IMHO, it's a real douchebag business decision, and anyone with a popular unique app should always expect Apple to screw you over with no notice and have a contingency plan in the works.
Yes! Sharecropping in the Orchard:
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2004/11/sharecropping-in-orchard...
Hopefully very few. I wrote that at the end of 2004, and it seems simpler to link to it than to repeat the same old, same old arguments all over again.
But Google will not use any of its substantial infrastructure to prevent you from doing your own business. They will still list you in the search results, offer your software in the android store, allow you to buy ads, etc. This is very different from what is happening here.
So all in all, bullshit.
Twitter wanted Google to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars for the right to search tweets. Google was paying that money, but then Twitter wanted to increase the fee and Google refused. But again, if they wanted to have their tweets indexed by google on the same terms as everyone else (i.e., for free) they could.
one email quotes an Android manager saying it was obvious to
phone manufacturers that "we are using compatibility as a club
to make them do things we want." [1]
Motorola flat-out told Skyhook that Android devices are "approved
essentially at Google's discretion," and that Moto couldn't afford
to risk its relationship with Google. Motorola also told Skyhook that
its carrier agreements require Google's apps be preloaded on its
phones, so Google's compatibility decision was doubly important --
if Motorola shipped software that didn't have Google's blessing (and
apps), it would immediately violate its contracts with carriers. [2]
[1] http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/10/internal-emails-reveal-go...
[2] http://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/google-android-skyhook-la...
Apples, oranges, and all that.
1. Skyhook didn't just want their stuff preinstalled, they wanted Google Maps taken out.
2. Google felt that the way Skyhook reported their location data (mixing WiFi/cell tower calculations and GPS data, IIRC) would have polluted their location database if they had tried to use it (the way they use the data gathered via Google Maps). Since getting that data is one of their few direct, tangible benefits from releasing Google Apps on an Android phone, it isn't terribly surprising that they'd be protective of it.
We don't know.
Frankly, I doubt Apple would give a damn about competition for a feature they plan to introduce in iOS 6. They don't care about other apps that reimplement iOS features, such as music players or (now) mail clients. Why give a damn about AirFoil?
Finally, unless you own, or no one owns, the platform on which you're developing, you're always at risk for something like this happening. This is nothing new, and it's definitely not behavior that's isolated to Apple.
If you're developing apps for a platform you want to be in one of two positions:
1. The app is secondary to whatever service you're providing (eg the Facebook app on iOS); or
2. You're developing games.
Everything else has to walk a fine line between failing and being successful enough that it gets absorbed into the platform.
Apple is just like everyone else in this regard. No platform owner is going to ignore something that they decide has become of critical importance to their platform. It's simply a fantasy to assume otherwise.
If you're not in one of those two categories you're basically hoping to be the lucky one who gets bought out (eg the official Twitter mobile client).
Microsoft built a big developer base in part by not totally screwing them over. But looking at iOS, maybe they shouldn't have bothered.
Ah, so that's why FireFox and Chrome were banned from Windows. Oh wait they weren't.
Ah, so it must be why the Amazon Appstore for Android can't be installed on Android any more. Oh wait, it can, along with dozens of other app stores.
But it does explain why the Kindle app is crippled on Android so that Google Books can take prime position. Oh wait, it's not.
You have a point, but you try to use that point to gloss over the real issue here. On other platforms your product just has to be good enough to succeed (eg: Kindle app). On Apple's platform(s) it is not about being good, in fact the better your product is the more threatened it is by Apple's anticompetitive practices.
AirTunes came out in 2004 and AirFoil followed a year later as a software accessory compatible with AirTunes.
Now, I also think this is a dick move, but it's because of dick moves like this that the patent and copyright systems exist in the first place, and why I think they need to be reformed rather than abandoned.
When either company leverages its control over the market to exclude its competitors using mechanisms other than technical quality, that's a bad thing and needs to be condemned.
I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.
Apple does not insist the post-PC devices are fully functional. In fact, Jobs compared PCs to trucks and iOS devices to cars. By post-PC they imply that lockdown that comes with it.
Everyone expects Apple to call the shots on their own app store to some extent, but it becomes unacceptable when well intentioned and heavily invested developers get screwed over by Apple making anticompetitive exceptions to their own, already volatile, set of rules.
This, however, has nothing to do with that: it's about consumer choice: making a better product and tempting people away with it is normal and healthy but abusing a lead in one market to prevent people from being able to make a choice in another is always bad.
This is the strongest criticism of Apple's app store policies: on the Mac if you get Karelia-ed that's not pleasant but it's a business risk you assume along with the possibility of any other large company entering the market. On iOS, Apple will preemptively kill your ability to sell a product before their competitor even ships, preventing your customers from even being able to decide that they prefer the app which ships with the OS.
[1] strictly speaking, it's the developers they bought (along with Logic)
It's on Steve's watch (a Navy term).
/pedantry
edit: nevermind, I had the timeline off- this came to rise after Steve came back.