Forging The Future 2/5/12 — 8:12 UTC

The latest evidence of growing Apple arrogance comes to us from BusinessInsider.com : “Apple Just Declared War On Amazon Kindle”

End Users need to reject Apple’s business model of taking a 30% cut of “in application” content sales and recognize the degree to which such hidden expenses are disguising the trust cost of iDevice ownership.

As competing tablets reach End Users we trust that market forces will bring about an end to such overreaching practices.

It is now being reported by the New York Times that Apple has blocked Sony from releasing a Sony Reader app for iDevices via Apple’s App Store : “Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store”

Businessinsider.com put this quite succinctly : “WAR: Apple Blocks Sony E-Reader App, Kindle Might Be Next”

End Users and Antitrust Regulators should be deeply concerned by Apple’s growing efforts to tie purchases of their current hardware to future purchases of software and media content through their exclusive distribution channels.

To allow this approach to stand as a mater of public policy and common sense would be the equivalent of letting the manufacturer of a refrigerator dictate where one could shop for frozen food or letting car manufactures restrict which brands of gasoline could be used to fuel your vehicle while permitting both to get a cut of your future purchases inflating the price of every purchase without adding any real value in return.

Consumer electronics manufacturers shouldn’t be able to condition the purchase of software and content by End Users of their “platforms” on their receiving a cut of all such sales by restricting third party vendors from directly meeting their customers needs without going through them as an intermediary. The Apple model of a single sanctioned App Store serves as little more than a content tax and anti-competitive barrier that prevents other firms from competing with the platform vendor and its preferred business partners to offer improved quality and value.

Naturally, proponents of the App Store model will argue that it benefits consumers by providing a vital quality control filter, but this end could be achieved through a Certification Mark without intruding into the Freedom of Contract between End Users and Third Party Vendors.

In all likelihood, most End Users would still choose to go the official App Store route, but only by forcing hardware vendors to permit alternate app stores and convenient side loading of content and unmediated purchases of such content can we insure an honest market.

In no other product category would we even contemplate the notion that manufacturing a product entitles its original vendor to exercise this level of control over its use and the aftermarkets for its compliments.

End Users stand at a crossroads between one future where we continue to enjoy the benefits of the free markets that have brought us to where we are today and and a much darker world of monopoly-priced platform-locked content and utter subservience to the whims of platform vendors restricting what programs and content you can see and use to only those apps and media that fit into their self-serving marketing plans.

The battle lines are being drawn and we can’t necessarily count on the courts and government regulators to protect our interests if we willingly embrace products that try to leverage of convenience of an App Store model to enslave us.