Apple is 'Intransigent, Closed and Controlling' Say Banks (afr.com)

Apple is increasingly trying to get banks to implement its Apple Pay mobile payments solutions, but some banks are avoiding Cupertino giant's offer, saying that the company is "closed and controlling". From a report on Financial Review: Three of Australia's big four banks have described technology giant Apple as being "intransigent, closed and controlling" and accused it of attempting to freeload on their contactless payments infrastructure while slowing innovation in digital wallets. In an increasingly acrimonious dispute, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking Corp and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank are arguing that the engineering of Apple iPhones prevent them from delivering mobile wallets to millions of customers. This is because Apple Pay is the only application that works with the iPhone's "near field communication" (NFC) antenna, which communicates with payment terminals. In their latest, 137-page submission filed with the competition regulator, the banks argue that by locking them out, "Apple is seeking for itself the exclusive use of Australia's existing NFC terminal infrastructure for the making of integrated mobile payments using iOS devices. Yet, this infrastructure was built and paid for by Australian banks and merchants for the benefit of all Australians."

Comments

Apple today, MS yesterday

[DaHat]

It is remarkable to think about how their relative positions have changed in just a decade or two.

Back in the 90's, Microsoft had the kind of dominant position that they could lock out companies who didn't play by their rules, and kept building a vision of technologies that put them in the center of everything... while Apple was talking about industry standers.

Today: Apple has the walled garden with iOS that MS could only have dreamed of, with the iPhone 7, they gave the finger to any semblance of industry standards with the loss of the headphone jack, while Microsoft open sources things like the .NET run time and even has baked in Ubuntu components into Windows 10.

Had any of us been betting on such an outcome 10-20 years ago, no one would have believed it.