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 Thursday, May 10, 2012
Microsoft is to Monopolist as Apple is to….

Remember the SAT test and their ridiculous analogy questions? “Apple : Banana as Steak : ???”, where you have to figure out the relationship between the first pair in order to guess what the relationship in the second pair should be? (Of course, the SAT guys give you a multiple-choice answer, whereas I’m leaving it open to your interpretation.)

What triggers today’s blog post is this article that showed up in GeekWire, about how Firefox is accusing Microsoft of anti-competitive behaviors by claiming IE will have an unfair advantage on their new ARM-based machines.

Anderson says the situation has antitrust implications. Microsoft has agreed to abide by a set of principles to maintain a level playing field on Windows for competitors despite the expiration of its consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department.

OK, wait a second here. Last time I checked, there’s another operating system out there that completely and entirely prevents any kind of web browser from being deployed on it, which strikes me as grossly anticompetitive, and yet Mozilla chooses to fire their guns at Microsoft, who is attempting to take a shot at the ARM market?

Seems to me like somebody’s either not getting the point of “anticompetitive”, or else they’re just taking a potshot at the company that everybody loves to hate because it’s an easy shot. If Mozilla is really serious about anticompetitive concerns, they will ask DOJ to investigate Apple’s iOS (that owns, what, 2500% of the tablet market) and AppStore, not Microsoft IE on a market that doesn’t event exist yet.

Otherwise, I call bullshit.


Thursday, May 10, 2012 12:22:02 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
iOS does allow other browsers, though... Opera Mini, for example. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/opera-mini-web-browser/id363729560?mt=8

You could argue that other vendors can't build the same caliber of browser as Apple given lack of access to private APIs that Apple can use, but they don't disallow them wholesale from the platform.

Thursday, May 10, 2012 1:15:03 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
Microsoft has been found guilty of antitrust issues in the past so they're an obvious target. When they were found guilty they had 90+% of the PC market. In today's smartphone market the biggest share of the market belongs to Android, not iOS. The situation is murkier then you represent though.

Apple doesn't block browsers that use the Webkit engine bundled with iOS. So you get browsers like Dolphin. Apple also doesn't block faux browsers like Opera Mini. What Apple blocks is the ability for third-party apps to mark memory pages as executable. Without that capability, JIT engines are impossible. Apple also blocks downloading scripts that are then executed on the device. Without that, Javascript is dead. So, Apple doesn't technically forbid third-party browsers, they forbid third-party, non-Webkit browsers from using Javascript. The end result is the same though.

BTW, Mozilla _did_ attack Apple for technically blocking mobile Firefox but Apple's stance is implacable and defensible from a platform security standpoint. Microsoft hasn't established that same stance yet.
Friday, May 11, 2012 8:55:41 AM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
As I've often said:

When Apple does something no one else has done, they are being Innovative.

When Microsoft does something no one else has done, they are being Proprietary.

When Apple does something someone else has already done, they are following industry standards.

When Microsoft does something someone else has already done, they are stealing.
Monday, May 14, 2012 5:01:09 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)
In addition to what Ted said, your SAT analogy is sort of broken. Apples aren't related to bananas (the origin of the phrase "Like comparing apples and bananas/otherfruithere"). So the correct answer is pretty much anything that isn't like steak. Possibly you could argue that they are both fruit and that any meat would then satisfy the second comparison, but that's a little far fetched.

There's always the chance you made it a purposefully bad example, but I'm not inclined to believe that that's the case.
S
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