Why can’t the iPhone / iPad download files?
The standard mobile Safari cannot download all types of files. It can only download files of the type : Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF files.
Why on earth does a company design a browser that cannot download files. That is a disgrace, and an insult to the way internet works. It’s getting more smelly, when you realise it can download Office files from one specific vendor Microsoft but not from any other. That isn’t exactly treating people the same, that isn’t exactly improving competition. That’s an insult to the free world. That is limiting competition. That’s anti-competitive behaviour. And it’s simply unfair. We should use open standards in communication, we want to communicate in a way everyone can understand, or at least everyone can learn to understand for free, well that is by investing time, but not money.
Apple has created a phone that can only shop in their own shops, you can’t buy downloads somewhere else. ( iPhone/iPad allows customers to access the iTunes Store to download audio and video files, AR 2010)
Apple has created a phone that favourites Microsoft software above open source software. In this case it’s about actively blocking others.
Off course companies, in contrary to governments, are free in discriminating people. They can sell a product to you, and can refuse to sell a product to me. That’s not against the law.
But it is against the law when they have a large market share. Misuse of marketpower in a dominant position is forbidden by the EU Antitrust Law in Europe. In the US we had the case of Microsofts anticompetitive behaviour.
Secondly it’s mostly against their own laws or principles. Most listed companies create Corporate Responsibility Reports in which they are touting about their business principles, for example like:
- We act with integrity
- We are respectful
- We are open and clear
- We are socially and environmentally responsible,
Those principles do not comply with forcing proprietary standards in communication, limiting competition by raising barriers and blocking certain users/minorities, companies, products or services because they use different software.
That’s is really bad policy, and I think it’s a must for everyone to oppose that kind of acting.
How? By name and shame? By not calling the iPhone browser the best browser there is? By not buying Apple products,
I dunno how. But I don’t own an iPhone, and chances are slim I ever want one.
Off course developers have made workarounds: they created apps to download files. But users have to install the app, and probably pay or jailbreak their phone, before they can download files. Again companies are totally free to write there own software and leave out basic features. But the please criticise that, don’t call it the best phone or don’t say it has the best best browser. It maybe in some fields, but in some it’s certainly not.
I think Apple should be fined for their policy by anti-trust government agencies at the moment they have a dominant position. (iPhone / iTunes market share)
As an economist I see Apple as forbidden fruit. Maybe it’s religious freedom that Apple can break the law? They seem to have believers instead of customers anyway.
IMHO there is no difference between Apple and a religion, they tell how you can be happy (speak their word, say their praises, buy their product, anyway live their proposed way of living), but mainly it’s their interest you’re serving not yours.