The iPad Show – Episode 12 – A Case For The iPad

The DOJ on Apple for anti-competition for having their own ad service? Seriously?

First… AdMod, the first group you mentioned feeling sorry for, are owned by Google, have been for months. And Google controls now HOW MUCH of online advertising compared to Apple or anyone else? 70%? 80%? More by now?

Second, the iPad and iPhone are Apple products, and ones that have minor market shares in the net space overall at that. This isn’t MicroSoft OSes being more or less forced onto other companies hardware products to get 95% market share of net accessing devices, then forcing other browsers out of the market… this is one hardware company introducing an ad service on their own product… a service that is better by design, and not one that in any way suggests it’ll force developers to adopt.

When Apple controls 95% market share of internet devices by selling several billion iPads and iPhones, turns off everyone else’s ability to advertise in any other way… then we’ll talk. But until THAT magical year happens, I think they’re safe in offering better alternatives on their own products than their primary competitors (like Google) are offering on those same devices of theirs.

Methinks too many people are drinking the “bad bad evil Apple” kool-aid lately, harping on Apple’s POTENTIAL to assume big brother positions, while too easily ignoring how much control their competition ACTUALLY has.

Steve – Your point is taken, and I really wasn’t suggesting you were anti-Apple per se… but really, how is Apple locking out competition in such a way that appears similar to the Microsoft case in the 90s that makes it “very possible”?

Not to seem argumentative… but this is what I’ve seen:

In recent months, they’ve made a decision not to sell pornographic apps on their own store and they’ve said they won’t approve apps compiled using external APIs (which is pretty much just their way of saying they don’t want developers using Flash as a dev platform for their devices). So far, other development platforms like Torque and Unity seem unphased by that recent move, so all I can think is that it’s mostly Apple pushing back on Adobe.

And, really, why not? Adobe is trying to position itself to marginalize the differences between hardware platforms by being a one-stop shop for development: this would likely influence user interface direction and minimize the uniqueness between platforms by having devs move towards their APIs, all by using Flash which has been notorious through its history for its bugginess, constant need of updating, and long line of quirky (sometimes terribly unintuitive) development tools, poorer support for Apple platforms, as well as being third party and completely proprietary. What started out as a vector graphics plug-in, became an interpreted animation plug-in, then overtook quality online video delivery with a chunky mess of poor quality video… and now is supposed to be the holy grail of compiled code delivery?

I tend to agree with Apple that Flash is a poor fit for developing apps, no matter what massive overhaul Adobe did to it in recent years… and it doesn’t really benefit the platform really either, as an app platform, if you want to take a purely Apple-centric approach. What good is an iPhone vs an Android if they both have the same apps and interface to the uninitiated? Flash in the browser is one thing, but even that is almost a trojan horse… and again, a proprietary one compared to what HTML5 can offer.

But as to the topic of anti-competition…

Sony produces/produced the PS1, PS2, PS3, PSP… and all “apps” (games) and advertising on the platform outside the browsers on several devices are approved by Sony. Microsoft has the Xbox and Xbox 360… same deal. Nintendo’s long line of consoles? Again… everything needs to be approved. My previous cellphones on T-Mobile and Verizon? Again… all approved apps through controlled stores of the network providers. But none of these ever charted for any kind of anti-competition cases… because there is competition between platforms, just like there is between cellphone platforms. Even within AT&T, iPhone isn’t the sole platform… and then there’s Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and dozens of smaller providers.

What we are talking about here is really localized control, not really anti-competition. And the level of control being exercised seems to be a lot more lenient than most other instances going on around it in other industries. Apple was previously offering a much wider berth of apps than just about anyone… but now they’re rolling back. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. Trying to find quality in a pile of 200,000 apps is becoming rather tedious.

The biggest visible difference is that brought up by the introduction of Android and the comparison of smartphones to full computers. But this is a difference in “ideology”, not really “legality”. Apple’s philosophy suggests that better experiences come from not having the headaches that completely open systems tend to create… so they clamp down on things they feel distract from, dilute, or damage that experience.

Apple putting it’s foot into on-phone advertising, if anything, is more a finger in the eye to the current overly dominant player, Google. What will be more interesting to watch is whether Apple’s new gaming hub can play nice with Plus+, OpenFeint, Crystal and the other i-gaming services. THOSE guys I could maybe see worrying a bit about… but from what I’ve seen, they don’t seem to feel threatened or forced out of the market by the move in any anti-competition sense. There isn’t any “forcing” devs to use Game Center that I see, and the existing networks are working to try to leverage it and expand beyond it. Not a one has really cried foul, that I’ve seen, on that very similar move.

Until Apple completely dominates a full sector, which itself is still unlikely, the chance of them getting the DOJ’s eye remains pretty remote to me, especially on something that is an optional service on the side.

But maybe that’s just me.

Also… sorry to suggest you might be drinking “evil evil Apple kool-aid”… I’ve been seeing lots of consumers of the beverage online in recent weeks on many sites which bring up similar issues and conflate them beyond reason.

Either way, thanks for the response and hope to see more episodes in the coming weeks as the site evolves.

If I remember, central to the DOJ’s case against Microsoft wasn’t just that they included IE by default, but that they built the system to effectively damage potential competition unfairly. In that light, I can see where you feel that Apple’s may be creating APIs with a distinct advantage to their advertising system… but I don’t necessarily know that this is absolutely the case. Has anything prevented competing advert creators from popping ads in an in-app browser rather than jumping out to Safari? I don’t think that is the case, and that seems to be the current advantage. That point still hinges on whether Apple’s APIs are developed in such a way that prevents others from using them to full effect. It’s a good point, but I don’t know that it’s necessarily a done deal. But again, good point.

But again, in comparison to Microsoft, I think we’re talking about a platform that really had effective control of net space, a much larger concern, due to its massive install base.

If Microsoft was just one cog in a giant machine, I doubt the DOJ would have come down on them. My point is effectively that “competition” doesn’t just mean on one platform, it means on all platforms. If it’s okay for Sony to sell 120 million PS2s and force all developers to use their approval process… then why is that any different for Apple, and how was it different for Microsoft?

To me, the answer is that Microsoft was teetering on the edge of having an effective monopoly on net access overall, not just within their own product line, because their OS itself was so huge. Apple, and similarly with game consoles and other cellphone services, may exercise greater localized control because they don’t really have monopolies, they are all in competition with each other. Thus they tend to be left alone as competition, in reality, does exist, even if not necessarily within their own closed systems.

For my part, I still feel it comes down to how much effective control Apple (or anyone) can exercise over an entire market, not just within their own circle. I mean, iTunes and a lot of other Apple OSX apps do much the same thing that MS did with IE… but it doesn’t seem to be much concern to the DOJ if they consider overall market share.

I guess time will tell.

Of course, TODAY there are rumblings of an Anti-Trust investigation, but not over the advertising model… but the denial of Flash as a development platform.

Go figure.

Also saw last week that Apple’s ad model was targeting campaigns in the million dollar range or some such… curious.