As many of you probably know, I am an OS X programmer. I write programs for OS X and every now and then I’ll write something for the iPhone. Usually these are just to fill my own needs and never get released, but nevertheless I have to deal with Apple to get my apps running.

Programming on the desktop is generally a pleasure. OS X comes with it’s own development IDE, Xcode, and a full set of components with complete documentation. For the most part restrictions are not placed on desktop developers. They are able to distribute and license their application as they see fit.

On the other hand, programming on the iPhone is much the opposite experience. The tools and components are still there but if you want to get your program on the device itself you have to jump through hoops. First, you must pay $99 per year to join the program. Then you have to go through this complex process of generating a security certificate (See HC Episode 9) and if you wave your arms around in exactly the right manner you’ll get it to run on your device. If you didn’t wave your arms right you’ll spend the next 30 minutes trying to track down error messages because you missed setting some obscure project setting. Not exactly the pinnacle of user experience I’ve come to expect from Apple products.

Then there’s getting your app in the App Store. I imagine most people have seen the news stories detailing Apple’s confusing and often inconsistent approval process. There’s the one of the app Eucalyptus that was banned from the app store because of its ability to download the Kama Sutra from Project Gutenberg. Which wasn’t resolved until the furor in the media caused Apple to respond. While many people pointed out the fact that Safari is also able to download “offensive” content and neither one have much control over what users search for. What concerns me more though is Apple’s practice of banning apps that “duplicate functionality.” Such as the Google Voice app, GV Mobile. Obviously being an app that allows phone calls and SMS it is duplicating functionality of the iPhone, and it’s easy to imagine why Apple wants to keep such competition off their device.

Now I’m all for fair competition in an open market, but faulting Microsoft for bundling a browser and a media player while allowing Apple and Linux distros to bundle far more software hardly seems like fair market. It’s not as if Microsoft is only including Internet Explorer and then blocking all other browsers from running on Windows. That I would consider to be monopolistic practices, but merely attempting to provide an offering of features equivalent to your competition hardly seems anti-competitive.

Apple, on the other hand, blatantly blocks apps from running on their device that may compete with their own offerings while their process for allowing or denying the distribution of applications is almost completely opaque. I don’t know of a more solid definition of monopolistic practices than intentionally blocking competing applications from running on your platform. Imagine if you couldn’t install Firefox or Camino on your Mac because they duplicated the functionality of Safari.

The argument that it’s okay because Apple has a much smaller market share doesn’t hold much weight with me. I don’t think users consider market share as a part of their purchasing decision, they look at things like price and features. But in antitrust law it seems merely having market share is considered so much of a boon that it requires removing other competitive benefits the company may have.

As mobile platforms like the iPhone become more and more like portable mini-computers, I think a precedent needs to be set that mobile platforms are not so drastically different from the desktop platform where it would be considered absurd to block users from installing whatever they want; good, bad, or otherwise. And it seems to me odd that in this Web 2.0 era where other companies are often criticized for their closed nature, that Apple’s behavior is often tolerated because they produce exceptional products and because they don’t necessarily have the highest market share.

That said, I won’t be getting an iPhone until I’m not forced to switch to AT&T just to get one. Which luckily may be soon.

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