Apple faces an anti-trust suit. Is there an app for that?

The New York Post reports that the feds are about to launch an investigation into whether Appple is violating anti-trust laws over banning non-Apple tools for developing for the iPhone. Regulators appear to be salivating over it, because both the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission want jurisdiction over what would be a very high-profile investigation, the newspaper reports.

The Post reports that the agencies:

...are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry. It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion.

There's no doubt that the possible probe was sparked when Apple banned Adobe tools and others from being used to develop apps for the iPhone.

The controversy has gotten increasingly nasty as an Adobe platform evangelist told Apple to "Go screw yourself Apple," on his Web site, and Steve Jobs issued a scathing blog post, Thoughts on Flash, about why he's banned Flash from the iPhone and iPad.

Microsoft has already felt the wrath of the feds for anti-trust problems. Now it appears to be Apple's turn. I'm not sure that Jobs' reality distortion field extends to Washington, D.C., but we now apparently get to find out.