all the apps written for Flash will migrate to iPhone in very near future, or that I am going miss out on Flash content for a significant portion of my device's life. Simplest solution is to avoid this whole Apple-Adobe drama entirely and get an Android device and watch from the sidelines.

Did MS say they were going to allow Flash on WP7? They don't exactly like Adobe either...

 

[senseamp]

Yea, whatever phone brands itself as being "farmville compatible" will surely be a juggernaut. Especially as the smartphone+farmville demographics overlap so much, haha.

Farmville and smart phone app user demographics do. We are talking about entertainment apps that it comes down to, you can get GPS and Email on both platforms. It's simple, customer goes to Verizon/Tmobile store, rep asks them if they play online games, he can then say that AT&Ts iPhone doesn't play those, but our Android device does. So while your Apple guy is talking about some iPhone apps that this customer never used and won't miss, the Android guy is talking about specific games like Farmville that over 100 million people already play.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Did MS say they were going to allow Flash on WP7? They don't exactly like Adobe either...

Presumably if Adobe can create a .NET implementation there shouldn't be a problem - MS isn't well known for restricting development on their platforms. I think it would be in MS's best interests to work with Adobe, as this could be a marketing boon for them (and Android).

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Farmville and Zynga properties are all being moved to non-Flash.

 

[senseamp]

Farmville and Zynga properties are all being moved to non-Flash.

Source?

 

[Emulex]

source is because adobe is a liability.

80% of crashes and security issues = adobe product
20% java

Java is coming off today - for good. adobe reader/writed being removed and replaced with other brand for good. flash? banned. hopefully they can isolate its process asap. not sure if it will help.

The amount of money we spend appeasing the flash-lovers and java lovers is ridiculous - and anyone who needs java (not javascript) to do a webpage is lame. same with flash - adobe.com looks beautiful without flash.

Games? i grew out of games back in the late 80's - i can't comment there.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

80% of crashes and security issues = adobe product
20% java

Got a source for that? Because it sounds like pure bullshit to me.

 

[Eug]

This is Ars' take on the controversy.

 

[KeypoX]

Apple has been under investigation for anti competitive monopolistic issues. Has lost in europe and I think also in America. This had to do with fair play or something drm only working on apple devices, and itunes. I did a presentation on it in law class lol. Forget all the details though, nor do i care. Edit: I do care, but not about the details.

Since they also dominate the smart phone market i would think they could get in trouble for the stuff they are doing now. It is only a matter of time.

 

[lsquare]

Looks like things are going to get a lot worse between Apple and Adobe. It's painfully obvious now that the Adobe-Apple relationship has not only soured, but has a lot of history from it. Obviously to me and some people, Apple wants to punish Adobe for perceived lack of support when the company was in a state of weakness.

According to IT World, Adobe is set to file a lawsuit against Apple in the coming weeks as a result of the new SDK rule for Iphone OS4.

http://www.itworld.com/legal/104320/adobe-vs-apple-going-get-uglier

 

[earthman]

The only big legal question I see pending for Apple is whether their OS can be run on non-Apple hardware legally or not. Unlike Microsoft, Apple hasn't pushed out or barred other companies from the market in general, just their market. You would have to convince a court that they didn't have the right to control what software was running on their branded device, and that is a hard sell.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

The only big legal question I see pending for Apple is whether their OS can be run on non-Apple hardware legally or not. Unlike Microsoft, Apple hasn't pushed out or barred other companies from the market in general, just their market. You would have to convince a court that they didn't have the right to control what software was running on their branded device, and that is a hard sell.

What nonsense. They have used their dominant market position to push competitors out of the market. This is the definition of anti-competitive behaviour.

How did they do this? Consider this. A development studio only has limited resources with which to produce their product. With tools like Monotouch, Unity3D, Adobe CS5 and others, developers were able to build a single product and deploy to multiple platforms. Apple's new rules specifically preclude this.

Now the development team has to decide whether to develop for iDevices or the rest of the market, and due to Apple's dominant market position the iDevices are likely to win out. Therefore Apple has used a dominant market position to force out competition with arbitrary and artificial rules like 3.3.1.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

It's like the Xbox 360, PC, PS3, and Wii platforms. When a game is developed for multiple platforms, it suffers on each. When it is specifically tuned for one platform, it would be a lot better and tweaked for that platform resulting in a better game.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

It's like the Xbox 360, PC, PS3, and Wii platforms. When a game is developed for multiple platforms, it suffers on each. When it is specifically tuned for one platform, it would be a lot better and tweaked for that platform resulting in a better game.

Except that the evidence doesn't bear that out. Many of the top 100 apps on the app store were developed cross platform, on non-ObjC languages and/or used cross compilers. A couple of days ago I was hunting for some decent fitness apps and went through maybe a dozen before I found one that wasn't a complete pile of buggy, useless shit (and even the ones I decided to keep are of fairly poor quality).

So on the one hand we have several extremely high-quality cross-platform apps, and on the other we have a large proportion of native apps that are buggy piles of shit. We can conclude that there isn't a strong correlation between app quality and development environment.

And even if there was a correlation, isn't that why Apple has a quality control process? Why preclude cross-platform apps if several of the best apps on the device fall into this category? Hint: it's not because they're trying to keep quality high. Don't fall for their bullshit.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

dp sorry

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Of course the reason for this new rule in the SDK is to keep developers locked down. But the argument can be made that the reason for this SDK is so that developers keep pushing the boundaries. How would you like it if you released new features but because the code wasn't written in languages that are natively run, developers have to wait until their cross-compilers are released to take advantage of those new features?

I assume some cross-compilers or frameworks that don't really impact performance directly would not be affected by this such as the Lua framework that Tap Tap and EA games uses. But no one can really be sure about that.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Of course the reason for this new rule in the SDK is to keep developers locked down. But the argument can be made that the reason for this SDK is so that developers keep pushing the boundaries.

They would have to demonstrate that this is the case to make the argument, which would be challenging considering it's trivial to demonstrate the falsity of it. Not to mention that abstraction and indirection are tools that computer scientists and programmers have been using since the dawn of computing to push the boundaries of the craft - it works the opposite way.

How would you like it if you released new features but because the code wasn't written in languages that are natively run, developers have to wait until their cross-compilers are released to take advantage of those new features?

Welcome to the wonderful world of computer programming. It's like this on every platform.

I assume some cross-compilers or frameworks that don't really impact performance directly would not be affected by this such as the Lua framework that Tap Tap and EA games uses. But no one can really be sure about that.

You're mad. Not only are you dead wrong about Lua (which has to be compiled JIT which is among the slowest ways of executing code) but this clause specifically outlaws frameworks like Monotouch and Unity3D which have been demonstrated to generate excellent, very fast code.