Apple Inc (AAPL)

[tomm]

I agree with this cribbed piece from TMF

Whether FCP is a better product than Adobe Premiere is really immaterial. The important news is that Apple is squeezing third part developers out of its platform. If Adobe abandons Premiere, will that decision play a factor when it comes time to code the next version of Photoshop or Illustrator?

As LongHook has stated many times, the health of a platform is dependent on the developers who are willing to code their applications for it. As Apple gets into the habit of competing with developers on its platform, it may be heading for a future where all major commercial applications are Apple-coded.

That would appear to be a foolish move because the whole point of having third party developers is to help spread the risk and capital investment that software development projects entail. Taking control of the entire software market may increase profit margins in the short term, but would most likely hurt long term growth.

The same trend is much further along with Apple's channel control where distribution and retail partners are getting squeezed into oblivion with the combination of the Apple Store web site and the Apple Retail venture.

The worst-case scenario for Apple is for the remaining ISV's to look at the plight of Apple's hardware-sales partners and decide to pre-emptively discontinue Mac versions of their software rather than wait passively for Apple to invade their turf in search of a bigger slice of a smaller pie.

To avoid that particular path, Apple should reconsider its apparent software strategy of pre-emption instead of cooperation. Stabbing partners repeatedly in the back only works if there are no viable alternatives. That's how Microsoft get away with it, and how Walmart keeps squeezing its vendors/competitors. Both are so big that not doing business with them isn't really an option. Apple doesn't have that luxury and this strategy seems short-sighted, IMO.