Here's something that invalidates your whole argumetn. How does this invlove bribery in any way shape or form? Bribery is clearly a different animal.
Read what I wrote again:
bribes or exclusion contracts
I gave specific examples of how other companies had been prosecuted for "doing whatever they wanted", to demonstrate that they patently
can't under the law, because there seems to be a disturbing pattern of support for that sort of cowboy mentality within certain elements of our society, to the point that such people seem incapable of even comprehending the immorality of such behaviour.
Apple's case may or may not involve one form or another of bribery (the practice seems sadly common throughout the business world), but that is not even the central point. As much as I find bribery disgusting, the key issue is whether or not there is any sinister collusion to exclude competition. It may be through bribery or any other nefarious means, but the outcome is far more significant than the method, and in both Apple's and Dell's cases the outcome is exclusion of competition by some underhand business practise. People should simply not accept that sort of "business" practice as normal, but it seems like an uphill battle to convince them. Fortunately for the rest of us, they don't
need to be convinced, because we have the law to make the final judgement, and the law invariably favours the side of ethics ... even if the ethically challenged masses don't.
fact is, people can simply choose not to develop for iOs, ergo nothing illegal being done.
Well that disingenuously assumes that it's a choice of
free-will, rather than coercion through financial disincentives.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who will
voluntarily choose to ignore Apple's platform ... I'm one of them, but for somewhat more politically motivated reasons. Equally I'm sure some developers will support both iOS
and Android, at least those lucky enough to have sufficient resources to completely refactor their codebases for each platform, since multi-platform development is simply not possible ... thanks to Apple's policies.
However, it's more likely that the majority will be forced, through financial considerations, to support only one or the other, or (at best) to support one platform primarily, whilst only allocating minimum resources to "porting" to the other.
We've all seen the results of "porting" versus true cross-platform development. The first issue is the massive delay between native and ported releases, but IMHO an even bigger issue is the abysmal quality of the results. Take Gameloft titles for example: most prominently "Assassin's Creed - Altair's Chronicles", or DataViz Documents to Go. If users even
see certain key quality software ported to Android at
all, it's a miracle, but if and when it finally
does make it over, it's usually a buggy, slow, half-baked attempt that's barely worth their money.
This is why proper multi-platform development is absolutely vital, to both developers and users. Developers need maximum market exposure at minimum cost, and consumers need parity of access to software titles, regardless of what platform they're using.
Neither DataViz nor Gameloft are Apple's competitors. They're merely suppliers, like wholesalers supplying fruit to market stallholders. So it shouldn't matter to Apple that those suppliers also supply other stallholders, indeed it's none of their damned business. But Apple have made it their business, by creating policies which make it difficult for those suppliers to supply Apple's competitors. Am I the only person here capable of seeing so clearly how comparable this is with racketeering?
If want to be able to program qbasic for google android, and google doesn't allow it, should I sue them?
The specific development language is irrelevant to the principle that companies should not be allowed to coerce third parties to exclude that company's competition. That is textbook racketeering, plain and simple.
Fact is, apple is doing nothing illegal with their app store.
The store is not the problem, it's their policy of refusing software created using non-Apple development tools which is at issue. The fact that their store is the only point of access for any iOS software (unless customers violate Apple's policies, and invalidate their warranties, by "jailbreaking" the goods they bought) merely compounds the issue, since that then means they have a monopoly on the distribution of such software. They then abuse that monopoly by creating policies which coerce third parties to exclude competing platforms, and
that is where they cross the line. Apple should not be allowed to wield such power over third parties, and should not be allowed to use such devious tactics to exclude their competitors.
They could, however be forced to allow sideloading of apps without a jailbreak, and without voiding the warranty.
Bingo. We have a winner.
That would completely solve the problem, and address every issue I have with Apple's policies, since it would allow third parties to use whatever development tools they wanted to create iOS software -
and software for any other platform - simultaneously and with absolute parity.
But that's not the app store, now is it?
Like I said, the app store, taken in isolation, is not the problem. Note that Apple would still be able to "do whatever they wanted" with
their store (within the law). Perhaps now you understand why this issue was never about dictating what people sell in their own premises, but rather what devious tactics they used to abuse their monopoly position to exclude competition.
And maybe you now also understand why Apple have implemented this seemingly bizarre policy in the first place, specifically as an underhand tactic to exclude competition, and for no other reason. And why they absolutely will not allow "sideloading" of applications, because that would utterly defeat their criminal intentions.
Admittedly it's a brilliant strategy:
- Create a piece of hardware
- Use proprietary protection methods to restrict access to that hardware, to only software approved by Apple (code signing)
- Release the hardware under a contract that forbids circumvention of that protection (warranty, remote wiping, and the DMCA)
- Create development tools which only support Apple's platform
- Create and control a single closed-shop repository for software
- Reject all software submitted to that repository not created using Apple's development tools
Yes, brilliant ... and utterly morally bankrupt. But then it's a fact that malevolence seems to breed devious ingenuity.
The result is a platform which cannot possibly be developed for simultaneously with competing platforms using the same codebase, thus ensuring developers must always relegate those alternative platforms to the status of low-priority, second-class citizens - at best, or completely ignore them at worst.
Of course, this is only relevant because Apple has such a large market share, and thus the power to entice developers to support their platform. By coercing those developers to support their platform
exclusively, however, they are guilty of abusing that dominant position (monopoly abuse). If Apple had an
insignificant share of the market, then their policies would harm no one but themselves, because then
they would be the second-class citizens that no developer would want to support ... because Apple makes it unnecessarily difficult for them to do so without an exclusive commitment.
Any one of the above steps, taken in isolation, might rightly be claimed to be well within Apple's rights to "do whatever they want" (even if many of the steps are profoundly immoral), but, as you can see, it's the particular devious combination of these steps which produces a criminally anticompetitive result.
This is why I believe Apple should be prosecuted.
