Apple may before long find itself the case of a Union antitrust inquiry over its position on Flash - built iPhone apps , if areport in theNew York Postpans out .
The paper say the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are talk about which of the two agencies would handle the inquiry , which would focus on changes to Apple ’s iPhone developer permit agreement , divulge last calendar month , that command iPhone apps to be written in Apple - approve programming lyric . The inquiry would investigate whether Apple ’s policy is anticompetitive . ThePostcites “ a person familiar with the matter ” as its source for the rumored inquiry .
A few boulder - sized grains of salt should accompany this news . Besides the fact that a bruit Union enquiry is not the same thing as an actual federal inquiry , an factual inquiry is not the same as a full - scale investigation . Rather , as thePostreport note , an question would let the feds to determine if there ’s enough grounds to deserve a formal investigating .
ThePoststory also report that Apple ’s raw policy requires iPhone and iPad app makers to “ only expend Apple ’s programing dick , ” which is not precisely what the developer correspondence say . Rather , here ’s how section 3.3.1 read :
Applications may only use Documented genus Apis in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any individual APIs . program must be originally written in Objective - C , C , C++ , or JavaScript as execute by the iPhone O WebKit engine , and only code spell in C , C++ , and Objective - C may compose and directly link against the Documented APIs ( for instance , Applications that tie in to Documented genus Apis through an intermediary version or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited ) .
That ’s not rigorously a prerequisite that developers use Apple programming tools ; it does require software to be written in languages that are supported by Apple ’s Xcode programming environment , however . Apple foretell the policy alteration in progress of Adobe ’s Flash CS5 liberation . The update software promise to allow developers to build apps in Flash and then deploy them to multiple platforms , admit Apple ’s iPhone oculus sinister . Apple contends that such an coming creates lower - quality apps that fail to take reward of iPhone O - specific features .
Nevertheless , a Union inquiry — if one were to wind up come about — would raise the temperature on the already boiling Adobe - Apple feud over Flash . Last week , Apple CEO Steve Jobsspelled out his company ’s objections to Flashinan open letter post on Apple ’s Website . That prompted aresponse from Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen , who contends that Apple ’s decisiveness to bar mobile developers using Flash is a restrictive move that hurt developer and consumers .
