It's a critical difference.

Which brings me to the latest flap about Apple, Adobe [ADBE 33.25 0.11 (+0.33%) ] and reports that Apple may have run afoul of anti-trust law. If I'm to understand this, developers are angry that Apple prevents them from developing cross-platform apps by refusing to allow them to use Adobe's Flash software (for reasons detailed in an earlier post.)

Developers are arguing and the Feds are apparently examining whether this is an abuse of Apple's power. Spare me. This is Apple's marketplace-Apple's platform. And if developer's want to develop for the App Store, and the iPad and the iPhone and the iPod, they have to play by Apple's rules. Some developers complain that they have to go out of their way to develop one app for Apple, and then a different version for everyone else. Too bad. Walmart sets the rules for products sold in its store. Same with Barnes & Noble. Costco. If companies don't like it, they can sell their wares across the street.

But they won't, because they can't ignore the Apple marketplace. Apple says in a mere 28 days, consumers downloaded 12 million apps on the 1 million iPads they bought. Stunning. So if a developer has to go out of his way to take advantage of all this, then so be it. If he doesn't, he can take his app somewhere else. I sense Adobe is behind this, not necessarily the developers, but that's just me.

The problem here isn't this particular issue, but the fact that Apple is attracting the interest of regulators at all. Apple has to walk that fine line of enjoying its size, not abusing it. Working in Apple's favor: Google, Microsoft, Research in Motion, even Palm all tout their own app stores. Google faces anti-trust questions over its acquisition of AdMob, but Apple has Quattro. We can all throw around big words like monopoly, regulation, investigation, illegal, and anti-trust. But real competition trumps them all in this country. Critics charge Apple might somehow have become "anti-competitive." I'd argue that given what all the other companies in Apple's universe are doing to take Apple on, Apple isn't anti-competitive, it's hyper competitive.

Apple isn't shutting out developers; it's telling them to play by Apple's rules, which is Apple's right. Apple's original mission is alive and well, but the bigger it gets, the more careful it needs to be that it doesn't become the Big Brother it set out to destroy. Apple might in fact be a bully. But I don't see shareholders complaining. Apple saved the music business. And plenty of apps developers playing by Apple's rules are getting rich.

Tread lightly, Apple.

Just not too lightly.