Poll: Do You Have A Problem With This Statement | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Do You Have A Problem With This Statement

11 pointsTomOfTTB58 comments

I was IM-ing with a friend after coming home tonight and we got into a heated debate about Apple’s app store banning (a story I’m sure every HN reader is aware of at this point). I said the Government should intervene and he said that was the beginning of the end because Government shouldn’t be allowed to tell companies what to do. I countered that point with this…

I believe Government should be allowed to force companies to define how they will act but not force companies to take any specific action.

In other words I believe the government should force Apple to define their acceptance criteria for the App store (e.g. give the specific reasons why apps would be rejected) in the same way they force food manufacturers to list their ingredients on the packaging. Is that something you would you have a problem with?

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Here's where the analogy breaks down:

Ingredients listed on food are provided so that people who have allergies can see what's in the food, and not die. In a universe where foods don't have to list ingredients, foods without the ingredient label will be cheaper, meaning allergic people have to pay more to find out what's in the food. Meaning that allergic people ("disabled", if you will) are forced to pay more because of a from-birth (or from-young-age) disadvantage through no fault of theirs.

I'm republican and libertarian as the day is long, but I support government regulation that puts this sort of disadvantaged people on equal footing with everyone else. That means elevators have to be in buildings, handicapped people should get free parking, learning disabled should get special classes in school, etc.

You can't be allergic to an iPhone app. Being open and transparent about an app market is one of those things that should be competitive advantage. Sprint or MS or whoever's building their app store should be able to say "Look at our app store, it's open! Come over here!" as a selling point even when their software stack is inferior (no flamewars please).

I'm an iPhone developer and I am pissed at apple. What they are doing is wrong and evil. But developers are perfectly capable of staging a coup and changing Apple's mind (we did with getting them to release the app store in the first place). I'm open to discussing why that doesn't happen (too many people are making too much money is my theory).

But what shouldn't happen is the government stepping in and saying "Too lazy to stand up for yourselves? Don't worry, we'll do it for you!" That's so dumb I don't even know where to begin. It sets an awful precedent. Software developers are fiery and passionate, generally speaking, and I've seen way too many professions lose that because they outsource their righteous indignation to their government, and then become dependent. And then there's regulation written for yesteryear affecting today's tech companies, and in about fifty years tech becomes the auto industry or the banking industry: one-brilliant people who gave their battles away to someone else to fight, and everybody paid the price for it.

Maybe that's a bit overdramatic for one government intervention. On the other hand, for want of a shoe...

The thing is your analogy doesn't hold up. Companies are required to put information like the number of calories in a product and that has nothing to do with allergies.

As for the rest of your comment I don't know. I guess we'll see. The tech community couldn't be more riled up then it is now (how many times have "I'm dropping Apple" posts made it to the front page of HN lately?). So if Apple does eventually change their policy than maybe you're right. If not I think you should reconsider your objection to limited Government intervention.

> The tech community couldn't be more riled up then it is now (how many times have "I'm dropping Apple" posts made it to the front page of HN lately?)

See, it could be much more riled up than it is. For one, developers could pull their apps from the store. That 50,000 figure Apple published ages ago could be 5,000. If Tapulous or one of the iPhone developers that Apple babies pulled their apps in protest, I guarantee it would keep Steve Jobs awake at night.

Google could stop handing macbooks to each new recruit. They could refuse to serve maptiles to future phones.

Front-page posts on HN, while I admit are more meaningful than Reddit or Digg or someplace, are chump change on the thermometer of developer outrage. All anyone's done so far about this is write passioned rants and maybe threaten to not buy any new macs personally.

Here's my problem with that.

The examples you give are never, EVER going to happen. Developers aren't going to pull their applications from the most popular computing environment just to prove a point. Nor are companies like Google going to change their whole computing environment just to prove a point. It would be corporate misconduct to flush all that money down the toilet just to prove some point to Apple that has nothing to do with your actual business.

So if we accept the actions needed for the public to make Apple change are not things that will ever happen the question is "As a society are we willing to just accept this injustice?" If your answer to that question is "Yes" that's perfectly valid. But if your answer is "No" then it requires government intervention.

Again, keep in mind, we aren't talking about forcing Apple to change their terms. Just to get them to publicly define them so developers don't waste months developing applications that may or may not be accepted.

> So if we accept the actions needed for the public to make Apple change are not things that will ever happen

But see, I don't accept that premise. For one thing, the CEO of Google just quit the Apple board, which I read as a little more than just "Too many meetings I can't take part of." For another thing, people aren't blindly loyal (except to themselves, perhaps). A mac wasn't the first computer you ever bought. An iPhone wasn't the first phone you ever made calls on. You woke up one day and decided to purchase one or both. Tomorrow you can wake up and decide to buy into another platform.

Sure, there's some friction. But that is largely for good reason. GV or no, the iPhone is better by and large than most other phones. Macs are (in some people's view, anyway) by and large better than most other computers. If they cease to become as good (or if their competitors become better), Apple will lose business. It's the same as anybody else.

> As a society are we willing to just accept this injustice?"

This is the wrong question. First of all, what's happened is not an "injustice". It might be meanspirited and in bad faith, but injustice is what happens when people are denied their rights. And "we" as "society" are not in the position to decide anything, except whether or not we want an iPhone, and whether or not we want to develop for it. Two years ago the app store didn't exist, nobody put apps on their phones. Now, everybody seems to think it's a god-given right and it has to be run a certain way. There's absolutely nothing illegal about what Apple's doing.

The government can't (and shouldn't) dictate the way it's run any more than they can dictate the plot of a Harry Potter book. Wildly popular, prosperous to many, contentious, and ultimately the product of someone's mind.

Besides, how would you do it? There's no breach of contract; developers sign a document that says that Apple can reject apps for any reason (all the rejections that I've seen actually point to a reason in the contract, which is not, technically speaking, required). The FCC's jurisdiction might extend to protecting jailbreakers, but not what software Apple allows in their own store (and certainly not to iPod Touches). I suppose Congress could increase the breathtakingly-wide interstate commerce clause, but 70% of the apps are free, which I think would give even the most expansionist observer pause. Plus you have to ponder what random nonsense would end up in the bill.

No, if there's anything to be done, Apple has to see enough pressure to change. With Google and Apple in divorce proceedings, it would be perfectly reasonable to stop serving map tiles when the contract's up. Already you see the signs: Latitude can't be a native app, GV can't be a native app, how much ad revenue does Google get from serving Youtube to phones again? That relationship's going to get sour fast.

A few things...

The CEO of Google quitting the Apple board is way different from what you describe. The actions you described would cost companies thousands if not millions of dollars and that's not going to happen.

Injustice is the denial of justice and justice is defined as "the quality of being just or fair". Denying people their rights is an injustice but only because it's unfair to do it. In the end the issue is still fairness.

Again, you use the example of dictating the plot of a Harry Potter book as why the Government shouldn't intervene. But that would be the Government telling a company HOW to run. I specifically said this isn't about that. It's about making the company define how they interact with the public. A better analogy would be the government making it illegal to put the cover of the new Harry Potter book on copies of older ones to sell copies (which in fact is illegal)

It's in Google's interest to stop dealing with Apple. They're in half the same markets. Far from costing millions of dollars, making the iPhone less attractive would be a good technical move, and positing as the open option would be a good market play.

You're confusing fairness with equality. Apple isn't being equal--it's treating some developers differently than others. But it's certainly being fair--following the terms it laid out in the SDK agreement.

This isn't about "making the company define how they interact with the public". Developers aren't the public. We're talking about publishing terms between developers and apple, and consumers only enter into the picture as an (albiet necessary) third party.

The problem is that a handicap doesn't have to be a physical or mental disability. There are serious asymmetries of information that handicap all of us, even the smartest. To take your example, I'd say that ingredients are listed on food so that consumers have the same information as the producers. People with allergies are just a particular subset of consumers who benefit from the level information playing field.

Another example: the SEC is set up to help keep information equally spread within financial markets, and in fact its (perhaps inevitable) failure to keep up with new information asymmetries involving complex mortgage derivatives and credit default swaps contributed significantly to the recent economic collapse.

But we can disagree in each particular case about whether the government should be responsible for improving information flow, or whether consumers should carry the burden themselves. I am definitely in favor of as little regulation as possible to get the job done. I'm just saying that some information asymmetries are literally huge and there's not much consumers can be expected to do without government's help.

I carefully framed the world "disability" above to mean some disadvantage you were either born with or acquired very young, something that's fundamentally unfair or injust. You can't choose to be allergic, you can't work very hard and eventually overcome your allergies. Fate just struck you, and that's that.

I'm not sure I view 'information asymmetries' in the same light. Clearly some information (like passphrases or source code) are asymmetrical by design, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. I'm "disabled" in the sense that I can't read SJ's e-mail; forcing him to open his inbox would probably be "leveling the playing field" for a lot of people, but none of this is unfairness or injustice. Quite the contrary, forcing his inbox open would be an injustice. Sure, there are cases when you're investigating something else and you need to, but there's warrants and process and all that. There's a fundamental understanding that it's very very bad and only if we absolutely have to.

Similarly, meddling in the app store, private property of apple, would be an injustice. Sure, I think it needs work; what apple's doing is meanspirited. But it's their sandbox, and they need to be the ones to clean up the mess. Boycotts, nonrenewing contracts, etc., all put legitimate pressure on a company, governments work with illegitimate pressure (which can be useful if something really really bad is happening. But that isn't this situation).

First let me state that I don't think there's a role for government intervention in the case of the iPhone or iTunes right now. I am absolutely advocating for people to make a decision not to own Apple products based on the way they are treating their customers.

Now to the point. I think maybe you are misunderstanding what I mean by information asymmetry. Obviously there is a trade-off between the consumer's right to know and a company's or an individual's right to privacy. I don't think anyone would say it's ok to force SJ to open his inbox in order to have that information spread widely.

But there are times when the benefit of open information outweighs the cost imposed. And sometimes the only way to reliably eliminate information asymmetries is for the government to step in, because the free market isn't capable of self-imposed openness.

Consider cigarettes. No, I wasn't born with an inability to discover that cigarettes are highly addictive and likely cause lung cancer. I could have done a bunch of research and maybe run some experiments to determine those things. But before the landmark Surgeon General's warning in 1966 tobacco companies had pretty effectively suppressed that information. Things started to change when that warning was required on every pack of cigarettes so that every consumer was at least aware of the risks of smoking.

This is the kind of information asymmetry that the government (and you) should care about eliminating. When companies wield (political, economic, etc.) power to keep consumers in the dark. No we're not disadvantaged from birth, we're disadvantaged due to lack of resources. I think you'd be surprised how bad many aspects of our lives would be without government intervention in a lot of information asymmetry situations.

What the cigarette companies perpetrated in the 60s was fraud. This was not mere 'information asymmetry'--this was flat-out lying about what was in a product, which is its own special category of badness (to start with, it's a breach of contract, in some sense). Also, as an important (but logically irrelevant) corollary, people died.

I don't think that "information asymmetry" is ever sufficient cause for government action. And I don't think "there is a trade-off between the consumer's right to know and a company's... right to privacy". That's a weak tautology, like saying "People shouldn't have to walk through metal detectors, and should still be perfectly safe in planes." It's vague enough to be agreeable without actually having said anything.

It's easy enough to look at the Hoover Dam and say "Look at this dam! Without government intervention this dam would not exist!" The fallacy is to suggest that the choice is between the hoover dam and nothing. In fact, it's the choice between the dam and where the money would have been spent. Was the hoover dam better than whatever the market could have done with the money? I don't know, but that's an extremely difficult position to argue--you have to argue against everything.

What you're saying is, basically, the government intervened to force companies to give us information. Is that good? I'm not so sure. We started (seriously, anyway) regulating the financial markets shortly after the great depression. Then the market got too complicated for the regulators, and it crashed, so we wrote more complicated regulation. Wash, rinse, repeat. There are still as many Madoffs today as there were in the 1890s--the only operative difference is that they've been regulated into a complexity that could potentially fool even me. Meanwhile startups are too scared to IPO, which is the secret cost everybody overlooks (what we would build with the hoover dam).

By and large, you still have the same percentage of bad apples. Information has simply inflated over the years. Still the same asymmetries, just a higher floor.

And what's really perverse about the whole thing--you see huge gains in the floor during the highest asymmetries. Think about the great economic booms--railroads, industrial revolution, even recently with MS Windows and/or Office. These are periods of huge economic growth, of technology raising everyone's standards of living. And they're the periods of patents, of lawsuits, anticompetiveness, and huge economic disparities.

At the risk of committing a huge causal fallacy, I posit that asymmetry, informational or otherwise, is necessary for these gains. Or at least more necessary than most of us feel comfortable with.

Couldn't you just ask "would you agree"? Mabye it's confusing because you are making statement like if you were going to ask "would you agree", but then ask a question expecting opposite answer (if you were going to agree, you have to say "no, I don't have a problem"). And I think there is no real difference between saying I agree and I don't have a problem with that.

Thanks for the suggestion but can't really change it now without screwing everything up

I see no reason why the government should get involved. It's an free market, if people don't like Apple's practices regarding the App store, they are free to go elsewhere or buy a phone from a different manufacturer.

I think you are missing the point regarding the acceptance of applications, it's not an end-user issue.

It's mostly the app store developers that are setting themselves up for trouble because of this.

So that should read 'if developers don't like Apples practices regarding the App store they are free to go elsewhere', only there is no 'elsewhere', the only way to the Iphone leads through the app store.

This might come as a shock to you: There actually is an 'elsewhere' beyond the iPhone. Last time I checked apple didn't go around forcing people to become app developers.

Don't like their rules? Don't play on their lawn.

Ok, point taken but equally, nobody is forced to develop for the iPhone. Develop for Android or Symbian. Ultimately, so many developers have succumbed to Apples practices and they are responsible for giving Apple the power they have. This is still no reason for government involvement.

I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with you but I'm curious about one thing: Are you against anti-discrimination laws like those that forbid people from not hiring a person based on skin color?

I ask because those laws set a precedent of using Government intervention to make sure private industries treat people fairly. So if you are in favor of those laws you have to ask yourself if it's fair for some developers to be forced to develop on platforms with 30 million fewer customers.

laws like those that forbid people from not hiring a person based on skin color?

ask yourself if it's fair for some developers to be forced to develop on platforms with 30 million fewer customers

You didn't just seriously draw a line between those two statements, did you? Moreover please show me a developer who is forced to develop anything for any platform.

Yes, I did. I assume your objection is that racism isn't in the same league as what Apple is doing. I agree with you on that. But the government doesn't take a stance on racism. If Government was taking a stance on racism then they wouldn't allow racist literature to be distributed (as just one example). But they do allow that meaning racism isn't the issue.

So the question at hand is fairness not racism. Which brings me back to my original point of "Should the government legislate whether private industries treat people fairly?"

First off, please stop mixing labor law and human rights into this. That's so idiotic, it's not funny. Especially since there isn't even an employment relationship involved here.

The app-store is a digital retail store. You are free to develop an iPhone app and offer it to them. They are free to reject it.

Just like you are free to develop a better mousetrap and offer it to WalMart - and they are free to reject it.

If you don't like their rules then don't develop an iPhone app. It's really as simple as that.

And in case you are wondering what their rules are: They are explained in this big blob of text presented to you when you sign up. The one with the checkbox labeled "I understand and I agree" at the end.

You can not understand and agree to that which is not published, such as the official rulebook on which apps will make it through approval and those that do not.

A transparent approval process would solve this instantly.

And even Apple would benefit.

You can not understand and agree to that which is not published, such as the official rulebook on which apps will make it through approval and those that do not.

You are mistaken, the official rulebook is published and it's right there in the blurb that you agree to during sign up.

It's really short, too, as there is only one rule: Apple decides whether an app is accepted and they will neither tell you the criteria nor the reasons for a rejection.

If you don't agree with that then you should not tick that checkbox. Easy, huh?

So, you're arguing that there exists no other Apple internal rulebook than the arbitrary one that says 'apple decides' ?

I find that hard to believe. I think a rulebook does exist, but that they avoid publishing it because they want to have the 'final say' even if somebody would play within the rules as specified in the book.

And that makes sense, because it would open apple up to being sued for breach of contract, and that is exactly what this whole thing is about. A one-sided contract is no contract, consideration is to be given to both parties. Developing an application is an investment and you should be allowed to inspect the full terms of the contract under which you make your investment.

So, you're arguing that there exists no other Apple internal rulebook than the arbitrary one that says 'apple decides'?

Excuse me? I said nothing like that.

Yes, they probably have an internal rulebook but that's completely irrelevant because they chose to not disclose it. They are free to make that choice, just like you are free to not do business with them on these terms. It's called "Free Market", wikipedia can tell you more.

A one-sided contract is no contract, consideration is to be given to both parties

I'm starting to think you have serious reading comprehension problems. The contract is not one-sided. You get to read it and you must agree to it.

Developing an application is an investment and you should be allowed to inspect the full terms of the contract under which you make your investment.

You are not only allowed to inspect the full terms, you are required to inspect and agree to the full terms.

The full terms are: Apple may or may not accept your application and they are not obliged to tell you any reasons for their decision.

If you think apple "should" be operating differently then don't do business with them.

You seem to think there is some sort of godgiven right to get into the App store. There is not. It is Apple's personal playground. If they choose to accept apps only on mondays then they are free to do so. If they choose to reject apps because they would compete with their own products then they are free to do so. If they choose to reject apps without even telling you the reason then they are free to do so.

They have this freedom because you, the developer, checked that little "I agree"-checkbox, remember?

So an employment relationship that would cost an individual money is completely different from a company devoting resources to an application only to have it arbitrarily rejected which costs a whole company worth of people money?

In truth it's exactly the same thing you just refuse to see it because you're so set in your opinion.

It's an interesting double-standard, forcing corporation transparency, when your own goverment isn't. Case in point: I had recently the pleasure of signing up for your country's "visa waiver" program. Technically, it's not a big deal, since it automatically accepts anyone with a recent passport, and a valid background. What got me is the fine print:

"...Waiver of Rights: I have read and understand that I hereby waive for the duration of my travel authorization obtained via ESTA any rights to review or appeal of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer's determination as to my admissibility, or to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any removal action arising from an application for admission under the Visa Waiver Program. ..." [ https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/ ]

So, the way I understand, the "American Way" is forcing transparency from everyone, as long as it's not me? How is Apple any different?

Ridiculous. Flagged. Stop whining for the love of god.

Why not also whine about how your local cinema refuses to show your home movie!

What's ridiculous is I just looked at the posts you've made over the last few days and half of them are just like this (e.g. complain about the topic and insult everyone participating)

If you don't like something why don't you try just clicking away.

Edit: And for those down voting this comment I say the same thing to you: Just click away for God's sakes. There are almost 50 comments here so clearly people want to discuss this. Let Them! Just ignore it and move on to topics you're interested in. Stop trying to control what other people are allowed to do.

I agree that the government should not be able to tell AT&T and Apple what to do ...

... as soon as Apple and AT&T deliver phone service without using any public infrastructure. As long as they want to use the public airwaves, though, the public should have some oversight into what goes on.

(Remember, "the big bad government" isn't telling them what to do, the people that own the infrastructure, us, are telling them what to do. It's just that the process is very, very indirect.)

"the public should have some oversight into what goes on", the public do have some oversight. The public could stop buying AT&T and Apple products/services.

With a $200 termination fee, I doubt this would be much incentive for AT&T to "do better".

"Airwaves" are not infrastructure.

Apple and AT&T do have government-granted privileges (such as limited liability and the huge swath of regulations which assist larger and existing corporations against their customers and smaller competitors), but regulations for and against don't "balance"; handing someone a candy bar does not give you the right to tell them what to do.

"Airwaves" are not infrastructure."

Sure, but radio spectrum (which is what the OP meant by "infrastructure") is owned by the government and licensed to corporations subject to public good and review isn't it?

(pS: I don't have a dog in this fight. I've never used Apple Hardware or software and never will. So I don't really care what Apple does. Where I live Apple is a very very minor player anyway. Just trying to confirm my knowledge of how radio spectrum is owned and allotted).

handing someone a candy bar does not give you the right to tell them what to do

OK, let's stop giving away candy bars then. What's in it for me?

I agree that we should stop giving away candy bars, but I don't understand your question.

The hell?

laissez-faire

You are comparing the nations food supply ... with iphone applications...

...

Not really, he's showing that the government already has 'full disclosure' rules for some industries and suggests that the digital world might benefit from that same principle.

You could easily trivialize this by suggesting that the food supply is a critical resource, but if a company gets large enough to employ a bunch of people living in Apples 'eco-system' and Apple decides to pull the plug the results for those people are quite comparable to eating something bad. In both cases there are people that have no way of knowing what is going on 'under water' whose health and well being depends on being informed.

To ask for that information is the only right thing to do.

Consumers don't have the power to bend a large corporation to their will, but the government can do that.

I understand your point. But very simply, that is not what Capitalism entails. Capitalism is like biology's natural selection. You don't arbitrarily go determining rules of engagement and codes of conduct within the animal kingdom, so as to even things out. Why? Because those things are taken care of naturally.

I'm not saying I know what's best for anyone. Rather, it's just not the American/Capitalistic way. And Americans, they like their Capitalism.

I don't think it has to do with whether or not it is the American/Capitalistic way either...

It's about whether it is right to have a platform that is closed without specifying clearly and unambiguously what the rules are for access to that platform.

Imagine you're an Iphone developer, you build your application, you get it accepted. Business is good. Then you hire some more people and you improve your application. Business is even better. Sooner or later you have an office full of people, and then one day your application gets rejected. Not only that, you'll have to pay back to the users that bought your application what they paid for it.

And all this without so much as an explanation why or a public rulebook where you could see for yourself why you were not in the clear.

Capitalism or the American way does not enter in to it. Think about a real-world analogy (and which like all analogies is broken) where the toll-keeper on a road would decide retroactively that the goods that you transported on their road did not meet their criteria, and that you have to reverse your business for the last N months, without any recourse on your part.

Morally: yes. Good business: yes. Legislated: why?

I bring up Capitalism because this is about business. All of your points are rock-solid data points of why NOT to do business with Apple's App store. Yet developers insist.

I am going start a company that manufactures pagers. Is this a bad business decision? Maybe ... Is it my choice ... yes...

Of course there's a difference. Your point is about retroactively pulling the plug for no disclosed reason. I get that - but again all the more reason that its a bad business decision.

Ok, I get your point.

I think I'm more worried about the 'domino' effects of these arbitrary decisions.

Independent software developers ('the guy in the attic') are probably fairly aware of the legal position they place themselves in when they develop for the iphone (though by the recent spate of postings I'm beginning to doubt even that).

But if you were employed by a company making the above sample iphone app it would be your ass on the line, not your boss'.

I voted Yes, I'd have a problem with this. Sounds like a common sense idea, but the implementation would be horrific. How exactly do you set the standards for this? You can't make a law especially for Apple, so you have to legislate ... what exactly?

I'm not sure I see why this would be hard. I'd say the law could look something like this...

"Companies who create computing environments that are not open to all applications must clearly define the acceptance criteria for developers wishing to create applications for those environments"

I guess there will always be some ambiguity (What's "clearly " for example) but anything is an improvement over what we have now.

How about a criteria that says "we will not accept applications that are crap or that make us look bad or dilute the pool of good applications"? Because this seems like it's what Apple is doing. Now whether they are doing their filtering well is a different matter.

I don't see why government needs to be brought into this. Do we really need a "computing platform fairness czar"?

This is like a political theory intelligence test.

Does Apple have a monopoly that is preventing free and open trade? Perhaps. If so, government has a role to provide an open, honest shot for smartphone developers (and more so for end-consumers) This is because monopolies distort markets, which hurts everybody. But it's important to realize that for 99.9% of cases, having control over your platform, sales, and marketing channels is a good thing for everybody involved.

Should government enforce food labeling? Sure thing, because folks can't make an honest determination of what they're buying unless the contents are clearly labeled. This is back to the free and open market idea.

Should government step in anytime somebody (even a majority) think something is "unfair"? Not so much. People think all kinds of things are fair or unfair, and such distinctions are very emotional.

The key question is whether or not the iPhone is distorting the free and open market for smartphone apps. I think we have a long way to go before we cross that line. Right now it's more a matter of Apple doing wonderfuly well and holding their cards close as to what they want to allow on their platform. But there are a lot of choices out there for app developers and consumers. And the worse Apple acts, the more the market will punish it.

I'm a developer who's thinking about writing some smartphone apps. With all the publicity, I've decided that the iPhone platform isn't for me. Over time, if enough developers feel the same way, there'll be more apps not on the platform than on it. Apple has to be smart enough to see this as a problem, so I think things will be self-correcting.

In time, the market will self-correct if Apple behaves poorly enough. But I think it's important to remember that self-correction might take a long time.

We're dealing with platforms -- large systems to which people commit their data. We're also dealing with a two-faced community: developers and consumers. It's going to take a lot more than unfair developer treatment to get many people to switch away from iTunes.

Apple generally makes excellent products; combine that with the iTunes ecosystem to get a combo bonus. People aren't likely to switch to a platform they perceive as inferior; Apple won't drop the ball on creating good combinations of hardware and software any time soon. Even if a superior product arrives, consumers must commit to migrating their applications, data, music, etc.

It's going to take a lot more than a restrictive and unfair developer platform to get the market to correct itself. Look at the Windows Vista debacle: despite many unhappy consumers, I don't see a whole lot of people switching away for that reason alone. Anecdotally, the only time I see people switch away from Windows is when they're enticed by buying a Mac instead -- and they cite Apple's software more often than Windows's flaws.

Absolutely. These things take a long time to work themselves out.

There's also a case to be made, which is made by every monopoly, that having a single player actually advances things in the public interest. In other words, by having Apple control so much, the future of smartphones in general is actually advanced much farther than if they didn't. I don't buy this argument as a general rule, but parts of it do seem to make sense. After all, getting 40 individual players to agree on a standard is a lot harder than getting one company to do so.

Perhaps the natural state of the technology industry is to slowly swing between monopolies and openness. During times of monopolies, de facto standards get adopted and interfaces stabilized. During times of openness, innovation rules and paradigm changes are made.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, just that it looks like a pattern might be setting up.

I'm not disagreeing with you but I hope you at least understand that the world you describe hasn't existed since Teddy Roosevelt picked up "The Jungle" in 1906. Since then Government has made a business out of trying to manipulate the market in a way that speeds along the positive aspects and eliminates the negative ones. A trend we all know has reached epic proportions with the current bail outs.

So, for better or worse, we are a long long way from a Government that only intervenes when there's a monopoly.

So, for better or worse, we are a long long way from a Government that only intervenes when there's a monopoly.

We are where we want to be. The poster asked the question of should government intervene. To say that "government will intervene whether we want to or not" is to engage in circular reasoning. One supposes that in order to ask the question, there must be a choice for the answerer to make.

I also have heard this "those were the old times" argument quite a bit lately, and its wearing thin for me. To some degree, yes, government has intervened and mucked around with markets. But to a larger degree it hasn't. And the decision to muck around or not, last I checked, was a political one, not done simply because times have changed. It's very much debatable whether government intervention in various markets constitute a good or bad thing.

Teddy was a smart man. So was Jefferson. We continue to find and address these issues as we can, doing the best with what light we have.

It would be circular logic if "Government Intervention" was a single thing rather than a designation that applies to a myriad of things.

My issue with your line of reasoning is that it's academic. You're making an argument based on a model of Monopoly = Government Intervention and that's not where we are anymore.

I would have a problem with this - it's like forcing a shop to justify not stocking a particular product. I do think Apple should be clearer, but they shouldn't be compelled to do so.

I would be for government intervention, but your reasoning I see as flawed. It is hypocritical.

If you believe Apple should be required to list its requirements for applications, then you should also believe that governments should be required to list their requirements for corporations.

That is all.

Force companies to decide exactly what they're doing, and declare it to the government in unambiguous language so that it can be broadcast to the public. Yeah. While we're at it we should force them to submit a document declaring the types of all their variables too, and have it notarized.

The final question is a bit confusing! (at least it is to me...)

I'd edit it if you could tell me why it's confusing. I honestly can't see what you're talking about.

much better already! Interesting question by the way.

Full disclosure of terms is a must I think, and a very rigorous process should be in place to handle these situations.

I firmly believe that even though the app store is clearly apples creation with great power comes great responsibility.

And when companies do not live up to their responsibilities (I think Apple has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they act in an arbitrary way) then they ought to be forced to do so.

People build their businesses on top of the Iphone app store ecosystem and they should have a reasonable expectation that their investment is not subject to some arbitrary action of Apple.

If Apple does not want that kind of oversight they have a simple solution available to them: Open up the app store for everybody and drop the review process other than to look for stuff that I would loosely class as 'malware'.

If your application is merely stupid, trivial or has been done a million times already that should not disqualify you. Even 'disgusting' stuff should be possible, who is apple to define what is disgusting and what is not.

As long as applications stay within the law there should be room for them in the App store, the only thing Apple could do to protect its brand in this respect is to categorize the applications or to cut the app store loose from the mother ship.

They're in a tight spot on this one, damned if they do and damned if they don't. The 'apple knows best' strategy is backfiring big time.

I would personally have a giant problem with government intervention in a private matter. This is a market issue. If customers don't like how Apple is behaving, they are free to take their business elsewhere. If they don't, they are either offering a more compelling product than the other guys, or are serving the majority of their customers satisfactorily.

I can see the argument that developers for the App Store are akin to contractors for Apple, but I don't believe that's the case either.

If the developers really want government involvement, the first step WOULD NOT BE regulation, rather it should be arbitration. The slighted developers have the courtrooms available to them, and potentially have contract dispute claims they could file suit on. (I don't know, I don't develop for the iPhone at all.) If they don't, then they've obviously entered into a one-sided contract they shouldn't have, and shame on them. That said, there might also be a claim for that as well. One of the primary tenets for contract law is that there is mutual consideration -- a contract without mutual consideration can often be considered valueless on its face. I am uncertain whether or not the potential for profit by app store sales counts or not, honestly.

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