Apple May Have To Skip iPhone OS 4.0 For The iPhone 4G

At Apple’s recent press event they announced iPhone OS 4.0 which brought some much needed feature to the iPhone operating system like multitasking,folders and iBooks. While Apple were almost certainly planning on launching the iPhone 4G running this new OS, they may well have to back pedal and revert back to iPhone OS 3.1.3
The US Federal Trade Commission isn’t to happy with some of the restrictions that come along in iPhone Os 4.0. Apple implemented a slight change for developers in its terms of service last month and this has sparked off the investigation.
The changes restricted developers from using cross-compiled runtime languages when developing apps for the iPhone. This in particular affected Adobe who had just only launched an iPhone apps development tool. I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent arguments Apple have had with Adobe over flash and that they’ve now withdrawen from making any apps for the iPhone.
According to a source within the US FTC who spoke with the New York Post, the group has internally discussed plans to possibly begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple’s recent changes.
OZCAR says:
If this truly does come to fruition, Apple may be forced to either modify the iPhone 4.0 OS to allow for cross-compiled runtime languages or launch the iPhone 4G with the previous OS (3.1.2). With only a little over a month from the official release of the iPhone 4G at the WWDC, we think Apple may need to go with the second option and later allow for an OTA update to OS 4.0 once it meets US Federal Trade Commission guidelines.
Now exactly how much of this is true is beyond me but I can certainly see why the Feds are interested in this as Apple is moving increasingly towards a major competitor in the mobile market and is forcing developers to make a hard choice about which platforms to target certainly puts the squeeze on competitors.
Source:
OZCarGuide