Doubtful. Adobe, Appcelerator, et al are not in competition with Apple, only making products which run on theirs. The ToS have always been disclosed as variable. It's a good reason not to predicate your business model on the whims of another company which has no stake in your success. :/

You could say the same thing about developing software for any platform that isn't open. None of these companies could have foreseen that Apple would drop the hammer on the creation of tools to help developers create more iPhone applications. They still have to pay Apple to develop for the iPhone. It's not like this was some end-run around the system.

Some companies are interested in having their ecosystem succeed and keep their agreements largely stable. Developing software for Microsoft is typically a solid proposition, for example; they're unlikely to change the agreement as to what toolkit you can use after the fact.

Apple, on the other hand, has shown a somewhat... avaricious... approach to the app store, rejecting applications for curvy buttons, speech bubbles, or being able to load arbitrary images from the internet. We should all realize that Apple will allow precisely what it wants to with respect to the app store, and nothing more. They don't need to do anything else; consumers will buy their products regardless of how the apps can be created.

I don't like it, but I definitely saw it coming. :/

It especially sucks if Apple does follow through with this and the people that paid for MonoTouch end up with a digital pet rock.

http://monotouch.net/Store $999 for the Enterprise version? Ouch.

Nope. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the phone market.

"Nope. Apple doesn't have a monopoly in the phone market"

It's a common misconception that you have to have a monopoly to run afoul of antitrust law. You don't. It also goes the other way--having a monopoly is not necessarily a violation of antitrust.

For instance, mergers have been shot down on antitrust grounds even when the merged companies would have had under 50% of the market.

Antitrust is more about the effects of actions on competition, rather than market share, although there tends to be a correlation between the two.

Yes, but is relevant if they are not judged to have a anti-compoetitive effect on the market as a whole. Clearly a company does not have to be a 100% monopoly in the literal sense to run afoul of anti-monopoly laws, but these sanctions are not applied to EVERY company. In Europe, it is not even a matter of behavior illegal for 'monopolies' to engage in, if they are a 'monopoly' there can be sanctions.

Thank you, good sir, for posting this reasoned, thoughtful, and accurate post.

People disagree?

Yeah, but the timing of the news could possibly end them in court.

Had they done this months ago, they'd likely have not had a problem. But 4 days before CS5's release? I could see that adobe has already filed suit.

could apple then sue them back because they're talking about something that is still under nda?

Perhaps sue John Gruber, who put it out there on the web.

Once out there, Adobe was likely under no obligation to not talk about it.

How is "market" defined, legally? They certainly have a monopoly over the "iPhone" or "iPhone App Store apps" markets. Of course, that reasoning could get absurd pretty quickly, so I'm sure it must be defined at a pretty generic, high level.

It's a gray area. One of the issues in the Microsoft antitrust suits was: what is the "market" in which Windows operates? Obviously, operating-system software of some sort, but which platforms count in the total? Microsoft was arguing that they make basically "an OS for computers", and so their market share should be computed after including Unix workstations, Mac desktops, maybe even Unix servers and IBM mainframes in the totals. Netscape were arguing that the relevant market was the OS market for IBM-compatible home-and-office PCs, in which Microsoft had a much higher dominance.

It's a good question and it turns out to be the most important issues for any anti-trust action. If you are really interested, I would encourage you to look up some famous cases and read the decisions in some of the cases.

Antitrust is about abusing monopoly power so I'd guess not, but I'd love to hear an opinion from a US lawyer about the 'restraint of trade' angle.

For example, I don't think automakers are allowed to ban competitors from making compatible parts for their cars. Similarly I think there have been cases where printer makers tried and failed to prevent competitors from making compatible ink cartridges for their printers. No automakers or printer manufacturers have a monopoly though.

Requiring the use of certain tools to produce an otherwise identical product seems to me a violation along similar lines. I'd love to hear an expert opinion on it.