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Apple’s exclusive control over its platform has been touted as an anti-competitive strategy that has just been waiting to be challenged.
Most iPhone, iPod – and now iPad users could not care less, we suspect, about the fairness or otherwise of Apple’s actions. What we care about is the number, type and price of the apps. And, if you are like us, the most pressing change we would like to see is to the search-ability of iTunes!! And of course, about the quality of the iPhone or iPad itself!
After all, how would we even KNOW if the apps could be better or cheaper with more open competition, when we can’t even FIND most of them. There are now over 100,000 apps available for us iPhone users to download. And it seems as if just about anyone can get an app listed in iTunes on just about any subject (urinals for examples!). But finding out about the apps that we need is a lot more arduous than it needs to be. How can a company that has so much talent at both invention and innovation do this one thing so badly?
All the same its clear that some are unhappy about the Apple monopoly over its platform. The current war raging between Adobe and Apple is a case in point. But perhaps more significant are the people who get their iPhones, iPods and iPads unlocked and the talented developers who offer their considerable talent and valuable time for free so that people can do this. We refer, of course, to the iPhone dev team
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFmy1rolqpw[/youtube]
And in case you think this is a minor group – consider that, according to Google, over 4 million people A MONTH search Google using keywords like iphone unlock, iPhone unlocked, 3g iphone unlock, 3g unlock – and so on. So a lot of interest! What’s more, according to Alexa, the Iphwn site (maintained by the iPhone Dev Team) is ranked at 14,335 – again this means that just this one site gets a huge following (over 750K visitors a month) with nearly a third of its visitors being American.
That’s a LOT of interest in unlocking or jailbreaking the iPhone, iPad or iPod. So the recent reports that the Federal Anti Trust body is looking at the Apple “monopoly” and may be about to challenge the way they control their iPhone and iPad development platforms is a sign that some of the concern out there is starting to get noticed!
Of course, there are a lot of passionate Apple supporters who don’t really care how Apple gets the results it does. After all, its only the results that count! Isn’t it?