[OreoCookie]

Well, but unlike Windows which runs on `every pc,' apps sold via the Apple App Store will only work on iPhone devices and Apple is not hindering other vendors to create app stores.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by Eug 

However, it does seem that Apple has an effective monopoly on phone application sales. That's something that AAPL investors are overjoyed with, but it does introduce sticky issues as we're seeing now.

no. They don't even offer their store to 70% of the potential market at all. This cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be construed as monopolistic.

The only anti-Apple twist you could make here is that the iPhone is obviously so deficient that it requires users to download dozens of apps to fix it.

[Eug]

Just as hardware sales are not the same thing as software sales, potential software sales are not the same thing as actual software sales either. (The main problem here is I don't actually know what the actual sales percentages are.)

Like I said, until I hear from a real lawyer, I won't be surprised if Apple gets sued. Whether or not the company doing the suing will win is another story, of course.

[jokell82]

Adobe can sue for whatever they want - the question is simply how fast it will be thrown out of the courtroom. I doubt they will even do it in the first place.

And Eug - it doesn't take a lawyer to know that there are no valid claims of monopolistic practices here.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

Adobe can sue for whatever they want - the question is simply how fast it will be thrown out of the courtroom. I doubt they will even do it in the first place.

Maybe, maybe not.

And Eug - it doesn't take a lawyer to know that there are no valid claims of monopolistic practices here.

Sure, whatever you say.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Perfectly understandable, but where is the line drawn?

What if you create a crappy app using all of the right tools? If Apple is really going for quality, maybe they should make this a little more clear and start rejecting bad apps in general? Apple would, however, have to share their criteria for these assessments.

The tools that are used seems like a sort of imperfect form of criteria.

The tools are just one criteria, and Apple does reject "crashy" apps all the time. Sure crappy apps get through - no system is perfect.

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Maybe, maybe not.



Sure, whatever you say.

They have under 30% of the smartphone market, and a MUCH lower percentage of the overall phone market. Their custom store for their phone is no more a monopoly than the Android Marketplace or the Palm App Catalog.

[slugslugslug]

I think Apple’s putative smartphone platform monopoly is also super different from the one that kept getting Microsoft in trouble over Windows. Lots of people—probably most people who used a computer at their job—were actually required to use Windows for work. And most of those people probably didn’t feel like they had much of a choice at home, too. Interoperability used to take far more effort, even if people did want to get used to repeatedly switching UIs. Windows was really the de facto OS for millions.

But practically nobody is forced to use the iPhone OS for their job (and probably a good chunk of folk are forced to carry around a Blackberry). If developers want to make something they can’t do on iPhone, and they think people really want it, they can try to lure them away from the platform.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Or, you want to develop a cross platform product and don't want to invest the resources that would be needed to make it a model citizen on each platform, and instead want to focus on consistency between OSes both for supportability and maintenance of code. See Mozilla Firefox.

I don't think that's a good example. Quite frankly, Firefox is a sub-par Mac app in terms of UI. This is why people use Camino.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by OreoCookie 

Well, but unlike Windows which runs on `every pc,' apps sold via the Apple App Store will only work on iPhone devices and Apple is not hindering other vendors to create app stores.

Correct. And Adobe could sue Apple for that, and for also allowing devs to only develop with Xcode, especially since some apps are built in Flash.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Correct. And Adobe could sue Apple for that, and for also allowing devs to only develop with Xcode, especially since some apps are built in Flash.

By the exact same logic, developers using XCode can now sue Microsoft for locking them out of the Windows platform due to the tools they use (and Microsoft/Windows IS a multiply-convicted monopoly), and .NET developers will also sue Apple for not supporting their development environment on the iPhone.

This alleged lawsuit is nothing but inflated hype to put more public pressure on Apple. There is no basis for any such action in the real world.

Developers are irate, and understandably so, but Adobe is desperate - so desperate that they gambled, and forced Apple to make what was obvious before into general policy.

The apologist's twist would be that it's Adobe that's knowingly forced Apple to **** over developers by blackmailing Apple in a gamble they have now lost.

This talk of lawsuit is the desperate attempt to keep the policy change in the news and damage Apple's platform, in hope of strengthening a competitor which could help keep Adobe in business.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

By the exact same logic, developers using XCode can now sue Microsoft for locking them out of the Windows platform due to the tools they use (and Microsoft/Windows IS a multiply-convicted monopoly), and .NET developers will also sue Apple for not supporting their development environment on the iPhone.

No. Microsoft would not support the hypothetical Xcode for Windows programming, but also does not preclude it, and has no requirement that .NET be used. So, if suddenly Steve went insane and said a version of Xcode were to be developed to create Windows programs for cross-platform Mac and Windows development, the other (monopolistic) Steve would welcome him with open arms.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

Everyone keeps telling us how dominating the iPhone is ... until the conversation turns to monopoly, and then Apple is the underdog again.

My joke obviously went over your head

-t

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

Correct. And Adobe could sue Apple for that, and for also allowing devs to only develop with Xcode, especially since some apps are built in Flash.

Again, Adobe can sue for whatever they want. You can bring a lawsuit for anything in this country as long as a lawyer is willing to take the case.

The only question is how fast it will be thrown out once a judge sees it. I'm putting the over/under at 5 minutes.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

By the exact same logic, developers using XCode can now sue Microsoft for locking them out of the Windows platform due to the tools they use (and Microsoft/Windows IS a multiply-convicted monopoly), and .NET developers will also sue Apple for not supporting their development environment on the iPhone.

I wasn't implying that the situation would only pertain to Apple. However, when a platform such as the iPhone gets rather large and Apple is actively going after alternate ways to get on that platform, people take notice. I wouldn't be surprised to at some point see the FTC get involved.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by jokell82 

Again, Adobe can sue for whatever they want. You can bring a lawsuit for anything in this country as long as a lawyer is willing to take the case.

The only question is how fast it will be thrown out once a judge sees it. I'm putting the over/under at 5 minutes.

And as long as you have the money. I'm not certain that Adobe can handle a frivolous lawsuit. If they are building a case against Apple, they'll have evidence.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Eug 

For non-flagged apps, doesn't Apple's "multi-tasking" actually mean "suspension of background apps"?

So, as was suspected, for most apps the so-called multitasking in iPhone OS 4.0 is not actually multitasking. Basically any non-specialized app will not be running in the background, but will be in suspend mode.

AppleInsider | Inside iPhone OS 4.0: Multitasking vs Mac OS X, Android [Page 2]

When you switch from one app to another in iPhone 4.0, the previous app is held in memory but all activity is frozen. As noted earlier, this isn't really multitasking in the sense of desktop OS multitasking, but rather just an illusion that multiple apps are all running, when they're really not. They're just ready to run again as soon as you switch back: hence the name Fast App Switching.

Before Apple announced this mechanism, many iPhone programmers had expressed the idea that the system didn't really need "multitasking" as much as a "saved state" concept that would allow users to rapidly switch between apps. That's exactly what Fast App Switching does.

[besson3c]

Eug: what about monitoring sorts of services that, for instance, monitor for a new email/tweet/whatever? Is it possible to establish background tasks of this nature?

[Salty]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Eug: what about monitoring sorts of services that, for instance, monitor for a new email/tweet/whatever? Is it possible to establish background tasks of this nature?

I think Apple considers that a job for the cloud! Services like Meebo or Beejive already do that for IM. There's no reason another company can't do something like the BlackBerry Internet Service for the iPhone by using push notification.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Salty 

I think Apple considers that a job for the cloud! Services like Meebo or Beejive already do that for IM. There's no reason another company can't do something like the BlackBerry Internet Service for the iPhone by using push notification.

How would the iPhone receive these notifications if the background task was suspended and unresponsive?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Eug: what about monitoring sorts of services that, for instance, monitor for a new email/tweet/whatever? Is it possible to establish background tasks of this nature?

Like I said before, I'm not a developer, but...

System-Wide Notifications as a Prerequisite for Efficient Multitasking

The first step down this path was delivered last year: Push Notifications. Rather than having apps sit in the background or spawning background services to poll remote servers for updates, Apple created a system wide service to efficiently listen for updates on behalf of the user's apps, and then present the user with notifications that the user then can act on (when convenient) by launching or switching to the app that has received the notification.

- snip -

With iPhone 4.0, there's a second type of system level notification being added: Local Notifications. This mechanism allows apps to set reminders on a schedule that the system handles for them. Rather than being events that are pushed from an external server, they're set up by an app while it's awake, and then held and delivered on time by the system while the app sleeps.

An example might be an app that sets a reminder of a live webcast; the app doesn't need to remain in the background counting down to the notification; the system accepts the reminder and delivers it to the user at the set time on behalf of the app while the app itself goes to sleep.