Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#121

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, May 04, 2010, 12:13 AM UTC

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…

Apple's restrictions are above and beyond anything that any console maker requires. Requirements on the end product are to be expected, requirements on the specific tooling used to create the product are more unusual and potentially represent anti-competitive activity.

With respect to game consoles, Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo have their own acceptance processes, but they do not require you use a particular compiler or code in a particular language, all they care about is the end product. A lot of the multi-platform games these days are developed using tool-chains specially built for the purpose, so that, for example, the PS3 release and the 360 release are just different builds from the same code base rather than awkwardly separate development efforts as they would be otherwise. Such tools vastly ease the burden of releasing to multiple consoles and in many cases enable developers to do multi-platform releases that they would otherwise not have the resources to do.

Apple's licensing restrictions make this sort of thing impossible. You can't reasonably build a tool-chain to target, say, both iPhone and android development from the same code base. Not and live up to Apple's licensing restrictions.

And that's very much anti-competitive on Apple's part. It means that more and more people have to choose, have to be "locked in" to one particular platform.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#122

Post by InclinedPlane » Tue, May 04, 2010, 12:23 AM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #111

ahoyhere wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Yes, exactly. It's really not much different than an employer trying to maintain the highest quality employees by using race as a hiring decision.

Apple already has an extensive quality control process for iPhone apps. If they can't come up with objective criteria that they can test apps against in the approval process then they shouldn't just use prejudicial BS to try to filter out so-called low quality apps. It's anti-competitive and anti-innovative. It's nothing more than a big company throwing around its weight trying to be a bully.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#123

Post by steveklabnik » Tue, May 04, 2010, 1:56 AM UTC

ergo98 wrote: post #112

tptacek wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

> The sort of apps built with Flash are unlikely to be the sort that would need to access the multitasking API.

The sort of apps built with the iPhone SDK are unlikely to be the sort that would need to access the Flash runtime.

> See, they have the choice whether to use the toolkit or not.

See, developers have the choice whether to distribute apps via the app store or not. There's always the web.

See how that works?

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#124

Post by ergo98 » Tue, May 04, 2010, 2:49 AM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #123

ergo98 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ex…

> The sort of apps built with Flash are unlikely to be the sort that would need to access the multitasking API. The sort of apps built with the iPhone SDK are unlikely to be the sort that would need to access the Flash runtime. > See, they have the choice whether to use the toolkit or not. See, developers have the choice whether to distribute apps via the app store or not. There's always the web. See how that works?

Yes, I see that you have absolutely no comprehension of choice.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#125

Post by carussell » Tue, May 04, 2010, 3:30 AM UTC

GHFigs wrote: post #105

zacharypinter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that apply to C/C++/Objective C libraries as well? Let's say everybody is using some popular Objective C library from github and it has a bug with a new iPhone OS. Apple would then be in a position of getting that library patched and getting potentially hundreds of apps to update to the latest version of the library. Should Apple outlaw 3rd-party Objective C libraries as well?

The key difference is that if the bug is in your own code, you can fix it. This could be trivial or it could not be, but it's within your sphere of control. If the bug were in (say) Adobe's code, you could not, nor could Apple.

Fun excuse, but section 3.3.1 forbids even intermediary translation or compatibility layers under your control. So that's a line of bullshit.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#126

Post by iantimothy » Tue, May 04, 2010, 7:02 AM UTC

ewjordan wrote: post #78

archgrove wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specifics are different, no doubt - but the ethos is the same. Microsoft force you to use .Net (of some form) and their APIs because that fits their business model (i.e. ties you to the XBox). They're restricting me from using my platform portable pure C code, which is their choice. I obviously don't know, but suspect if large amounts of code started targeting XNA in a cross platform way, they'd come down on that…

Microsoft force you to use .Net (of some form) and their APIs because that fits their business model (i.e. ties you to the XBox). They're restricting me from using my platform portable pure C code, which is their choice. You're missing the point. Microsoft makes it technically difficult to write a game in a non-.net language, but (at least as far as anyone knows) it's not disallowed in their developer agreement. If y…

From what I understand, the problem was Microsoft tried to use its dominant position with Windows to achieve a dominant position in the web browser space in a manner that was considered 'unfair'.

What Apple is doing isn't trying to use its dominant position in the market for mobile applications to achieve a dominant position in the market for development tools, nor even in the market for development tools used to write iPhone applications.

Conceivably, you could use TextMate to write your code.

Conceivably, Adobe could write a better IDE than Xcode for Objective-C and Cocoa Touch programming

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#127

Post by GHFigs » Tue, May 04, 2010, 12:05 PM UTC

carussell wrote: post #125

GHFigs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference is that if the bug is in your own code, you can fix it. This could be trivial or it could not be, but it's within your sphere of control. If the bug were in (say) Adobe's code, you could not, nor could Apple.

Fun excuse, but section 3.3.1 forbids even intermediary translation or compatibility layers under your control . So that's a line of bullshit.

I said nothing about "intermediary translation or compatibility layers", nor did the post I was replying to. Please read the thread for context before posting.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#128

Post by protomyth » Tue, May 04, 2010, 3:07 PM UTC

stanleydrew wrote: post #87

protomyth wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it isn't a new behavior. Look at the history of Nintendo and the Atari 2600. Bad apps reflect on Apple, just as bad games reflected on Atari.

I meant it's new for Apple in relation to, say, OS X.

Despite all the Adobe advocacy, people blame Safari and Apple for crashing when the trace shows it was the Flash plugin. Most people don't know what did it and blame Apple. I think they are tired of it.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#129

Post by ahoyhere » Tue, May 04, 2010, 7:55 PM UTC

enjo wrote: post #115

ahoyhere wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let's compare…

Kodak wouldn't sell parts to other parties.

Apple won't sell your stuff in their store.

There's a pretty clear difference here.

Re: Antitrust inquiry into Apple over Section 3.3.1

#130

Post by carussell » Thu, May 06, 2010, 1:12 AM UTC

GHFigs wrote: post #127

carussell wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun excuse, but section 3.3.1 forbids even intermediary translation or compatibility layers under your control . So that's a line of bullshit.

I said nothing about "intermediary translation or compatibility layers", nor did the post I was replying to. Please read the thread for context before posting.

"[I]ntermediary translation or compatibility layers" is directly from section 3.3.1 and the entire reason this thread exists. Please read the primary sources for context before condescending.