Just saw some news about advertising on the iPhone/iPad, and they're being pretty darn anti-competative (and hypocritical) with it.

First: They have effectively banned all other adverts on iPhone.

As for the hypocrisy, they are releasing a feature for Safari which cleans up a page to only be the content, talking about "annoying ads and other visual distractions". Now, I block ads myself, and that kind of feature is actually pretty nice, though including it by default is pretty harsh on online publishers. Also, they talk about ads like that while releasing an advertising platform themselves. (Clicky)

Not even based much on my anti-Apple stance, I just can't help but think they are poking the EU courts a bit, they've gone all out on much lower (IMO) anti-competitive practices (see Microsoft and the IE incident).

The quickest way to the top is to eliminate the competition (Met will agree)

And lol.

I agree.

I fear that because it is Apple, nothing will be done about it. For one consumers will not notice because lets face it, Apple said it was good therefore it is good. It's why in 2009 FM Radio magically became awesome because it was in an iPod Nano?!?

As a web developer whos single source of income is advertisments, personally I don't like you disabling my adverts. Developers need to eat too. But that's one thing, for me now to be penalised because I don't have the resources to invest into one platform entirely, maybe I should hope that someone does something about it... but I'm not holding my breath.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google and other big companies take them on for this, it should be a fairly easy victory in EU court, judging by the MS IE thing. The only real difference is the monopoly is nowhere near as big, so it would probably come under anti-competitive practices.

Some publishers may not be happy about the lack of choice aswell, especially if they have special contracts with advertisers.

Well I saw this coming (except it's the US, not the EU).

Also, lul at the fanboy "Apple can do what they like with their devices" comments

US is clearly just to see how Apple's lawyers can defend themselves.
They have no problems with US law? Bam! Here comes the EU. Or maybe they're just too busy bitching about unencrypted wifi.

But anyway... who agrees with this. If apple would have had this to begin with, there wouldn't be so much of a problem with it. It's just the saying no after the fact. I can see what's coming next. A purge of all apps with other ad networks. That is just in Apples MO. Yet again people get screwed just so Apple can get their 30%. Just another reason to avoid the lovely team at Cupertino I think.

I would think the US one is actually going to rule against Apple quite quickly, and the EU will probably follow suit if needs be. The EU are probably stronger on these things aswell.

I pretty sure the ad purge has already been confirmed.

And I completely disagree with what Apple's doing. It would be like MS demanding that any Windows program with adverts in it must use MS ad programs.

Just for clarity, I don't think the ad ban extends to websites, it was just coincidence that they are providing a feature to purges ads on websites (probably requiring you to press something). But still, it does make adblocking very easy, thus requiring content publishes to make an iAd supported app if they want to see the best revenue off iPhone customers, which is a pretty sneaky and unfair move by Apple.