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Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

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Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#111

Post by zmmmmm »

ahoyhere wrote: post #102
dpifke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercising control over a given market ("video games for Xbox" or "software for iPhones") in which you have a monopoly is not illegal, it's when you use your monopoly to push out competitors in different markets (such as "development tools" or "mobile advertising") that the Sherman Act prohibitions on illegal tying apply. In Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that Kodak had a…

Seems to me there is a big difference between 3.3.1 and the Kodak case. Apple says "this is what you have to do to be in our store," which is very different than refusing to sell people proprietary parts. Is it anti-competitive if Wal-Mart refuses to stock goods from a vendor who doesn't meet their quality requirements? If it were, all businesses would go out of business. Apple isn't competing with Adobe. They are sa…

> Wal-Mart refuses to stock goods from a vendor who doesn't meet their quality requirements

Well, that's just the point. Apple doesn't care about the quality of the application. They already have a screen for that by virtue of their control of the app store. They are refusing apps based on the technology that was used to create them. It could be the most beautiful, performant, amazing application ever written and their developer agreement rules it out.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#112

Post by ergo98 »

tptacek wrote: post #99
ergo98 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All the technical justification you need can be had from Adobe's other half, which only 3 days ago shipped their first Photoshop for Mac which doesn't use Mac OS Classic GUI APIs. Humorous given that Apple has several very prominent apps (iTunes, Final Cut Pro) that still have made the migration. And they control both sides! However that is irrelevant. Tell me again how, if Apple revises the API, that suddenly every…

Could you stop using words like "vapid", "ridiculous", and "asinine"? Developers who build on Flash can't multitask until the iPhone Flash runtime exposes the multitasking API. The developers of those applications are beholden to Adobe to get access to a core iPhone OS feature. This is not a complicated argument. Reasonable people can disagree about whether this is a valid reason to lock down the compiler toolchain f…

>Could you stop using words like "vapid", "ridiculous", and "asinine"?

No. It is what it is. You don't like it because it undermines your blatant, translucent apologism.

>Developers who build on Flash can't multitask until the iPhone Flash runtime exposes the multitasking API.

The sort of apps built with Flash are unlikely to be the sort that would need to access the multitasking API. That's a specious, ridiculous example. Your example is as logical as Microsoft banning any language but C# from ASP.NET because hypothetically it will be the first to take advantage of a new IIS feature. Thankfully most people realize how damaging and absurd such an argument is.

>The developers of those applications are beholden to Adobe to get access to a core iPhone OS feature.

NO THEY ARE NOT

See, they have the choice whether to use the toolkit or not. If it doesn't stay current, and their apps aren't as saleable because they don't take advantage of the latest innovation or use the latest instruction set or yield the best performance, developers migrate away. That's how "free markets" work.

Apple completely undermined that, yet remarkable the faithful go forth to sell the pitch despite having a complete absence of empirical standing for it.

>This is not a complicated argument.

Right. It isn't.

Honestly I'm surprised I haven't been moderated to -infinity, as Hacker News is generally a clearinghouse of pro-Apple apologism. If this place is starting to get more centrist, Apple really is in trouble (PG already alluded to this a couple of essays ago)

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#113

Post by mkramlich »

mattmaroon wrote: post #35
ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point. This is an anti-trust action. None of Microsoft, Sony or even Nintendo can be said to have the kind of dominant position in the console market that Apple does in smartphones. They're not a monopoly, but they're distressingly close. And they appear to be taking actions that can be pretty clearly seen as anticompetetive -- leveraging their dominance to make compatible applications for other pl…

Wrong and wronger. Each of the console gaming companies you mentioned has more market share in consoles than Apple has in smart phones (and Apple's share of mobile phones as a whole is trivial). While the iPhone might garner 95% of Hacker News entries, it's only selling about 15% of smart phones. (That's a lot, especially at the markup Apple gets off of it, but it's less than any of the console makers has.) Regardles…

I think the distinction that is confusing several people is that between the market for cellphones and the market for applications which run on high-end cellphones/mobiledevices. Using some of the numbers thrown around, it's the difference between saying Apple has only a 15% share of the cellphone market, vs., 99% share of the paid smartphone applications market. It's that latter market that Apple is clearly the dominant player in, and their change to the 3.3.1 could, by a reasonable person, by seen as a move to stifle development on competitive platforms. I think this is the basis for a potential investigation.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#114

Post by ergo98 »

tptacek wrote: post #98
archgrove wrote: post #8

Genuine question: How are the restrictions placed by Apple on what's allowed in the App Store any different then the restrictions placed by console owners on what's published for the XBox or PS3? For example, the XBox XNA community games system requires people to use .Net - there's no technical reason for this (the XBox is clearly capable of running native code). However, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo still seem to be allo…

There are in fact technical reasons why XNA games need to run on the CLR. The XNA CLR stack implements aspects of the security model. The fact that the 360 itself can run "native" code (in fact: hardware-managed code running in a VM) is irrelevant; Microsoft has onerous licensing and contractual agreements with the people they allow to write native games. On the other hand, anyone can write an XNA game. In point of f…

I believe that's pretty much exactly what I said.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#115

Post by enjo »

ahoyhere wrote: post #102
dpifke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercising control over a given market ("video games for Xbox" or "software for iPhones") in which you have a monopoly is not illegal, it's when you use your monopoly to push out competitors in different markets (such as "development tools" or "mobile advertising") that the Sherman Act prohibitions on illegal tying apply. In Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that Kodak had a…

Seems to me there is a big difference between 3.3.1 and the Kodak case. Apple says "this is what you have to do to be in our store," which is very different than refusing to sell people proprietary parts. Is it anti-competitive if Wal-Mart refuses to stock goods from a vendor who doesn't meet their quality requirements? If it were, all businesses would go out of business. Apple isn't competing with Adobe. They are sa…

Except that Apple owns a monopoly on iPhone application distribution. Just as in the Kodak case where Kodak had a monopoly on parts.

In the Wal-Mart case you can hardly argue that Wal-Mart owns a monopoly on consumer good distribution.

The key thing here is that there is no way to get a legitimate application (and web-apps hardly need apply) onto the iPhone without going through the Apple channel. It looks and smells like a monpoly (at least as defined in previous supreme court rulings) to me.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#116

Post by tptacek »

ergo98 wrote: post #114
tptacek wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are in fact technical reasons why XNA games need to run on the CLR. The XNA CLR stack implements aspects of the security model. The fact that the 360 itself can run "native" code (in fact: hardware-managed code running in a VM) is irrelevant; Microsoft has onerous licensing and contractual agreements with the people they allow to write native games. On the other hand, anyone can write an XNA game. In point of f…

I believe that's pretty much exactly what I said.

I'm confused, Dennis. Was I replying to you? Also, it looks like we're saying the exact opposite thing.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#118

Post by ergo98 »

tptacek wrote: post #116
ergo98 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's pretty much exactly what I said.

I'm confused, Dennis. Was I replying to you? Also, it looks like we're saying the exact opposite thing.

Sorry I didn't read the thread correctly and mistook the placement of your reply.

However yes my statement was very much the same, however questionable comparisons to the console market may be.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#119

Post by wooster »

ahoyhere wrote: post #102
dpifke wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercising control over a given market ("video games for Xbox" or "software for iPhones") in which you have a monopoly is not illegal, it's when you use your monopoly to push out competitors in different markets (such as "development tools" or "mobile advertising") that the Sherman Act prohibitions on illegal tying apply. In Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc., the Supreme Court ruled that Kodak had a…

Seems to me there is a big difference between 3.3.1 and the Kodak case. Apple says "this is what you have to do to be in our store," which is very different than refusing to sell people proprietary parts. Is it anti-competitive if Wal-Mart refuses to stock goods from a vendor who doesn't meet their quality requirements? If it were, all businesses would go out of business. Apple isn't competing with Adobe. They are sa…

Imagine if WalMart required vegetable growers to use WalMart brand fertilizer if they wanted their vegetables sold at WalMart. That seems a bit more like the current situation with Apple. It's not at all apparent that there was a quality issue with apps not programmed in Objective-C, and it's certainly not obvious to me (as an ex-Apple employee, Objective-C-coding, iPhone and iPad developer) that Apple would be able to prove in court that the license agreement is about quality rather than competitive interests.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#120

Post by tptacek »

ergo98 wrote: post #118
tptacek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, Dennis. Was I replying to you? Also, it looks like we're saying the exact opposite thing.

Sorry I didn't read the thread correctly and mistook the placement of your reply. However yes my statement was very much the same, however questionable comparisons to the console market may be.

The comparisons seem especially apt.

Microsoft: Nobody can develop first-class applications for the platform without licensing the (extremely expensive) X360 XDK, which includes an approved compiler toolchain.

Apple: Anyone running OSX can develop first-class applications for the platform using Xcode for a (very cheap) developer fee.

XNA is a red herring. It's (to use MSFT's term) a hobbyist platform.

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