The other day I commented on the Apple iPhone SDK and received a couple of emails saying I was full of shit. However, CNET just released a new article basically outlining some of the same concerns I had. In particular they are noting some serious anti-trust concerns as well as some anti-competitive behavior.

You can read about it here.

A couple of interesting sections:

In a Q and A session with reporters, CEO Steve Jobs was asked if voice applications such as Skype will be permitted. Jobs replied by saying that VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) will be allowed when the iPhone is using a WiFi connection, but forbidden over AT&T’s cellular data network. How this will be enforced remains unclear. At the very least, Apple can blacklist from iTunes any application that doesn’t play nice over AT&T’s network.

Using digital signing to block applications from competing. Yup, it’s obviously going to happen. Here’s some more great stuff:

In addition to the anti-VoIP rules, Apple seems to have also set its sights on the Firefox Web browser. Deep in the legal agreement for developers, Apple states:

“No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)…An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”
As a member of the Firefox development team has already noted, this is a big deal.

Both the Firefox and Opera Web browsers, which compete with Apple’s pre-installed Safari browser, are forbidden as they support hundreds of user-created add-ons. Furthermore, the Web browsers support Javascript, which is a key component of most Web 2.0 content. Javascript is an interpreted programming language, and thus forbidden as per Apple’s terms of service.

Also banned from the iPhone: programming languages Ruby, Python, Perl, and Java. Quake, the video game engine ported to practically every platform (including Google’s Android), as well as Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and .NET are also persona non grata.

And since I’ve had a few too many to drink, I’ll just plagiarize the rest of the article here:

Sun announced last week that it is readying a version of Java for the iPhone. Once the restrictive iPhone license was pointed out, Eric Klein, the vice president of Java marketing at Sun, backpedaled somewhat on his own personal blog, writing that “I’ll leave those (legal) questions to another forum, but we really do want to deliver a JVM if at all possible.” This alone should make for an interesting fight, as Sun is no stranger to filing antitrust complaints.

Net neutrality complaints

Apple’s blocking of Skype and other voice applications raises the same Net neutrality issues as Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent. Critics have argued that Comcast does this because the P2P video apps compete with the cable giant’s own video programming.

Apple is now engaging in a similar practice, blocking any VoIP application that competes with the voice services offered by AT&T–the company with which Apple signed an exclusive five-year contract.

The company will be unable to borrow Comcast’s line, and claim that the restriction is “reasonable network management.” After all, watching a couple YouTube videos eats up far more data than a VoIP call.

This is not the first time that a company has attempted to block VoIP traffic to protect its own business model. Madison River Communications, a North Carolina ISP was fined and forced to change its behavior by the FCC when it started blocking VoIP providers like Vonage in 2005.

Also, some specific examples of antitrust type behaviour:

Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer back in the late ’90s led to major antitrust lawsuits brought by Department of Justice and 20 different states. While consumers were free to install Netscape and other competing browsers, it was the preferential treatment of its own browser that lead to legal problems for Microsoft.

Apple is now engaged in an even more egregious practice. It bundles the Safari browser with its iPhone, it makes it impossible for consumers to remove the browser, and the company now forbids competing companies from making their browsers available to the millions of iPhone users. Firefox has over 40 percent market share in some European countries, but it forbidden from making a version for the iPhone platform.

If Apple doesn’t rapidly backtrack on its anti-Firefox and VoIP rules, I predict that it will soon be looking at investigations from multiple government agencies, both here in the U.S. and EU. The FCC and Congress will most likely look into the Net neutrality complaints, while the European antitrust regulators will probably take a keen interest in the Firefox issues. This would, of course, not be the first time that the Europeans have investigated Apple’s iTunes store for dirty tricks

Ok I’m done now.