Apple (and Google?) under investigation for anti-trust violations

[bascule]

Well isn't this strange...

 

I also feel [bascule] has no idea how many sources [banning News Corp'] would actually involve, including reporters involved virtually everyplace on Earth. He and many others, have probably unknowingly quoted sources tied to NC.

 

jackson33, you have me at an impasse. There's an article I'd like to discuss, but it's only available through News Corp outlets at the moment, specifically the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and FoxNews.com. Also, it's a rumor...

 

The New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/an_antitrust_app_buvCWcJdjFoLD5vBSkguGO

 

The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703612804575222553091495816.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop

 

And FoxNews.com: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/03/apple-adobe-flash-antitrust-investigation/

 

...are reporting that Apple is under investigation for anti-trust violations stemming from the recent policy changes it made which blocked, among other things, Flash-based applications from their app store.

 

If that's true I'm sure it would bother any free market capitalist, and it would bother me. It's Apple's device and Apple's app store. Who is the government to tell them how they can run it? Don't like it? Buy an Apple competitor's tablet.

 

I'll be interested in seeing how this all pans out, if it's true News Corp actually has a scoop here, and if not they're rumormongering against Obama. This entire story is predicated upon the anonymous testimony of "a person familiar with the matter" according to the New York Post, and I'm not sure that's a source I can trust.

[Pangloss]

In terms of the ongoing dispute between Apple and Adobe it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Both Apple and Adobe have valid points in this argument and each have a huge iron in the fire. Flash has been a wonderful enabler of content on the Web, but it's performance and its IDEs are pathetic (seriously, just try to write ActionScript in Flash CS4 after working with Visual Studio, Xcode, or even NetBeans) and Adobe has been sitting on its hands for years, though certainly giving a bravura performance as Best Impression of Symantec. On the other hand, Apple's anti-Flash policy is the very epitome of arrogance, an almost unimaginable position that would be absolutely mind-boggling if it wasn't for the fact that it actually seems to be working. The iPhone's success has produced one of the most stunning "who's laughing now" moments in the entire history of IT.

 

My greatest hope here is that the customer will win out in the end, somehow. That generally happens when companies go at each other's throats like this, but not always, so I am cautiously optimistic. We'll see.

 

 

BTW, it's not just News Corp that's reporting the Flash connection with the anti-trust rumor -- it's also being widely reported in the technology outlets and the business sector. Bloomberg claims the investigation is derived from a complaint by Adobe specifically.

 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-04/apple-policy-said-to-prompt-u-s-antitrust-allegation-by-adobe.html

[swansont]

I don't think Apple's position on Flash is the epitome of arrogance. It's a reaction to bad software and also to Adobe's history of non-responsiveness to the Mac platform.

 

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

 

Read reason 6. This is only an excerpt.

 

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

 

And as far as the iphone and ipad being closed platforms, isn't this also true of gaming consoles? If you want to write a game for playstation or the xbox, et. al, don't you have to sign an agreement with the platform owner? That's been true for decades, and nobody seems too bent out of shape about it.

[padren]

I absolutely dread flash, and consider it a last resort. The thing that bothers me, is that sometimes it is the last resort because despite how bad it is, it's still the best tool considering how much worse/harder everything else is for a job.

 

Apple is basically saying Flash is undesirable for a lot of good reasons - but that without their Infinite Wisdom developers will be led astray by Adobe and not realize they should never, ever use flash on a mobile device. I really don't like it when a company makes and effort to remove options so wayward developers are not tempted to use them, unless it's very strictly for security reasons and such.

 

A better option:

 

They should set some standards for a mobile development layer, which Adobe can bring Flash up to meet or not. Then they wouldn't be rejecting a brand, a company, or a specific tool - just setting the bar for what tools need to provide in order to be used with their platform.

[ecoli]

I think Apple is justified to treat their products as proprietary. I don't they should be surprised/ have a legal basis to punish anyone when the iPad inevitably gets cracked though. They also shouldn't expect me to buy into it!

 

are there any analogous scenarios to what Apple is doing that nobody seems to care about as much?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I don't they should be surprised/ have a legal basis to punish anyone when the iPad inevitably gets cracked though.

 

Surprise! Already done.

 

http://gizmodo.com/5530906/jailbreaking-your-ipad-how-you-can-and-why-you-should

[swansont]

If you jailbreak it, you void the warranty, but it's not like that's a new concept that applies only to Apple.

 

Analogous cases? Gaming consoles, as I have mentioned. Hell, there are many programs written for Windows that aren't available on the Mac — why aren't they cross-platform?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Hell, there are many programs written for Windows that aren't available on the Mac — why aren't they cross-platform?

That's not a function of Apple intentionally trying to keep them off, though, but rather providing different programming interfaces and different features. There are plenty of systems to facilitate cross-platform programming, and Apple hasn't intentionally tried to get rid of any of them.

[Pangloss]

I don't think Apple's position on Flash is the epitome of arrogance.

 

Perhaps a better word might have been "audacious", the point being that they took a huge risk. Which in my opinion is fantastic and a great example of what makes Apple such an interesting company. They put their ideas on the line, sink or swim. More power to 'em.

 

But "arrogant" is not far wrong either, when describing Apple's behavior in recent years. Whether it's throwing lawsuits at reporters or just generally acting like king of the hill, it's a pretty determined and ostentatious bit of corporate behavior. And people have noticed.

 

And I think they should be careful about that, because to a lot of people they really are not "all that". The iPhone has certainly been successful, but it's a huge divider -- people either absolutely love it or they completely loathe it. Bring it up in a conversation and you're as likely to get one as the other. I've even heard people decry iPhone owners as idiots and fools. It's a really stark contrast, and it seems to be as much about Apple as it is anything about the device -- often the most vehement detractors seem to have never even used one! (Or so it seems to me.)

 

Where I think Adobe has had a valid point is in the nature of the iPhone being proprietary as well. Jobs addressed this point in his open letter when he focused on the advantages of having data formats be open, but the same can be said of operating systems, software distribution schemes, and just about everything else associated with computing. There's no proven dividing line that says that X technology should be open but Y technology should be proprietary.

 

But personally I think Apple has this one right, and should stick to its guns, arrogant or not. They should drop that silly lawsuit against the Gizmodo guy, but this they should stick to like glue. My two bits, anyway.

[swansont]

Apple remembers depending on others to keep their software platforms up-to-date, and how it cost them.

http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr10/PlatformControl.html

 

 

Apple doesn't have a lawsuit against "the Gizmodo guy." They filed a criminal complaint, and the police executed a search warrant. Under California law, the iphone in question is considered stolen property — the law is pretty clear on this. Gizmodo bought stolen property, which is why they are in trouble.

[bascule]

If you jailbreak it, you void the warranty

 

For what it's worth, if you jailbreak it and know what you're doing, even if you completely trash the OS installation you can always factory restore the iPhone (using a built-in Apple feature, DFU mode)

 

In wish case... how is Apple any the wiser? They'll still have to honor the warranty. The only problem arises if you physically damage a jailbroken phone.

[jryan]

Or you get so comfortable with your jailbreak iPad that you forget it's actually a jailbreak iPad when you take it in for service a few months later.

 

I'm surprised that Apple hasn't just written their own flash compatible plug-in by now. That's what Microsoft would have done!

[Pangloss]

Gizmodo bought stolen property, which is why they are in trouble.

 

Unless the DA only took interest when Apple kicked them in the rear.

[bascule]

This was an interesting op ed:

 

http://robertreich.org/post/572112065/apple-isnt-the-problem-wall-streets-big-banks-are

 

This guy wonders if the "people familiar with the matter" are correct and the FTC is really going after Apple, why are they doing that instead of going after the Wall Street financials?

 

On the other hand, the four largest U.S. financial institutions are so big and the rest of the economy so dependent on them that if one of them makes a bad decision it can take us all down. Between them they hold more than $7 trillion in assets, over half the size of the entire U.S. economy.

 

So why is the FTC nosing around Apple and not around Wall Street? Because the Federal Trade Commission Act allows the agency to stop “unfair methods of competition” almost anywhere in the economy except in the financial sector. Banks are explicitly excluded.

[swansont]

Unless the DA only took interest when Apple kicked them in the rear.

 

I think the DA (or someone in the system) automatically takes notice when you report property as stolen, especially when you know who ended up with it. Since it was Apple, I assume the case landed/moved higher in the food chain, but that's probably going to happen to any high-profile case.

[bascule]

Apple is basically saying Flash is undesirable for a lot of good reasons - but that without their Infinite Wisdom developers will be led astray by Adobe and not realize they should never, ever use flash on a mobile device. I really don't like it when a company makes and effort to remove options so wayward developers are not tempted to use them, unless it's very strictly for security reasons and such.

 

Apple has some very good reasons for not supporting Flash, namely emphasis on user experience. They don't want the app store or its review process inundated with a bunch of Flash shovelware. They want people writing apps for the iPhone/iPad to focus exclusively on these platforms and create the best user experience they can.

 

At the same time, the iPhone/iPad do support open development in the form of HTML5/JS, a vendor-neutral standard similar to Flash, except with substantially better performance. In fact, it seems Apple has singlehandedly catapulted HTML5 to critical mass. HTML5 provides several key features which were missing from browsers which the Flash plugin was previously the only solution to. In this regard, by eschewing Flash, Apple is doing everyone a service by forcing them to choose an open alternative.

[padren]

Apple has some very good reasons for not supporting Flash, namely emphasis on user experience. They don't want the app store or its review process inundated with a bunch of Flash shovelware. They want people writing apps for the iPhone/iPad to focus exclusively on these platforms and create the best user experience they can.

 

At the same time, the iPhone/iPad do support open development in the form of HTML5/JS, a vendor-neutral standard similar to Flash, except with substantially better performance. In fact, it seems Apple has singlehandedly catapulted HTML5 to critical mass. HTML5 provides several key features which were missing from browsers which the Flash plugin was previously the only solution to. In this regard, by eschewing Flash, Apple is doing everyone a service by forcing them to choose an open alternative.

 

Why can't they achieve this by setting specific standards for the application layer, instead of banning a specific product by name?

 

I agree we will all be better off in the long run if flash goes the way of blinky-text, but the way they are doing it is what I don't agree with. The main reason it bugs me I think is not the building of applications but the phone is becoming a means of accessing media, some of that media is in Flash and that has now been singled out by name to be unsupported via crippleware.

 

The experience may not be very favorable but then you probably don't want to play DOOM in html5 on an iphone either. If they had gone the "minimum spec standards" approach then Flash would not have made the cut, and Adobe would be the one's on the spot for their horrible product. People would be asking them if they would bring flash up to the standard or let it die in the phone market.

From a PR standpoint, and as a business move I think they took the wrong approach.

[D H]

It appears that Apple has banned *all* third party APIs and third party development tools. From the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (source: http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler):

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).

 

Smart? Maybe, maybe not. I can attest that Flash has been the number one reason that Safari crashes, and that and Acrobat was the number one reason that Safari crashed on my old and not-quite standard Mac (then again, it might have been that I had an old and not-quite standard Mac).

 

I have to wonder whether the DOJ/FTC are going after Apple because, well, they have to go after somebody; going after evildoers is there job. Banks are off-limits, and Microsoft is too big to attack.

[bascule]

Why can't they achieve this by setting specific standards for the application layer, instead of banning a specific product by name?

 

As D H noted, that's exactly what they did. They said you had to author your application "originally" in ObjC/C/C++, which precludes Flash.

 

The main reason it bugs me I think is not the building of applications but the phone is becoming a means of accessing media, some of that media is in Flash and that has now been singled out by name to be unsupported via crippleware.

 

I'm interested to see how well Flash will work on Android. Flash is designed for pointer-driven interfaces so it will be interesting to see how well Flash web sites work on a touchscreen device. I suppose Android does provide a pointer if you need it, and Flash very well may need it.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Smart? Maybe, maybe not. I can attest that Flash has been the number one reason that Safari crashes, and that and Acrobat was the number one reason that Safari crashed on my old and not-quite standard Mac (then again, it might have been that I had an old and not-quite standard Mac).

 

It's pretty strange. Flash used to work great on Mac. Then the contention over Flash on the iPhone began, and it seems like the quality of Flash on the Mac went downhill rather quickly. This only poured fuel on the fire for Apple, who can now claim that Flash is horribly unstable, which it is... on Mac, not on Windows.

 

--

 

All that said, getting Flash working properly on a mobile device seems to be an immense technical challenge, and in that regard Apple's decision may be pragmatic. Flash for Android has been delayed repeatedly, and I saw this today on Twitter regarding the current state:

 

 

Flash on Android demo crashes twice. Speaker says "What site would you like to see?" Someone says "Hulu." Speaker says, "Hulu doesn't work."

Edited May 8, 2010 by bascule
Consecutive posts merged.

[swansont]

I have to wonder whether the DOJ/FTC are going after Apple because, well, they have to go after somebody; going after evildoers is there job. Banks are off-limits, and Microsoft is too big to attack.

 

It's not clear to me that they are. This was just a rumor. I don't recall seeing any corroboration from independent sources, just repetition of the same story and commentary on it.

[Pangloss]

Microsoft is too big to attack.

 

Microsoft is not really that much larger than Apple, btw. Operating revenue of ~$58b vs ~43, and 93k employees vs 34k. Nothing like, say, Wal-Mart (~$400b, >2 mil employees), which is the regular subject of labor and environmental probes.

[bascule]

It would appear that the DOJ has launched their suit. It centers around Apple's veritable monopoly on online music sales, and not anything to do with speculation it was about the Apple App Store:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/26/technology/26apple.html

[Pangloss]

Interesting.