Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

My observation of the current nine days' wonder is that many of the arguments are falling into a false dichotomy trap. If Apple is right, Adobe must be wrong. If Adobe is right, Apple must be wrong. If Apple is right, developers must be wrong. If developers are right, Apple must be wrong.

It's entirely fair for Adobe to be right to attempt to lock developers into the Flash platform and for Apple to be right to attempt to lock developers into the iPhone platform.

It's entirely fair for Developers to be right to want the freedom to develop any app they want, any way they want to develop it, even if in aggregate such decisions kill iPhone and/or Apple. And it's entirely fair for Apple to want to ban apps that do not further Apple's interests, compete with its own developers when it further's Apple's interests, and impede or block outright development platforms that undermine its interests.

When all the name-calling stops, the parties involved have to either search for an equilibrium where everyone benefits or choose not to play with each other.

Come on. Apple has an effective monopoly on mobile mini-computers. They have essentially created their own category, as the iphone was such a game changer. I would not consider anything pre-android or windows mobile 7 competitors, and perhaps regulators would too.

Imagine the uproar that would have happened if Microsoft had said you can only write windows apps in assembly.

It's not about Adobe. Or titanium. Or unity. It's about abuse of a monopoly in a category they created with a business decision that only serves to extend their monopoly.

In my opinion that's exactly when a regulator should step in.

Please be careful. "Oh, come on" is patronizing. Did you mean it that way?

An "effective monopoly" is not measured by market share alone, it's measured by barriers to entry. Ok, there are 130,000 iPhone apps, and that's a draw for iPhone. But how many of those are de-facto standards people cannot do without? I would argue that none are. Consider the Office Suite. What app for iPhone is just like Office Suite, one you have to have and can't get on any other mobile device?

What blocks developers fromn developing for Android, Symbian, or what-have you? Nothing. Can I buy a "mobile computer" from another carrier? Sure. Doe smy carrier (Rogers/Fido) lock me into iPhone? No, they are happy to sell me a Blackberry.

There is no monopoly.

I honestly can't see how you think it's ok for apple to try and lock people into developing for the iphone. If that's what you really believe then please explain why you think that's ok, especially that in their segment they are by far and away the market leader.

The only devices comparable at the moment are android, and with a quick search iphone have slightly more than 80% of the market.

>An "effective monopoly" is not measured by market share alone, it's measured by barriers to entry.

One such barrier to entry is the lack of cross-platform applications. Another is Apples patent portfolio. Another is metcalfes law and how it relates to revenue of application developers, and their willingness to switch. Why would developers develop for symbian when they can make a killing on iphone applications (either writing for hire or selling)?

80% share, huge barriers to entry. Are you sure there isn't a monopoly?

Replying to my own post I know :)

Remember Apple are attacking this market in multiple directions: The have the ipod touch, iphone and ipad. Most applications written for them run across all devices. They are using a cunning take on cross-product economies of scale to further distance themselves from the competition due to lower costs and market saturation (ipod touch now outselling iphone for example). An ipX in every pocket? That's the dream.

Taking this into account we now have an 88% market share.

So apple have larger economies of scale which can drive profit high while keeping prices low.

You ask a good question. My understanding is that 80+% market share is not a barrier to entry even when there are strong incentives for developers to develop for iPhone.

The barrier to developing for other platforms will come down to the question of whether banning Flash apps and/or compiling Flash to Objective C effectively monopolizing applications.

I personally do not think so, but I am not a jurur.

As long as Apple permits the time-honored method of writing an application in C with #ifdef iPhone sprinkled throughout, there is no obstacle to writing one application that compiles for two or more platforms.

What they are trying to prohibit is writing one program that compiles for one platform (Flash) which happens to run on two or more mobile operating systems. They are not raising barriers to developing applications on multiple platforms, they are raising barriers to creating a new application platform that commoditizes their hardware by turning it into a rendering device on equal footing with its competition.

The difference between #ifdef and writing for Flash may seem small, but it comes down to information hiding. Flash insulates the developer from Apple's API. A FLash developer is free to know nothing about an iPhone or Android or anything else. He is a Flash developer. If Flash doesn't support some feature like detecting when the phone is shaken, the Flash developer may be blissfully unaware

A #ifdef programmer learns two or more platform APIs. Such a programmer is an iPhone developer. Even if they consciously try to avoid using features that are not present on all the platforms they target, they are probably aware of them and how much better their iPhone app could be if it used them.

I appreciate that you hold an opinion that Apple should be legally barred from trying to force people writing applications that happen to run on iPhone from being iPhone developers in the sense I describe, but I certainly can't fault them for trying.

If I were apple I would do exactly the same thing :)

> lock people into developing for the iphone

You're saying that Apple is preventing you from developing for Android?

In fairness to the person questioning my post, while Apple does not prevent it absolutely, there is a question of degree.

I am writing a Go game for "mobile computers." When I set out to do so, I had a variety of options available to me, and I selected web application as best for my purposes.

Apple is absolutely reducing the number of options for developing applications on multiple platforms available to the developer. Clearly there are still some left, so no they are not preventing it but in some sense they are hampering it.

That may not be enough to be considered anti-competitive, and they may not have a monopoly, but I certainly appreciate that developers may not like it. But not liking something doesn't mean it's wrong or illegal.

If Apple starts bundling a Go application with iPhone I won't like that either!

>I certainly appreciate that developers may not like it. But not liking something doesn't mean it's wrong or illegal.

This is what I think is lost by so many here and elsewhere. I personally don't like the licensing change, but I don't think it's illegal or immoral. That's the attitude that I can't stand. The argument shouldn't be "They can't do that!", it should be "they shouldn't do that, it's dumb".

I'm not sure that it is in the best interest of Apple in the long term to limit the toolkits developers can use. But those are the terms of playing ball with Apple. I suspect that most developers will just abide by the new rules, but Apple is setting itself up to miss out on some apps because of it. I think they just calculated that they have enough critical mass to not care.

80% of the market? Where does that come from? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone RIM's blackberry still has more market share than Apple.

Is the ipod touch a smartphone?

Unfortunately for your argument, they do not have a monopoly in the smart-phone market. They do have a monopoly in the iPhone market, but then again regulators don't look so narrowly when determining anti-competitiveness.

Re: "effective monopoly". Your comment reveals that you do not understand how antitrust/competition law works.

In order to define a monopoly, you need to define a market. In your comment, you define the market as "mobile mini-computers". I have no idea what this means. Do you? I mean, are you able to articulate your definition of the market in terms that a court would accept?

Short version: Apple doesn't have a dominant position in any market other than the market for Apple products. That is not an antitrust/anti-competition scenario.

You need to read up on this subject.

Market definitions are tested in court, and there would be a good case to have a tight definition here.

My definition would be a somewhere along the lines of mobile computer, not necessarily a phone, with a centralised application store. Note that because of the ipod/ipad they are in a different market than a smartphone. I think this is entirely justified. And Apple rules this market.

I don't think you know how much careful thought goes into market definitions in antitrust cases. It's a lot more than what you presented there! They would laugh you out of court, frankly.

Apple's trying to use its near-monopoly of the handheld software delivery channel to perpetuate its near-monopoly of the handheld software delivery channel. I doubt this is illegal and I don't think it means anything to say that its somehow "right" or not in any universal sense.

But it pisses me off. (It pisses me off because, a priori, I don't think business should be done that way -- but the reason why is sort of beside the point.) And if I can help make even a tiny amount of trouble for Apple over it I'm definitely going to.

The end.

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