I agree in principle, but it's a difficult line to draw. There is no clear distinction between contracts that stifle competition and contracts that are legitimate means of competing.

There are all sorts of exclusivity arrangements or vendors selling only their own branded wares or that of their partners in their own store. It's not like Apple invented this scheme. For a very long time telcos selected every single application that was allowed to run on their network.

Consumers have their own means of defending against such practices. They can simply stop buying iPhones for instance. It's not like there were no alternatives. As a consumer, in this case, I have to say don't need the government.

It's not really comparable, sizewise Microsoft was much bigger than netscape at the time, and the only route to the desktop was through microsoft. The iphone is not a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination, even though the 'hip' people all seem to have them.

(hm, the implicit conclusion is that I'm not hip...)

Not the same size, but vastly more controlling. On a windows machine you could always install netscape. On an iPhone you have to download apps only from apple-approved sources.

I suppose the question is whether the concerns of one marketplace (handsets) should override theneed of another (apps). As someone who hasalready bought an iPhone for what is a considerable amount of money, I don't like the turn towards crippling a product I thought was mine.