[cooldeal]

>How is the "walled garden" anti-competitive. It doesn't stop anyone from writing applications for android, WebOS, etc

Microsoft got a lot of flak for just shipping IE with the OS, whereas Apple doesn't even allow alternate browser engines such as Firefox and Chrome on iOS.

Couple that with some capricious and silly rejecting or stonewalling of apps such as Google Voice and an Android magazine apps and I feel Apple is worse than Microsoft in asserting control over the ecosystem.

[kenjackson]

Also remember Apple having to back pedal from developers even generating code from non-sanctioned languages. It was the first time in history, that I recall, where a vendor not only specified a language, but also specified how code for that language was generated.

[crs]

I agree with you there, that was pretty ridiculous when I first saw they were attempting to do that. I will say though, I don't believe that was necessarily to force people to buy macs to develop. I think that by keeping people on the same toolchain, using the predetermined API's and LLVM, they could make major enhancements without having to worry about all the 3rd-party apps still working.

[ugh]

You can use any browser engine you want on OS X. The point of comparison obviously has to be Windows Mobile 7, not Windows 7.

Oh, and Microsoft got flak because they were behaving in an anticompetitive way. Shipping your OS with only ine browser engine is usually no problem and only in very specific instances illegal.

[crs]

Controlling the ecosystem it created is not anti-competitive. There seems to be confusion over not being able to distribute apps on Apple's platform, and not being able to compete against apple.