Oh EU, DOJ, turn your Mordor like gaze to Mr. Jobs.

I only hope it happens soon. I think I will actually take the day off of work, plop my feet up on the ottoman, eat Popcorn and watch Steve Jobs give his dry jabs and pokes at a panel. My only question is will he have the balls to show up to a senate hearing in a turtle neck and tennis shoes.

Between the iPhone, the iPod Touch and soon the iPad, one could make the case that we have a platform. One of the silly things that happens when you have a platform, is that you start to have trouble defending your right to refuse your customers’ right to choice.

It all started simple enough. “Our iPhone does voice, we won’t let your pesky Google Voice app through because it might not jive with AT&T.”

There was also a little squabble about the type of internet content Apple would allow you to see. Of course this content is widely available in Safari, but you couldn’t write an app that would allow you to see any of it.

The most egregious offense was the omission of Adobe’s Flash. One might be tempted to think that this is a technical issue. People might make the argument that performance is suspect. Others might wonder if Apple is just having trouble licensing the technology.

The reality is none of those. Linux is able to not only run flash on much less capable hardware, it’s able to practically reverse engineer it in several projects, and Adobe is chomping at the bit to allow flash on iPhones and now iPads.

Apple doesn’t want it on there for a very simple reason. If you can watch television and stream music from flash apps, you won’t buy them from iTunes. Flash is missing because it’s an attack on their bottom line.

The reality is that nearly every browser based game and browser based video service runs on Flash. That’s chopping a significant amount of the “internet in your pocket” out. Maybe that’s why it’s so light to carry the internet in your pocket, a ton of it is missing!

On the same topic, Apple has long made it nearly impossible to get a variety of formats on it’s devices. The iPods are limited to a few video and audio formats. The new iPad will be limited in it’s book format. The reason is simple, there is no reason for Apple to want you to bring your own content to the party, because you should buy it from them.

It will be very interesting to see if Apple allows a large format version of the Kindle App that sells eBooks significantly cheaper than the prices they have suggested iBooks will cost, and you can use them on other devices.

To be fair it’s a smart business tactic. To be realistic, it’s not going to work much longer unless the Department of Justice is ready to display the largest and most incredible example of hypocrisy in business and technology history.

Microsoft has been forced to allow alternative web browsers, media players and other core technologies for years because it is “dangerous for a company to control a platform technology in a way that is anti-competitive.”

At least Microsoft just made it HARD, Apple makes it impossible, and laughs and points it’s finger at you in public.

So when you buy your iPad, and realize that you can only watch video that Apple allows you to buy, and you can only listen to music that Apple allows you to buy, and read books that Apple allows to buy, all at Apple’s prices that do not suffer from the inconvenience of competition, will you feel a little bit like someone has given Apple the keys to the kingdom, the crown and everything else they could fit in the wagon?

*Editor’s note: I have lots of Apple devices and have purchased my fair share of content for iPhone, AppleTV, iTunes, etc. I also subscribe to music via Zune and pay for Netflix’ streaming services.

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