
Apple Policy Said to Prompt U.S. Allegation by Adobe - tvon
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=asdIuYfRt_7U
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tumult
This is like when you were a kid and you got in a fight with your sibling, one
of you lost and went and told mommy.

And then, you both got in trouble. Surprise.

Apparently Adobe's managers do not remember lessons learned during childhood.

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Perceval
>Adobe says Apple is stifling competition by barring developers from using
Adobe’s products to create applications for iPhones and iPads

What exactly are Apple and Adobe competing over in this particular case?
Language? Is code language a market?

I can understand Flash developers feeling that this behavior excludes them
from the market, and I understand that Adobe feels (rightly) that this makes
CS 5 less attractive, but is Apple competing directly with Flash app
developers or with Adobe's CS 5?

I guess it's just not clear to me what competition is being stifled and if
Apple directly stands to gain from section 3.3.1 (as opposed to indirectly
gaining because of their ability to maintain control of their platform's
direction and features).

~~~
ajross
Apple is competing with other mobile platforms. Adobe wants to provide a
portable application environment across these platforms (leaving aside the
question of whether flash is a _good_ portable application environment). Apple
won't allow it. They want iPhone apps to _only_ be iPhone apps.

The only way Apple could make 3.3.1 work is because they are the dominant
smartphone platform that everyone must support. If Google or RIM or Microsoft
or Palm were to try the same thing it would fail: they'd get no new customers
and hurt their platform. Apple is leveraging its dominant platform to
perpetuate its dominance, and that certainly seems to be anticompetitive to
me.

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maxharris
Apple made "the dominant smartphone platform that everyone must support"
through its own extraordinary and dilligent efforts, and they deserve every
bit of their success. I disagree completely with these attempts (both in the
media and through legal means such as antitrust law) to cut down tall poppies
like Apple - they've achieved their position fairly, and this antitrust talk
is just about bringing down a company that is good at its job.

~~~
artsrc
The point of antitrust talk is to prevent a company that has achieved
dominance fairly, through extraordinary and diligent effort, from maintaining
that position in _other_ ways.

Bringing down companies that once were, but no longer are good at their jobs
is the whole point.

~~~
maxharris
The only way for a company to remain "dominant" without doing a good job is
for it to curry special favors from the government. This is done usually by
lobbying for regulations that harm competitors, while leaving the company
relatively unharmed (differences in scale following consolidation are natural,
for example, but additional regulatory burden will keep small upstarts from
entering the market - think about the way milk is sold in California). Without
regulatory assistance, unearned monopolies are impossible to maintain.

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malloreon
Man the title to this article means nothing.

"U.S. Allegation?" WTF is that.

