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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 wh

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 allowed to place pretty heavy licensing requirements on game publishers (so strict you can't actually know them without handing over a lot of cash). I tend to agree with antitrust action most of the time, but it seems that platform owners should be able to have some say over their platform direction, if they honestly think that doing so is good for their business. Whilst they don't have a monopoly in the market, and there is plenty of choice for consumers, what benefit does the public get from forcing people trying the "Closed is better" business model to open up to direct competitors (who, depending on what you believe, might seriously damage the experience for end users)? If the market dislikes the closed system, it will fail. If it grows to be dominant, then sure - anti-trust seems reasonable. But whilst competition is thriving, it seems heavy handed to rule out certain business models.

houseabsolute 16y ago
The main way they're different is that people have always expected consoles to be walled gardens. They have expected the same things of phones, but because the developer of this phone is Apple, they thought that the model would be more similar to the way desktop applications are developed. The only significant difference is one of expectations.
- archgrove 16y ago
  But "I expected it to be different" doesn't seem like a sound legal foundation for anti-trust action. In many ways, the iPhone has been the founding of "open" phone development. Prior to the iPhone, there was virtually no real development allowed on phones that achieved any levels of success (carriers had the platform locked down hard). Post iPhone, we've seen actual competition in this space - the entirely open Android strategy (though their App Store also has restrictions, they just apply them post-release rather than pre-release); the semi-closed iPhone and Nokia Ovi models, the web app model of all the platforms. People claiming that Apple has created a locked-down environment have very short memories - even the closed nature of the App Store via 3.3.1 would have been considered insanely open only 5 years ago. Google have bet that unfettered platform mutability with (almost) totally free development is good for their business model. Great, and more power to them. Apple have bet that allowing a freeforall would cause their business model damage; OK, that's their call. Other platform holders are trying other strategies. The point being, the free market seems to be about allowing them to try these ideas, and fail if consumers don't like them. Whilst Apple are nowhere near a monopoly on smartphones (and they're frankly miles away from one), they should be free to adopt whatever model they think works best for them.
  - houseabsolute 16y ago
    > doesn't seem like a sound legal foundation for anti-trust action . . . Don't get me wrong. I'm right with you there.
  - gdee 16y ago
    >> Prior to the iPhone, there was virtually no real development allowed on phones that achieved any levels of success (carriers had the platform locked down hard). cough The development for mobile phones partially sucked (and still does, partially; it's in the nature of the beast I suppose, for now) before the iPhone, but I don't know about it being not allowed. You have to draw a distinction between so called feature-phones and smart-phones here. Feature-phone dev was and still is largely restricted (not to mention uninteresting from most POVs) but the same cannot be said about smart-phones. Seeing how the iPhone is supposed the be a smart-phone, we should compare it to those I think. And to that end, I seem to remember writing mobile apps for Windows Mobile and Symbian long before the iPhone existed. Some of that writing didn't even suck that much and I definitely didn't have to ask nobody's permission to distribute the apps. Python for S60 [1] appeared before the iPhone not to mention the c/c++ based toolchains from MS and others. Even the appstore concept is not really Apple's invention, Handango predates it by quite some margin for example. >> In many ways, the iPhone has been the founding of "open" phone development I don't know in how many were those ways. I would say it made it's (phone development) products cool (albeit not yet mainstream) for the masses, and that is very nice and respectable, but "founding" and "inventing" and "reinventing" are just hyperbole filled, marketing words that Apple touts around. >> Post iPhone, we've seen actual competition in this space - the entirely open Android strategy (though their App Store also has restrictions, they just apply them post-release rather than pre-release); the semi-closed iPhone and Nokia Ovi models, the web app model of all the platforms. A few lines up, you were talking about "phone development" and I assumed you were referring to application development because you mentioned carriers platform locks. Now you refer to appstores. Not the same thing. And even there, there was competition [2]. >> People claiming that Apple has created a locked-down environment have very short memories I would argue that it's somebody else exhibiting short memory here but I have already. >> even the closed nature of the App Store via 3.3.1 would have been considered insanely open only 5 years ago. No... it would not have been. Again, please see [2]. The thing is, we had "open for development" smart phones before the iPhone. The platforms were less cool. Some of today's platforms, that are still more "open for development" are more cool in at least some ways that the iPhone. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_for_S60 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_for_S60 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_distribution_platforms_for_mobile_devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_distribution_pl...
- rubinelli 16y ago
  AFAIK, console makers require developers to use their SDKs, but they don't care about what happens before that point in the pipeline. What Apple did was more like forcing 3D models to be created exclusively with Maya.
  - GHFigs 16y ago
    but they don't care about what happens before that point in the pipeline. They most certainly do. The difference is in their point of control. Console makers exercise far more control over who is allowed to develop for their platform, and that control extends to who is allowed to develop middleware. They may or may not have restrictions on programming languages, but they do more generally exercise a degree of control over the tools you're allowed to use. It's difficult to know exactly what is and isn't allowed, as it's all under NDA, but there are certainly some shared motives. The Xbox 360™ Tools and Middleware Program licenses professional developers of games software tools and games middleware applications to obtain full Xbox 360 Development Kits and to distribute Xbox 360 code to approved Xbox 360 developers and publishers. -- http://www.xbox.com/en-US/dev/tools.htm http://www.xbox.com/en-US/dev/tools.htm 3rd Party Tools, QA/Testing, and Localization companies can also apply for Authorized Status using the same Application. You will need to select the appropriate category from the drop-down box in the Application. -- http://www.warioworld.com/apply/ http://www.warioworld.com/apply/ Under this license program, licensees will be entitled to 1) access to development environment and technical information of "PLAYSTATION®3" which is the same as development environment and technical information that licensed game title developers have access to, 2) develop tools and/or middleware to be used in the game title development for "PLAYSTATION®3", and 3) directly provide licensed game title developers with such tools and/or middleware. -- http://www.tmstation.scei.co.jp/ps3/info_e.html http://www.tmstation.scei.co.jp/ps3/info_e.html
    - gte910h 16y ago
      >> but they don't care about what happens before that point in the pipeline. > They most certainly do. MS/Sony/Nintendo don't require licenses from all the middleware people. However, SOME of the middleware people will ostensibly want to test on the platform, so will buy the product from MS/Sony/Nintendo. If they do not wish to do so, they need not, then the end licensor of those third party toolkits/whatevers, can still use it. What Apple is doing is 1 step more: They say you can ONLY use tools made in a certain way. MS/Sony/Nintendo do not limit that.
doron 16y ago
Maybe the issue is that in order to develop for the iphone or Ipad you are forced to use the SDK which in turn requires apple hardware (MAC) and apple software (OSX) to run. software that you are also prohibited from virtualizing?
- apgwoz 16y ago
  The way I always thought Apple avoided Anti-trust is that it controls the entire stack from software to hardware. The fact that they let you develop any apps at all, for any of their platforms, is their choice which they should be able to deny at will. You as the consumer don't have to buy their things if you don't like their policies. Contrast this with Windows on any number of manufacturers of PCs. Where Microsoft went wrong is that they said, "We'll give you OEM pricing if you agree to this, this, this and this. Otherwise we'll make it difficult for you to compete." It's that sort of bullying that's a problem, because they don't own the entire stack.
  - lutorm 16y ago
    They avoided anti-trust because they have a single-digit percentage of the PC market. It seems their position with the iPhone in the smartphone market is much more dominant, though I don't know what the numbers are.
exit 16y ago
does microsoft also prohibit 3rd parties from producing compatibility layers on top of .Net?
- nkohari 16y ago
  No, as far as I know, Microsoft does not contractually obligate developers to use their tools. The .NET CLI is an ECMA standard, and there have been a few alternative languages developed for it (same as the JVM). I'm not aware of anything that would stop you from writing an XNA game using Boo, for example.
ajross 16y ago
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 platforms more expensive to develop. So yeah, I think an inquiry is an appropriate course of action here, for the same reasons it was in the 90's with microsoft. If you "tend to agree with antitrust action most of the time", but not this time, I think you might be better served by introspection than posting a defense of Apple.
- archgrove 16y ago
  But they're nowhere near "distressingly close" to a monopoly - even picking the most Apple friendly metrics, they have only 25% of the smartphone market, with Android constantly closing the gap (and e.g. Blackberry actually ahead of them in some areas). The Wii, on the other hand, has around 50% of the current generation console market. They seem to have a monopoly on marketplace hype, I won't doubt that. But to claim they've a monopoly on smartphones is just plain wrong.
  - ajross 16y ago
    The iPhone is the first, and in some cases still the only, platform to target if you're doing anything in the mobile consumer space. RIM competes with businesses only, there is no meaningful "app market" there, nor with Windows Mobile. Android is doing well, but it remains a distant second.
  - chc 16y ago
    Wrong metric. You may as well choose "Shiny plastic devices market" as "smartphone market," because neither directly affects third-party devs. What matters here is app market, and Apple is utterly dominant there.
    - archgrove 16y ago
      So Apple has a monopoly on the iPhone app store - no great surprise there. I may as well claim that Microsoft need to open the 360 marketplace to my personal ideals, because they have a monopoly on licensing XBox 360 games. The Android app store certainly exists, and is doing quite well. The web is free for all platforms. Apple don't, by any realistic measure, have a monopoly on application sales for smartphones. They just couldn't - with only 25% of the smartphone market, and an app store that targets only that 25%, how can they have a monopoly on smartphone app publication? What they might have is a monopoly on the wealthy gadget consumer with large amounts of disposable income to spend on apps. I'm not, however, that Apple's clever demographic targeting, coupled with the inability of their competitors to eat into this market via fair competition, is reason to force them to change their business model.
ergo98 16y ago
>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) XNA requires you to target the .NET runtime. It does not dictate what tools you use to generate the assemblies. If Microsoft had a clause saying that you had to use Visual Studio Ultimate on Windows 7, they would get demolished. And you can target native, but you have to buy the expensive SDK and sign a revenue sharing agreement. That's the financial model behind consoles (where they are generally sold at a loss). Again, though, how you develop is not Microsoft's concern, and you have no limits on that, so long as you fall within the bounds of the runtime. Apple's restrictions are not at all comparable. If Apple implemented 3.3.1 as a clause that Apple will impose minimum quality levels, feature completeness (e.g. "you must use the current available features of the platform"), etc, that would be one thing and they would have been entirely within their rights to do that. That is not what they did, but instead they are saying that a super shitty, super inefficient crapshoot of an app that misuses and underuses the platform is okay, but one that is developed in a different manner is not just because.
- roc 16y ago
  The distinction Apple is making is thus: A "bad" behavior written into an app by hand may break on a new update, but it affects only itself. A "bad" behavior written into middleware may break on a new update, and may take out dozens, hundreds or perhaps thousands of apps. No-one would expect Apple to take special pains to avoid breaking a handful of random apps in the app store. But if some middleware bug effected thousands of apps, they would. To deny that is to refuse to learn from all the intentionally-protected bugs and legacy behaviors in modern desktop operating systems, that linger solely because the platform provider doesn't want to break large swaths of legacy apps.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    This justification is one of the most astonishingly vapid ones around. I'm not quite sure how it keeps getting repeated as if it has credence, when technically it has no legs to stand on. The distinction Apple is making is that they have a temporary mindspace monopoly of the smartphone markets and they want to cement it in by forcing developers to help the Apple cause.
dpifke 16y ago
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 monopoly on replacement parts for Kodak copiers, and by refusing access to parts and manuals to their competitors, they were illegally tying their parts monopoly to the market for repair service. The Court wrote: "power gained through some natural and legal advantage such as a patent, copyright, or business acumen can give rise to liability if a seller exploits his dominant position in one market to expand his empire into the next" (504 U.S. 451, 480 n.29 (1992)). In the case of video game makers, you may have a case if e.g. Microsoft took active steps to prevent someone like EA from creating their own version of Xbox Live (since the market for games is different than the market for online services), but I don't believe that's the case.
- ahoyhere 16y ago
  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 saying that they have quality standards for the ways apps are made. It's as if Wal-Mart said to their (potential) vendors: Company X's factory equipment does not meet our quality standards. We refuse to stock goods made with Company X's factory equipment. So if you use Company X's factory equipment, we will not stock your goods. This is hypothetical, but Wal-Mart does use its extreme leverage to get conformity of all sorts out of its supplies, including (believe it or not) by eliminating questionable agricultural production processes. And, so far as I know, nobody has ever screamed monopoly about that. By comparison, Apple does not keep the parts (XCode) or the instruction manuals (documentation) from their competitors. They are not withholding secrets. They do not lock them out of developing for the platform in compliant ways; they do not block them from cross-compiling to cacheable web app that can also be placed on the iPhone "desktop"; they do not stop them from loading their non-compliant apps directly, outside of the store. They just will not stock their goods, in their store. Now. Are there precedents of desirable retail stores being forced to carry products they don't want to?
ehnus 16y ago
The list of requirements is made available to the developer well in advance, it isn't arbitrarily made more restrictive by first parties (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft), and every developer goes through the same submission screening process. If a game is rejected for not meeting the established criteria it happens before it has shipped -- titles aren't just pulled for no apparent reason.
tptacek 16y ago
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 fact, XNA is more burdensome on X360 developers than "3.3.1" is on iPhone developers. For the most part, iPhone devs are on a somewhat level playing field with Apple (there are clearly exceptions, but the showcase apps on the iPhone tend to come from third parties). Apple's restrictions lock developers into 95% of the same platform as Apple itself uses. XNA is a second-class citizen on the XBox 360. Microsoft does not allow random people to write full native Xbox titles.
- ergo98 16y ago
  I believe that's pretty much exactly what I said.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I'm confused, Dennis. Was I replying to you? Also, it looks like we're saying the exact opposite thing.
    - ergo98 16y ago
      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.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        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.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
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.

houseabsolute 16y ago

The main way they're different is that people have always expected consoles to be walled gardens. They have expected the same things of phones, but because the developer of this phone is Apple, they thought that the model would be more similar to the way desktop applications are developed. The only significant difference is one of expectations.

archgrove 16y ago
But "I expected it to be different" doesn't seem like a sound legal foundation for anti-trust action. In many ways, the iPhone has been the founding of "open" phone development. Prior to the iPhone, there was virtually no real development allowed on phones that achieved any levels of success (carriers had the platform locked down hard). Post iPhone, we've seen actual competition in this space - the entirely open Android strategy (though their App Store also has restrictions, they just apply them post-release rather than pre-release); the semi-closed iPhone and Nokia Ovi models, the web app model of all the platforms. People claiming that Apple has created a locked-down environment have very short memories - even the closed nature of the App Store via 3.3.1 would have been considered insanely open only 5 years ago. Google have bet that unfettered platform mutability with (almost) totally free development is good for their business model. Great, and more power to them. Apple have bet that allowing a freeforall would cause their business model damage; OK, that's their call. Other platform holders are trying other strategies. The point being, the free market seems to be about allowing them to try these ideas, and fail if consumers don't like them. Whilst Apple are nowhere near a monopoly on smartphones (and they're frankly miles away from one), they should be free to adopt whatever model they think works best for them.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  > doesn't seem like a sound legal foundation for anti-trust action . . . Don't get me wrong. I'm right with you there.
- gdee 16y ago
  >> Prior to the iPhone, there was virtually no real development allowed on phones that achieved any levels of success (carriers had the platform locked down hard). cough The development for mobile phones partially sucked (and still does, partially; it's in the nature of the beast I suppose, for now) before the iPhone, but I don't know about it being not allowed. You have to draw a distinction between so called feature-phones and smart-phones here. Feature-phone dev was and still is largely restricted (not to mention uninteresting from most POVs) but the same cannot be said about smart-phones. Seeing how the iPhone is supposed the be a smart-phone, we should compare it to those I think. And to that end, I seem to remember writing mobile apps for Windows Mobile and Symbian long before the iPhone existed. Some of that writing didn't even suck that much and I definitely didn't have to ask nobody's permission to distribute the apps. Python for S60 [1] appeared before the iPhone not to mention the c/c++ based toolchains from MS and others. Even the appstore concept is not really Apple's invention, Handango predates it by quite some margin for example. >> In many ways, the iPhone has been the founding of "open" phone development I don't know in how many were those ways. I would say it made it's (phone development) products cool (albeit not yet mainstream) for the masses, and that is very nice and respectable, but "founding" and "inventing" and "reinventing" are just hyperbole filled, marketing words that Apple touts around. >> Post iPhone, we've seen actual competition in this space - the entirely open Android strategy (though their App Store also has restrictions, they just apply them post-release rather than pre-release); the semi-closed iPhone and Nokia Ovi models, the web app model of all the platforms. A few lines up, you were talking about "phone development" and I assumed you were referring to application development because you mentioned carriers platform locks. Now you refer to appstores. Not the same thing. And even there, there was competition [2]. >> People claiming that Apple has created a locked-down environment have very short memories I would argue that it's somebody else exhibiting short memory here but I have already. >> even the closed nature of the App Store via 3.3.1 would have been considered insanely open only 5 years ago. No... it would not have been. Again, please see [2]. The thing is, we had "open for development" smart phones before the iPhone. The platforms were less cool. Some of today's platforms, that are still more "open for development" are more cool in at least some ways that the iPhone. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_for_S60 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_for_S60 [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_distribution_platforms_for_mobile_devices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_digital_distribution_pl...
rubinelli 16y ago
AFAIK, console makers require developers to use their SDKs, but they don't care about what happens before that point in the pipeline. What Apple did was more like forcing 3D models to be created exclusively with Maya.
- GHFigs 16y ago
  but they don't care about what happens before that point in the pipeline. They most certainly do. The difference is in their point of control. Console makers exercise far more control over who is allowed to develop for their platform, and that control extends to who is allowed to develop middleware. They may or may not have restrictions on programming languages, but they do more generally exercise a degree of control over the tools you're allowed to use. It's difficult to know exactly what is and isn't allowed, as it's all under NDA, but there are certainly some shared motives. The Xbox 360™ Tools and Middleware Program licenses professional developers of games software tools and games middleware applications to obtain full Xbox 360 Development Kits and to distribute Xbox 360 code to approved Xbox 360 developers and publishers. -- http://www.xbox.com/en-US/dev/tools.htm http://www.xbox.com/en-US/dev/tools.htm 3rd Party Tools, QA/Testing, and Localization companies can also apply for Authorized Status using the same Application. You will need to select the appropriate category from the drop-down box in the Application. -- http://www.warioworld.com/apply/ http://www.warioworld.com/apply/ Under this license program, licensees will be entitled to 1) access to development environment and technical information of "PLAYSTATION®3" which is the same as development environment and technical information that licensed game title developers have access to, 2) develop tools and/or middleware to be used in the game title development for "PLAYSTATION®3", and 3) directly provide licensed game title developers with such tools and/or middleware. -- http://www.tmstation.scei.co.jp/ps3/info_e.html http://www.tmstation.scei.co.jp/ps3/info_e.html
  - gte910h 16y ago
    >> but they don't care about what happens before that point in the pipeline. > They most certainly do. MS/Sony/Nintendo don't require licenses from all the middleware people. However, SOME of the middleware people will ostensibly want to test on the platform, so will buy the product from MS/Sony/Nintendo. If they do not wish to do so, they need not, then the end licensor of those third party toolkits/whatevers, can still use it. What Apple is doing is 1 step more: They say you can ONLY use tools made in a certain way. MS/Sony/Nintendo do not limit that.

doron 16y ago

Maybe the issue is that in order to develop for the iphone or Ipad you are forced to use the SDK which in turn requires apple hardware (MAC) and apple software (OSX) to run. software that you are also prohibited from virtualizing?

apgwoz 16y ago
The way I always thought Apple avoided Anti-trust is that it controls the entire stack from software to hardware. The fact that they let you develop any apps at all, for any of their platforms, is their choice which they should be able to deny at will. You as the consumer don't have to buy their things if you don't like their policies. Contrast this with Windows on any number of manufacturers of PCs. Where Microsoft went wrong is that they said, "We'll give you OEM pricing if you agree to this, this, this and this. Otherwise we'll make it difficult for you to compete." It's that sort of bullying that's a problem, because they don't own the entire stack.
- lutorm 16y ago
  They avoided anti-trust because they have a single-digit percentage of the PC market. It seems their position with the iPhone in the smartphone market is much more dominant, though I don't know what the numbers are.

exit 16y ago

does microsoft also prohibit 3rd parties from producing compatibility layers on top of .Net?

nkohari 16y ago
No, as far as I know, Microsoft does not contractually obligate developers to use their tools. The .NET CLI is an ECMA standard, and there have been a few alternative languages developed for it (same as the JVM). I'm not aware of anything that would stop you from writing an XNA game using Boo, for example.

ajross 16y ago

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 platforms more expensive to develop. So yeah, I think an inquiry is an appropriate course of action here, for the same reasons it was in the 90's with microsoft. If you "tend to agree with antitrust action most of the time", but not this time, I think you might be better served by introspection than posting a defense of Apple.

archgrove 16y ago
But they're nowhere near "distressingly close" to a monopoly - even picking the most Apple friendly metrics, they have only 25% of the smartphone market, with Android constantly closing the gap (and e.g. Blackberry actually ahead of them in some areas). The Wii, on the other hand, has around 50% of the current generation console market. They seem to have a monopoly on marketplace hype, I won't doubt that. But to claim they've a monopoly on smartphones is just plain wrong.
- ajross 16y ago
  The iPhone is the first, and in some cases still the only, platform to target if you're doing anything in the mobile consumer space. RIM competes with businesses only, there is no meaningful "app market" there, nor with Windows Mobile. Android is doing well, but it remains a distant second.
- chc 16y ago
  Wrong metric. You may as well choose "Shiny plastic devices market" as "smartphone market," because neither directly affects third-party devs. What matters here is app market, and Apple is utterly dominant there.
  - archgrove 16y ago
    So Apple has a monopoly on the iPhone app store - no great surprise there. I may as well claim that Microsoft need to open the 360 marketplace to my personal ideals, because they have a monopoly on licensing XBox 360 games. The Android app store certainly exists, and is doing quite well. The web is free for all platforms. Apple don't, by any realistic measure, have a monopoly on application sales for smartphones. They just couldn't - with only 25% of the smartphone market, and an app store that targets only that 25%, how can they have a monopoly on smartphone app publication? What they might have is a monopoly on the wealthy gadget consumer with large amounts of disposable income to spend on apps. I'm not, however, that Apple's clever demographic targeting, coupled with the inability of their competitors to eat into this market via fair competition, is reason to force them to change their business model.

ergo98 16y ago

>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) XNA requires you to target the .NET runtime. It does not dictate what tools you use to generate the assemblies. If Microsoft had a clause saying that you had to use Visual Studio Ultimate on Windows 7, they would get demolished. And you can target native, but you have to buy the expensive SDK and sign a revenue sharing agreement. That's the financial model behind consoles (where they are generally sold at a loss). Again, though, how you develop is not Microsoft's concern, and you have no limits on that, so long as you fall within the bounds of the runtime. Apple's restrictions are not at all comparable. If Apple implemented 3.3.1 as a clause that Apple will impose minimum quality levels, feature completeness (e.g. "you must use the current available features of the platform"), etc, that would be one thing and they would have been entirely within their rights to do that. That is not what they did, but instead they are saying that a super shitty, super inefficient crapshoot of an app that misuses and underuses the platform is okay, but one that is developed in a different manner is not just because.

roc 16y ago
The distinction Apple is making is thus: A "bad" behavior written into an app by hand may break on a new update, but it affects only itself. A "bad" behavior written into middleware may break on a new update, and may take out dozens, hundreds or perhaps thousands of apps. No-one would expect Apple to take special pains to avoid breaking a handful of random apps in the app store. But if some middleware bug effected thousands of apps, they would. To deny that is to refuse to learn from all the intentionally-protected bugs and legacy behaviors in modern desktop operating systems, that linger solely because the platform provider doesn't want to break large swaths of legacy apps.
- ergo98 16y ago
  This justification is one of the most astonishingly vapid ones around. I'm not quite sure how it keeps getting repeated as if it has credence, when technically it has no legs to stand on. The distinction Apple is making is that they have a temporary mindspace monopoly of the smartphone markets and they want to cement it in by forcing developers to help the Apple cause.

dpifke 16y ago

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 monopoly on replacement parts for Kodak copiers, and by refusing access to parts and manuals to their competitors, they were illegally tying their parts monopoly to the market for repair service. The Court wrote: "power gained through some natural and legal advantage such as a patent, copyright, or business acumen can give rise to liability if a seller exploits his dominant position in one market to expand his empire into the next" (504 U.S. 451, 480 n.29 (1992)). In the case of video game makers, you may have a case if e.g. Microsoft took active steps to prevent someone like EA from creating their own version of Xbox Live (since the market for games is different than the market for online services), but I don't believe that's the case.

ahoyhere 16y ago
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 saying that they have quality standards for the ways apps are made. It's as if Wal-Mart said to their (potential) vendors: Company X's factory equipment does not meet our quality standards. We refuse to stock goods made with Company X's factory equipment. So if you use Company X's factory equipment, we will not stock your goods. This is hypothetical, but Wal-Mart does use its extreme leverage to get conformity of all sorts out of its supplies, including (believe it or not) by eliminating questionable agricultural production processes. And, so far as I know, nobody has ever screamed monopoly about that. By comparison, Apple does not keep the parts (XCode) or the instruction manuals (documentation) from their competitors. They are not withholding secrets. They do not lock them out of developing for the platform in compliant ways; they do not block them from cross-compiling to cacheable web app that can also be placed on the iPhone "desktop"; they do not stop them from loading their non-compliant apps directly, outside of the store. They just will not stock their goods, in their store. Now. Are there precedents of desirable retail stores being forced to carry products they don't want to?

ehnus 16y ago

The list of requirements is made available to the developer well in advance, it isn't arbitrarily made more restrictive by first parties (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft), and every developer goes through the same submission screening process. If a game is rejected for not meeting the established criteria it happens before it has shipped -- titles aren't just pulled for no apparent reason.

tptacek 16y ago

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 fact, XNA is more burdensome on X360 developers than "3.3.1" is on iPhone developers. For the most part, iPhone devs are on a somewhat level playing field with Apple (there are clearly exceptions, but the showcase apps on the iPhone tend to come from third parties). Apple's restrictions lock developers into 95% of the same platform as Apple itself uses. XNA is a second-class citizen on the XBox 360. Microsoft does not allow random people to write full native Xbox titles.

ergo98 16y ago
I believe that's pretty much exactly what I said.
- tptacek 16y ago
  I'm confused, Dennis. Was I replying to you? Also, it looks like we're saying the exact opposite thing.
  - ergo98 16y ago
    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.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      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.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

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.