
DoJ and FTC oppose Apple's walled garden - dujkan
http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/the-government-is-thinking-different-about-apples-platform-lock-out-on-ipad-and-iphone-2010053/
======
symesc
Apple is now the 3rd largest company in the US by market cap, behind Exxon and
Microsoft.

Given the scrutiny and convictions that Microsoft has undergone as a
technology company, Apple is now a natural candidate for inquiry by
government.

The underdog label is gone.

~~~
Qz
It's past Microsoft FYI, only behind Exxon now.

~~~
zweben
Microsoft: 267 billion

Apple: 237 billion

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=aapl%2C+msft>

~~~
Qz
I guess MS went back up, but Apple had pulled ahead at one point recently.

------
pyre
I love how he takes pot-shots at Adobe:

    
    
      By the way, Adobe’s shares dipped two percent the
      day Apple published that piece.
    

As if the dip in stock price somehow validates his pro-Apple attitude. If
anything, it validates the concerns about anti-competitive practices coming
out of Apple.

------
akshaybhat
To quote from article: """ Probe Microsoft because Windows doesn’t run Linux
apps?? """

The author of the article has got no CS knowledge. What are the qualifications
for being a geek? Apple Logo and Star Wars?

I can write better articles than this guy.

~~~
akshaybhat
This guy clearly does not knows anything about cygwin and mingw. Yet still
there are some programs which you cannot run but that is due to lack of
features in windows (signal and ptys) rather than an evil Microsoft scheme.

What the author does not understands is that this clause (3.3.1) was
originally absent from the agreement and was added for sole purpose of pissing
off Adobe. That is anti competitive for sure. IMHO its equivalent to what MSFT
tried to do when it started distributing IE for free.

~~~
joe_the_user
Yes,

And an application framework might, maybe lead to substandard application. But
Apple can and supposedly already does control for application quality, so the
only reason for the further restriction is ... monopoly control.

Both Microsoft and Apple created an skewed playing field in the application
space to further their agendas. Microsoft did this by having secret APIs that
only they and their friends could use. Apple did this by including extraneous
requirements to the App Store.

~~~
akshaybhat
Microsoft has Secret API??? Can you name a single product which benifitted
from it???

Let me remind you its Apple which didnt allow access to GPU to flash dev.

~~~
joe_the_user
Ever heard of Microsoft _Office_?

This page has a link to Andrew Shulman's testimony;
[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20070208195343...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2007020819534335)

 _"The source code for Windows XP and Microsoft Office provide additional
bases for opinion #21 in my June 2, 2006 technical expert report (“Microsoft
Office uses (and copies) undocumented DirectUI APIs”)."_

Andrew Schulman, btw Author of "Unauthorized Windows 95" - IE, foremost expert
on Windows Internals outside of Microsoft...

