"Stealing" features is one thing, taking advantage of your control over a particular market to shut out the "competition" you "stole" said features from isn't justifiable in any way (IMHO).
Exactly. If Apple clones this thing and produces a better product, it's a good thing, because we all have better software to use. Likewise, if Microsoft were to produce a better browser than, say, Netscape, no one would complain.
When either company leverages its control over the market to exclude its competitors using mechanisms other than technical quality, that's a bad thing and needs to be condemned.
I'm waiting for the day when the App Store (et al) become classified as a "market", in the sense of "shutting competitors out of the market". On a desktop, Microsoft can't get away with making a browser (for example) and then locking out all other browsers. That's abuse of their monopoly position. Apple should be living up to the same standards in mobile.
I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.
>I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.
Apple does not insist the post-PC devices are fully functional. In fact, Jobs compared PCs to trucks and iOS devices to cars. By post-PC they imply that lockdown that comes with it.
Hey, it's Apple's marketplace - private property and all that. Nobody has a right to sell there.
Now, I also think this is a dick move, but it's because of dick moves like this that the patent and copyright systems exist in the first place, and why I think they need to be reformed rather than abandoned.
I wish that we could rely on the companies that are increasingly controlling semi-public commons like social networks and software repositories to have some integrity and respect for the roles that they are playing in this regard.
