Apple’s iPhone application rules investigated by FCC

20th June, 2010 by adina
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The FCC has formally begun an investigation regarding the ban Apple is imposing to cross-compiling tools dedicated to making iOS applications. After negotiations with the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission will be able to determine whether Apple is anti-competitive or not as it would try to prevent Adobe Flash CS5 or other software tools from creating iPhone, iPad or iPod touch native applications. The date when this investigation would start is not known yet.

AdMob’s exclusion by Apple through iOS 4 gold master conditions may also be investigated by the FTC. The Department of Justice continues the investigation related to music practices independently of FTC’s investigation of applications. There is no reaction from either Apple or the FTC regarding this news.

These legal ramifications are something quite new for Apple, as it permanently controlled its development in the past. The company prevented writing of Cocoa applications for Mac OS X without needing the use of Xcode. It is true that until now, it did not have devices with so important market shares to create worries for the competition. Although Apple is smaller now in smartphones than Nokia or Research in Motion, the recent actions of its competitors are rather preventive and try to stop the rules from drastically affecting application development. If the FTC waited for Apple to gain a majority share, any rule change might prove ineffective because of giving participants in Apple’s current system a large advantage over competitors.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, has stated that only the quality of the applications did require the cross-compiling restrictions. Some past experience with Mac OS X applications during the last decade has been marked by slow development from Microsoft and Adobe. The third-party tools dependence, such in the case of CodeWarrior, has led to significant delays in the native code of the OS X or in porting applications over to Intel-based devices.

Critics of this policy, like Adobe, for example, have incriminated Apple’s intention of making difficult to write iPhone applications supposed to be easily ported. If the rules apply, developers are forced to write a completely separate version for the iPhone, even when writing applications for Android or other platforms, which could be created using a single software tool for development.


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