Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad

Someday, though, as Apple's strategy continues to unfold, and as it continues to tighten restrictions on others' ability to develop for each device, to use its dominance of one device (e.g., iPhone) to leverage market share in others (e.g., iPad), and to exert significant control over a range of devices that are nominally independent but actually inter-connected, the idea of "platform" will blur and Apple will likely have to own up to the antitrust police, just as Microsoft did with respect to the desktop OS market.

I am not an antitrust lawyer and the above may in fact be naive. Instinctively, though, the apparent arrogance behind Apple's methods of throwing sharp elbows toward competitors has all the feel of what Microsoft did in the 1990s as it used its desktop OS leverage to favor MS Office/Internet Explorer, etc. and to harm independent software vendors trying to market their apps for the PC market. Ditto for IBM before that. And, while we are at it, though no two people could possibly be so different in so many ways, it would appear that Steve Jobs has drawn his competitive (or anti-competitive) inspiration right from John D. Rockefeller, who was a control freak over his markets and who often used such control in even ruthless ways to stifle competition.

We are nowhere near the stage where Apple can seriously be declared a monopolist in any relevant market but Apple certainly seems bent on pushing the limit as it goes along its path on its quest for hegemony.

I can't. Except as a land- and power grab in the "all your toil are belong to us" category.

I can understand that Apple attempts a strategic move to avoid becoming just another platform for Flash.

I can understand that Apple may want to cut down on the number of submissions, and are assuming that those that go to the trouble of learning Objective-C/C/C++ are the "real professionals", as opposed to those who once spent a weekend learning Flash.

I can understand that Apple wants a minimum quality to their apps and are not happy when the exact same code is cross-compiled to a dozen devices: The code would probably be developed to the smallest common multiple, would look and feel bad and would not play to the iPhone's strength. In short, it would make the iPhone look bad, and users would blame the iPhone and Apple.

I can understand that Apple doesn't want a 10kB app to ship with a 1 GB translation library. (From comments I've seen elsewhere, it appears that this is how the Adobe tool does it.)

Maybe I can even understand that they might want to strengthen their nuclear law arsenal with a poison pill in case someone falls out of favor.

But: Which tools I use and how I use them is not Apple's f...ing business - I don't work for Apple, I'm an independent developer.

From my point of view, Apple has every right to be as anal retentive as they wish regarding what they accept - it is their store and their party.

But Apple has no right to any opinion whatsoever regarding how I create those deliverables - that is my business, and remains so until I submit it.

Whatever Apple is trying to achieve here, outlawing pretty much anything a developer can do to increase productivity is throwing the baby out with the bath water. I can't see this as anything else than a pure power trip ("see how we can make them jump") and a big F... Y.. from Apple to their developers.

Now whether Apple actually intended it to come across that way is another discussion.

But we have no way of knowing either way unless Apple deigns to clarify. And Apple is hardly known for being talkative on controversial issues...

[update: minor spelling, phrasing]