Seems that Apple is just following, with much delay, the law of People's Republic of China. I don't understand why some people think companies should be above the law.
I think certain aspects of justice are above legal frameworks. For instance, slavery is wrong no matter what the law says. Companies like Apple, by lobbying the government for various non-business things (gay rights, climate change, etc.), recognize this.
I think wholesale restriction and manipulation of political speech is just wrong even if it is legally mandatory. And, while understandable, I'm not sure (still chewing it over) it's a valid excuse to say that we were just complying with the law.
While FOXCONN is not slavery, outsourcing work to countries where you can pay incredibly poor people unethically low wages to create expensive products is hardly a good indicator that a company will stand up to laws that don't affect their bottom line.
Take something Apple says it stands for - privacy. They will stand up for users to a point but they will not break the law. They will lobby and create technical solutions but they will not deny or disclose a national security letter no matter how BS or immoral the request may be. This is the same thing. By distributing VPN apps they break the law. They can still lobby for change or potentially come up with a technical solution that allows users to bypass the great firewall but does not break Chinese law (although I don't see how that's possible).
I hope you realize that you are only saying this because you happen to be born at this particular point in human civilization.
For a very long time, people thought slavery is right, including the people who wrote your constitution (assuming your are from US). It is easy to say that slavery is wrong now, but not in 18th century in the US. Think of China as the US, a few centuries ago, when human rights are still a concept being explored.
And you're only saying that because you were born when and where you were. It's not universally accepted that ethics are relative like that.
Otherwise I'm not sure what you're saying. That slavery was relatively OK in the 18th century so Apple enforcing government censorship is now, too?
It's also worth pointing out that colonial contemporaries were appalled by slavery, though they didn't have the power to universally outlaw it.
In any case, go to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679276 and you'll see people calling for US companies to deny service to all Germans and overthrow their liberal democratic and otherwise stable government that way, all this for just wanting to ban online hate speech that is already illegal everywhere else in Germany.
Just don't say US companies shouldn't topple allied democratic liberal foreign governments that do little to no wrong on their citizens or you'll get downvoted like I did.