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EU Plans To Make Apple, Adobe and Others Open Up
FlorianMueller writes "After pursuing Microsoft and Intel, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes is now preparing an initiative that could have an even greater impact on the IT industry: a European interoperability law that will affect not only companies found dominant in a market but all 'significant' players. In a recent interview, Mrs. Kroes mentioned Apple. Nokia, RIM and Adobe would be other examples. All significant market players would have to provide access to interfaces and data formats, with pricing constraints considered 'likely' by the commissioner. Her objective: 'Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future.' The process may take a few years, but key decisions on the substance of the bill may already be made later this year."
Will the customers of Apple and Microsoft in the USA also benefit from openness and interoperability?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Do the various "services" have to be able to communicate with any kind of "IT product"?
How is Apple an "abuser" of open technology? Their open technology was licensed under the BSD license which explicitly allows the type of stuff Apple is doing. If you don't like it then use the GPL or another license that has copyleft when you license your OSS.
You do realize that you don't have to use Apple products don't you? The main way to open up competition is to kill software patents and weaken copyrights.
When government fucks with free markets, the customer loses, always.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So now cell phones will be the size of buildings so that they can support the massive array of antena and dishes so they can comunicate across the full radio spectrum. Still, it will be interesting having a cell phone that supports microwave OC3 communication.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
The EU can't formally legislate on what companies are allowed to do in the US market, but in practical terms, we're talking about a global market for IT products and (especially) Internet-based services. If vendors wanted to apply a different set of openness and interoperability standards in the US than in the EU, they would have to make a lot of efforts to keep the markets separated. They can do it, such as by refusing connections from certain sets of IP addresses, but it would be a major hassle. If many vendors did so, lawmakers in the US would also take a closer look and might consider a similar initiative to benefit customers in their own country.
Concerning Microsoft, the new law isn't even needed for them because they were already subjected to two antitrust proceedings in the EU on the grounds of being found dominant. More importantly, I'm not aware of them treating the US market any differently concerning interoperability with Samba than they treat the EU, even though it was only a European ruling.
The biggest benefit of the envisioned new EU law is that similar rules would also have to be respected by companies who may just not be close enough to a monopolist so that antitrust law can deal with them, but who are powerful enough (such as Apple, Adobe etc.) that it's a problem if they get away with too closed an approach. I don't mean to blame those companies for simply trying to maximize shareholder value or for adhering to certain closed philosophies -- but if antitrust law can't change their behavior, a new instrument is needed.
"Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future."
What does that even mean?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
When the government starts dictating requirements and the price, we're all screwed.
I find it so interesting that the E.U. constantly appears to have no concept of Private Property.
Do the various "services" have to be able to communicate with any kind of "IT product"?
I haven't asked the commissioner but even without doing so I have no doubt that she meant this both ways. Interoperability goes both ways. The only problem is that obviously some companies in the industry want it as a one-way street: others have to open up, they stay closed. I can't imagine a piece of legislation would be one-way. Even if some companies tried to lobby for one-way rules, I don't think they'd get very far.
What's more likely is that the rules may only apply to certain segments of the diverse IT market. But again, within the scope of the rules I can't imagine there would be anything other than quid pro quo, give and take on equal terms.
I have to admit that the thought of Android, Blackberry, etc apps on Apple's App Store would be interesting. ;-)
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Perpenso Calc for iPhone. Classic Scientific and HEX functionality plus RPN, fractions, complex numbers, dotted quads, 32/64-bit signed/unsigned bitwise operations, UTF-8, IEEE FP decode, and RGB decode with color preview.
"...To create anything for any of their platforms, you need to use Apple tools..." I wasn't aware Apple wrote the GCC thanks for enlightening me. I'll let the writers of Code::Blocks and Eclipse know they are owned by Apple as well. It might come as a shock to them.
I have to admit that the thought of Android, Blackberry, etc apps on Apple's App Store would be interesting. ;-)
Emulation could make it happen, in principle at least.
Because trying to have Microsoft and Intel open up were such successes ...
That makes absolutely no sense. The EU bitch slapped those companies for anti competitive behaviour. It had nothing to do with their openness (or perceived lack thereof.) Opening up was not their end game.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8047546.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7266629.stm
That's never going to happen. If that is what they mean by interoperability...
if you don't know what it means, its probably something that you don't know much about?
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I have to admit that the thought of Android, Blackberry, etc apps on Apple's App Store would be interesting. ;-)
Emulation could make it happen, in principle at least.
I'm not referring to running Adroid, BlackBerry, etc apps on an iPhone. I'm just thinking about the Apple App Store becoming a cross platform store. The users sets a filter for their device and then native apps for their device are shown.
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Perpenso Calc for iPhone. Classic Scientific and HEX functionality plus RPN, fractions, complex numbers, dotted quads, 32/64-bit signed/unsigned bitwise operations, UTF-8, IEEE FP decode, and RGB decode with color preview.
I'm against DRM in general, but the reality of my situation is that I have a ton of DRM'ed songs and videos bought from iTMS.
I would willingly pay $30 to get a Linux-based player for this content.
I wonder if that could happen under this plan?
Can you imagine how much inertia an Apple & MS embargo would bring for FOSS? So yes, proprietary software vendors, get out of the EU ASAP please ;)
So, I assume that if that is the case, the EU will also force Ford to sell Chrysler's cars on their lots, and force Nike to sell Adidas in the Nike store.
Then you can go live in your FOSS Utopia.
If this ends up being applied to device drivers, it could be great news for the hard working FOSS coders working on drivers for graphics cards and other hardware under Linux and the other open OSes.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'm against DRM in general, but the reality of my situation is that I have a ton of DRM'ed songs and videos bought from iTMS.
I would willingly pay $30 to get a Linux-based player for this content.
I wonder if that could happen under this plan?
My understanding is that the Apple iTunes Store can remove DRM from old 128 kbps purchases if you upgrade them to the 256 kbps versions currently being sold. I don't think Apple is selling songs with DRM any more.
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Perpenso Calc for iPhone. Classic Scientific and HEX functionality plus RPN, fractions, complex numbers, dotted quads, 32/64-bit signed/unsigned bitwise operations, UTF-8, IEEE FP decode, and RGB decode with color preview.
I make stuff on the Apple platform without using Apple tools, so by "anything" you mean "some things, like iPhone apps".
I make music on my Apple using non-Apple products, burn CDs using non-Apple products (open source even!), browse the web with non-Apple products, write documents with non-Apple products (sometimes even Microsoft products!), write HTML with non-Apple products.
So, unless you include the OS, I do the majority of my content creation on this Apple with non-Apple products. So, your "anything" really is.... nonsense.
(Oh, and even the OS on my other Apple is Ubuntu, so anything I create on there is.... you guessed it, using non-Apple products).
Sometimes I wonder why I even read /. comments. They are so fucking predictable.
First off, you don't have to pay Apple anything to make Mac apps (besides owning a Mac and honestly if you don't own and use a Mac you have not business developing for it). There is a paltry $99 per year fee to make iPhone/iPod/iPad apps but no one is forcing you to make iPhone apps. On a side note, you have to pay RIM, Palm and Google money if you want to get in their app stores as well so they must be "open technology abusers" as well.
Here is some of Apple's open source code: http://www.opensource.apple.com/ Maybe you should download a few Gigs of source code before you start talking shit about something you don't know about.
Apple makes iOS which is based on OS X and puts it on iPhones, iPads and iPods. They took their own OS (which I might add has a large amount of open source code in it and more coming at fairly steady intervals). Read that again, "they took their own OS". The OS they spent years making and invested tons of time/money into. They give every person who owns an OS X license a free copy of their entire development stack: Xcode, Interface Builder, Dashcode, Instruments, Quartz Composer, PackageMaker, FileMerge, etc, etc, etc. They arguable provide the most complete set of frameworks available for any platform (Cocoa/CoreFoundation) to developers. You can build a Mac or iPhone app with GCD (open source). Apple has provided piles of code to the GCD project. You can now build Mac and iPhone apps with LLVM (open source). Apple has provided piles of code to the LLVM project.
So, given that information (and taking into account that Apple is a business that needs to make money to survive) why on earth do they need to allow someone to make Mac apps on Linux/Windows? You don't make any fucking sense man. None at all. Have you seen the cost of Microsoft's developer tools recently? And don't bother mentioning the "Express" versions of their software that don't allow commercial products.
To sum things up, many readers of /. would like every company on earth to make everything "open and free" no matter what the cost to said company. If a company does not do this, they will get piles of complaints from slashdotters who wouldn't do anything different even if said company did make something "open".
Forcing companies to open up their proprietary protocols while certainly a step in the right direction, probably isn't enough and will almost certainly be abused...
Consider this, a company brings out product using a proprietary protocol or format...
They are forced to release the documentation, but they do so slowly, once the documentation is out the format is (intentionally) extremely complex and takes a long time for anyone else to get very far in implementing it.. Eventually flaws in the documentation are discovered, reported, and the vendor is forced to correct the documentation...
After months or years, competitors have finally implemented enough of the published documentation to have an interoperable program...
The first company brings out a new version of the product, using a different proprietary protocol or format and deprecates the old version.
Instead, companies should be forced to use standards where they already exist, and ONLY if nothing exists to do what is needed then they should be required to develop a new one, or modify an existing standard, in full view of the community... Such standards should also reuse existing published standards wherever possible.
Force companies to compete on product quality and cost, not through lock-in.
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Why is the parent post modded troll? I'm sorry, but "troll" is not a substitute for "holds an opinion opposite to me".
The parent is entirely factually correct, and is talking about the very heart and idea of OSS: if you release something under the BSD licence, anyone can use it. If you release something under the GPL, anyone can use it as long as they follow the licence. So, when Apple uses BSD and GPL code, somehow it is "abuse"? Come on! You are either for the idea of OSS, or you are against it. You *cannot* be "oh, well, I love OSS, but Apple is not allowed to use any BSD code and get rich off it! That's just not allowed, but other companies can use BSD code since it is open source."
This also doesn't address the benefits the OSS community has seen from Apple. Far from being an "abuser" Apple has contributed an enormous amount to OSS - isn't that one of the benefits of a large entity getting involved in the community: provision of resources? Companies like IBM, Apple, Red Hat, Mozilla Foundation are promoting open source. You can't turn around and say "I don't like Apple, so they are abusing OSS!"
If you really hate them that much, write your own OSS code and release it under a modified BSD licence that permits anyone except Apple to use it.
I wonder which companies will run the calculations and decide that they will lose more profits opening up than they would by simply leaving the European market. While this sounds nice, companies who do a smaller percentage of business in Europe than they do elsewhere may decide it is worth it to keep their code locked. After all, no one will be able to implement interoperability exclusively in the EU, the US + rest of the world will get it too.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
Apple is the single largest abuser of open technology, standards, formats and platforms. To create anything for any of their platforms, you need to use Apple tools, Apple hardware and pay Apple. It's not even technical limits on the hardware, but all artifical barriers created by Apple.
Yes that's why I needed a Mac to use Chrome (Webkit) on my PC. Or that I needed a Mac to run Darwin (BSD). Or to play non-DRMed AACs (MP4 part 7). Oh wait, no, I didn't.
I have no idea why Microsoft always gets yelled at because other third parties don't implement their support fully, but Apple gets a free pass on it.
For the most part, MS creates their own standard and fails to publish it fully. Apple has a tendency to use open standards. If you have a problem and not Apple's implementation then you should take it up with those who wrote the standard.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No, more like "I'd like to change GIS systems, can I get my data back, please?" - Currently if you go with the industry leader you are screwed. For example the US Air Force mandates that all it's bases store their maps in a proprietary DCMA protected format (got to love lobbiests) - This means that the US Air Force Academy spent $25 Million in a non compete tender to ESRI each year to licence the software they need to get to their own datasets (https://www.fbo.gov/index?tab=core&s=opportunity&mode=form&id=01da8bda20d8acaa50c7af0bba1f980c&tabmode=list). This is my taxes going down the drain each and every year.
I guess the EU just got fed up with this sort of tax waste and feels that it is preventing others entering the market. Even if I give my software away I can't beat vendor lock in like that.
They're in the process of switching to LLVM, so keeping up to date on gcc isn't really necessary any more.
You seem knowledgeable. Where can I find an Apple Mac video player that can play at double speed, and without distortion? (Like the 2xAV plugin for Windows Player.)
I'm beginning to think buying a Mac was a mistake if I can't find such a simple function for it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Or they will just point out the obvious stupidity of it all and call it a day.
Would I be able to sync my iPod without having to use iTunes? Or access my iTunes share with any DAAP client??? Would this stop Apple from preventing the Palm Pre from syncing with iTunes?
so that we can have some freedom with the devices we BUY. even americans' butts, mind that.
Read radical news here
It's not illegal because anytime anyone tries to do anything outside of Apple's closed loop legal terms, they get sued. Apple is always going to be preemptive. A soon as they let one slip by they lose. Let us not forget that, unlike Apple, Microsoft creates almost exclusively software. At least that is what they are in trouble for. Apple creates not only software but the hardware that it runs on. While their software is open, their hardware is far form it. How many times have companies tried to copy Apple's hardware and gotten sued? Even the ones who didn't try to rip offew their OS. It doesn't matter how open they pretend to make their software. If they close off their hardware, and make the software acceptance procedure ambiguous they are not open. Hell, they just had an antitrust inquiry two months ago.
It's hilarious how many see this as an "attack on free market".
Let me run a few facts down through your skulls:
1. There is no free market for IT goods referred to in the statement. The market that exists is heavily controlled and regulated, essentially being a monopoly market on per-product basis, or interconnected market where vendor uses monopoly control over one aspect of the market to openly destroy freeness in another market.
2. Neelie Kroes is probably the most pro-free market person you will find in EU. It's more of her life's philosophy then just a law enforcement on some level.
3. Suggestions include OPENING the CLOSED MARKET, to make it... that's right, more OPEN!
So do share, in what way is this "evil EU abusing US companies by closing free market"? I can see this being "good EU abusing evil US companies who like to close market to competition by forcing them to actually compete", but to actually claim the exact opposite, you have to either be ignorant, stupid, or have a deep vested interest in status quo.
You may just have stumped me. I assume none of the OSS players can do this, like VLC or Mplayer?
Quicktime 7 seems to do it - enable the "show AV controls" under the window menu and you can change the playback speed there with a slider. I just tested it with Dr Who and it seems to work without distortion, but I'm not sure if it is suitable - maybe it depends on the content you feed it?
The list of companies given in press release includes European companies. Also, Neelie Croes is known as someone who won't care if you're european, american or papua guinean - if you break the rules, she'll come down on you just as hard.
No, it's more like create an API that anyone can use, or find anothet place to sell your stuff!
This is blinging
It's like a country that has freedom of thought. You are allowed to have any thoughts you like, as long as you keep them inside your head and don't express them in any way.
What good is a phone application, if you can't run it in a phone?
Do you like having the ability to print in Linux? Next time you go to print, I highly recommend opening your browser and typing http://localhost:631/
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
APIs such as?
Just out of curiosity, if everything you use is non-Apple, why bother with the Apple platform at all? If all you're paying for is the hardware, why bother?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Well then the question I would think is "should they be" and considering they own more than 70% of the market and has used that power to stifle competition I would say when it comes to multimedia that would be a big YES!
Just because Apple makes pretty iStuff doesn't mean they should be allowed to lock down the market or threaten competition. And I would say that iPod pretty much owns the PMP market hands down, which gives iTunes considerable leverage. Frankly I'm just waiting for the inevitable antitrust suit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Isn't it about time that Porsche made a cheap economy car, to the price point I want, with the features I expect out of a sports car?
While I agree that a mid-sized tower would be nice as would always better hardware for the same price in their current models, it has been tried before and failed. Pre current reign of Jobs, there were all sorts of styles designs, it was to much research and design of too many models of which some didn't sell. One of the things Jobs did was trim down the line so that the company could become profitable again. Like licensing the OS out to other manufacurers, it wasn't something that benefited Apple so don't expect it again. For everybody else, there are hackintoshes. From what I've read, it's not hard and not too many driver issues.
When the alternative is living under the thumb of our corporate overlords, yeah that sounds pretty nice actually.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
We don't live in a free market. This is an illusion provided by the government to placate the masses.
cat
This is how Skynet will be born. By some clueless twit with dangeroulsy little knowledge, interfacing devices and systems to each other in unholy ways.
cat
Looks to me like they're talking about mandating interoperable data formats and protocols, not app portability. Sounds good to me! That's exactly what we should have.
I do not want to force Microsoft to make "Word" available on every platform, or force every platform vendor to create an emulated environment that runs a version of "Word". I want to force "significant" word processor vendors to offer import/export to compatible, open formats (doing so will cause market forces to force the insignificant vendors to do so too).
Same deal with the iOS, sure. Yeah, it's nice that "Pages" can spit out a Word or PDF version of a file and store it out to the "iwork.com" web site. Now what about just adding "OpenDocument" formats (or maybe just RTF) to the conversion list (or maybe even just completely document/open the XML format that Pages uses so we can do it ourselves with XSLT), and using a standard protocol like WebDAV do to the storing and fetching? That's exactly what should happen, as long as we're talking about "our data" (eg. our essays, our spreadsheets).
I don't want them to mandate openness with regards to application execution (eg. "everyone has to be able to install whatever they want wherever they want"), or with regards to client-side support of DRM (eg. "because Adobe's DRM is ubiquitous for ebooks lent by public libraries, every ebook reader is legally required to support Adobe's DRM"). Both of those, I'd consider to have more downside than upside. But for example mandating that every significant ebook reader be able to export annotations in an interoperable way (so I can mark up a Kindle copy of "1984" and import my own personal notes into an iBooks copy), that I'd welcome.
You seem knowledgeable. Where can I find an Apple Mac video player that can play at double speed, and without distortion? (Like the 2xAV plugin for Windows Player.)
I'm beginning to think buying a Mac was a mistake if I can't find such a simple function for it.
quicktimeplayer 7 uses the industry standard keys j k l for playback, stop and playforward. pressing l plays forward, pressing l agains plays double speed etc.
Good point.
At what point does the market require another iPhone to compete with the iPhone? That's nonsense. There are tons and tons of iPhone competitors.
This is a non-starter and headline grabber from whatever agencies are talking.
However, the interoperability bit can be about what? Apple disallowing Flash, really? Your raison d'etre as a European agency is to get Apple to allow Flash on the iPHone? I don't see it.
What other interoperability aspects are there to force Apple on? You must allow toolkit X, Y, or Z to deploy applications on your platform? I can see an argument for this (personally I'm good with Apple's position, it's clean and right headed) but again, really? Supposing they are going to go after game consoles next?
However poorly the EU words words it, I think, what they are trying to avoid is lock-in. i.e. iPhone = Apple app store ONLY, or iPhone = ATT service ONLY. I know the iPhone is carried on many carriers across the EU; it's just an example. They are trying to prevent a single purchase from locking customers into a single supply chain / company, essentially negating other competing services.
..news for people who appreciate freedom.
It will mean that I, as a Linux user, will be able to read and write MS Word documents correctly, connect to an exchange server, and buy and use an iphone with my music player (should I want).
I think it's ridiculous at the moment for me to need Microsoft Windows plus MS Word just to be able to collaborate on a MS Word (or Powerpoint) document - I don't even want to use the software - just to be able to save in .doc would be a huge boon, and open up the Word Processor market to many competitors who cannot compete at the moment because of MS's dominance and closed nature.
D
To Clarify that comment ...
Michael Sweet, who owns Easy Software Products, started developing CUPS in 1997. The first public betas appeared in 1999.[2] The original design of CUPS used the LPD protocol, but due to limitations in LPD and vendor incompatibilities, the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) was chosen instead. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for several Linux distributions, including Red Hat Linux.[citation needed] In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.[3] In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code.[4] (wikipedia)
The guy that developed cups in 1997 was hired in 2007, a whole 10years later. You can hardly credit Apple for developing CUPS, since it had been in development for 10yrs before they Hired Michael. If Cups had not existed - you can bet your bottom dollar whatever printing framework OSX would be using now would not be enjoying the freedom of operating on other platforms.
Its fair to say however - its nice that they did hire Michael and are continuing to support the development of CUPS.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
In some cases it's industry-standard formats, sometimes even open formats.
Mac OS X saves screen captures in PNG.
Preview can save in GIF, JPEG, JPEG2000, BMP, PDF, PSD, PNG, TGA, TIFF and a few other formats.
iTunes understands WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, MPEG-4, H.264.
Calendar uses the iCal format and Address Book uses the vCard format.
Mac OS X itself can print directly to PDF. If an application can print, it can output to PDF automatically.
I don't get that kind of reasoning at all.
When we talk about software, companies are more like car dealerships. You can't Toyota dealerships to sell Ford vehicles, much less do maintenance on those.
When we talk about media, companies are more like groceries stores. A music file should play on all music-playing devices capable of reading files. Ex: iTunes now sells plain AAC files which can be played on a lot of non-Apple devices. As an example, you can play a tune bought on iTunes and play it on your Nintendo DSi.
An antitrust inquiry and an antitrust conviction are two completely different things.
Just because a company dominates a segment doesn't imply monopoly or anti-competitive behavior. Maybe Apple has a 70% "multimedia" share because they have a 25 year track record of being the better multimedia-capable OS?
Yes Apple are bad, but i would argue not as bad as MS...
To create anything for their platforms you have to use Apple tools...
In order to develop for MS platforms you need to use their tools too, the only difference is that they don't require you to buy their hardware (because they really don't make any), but you still have to buy their software...
On the other hand, Apple development tools are based around gcc, whats to stop you taking the apple version of gcc and making a cross compiler to run on say linux?
Artificial barriers - most proprietary software vendors are guilty of artificial barriers, apple are not really the worst offender here... 32bit versions of windows support pae and yet still artificially limit you to 4gb of address space, and lets not forget activation, license keys and all the different versions of windows where the cheaper versions are intentionally crippled in various ways.
Apple and MS are both as bad as each other when it comes to h.264, although the problems with this are patents rather than the format being proprietary...
OSX and iOS both support caldav for calendars, as well as the proprietary ms activesync protocol... ms only supports the proprietary exchange protocol on the desktop and the proprietary activesync protocol on windows mobile...
OSX supports pdf out of the box, MS are trying to push their own XPS format which is completely different...
OSX comes with the ability to edit opendocument text by default, windows doesn't
OSX can mount smb, nfs, webdav and other network filesystems out of the box, windows only supports its own proprietary smb protocols... on disk filesystems are similar too - osx can mount its own formats, windows formats and ufs, windows only supports the ms created formats
apple have a modern standards compliant web browser, for which the core rendering engine is open source... ms have a proprietary browser with a proprietary rendering engine that they have only recently started to improve because they had no other choice.
I do agree that the iphone is too restrictive although the simplicity is actually good for the average user, they should provide an equivalent to jailbreaking for advanced users... same way google did on the nexus one, you have the option to root the phone at your own risk.
end users really do need locked down by default products, the complexity of a computer is actually far too much for the average user to cope with, especially on systems like windows or osx without centralised package management... most users are really much better off with a locked down appliance thats effectively controlled by someone else (ie someone who knows what they're doing).
but when you talk about the iphone being locked down, consider games consoles... they are every bit as locked down as the iphone, perhaps more so... modern consoles have an "app store", if you want to publish software for them you need to pay fees to the console manufacturer and you will probably need to buy their specified development environment, and modding them to run homebrew is often considerably harder than jailbreaking an iphone.
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this version will be a binary abacus, and Bull Group will offer it as an upgrade to its now-outlawed mainframes and servers.
this is envisioned to be the last generation of "computational" equipment availiable in the EU.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Well, then they can follow US's steps...
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To create anything for any of their platforms, you need to use Apple tools, Apple hardware and pay Apple. It's not even technical limits on the hardware, but all artifical barriers created by Apple
Wrong on all three points. You can create Mac software without using Apple tools, without using Apple hardware, and you don't have to pay Apple anything.
Because not everything is. I do use some Apple stuff - iTunes and Safari, and iPhoto being the biggest. I like OS X, and it does what I need it to do, but I'm not beholden to it (I do run Ubuntu too, but not seriously at the moment - not comfortable enough with it yet to leave OS X behind on that box, and I was also bummed out that I couldn't put KDE on it, since it ha a PPC cpu, and from all the screenshots I have seen, it just looks nicer than Gnome [so sue me, I like eye candy - I use OS X!]).
I also like the physical format of the iMac. I bought an iMac specifically (over a Macbook Pro/Mac Pro) because of the form factor. You really can't beat a desktop unit that you can unplug from the wall, drop into its box (with carrying handle) with the keyboard and mouse in under 2 minutes, and check it in as baggage for a transatlantic trip (many times) and set it up on the other end in the same time. Plus, it takes up so little space on my desk, and freedom from a tower is a joy. The cost of the iMac for that alone was well worth it for me.
If I weren't using the iMac for the form factor I'd still use OS X over Windows, since I simply prefer it and have yet to find anything I couldn't do that I did before (switched over 10 years ago). I'm not under any illusion that is is magically immune from software threats, or that it magically makes the world better, it's just very nice to use.
Ain't Car Dealerships tied by Licence / Contract restrictions to only sell one brand of vehicle in a single store?
That's why you tend to find a group of dealerships (e.g. Ford, Toyota & Ferrari) owned by the same company in a single location, to get around it. (Well that's the state of play in the UK)
Same thing can be done with iTunes, Have a separate "iMarket" based on the same iTunes framework for other Devices and OS's.
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
If I design a platform, I have the right to set terms for using that platform and consumers have a right to not buy into that platform. These EU people claim to be about "freedom" but regulation never leads to more "freedom". What's next? Will they regulate Apple into making iOS 4 less secure to open up a market for antivirus? As an EU citizen, I demand accountability from the EU. I demand that they stop accepting money from lobbyists hell bent of making everything insecure just so they can peddle their crapware "security" software.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The EU is already the biggest economy in the world, beating out even the US. I don't think that's their concern.
it says nokia on the article, so atleast eu companies
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
P55 chipset motherboards with Intel processors are super propietary. I have run at least 4 or 5 different OS's on my new Apple laptop including MS-Windows.
Uhhh...did you not read the stifle competition part? Here let me quote a bit in case you are one that refuses to RTFL "Apple has allegedly been pressuring music labels to ditch Amazon MP3's "Daily Deal" promotions, lest they be excluded from being promoted through the iTunes machine."
If this isn't an example of monopolistic behavior I don't know what is. Here is an easy way to tell: If MSFT did it, would people be having a shitfit? Of course they would, since they are trying to set the terms their competitors get by basically saying "You promote on Amazon and we'll bury your artists so far down nobody will ever see them". In fact this is already having a negative effect on the competition as according to the FL "labels representing Corinne Bailey Rae, Lady Antebellum, and Ke$ha have all reportedly pulled out of Daily Deals consideration in favor of staying on Apple's good side".
So I'm sorry, but frankly I don't give a damn if they are the leader through bribery, low prices or as you put it "because they have a 25 year track record of being the better multimedia-capable OS" the second they start using their position to dictate what terms the competitors get I have to scream antitrust. It is one thing to use what your competitors are getting to negotiate yourself a better deal and it is quite another to use your market power to make sure they get a worse one.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Does VLC not have a time stretch function for it's audio? If you haven't looked for this feature in VLC I suggest you try that first. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ If that doesn't help, you can always use MAX/MSP/Jitter to make your own, or bust out the DVD that came with your mac and write a simple video player Xcode (Due to the joys of object oriented programming, this is easier than it seems it would be).
On Linux, mplayer will do this with no distortion. Just press the [ and ] key respectively to slow down and speed up. There is a command line switch to keep the same pitch if you want that. I'm not sure if it works like that on OSX but I can't see why not.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Corporations are not subject to the conjecture of random slashdot guy, sorry.
Until Apple is charged with, and convicted of antitrust violations, they aren't monopolistic.
in my opinion. Try to play chicken with Steve Jobs and see what happens. He locked the iPhone out of the entire Verizon market in the US (which is huge) because he felt passionately that Apple's value proposition includes controlling the user experience.
That said, though, I think Apple is flexible on some of the App Store policies (like competing with core functionality apps)--they just aren't flexible on allowing the user experience & perception of an iPhone to include malware/viruses/unreliable junk apps. There's a way to split this hair in a way that makes everyone happy.
It is nice to see this many open formats from Apple. At the same time I would be curious to know which other formats or protocols, used by Apple in public products, need to be opened up. I am more curious as to data formats that could be cause for lock-in. I would also be interested in having such formats from other companies being listed.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If you aren't joking, you must be high on crack.
OK, where can I download the source for Apple's GUI. Speak up, I cant quite hear you...
What's that, I cant download the source for Apple's GUI. OK then how about being able to put my unsigned code on an Idevice. I cant do that either.
Apple built a propriatery product on open source technologies and effectively locked the benefits out of open source, this is the abuse the GPL is designed to prevent. Not only that they lock their customers into their supply chain as much as possible, that kind of abuse goes beyond Microsoft and we all agree that Microsoft is an abusive corporation.
Compared to now when the corporation is allowed to fuck the customer, said free market does not exist. Contray to you frothing at the mouth anti-government rant, this move is about opening up the market and lowering the barriers for entry. Sacrebleu, a lower barrier for entry means that more people can get into the market, more people in the market then there is more competition.
.docx and BES. This has been conclusively proven to be a very good thing when applied to other markets such as cellular protocols. But don't let the facts get in the way of your "evil gubbermit" rant now.
If you bothered to read the article, this only covers interfaces and data formats like
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yes but apple did not invent any of those technologies. If you use Chrome you're just using KHTML, developed by the KDE Team. If you run Darwin your just running BSD, developed at University of California. If you're playing AAC files you're playing a file developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, Dolby, Sony Corporation and Nokia.
I do need a Mac if I want to use cocoa, the Aqua GUI or develop for an Idevice. Out of these things the only one the EU is targeting the last one (possibly, they seem to be after formats and protocols rather then dev environments).
Why dont you look at Apple developed formats and interfaces. If I want to use an Idevice, I need Itunes. If MS did this you and all the other zealots would be mercilessly ripping Microsoft to shreds. They get lambasted enough for requiring signed drivers for 64-bit Windows (which aren't that hard to get signed and actually help the stability of the system by preventing unstable drivers from being installed, and yes unstable drivers will kill any system Mac, Win or Linux).
Why the hell does Apple get a free ride when it has implemented worse vendor lockin then Microsoft could have ever done.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
ALL the companies? For example,will it include EU companies?
Like the Nokia from the summary? I think so.
Reading the article, I don't see the issue as being anything more than the data created or purchased being interoperable. Buy an eBook or mp3, and it should be usable on platforms that claim to read eBooks and play mp3s. Create data like photos or documents, and the data created should be usable on other platforms which claim to support those same formats. That's reasonable and probably acceptable to most device makers as long as the standards are established.
But it's not saying that if you buy an iOS 4 Tetris app from Apple's app store that it should work on your Nokia N97. At best, it's saying that data created with that Tetris app (e.g. players high score lists) should be transferable to another Tetris app on another platform... if there is a standard for Tetris app information. We (probably) aren't going to see alarm clocks that play Tetris, but we might see alarm clocks that can play the same tunes you bought in 2001 even though your Nomad finally died.
This doesn't appear to break down any walled gardens or worse, make the government the purveyor of the biggest walled garden, but it just makes it easier to swap from one garden to another when your gardeners raise their prices and try to lock you out of what you created and bought yourself. You can get what's yours and move to somewhere else, be a different garden or a wild open source forest.
Sounds good - so, I want everything in EBCDIC, nothing in that octal crap! And definitely nothing in iXXn, UTF whatever codes!
Oh, people mean presentation of data, not the coding of data? Definitely 3D, I love to see my data in 3D - 2D is so 90's and 1D is 80's or how did it go? My Excel and Powerpoint will shine in 3D! But, please, not those smell effects - I have to make some corporate reports and you know, the smell may not be the nicest? Colors, of course, at least the normal 16million! Videos in HD, whatever it means to any manufacturer but I can take that - as long as they look as good as Avatar with 3D glasses! Sound - minimum 16 channels! What else about data - should / could we require some quality / the data to have some contact to reality - no, of course not, it's corporate data!
How about letting an enterprising app developer create a JVM for the iPhone? So that others can create simple Java games and tools?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Yeah, I bet all Northern Europe is crying right now wishing they could be like the USA.
For those of you pointing to nokia, let me point out that overall nokia is already pretty open. THey were SYmbian OS and that is now Opened.
OTH, SAP is a VERY closed German system. Now, some may claim that is nothing more than a accounting system so it should not count. Yet, elaborate applications are produced on it and there are a number of closed hooks that SAP makes use of, that others can not. In fact, SAP is in many ways far more closed than Windows or Mac.
Yet, I noticed that they did not list it. There are other EU companies and groups out there with closed systems. WIll they also be forced open?
Somehow, I seriously doubt it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They're a CONSUMER PRODUCTS company. As far as Apple is concerned, Apple doesn't do IT.
Just like all makers of gramophones benefited by the introduction of standard playback speeds, Apple benefits from the adoption of various standards.
Apple makes and sells HARDWARE.
Software is how hardware inter-operates.
Apple is only too glad to license somebody else's standard and beat the snot out of the competition with elegant hardware an software design.
None of the other hardware manufacturers understand elegance.
Consumers instinctively DO.
Ergo Apple sells millions upon millions of iPods, iPhones and iPads when Microsoft throws billions of dollars dollars in the same arena with lousy results.
Zune sales suck, PCs sell only to businesses who just want the damn things to not be such malware targets and they have to pull their mobile phone after a few weeks.
The jury isn't in yet as far as game consoles.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
2. Contact. You can use Mobileme syncing for your contacts or Gmail contacts through Exchange mode. No lock in there either.
3. Notes. The Notes app now syncs through Mobileme allowing you to easily port those notes elsewhere. No lock in again.
4. Music. Music is sold as DRM-free AAC in iTunes which can be played on other players and phones. You can also play MP3 format music or import MP3 music from services like eMusic.
5. Video. Purchased video is DRM'ed at the request of the MPAA but the same holds true for other devices/services like the Zune.
6. eBooks. Free epub books that are public domain are provided DRM free. PDFs are also DRM free. Lock in for purchased books is the same as other services.
Looking at the iOS ecosystem, I see it as less closed than Blackberry or Windows Mobile as it is not tied to one desktop platform for the end user and it it cheap for a developer to get started on iOS compared with windows mobile or Blackberry app stores.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Google's OS allows other App stores by default, and don't even get me started on Palm. Don't you dare equate them with Apple. At least in the mobile realm.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Did you ever use KHTML? Apple has extended WebKit way beyond what KHTML ever did. In fact, one of the contentions of the KHTML team was that Apple was putting so many features and not properly documenting them that they could not backport some of the features. That's like saying: Red Hat's Fedora really doesn't contribute to GNU/Linux. That's just the standard Linux distro with some extensions.
If you run Darwin your just running BSD, developed at University of California.
So there's no difference between OpenBSD, FreeBSD, BSDLite, and Darwin? I would think many in the BSD community would disagree with you.
If you're playing AAC files you're playing a file developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, Dolby, Sony Corporation and Nokia.
The original complaint is that Apple didn't really use open standards. If you can play your non-DRMed AAC on iTunes/Zune/PS3/Linux/whatever, etc, then I would say Apple is using an open standard.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.