AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes | Hacker News Reader

AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

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This seems to have been announced a couple of weeks ago, so we don't need to just trust the tweet: https://www.macworld.com/article/1377200/apple-to-limit-aird...

Having it open to everyone for only a limited amount of time actually kind of seems like the right thing, but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.

To be fair: (1) it seems like the update landed recently, and (2) the article you linked does cite the same reasoning as the Twitter posts. Even if was a little ahead of the more recent Zero Covid protests, it seems like AirDrop's been a known vector in China to share government criticism, which is why Apple's cracking down.

Sure, I didn't mean this in the "this is old news" sense, but in the "this has been verified by Apple themselves, not just a random Twitter account".

> which is why Apple's cracking down.

This is absurd. Apple is doing this because of government pressure, not because of their own desire to crack down.

You're both saying the same thing.

Nope. They were taking about Apple cracking down. That’s not the same as being forced to make a software change at the governments demand.

That doesn't make it better, though. Plenty of companies have decided not to do business in China on ethical grounds. Hell, even Google pulled out of China way back when, a company I certainly don't think all that highly of.

Yes, not doing business in China means less revenue, and unhappy shareholders. This is why capitalism sucks: it more or less requires companies do unethical things, when not doing those things means much less money.

Wait what? How can you claim that capitalism requires a company do unethical things while in the same comment giving an example of a company that chose not to do an unethical things?

IMO it does. I would rather have a generally good product with concessions as opposed to no product at all. If apple, google, everyone exits out of protest, what is left? Chinese-developed tech that is 100,000% susceptible to the same government orders. At least with apple they know what they're getting.

I know it’s in vogue to blame capitalism, like our economic system is a faceless AI that decides things in a perfectly efficient market (It’s not).

Behind the curtain there are humans making decisions. They may be hedge funds, investors, board members, etc. There are humans that deliberately want to do business with China and know exactly what is happening with those workers. It wasn’t capitalism that outsourced iPhone production to a sweat shop, it was a group of real people who are morally bankrupt.

Capitalism is blamed because it is the system that lets those morally bankrupt people get rich of those decisions without any real consequences.

As opposed to socialism and communism where morally bankrupt leaders are unable to get rich off their decisions with no consequences?

Power and corruption are ubiquitous in every system.

Whatever "Apple's" feelings (really, the executive team's; a corporation does not have feelings) about it, Apple is the entity that made the change.

And it is a weird kind of "force" they face. Apple, over the course of decades, has willingly made a huge investment in a state with an authoritarian government in order to pursue their goals. They did this knowing full-well that China's suppression apparatus would take great interest in Apple's pocket bugs, and that China shows little hesitation about using their leverage. Apple knew they would be asked to make these sorts of concessions. There's no chance they didn't think this over.

So when people say they "Apple doesn't have a choice", what they mean is Apple made the choice some time back.

> has willingly made a huge investment

This is the part you're wrong about: Apple, like any public corporation with effectively-zero internal controlling-share ownership, is constitutionally incapable of doing things that would make its share price drop; and is constitutionally compelled to do things that make its share price rise. Any CEO who attempts to do anything "against" the share price is fired by the board (which consists of external shareholders, not idealists) and replaced by a CEO who will serve the share-price god.

"Things that make Apple's share price rise" include "entering the Chinese market", "committing to the Chinese market", and "doing whatever customization to their products is required to stay in the Chinese market."

Which is all to say: Apple never made a choice. Free-market capitalism made this choice. If individual Apple employees don't like "the market" being their true boss, they're free to leave and work instead for a private company, or an internally majority-owned company, or a non-profit, or a B Corp. But Apple itself — the aggregate emergent behavior of the organizational entity — is not free to do anything, any more than a train is free to drive off of its rails.

This is the most wrong, reductionist take on Ford v. Dodge. Companies make decisions all the time that aren’t exactly what shareholders focused on quarterly results want. The quintessential examples are Costco and Amazon. The former pays associates above market wages and benefits, the latter had losses or broke even for years by investing for the long term.

This isn't about Ford v. Dodge. I said nothing about legal compulsion. This is about the "realpolitik" of operating a publicly-traded company.

Consider:

1. The market has an ability to "lose faith in" an equity, and do a mass sell-off of that equity, destroying/bankrupting the company — see e.g. what almost happened with British bonds a few months ago. Essentially, an uncoordinated boycott, as a result of a suddenly different output to a Keynesian beauty-contest (i.e. everyone thinks that a sufficient number of other people will sell based on the news to trigger a collapse of the price; so they have to sell first.)

2. In companies owned by majority-external shareholders — especially when those shareholders are market-makers (as is true in Apple's case: https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...) — the board is very well aware of #1, and so hires/fires the CEO based in part on whether they will avoid actions that will result in the market "losing faith" in the company. (How do they know? Because those market-makers are the ones who would, in aggregate, do most such selling-off!)

That's what I mean by "Apple is constitutionally incapable of doing X" — not that they'd face some sort of corporate malfeasance suit if they did (who even cares?) but that any CEO hired by a public corporation is operating under a dagger of Damocles that they know will fall the moment they do anything to lose the public's faith in their company's stock.

Costco paying above-market, and Amazon not putting out any dividends, are not actions that result in mass sell-offs — especially because they're things the companies have done from the start (so if anyone got in on these companies in the first place, they got in knowing that these are things these companies do.)

Apple exiting China is the opposite: a stark, sudden shift in strategy, in a direction the self-interested parts of the global(!) market wouldn't care for. (Emphasis because mutual funds et al have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, and those shareholders aren't just American, but all over the world — including China!)

Surely it depends on the extent to which Apple was indeed forced to make the change. You wouldn't say "convicted murderer imprisons himself."

Apple is literally the group implementing the change, it's accurate to say "Apple is cracking down".

You're trying to paint Apple as a helpless victim here, but they didn't get blindsided by CCP tyranny. The company has spent years developing this exact situation and repeatedly choose to do the bidding of the Chinese government.

"Just following orders" is a pitiful excuse, and even worse when the orders are coming from an oppressive foreign government.

> Apple is literally the group implementing the change, it's accurate to say "Apple is cracking down".

I think it would be more accurate to say that the CCP is cracking down, and Apple is one target of that push.

I don't think it's completely accurate to say that Apple can "choose" these things. There's no "choosing" with the CCP, and there's no "choosing" to manufacture outside of China, at this point [1]. This isn't an Apple problem, it's a worldwide supply chain problem, that all tech companies are stuck in [2].

They're choosing to continue business in China. They're choosing to continue to manufacture in China. Like everyone else, they're choosing to leave China, with manufacturing being pushed to India, Taiwan, Vietnam, and S.Korea. But, in the short term, there's exactly one choice, for both, for them and the rest of the tech sector, that keeps the bills paid. This is a systemic problem, not an Apple problem. It's good to see the world is, finally, waking up to this, beginning the transition, and I think the beginnings of the transition should be celebrated.

1. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/tech/apple-china-manufacturin...

2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/timbajarin/2022/08/30/shifting-...

Google is successfully ignored China's request even though their Pixel uses many Chinese parts and some are made in China, because they don't service in China.

> Google is successfully ignored China's request

Which request? Android's version of AirDrop, "Nearby Share" is disabled in China [1].

> even though their Pixel uses many Chinese parts and some are made in China, because they don't service in China.

Google is an ad company. Only 5 million Pixel 6 sold in the first 6 months [2]. It's just a few percent of their income. Nobody would notice if they decide to stop selling the Pixel line, worldwide.

Apple is a hardware company, with around 50% of their income from iPhones [3]. It's a very different context. Again, they appear to building speed to move out, and like the previous reference shows, that's all any of these established companies can do in the short term: build speed.

1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72812112/android-nearby-...

2. https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/274544/pixel-smartph...

3. https://fourweekmba.com/apple-revenue-breakdown/

Apple could move out, but at great cost to themselves. Being a socialist, I think the cost of such a decision should come from the government who should mandate it for all companies so there is a single national standard on ethics.

However some people think that Apple should bear the cost in its own, since it’s the not an existential choice. It’s simply the choice between taking a loss this year then recovering later, or continuing to make the maximal amount of money this year.

> the government who should mandate it for all companies so there is a single national standard on ethics.

I think I agree with this. What could you see that mandate looking like, and what would the "standard" be? Would it be something stronger than the sanctions we have now? As my previous links show, complete isolation is impossible, in the short term, so I imagine this would have to be a slow process.

> It’s simply the choice between taking a loss this year then recovering later, or continuing to make the maximal amount of money this year.

I would suggest reading the references I provided. This definitely isn't a "loss this year" thing. It's losses for decades. It not only requires rebuilding direct vendors, but vendors that supply to them, and to them, and so on.

What is the alternative? Apple exits the country and we use.. android? Is that a better, more privacy-respecting, government-order-rejecting alternative?

Edit: The alternative is Apple doesn't comply w/ government orders and leaves the country. That is the alternative.

They may not desire to crack down, but they desire to crack down to preserve profits, which means they still end up desiring to crack down.

That's interesting that this was rolled out a few weeks ago, however the article also says:

> Apple won’t admit why this change is being made in China, but the peer-to-peer nature of AirDrop has made it popular for spreading anti-government protest material, and hopping into your settings every 10 minutes to re-enable the ability to receive AirDrop from strangers makes it a lot less useful for that.

Looking at it from a users perspective, people constantly trying to airdrop me stuff is not something I want, even though I want to use “everyone” at times. I’ve had this happen in public before and it’s annoying but maybe it’s become so widespread that it’s a UX issue in China?

The fix for your use case is an easy to enable "next hour/ten minutes/whatever" from the control center buttons.

Then it can be default "contacts only" and you can turn to everyone with a single press, and it turns itself back off.

you're thinking differently, don't expect any apple job offers.

The timing of the change seems quite conspicuous [1], and it's also weird that Apple would introduce this in China first and only roll it out to the rest of the world next year. The same article mentions that Apple blocks the Taiwanese flag emoji in China, for which it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship.

1: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...

Apple certainly tailors the emojis available to the local political climate.

They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

I can still see the Iran flag in all of its unaltered glory here in the US. I guess they missed the memo?

Afghanistan =/= Iran

The parent poster was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan

Iran and Afghanistan are different countries.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/person-lotus-position...

Here's a podcast interviewing someone who created an emoji

Truth. And it's not just apple, on android we (U.S.) get a "water gun" for gun and no emoji shows up when you search for rifle.

The gun emoji became a toy on all major platforms everywhere several years ago.

This is surely related to the political climate but I believe the entities involved applied that change worldwide.

I would love to learn more about backroom emoji politics. It sounds foolish on the surface but emojis have a big reach.

Here's some folks taking emojis very seriously. Including the poop emoji face. It's a good read - https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17393-wg2-emoji-feedback.pd... (pdf)

I watched this documentary https://www.dutch-core.com/programs/documentary/backlight-be...

This is a really good doc on it

https://www.theemojistory.com/

It became a toy because Apple unilaterally changed it, and then everyone had to follow because it would otherwise lead to things like this: https://blog.emojipedia.org/content/images/2016/08/emojipedi...

It was a unilateral Apple decision. Other platforms were forced to follow them over the next few years to avoid situations like kids texting each other "Can't want for our class trip to the water park tomorrow <insert squirt gun or real gun depending on font>"

Apple made that change around the same time as the Rio Olympics. In the leadup to the Olympics, there was a push to create an emoji for every event. Unicode 9 added emojis for handball, wrestling, water polo, fencing, etc.

However the almost comprehensive set still had some gaps, because Apple veto'd the marksmanship/air rifle and pentathlon emojis... but not in time to prevent the creation of the corresponding unicode glyphs

I found a summary on what motivated the change, I don't know how accurate that is, but sounds legit https://youtu.be/7SBJr3Zfgl8 - Why Apple removed the gun emoji

Well, yeah, US companies are more than happy to export the US political climate as long as it doesn't directly conflict with local laws.

That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.

Yandex is an interesting showcase of how bad this can get - they literally dropped country borders from their maps last year "for better user experience". And I don't mean just lines that you normally see while browsing the map, but even when you ask for it deliberately. For example, if you look up a city, you get its territory highlighted on the map - but that's not the case for countries, it just puts a marker "somewhere in the middle".

They also removed administrative regional boundaries without announcing that change - probably because looking up regions at the border would have to include a part of said border into the displayed boundary, making it discoverable.

> That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.

How does that standard apply to Taiwan?

In mainland China they don't support the Taiwanese flag emoji, presumably because that's the only country that would care or want to censor it.

Perhaps Yandex maps could be perceived as representing an ideal future devoid of essentially arbitrary political boundaries and silly notions of citizenship.

No matter how much you want such an utopia where everyone gets along, that is not the reality we are living in. Instead, borders are real and which country a particular location in matters in many contexts that involve looking at a map.

Google Maps also does this when the border is under contention. Selecting a country with a contested border like Ukraine or Russia will only highlight the country name, but selecting a country with uncontested borders like Poland or Germany will draw a red outline around the country.

Mapmakers have been doing this one for centuries. Contested borders often do not appear.

I heard Google also alters the drawn borders based on your IP (if you're in one with a contested border)

Yes they do - some examples:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/14/google-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2016/aug/10...

https://www.wesa.fm/national-international-news/2014-04-12/w...

Nitpick: technically, the border between Germany and the Netherlands is semi-contested. The countries agreed to disagree about its exact location. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany–Netherlands_border#D...:

“The maritime border is disputed in a part of the Ems estuary outside the Dollart bay, where Germany has the view that the state border runs on the left bank of the Ems, while the Netherlands regards the Thalweg as its border.

[…]

In 2014 the two nations' foreign ministers met to put an end to the dispute. It was decided that the border should remain ambiguous and responsibility for the region in question shared”

More info (in German) at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsch-Niederländische_Grenzf....

Bowing to censorship? Bowing isn't necessarily done happily.

Or maybe more ideas are also in play? Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics? Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?

Not all ethicists recommend "dying on your sword" so to speak. Sometimes it is useful to maintain influence and fight another day. These things are far from simple.

If you want Apple to push back on censorship in China, let's talk about the details. What would China likely do in return?

Hopefully, they (the CCP) will collapse.

Hmm, I see this sentiment often, but I am not entirely certain people go through it beyond the initial 'feels good' analysis. If there is one thing that US population probably should be aware of, it is that succeeding regime will not automatically be to one's advantage ( devil known kinda deal ). Say what you want about old age, but it does force you to recognize certain level of stability as desirable.

Taiwan made the transition to democracy. No reason why the mainlanders can't.

They could make that transition, of course. But look at all the countries that somehow got rid of dictators in this century. How many of those turned into stable, free, and democratic societies? Afghanistan? Iraq? Egypt? Lybia?

If you add ten more years, did it work out for Russia? Belarus? Ukraine? It did work out for Poland, Latvia and some others. But getting rid of an oppressive regime is the easy part of transforming an autocracy into democracy.

Take a look at Eastern Europe. Many countries were either directly or indirectly under the Soviet thumb, and dare I say, they are much better off now that they can rule themselves independently. At least any mess they make is of their own making, rather than centrally imposed.

I guess what parent is saying that for every Poland, we seem to have an Afghanistan ( the odds of favorable outcome are hit or miss ). One would hope people in charge in US are actually studying the whys behind the failures and successes, because even without access to privileged information one could infer some reasons for both. I would especially like to hope that we learn from our mistakes ( as those tend to result in much greater level of misery for all ; in the event of success everyone is just patting themselves on the back ).

If they do, it won’t be because of Apple.

Remember how Tim Cook’s Apple handled HKmap.live¹, Telegram², and the Navalny app³. Maybe you shouldn’t fight every battle, but he fights none. The richest company in the world has at the helm a person who quotes Martin Luther King Jr on the importance of doing something for others⁴ yet he always kowtows to authoritarian regimes. He’s in a stronger position than most people in the world to make a stand but he never does. At a certain point he’s out of excuses. He fights for money, nothing more.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKmap.live

² https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-telegram-belarus/

³ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/google-apple-remove-nav...

⁴ Check the bio: https://twitter.com/tim_cook

> Maybe you shouldn’t fight every battle, but he fights none.

All we know is what has been reported.

It would seem improbable what a multi trillion dollar company with it's manufacturing base in China wouldn't be dealing and negotiating with the Chinese authorities as part of day to day operations.

To say Tim Cook fights no battles seems unlikely. We cannot make that statement because the reality is that we just don't know what goes on behind closed doors!

Perhaps he dresses up as Batman and fights crime at night, I mean, who can say?

So basically your counterargument is a variation of the Conspiracy Fallacy. "The good actors are hiding the evidence for their goodness!"

(Or perhaps, that was your point!)

I think it's more that Tim Cook, and Apple, are innocent until proven guilty.

They are not 'hiding' anything, which implies they have more to hide.

Apple are a secretive company that does not tend to discuss their internal politics and supplier arrangements.

The internet could argue about this all day long, but my point stands that we just don't know!

But I get your point as well. Maybe I'm feeling generous towards Apple!

I'm not normally a fan of Mr Tim Cook! :-)

If you can point to a positive change that Apple have made, in this regard, under Cook's watch, then your argument has some merit.

If you can't then you'll have to rely on the "it would've been worse but for his efforts" but I doubt you're going to provide evidence for that.

What we do know is that Apple have repeatedly sided with censorship, I can certainly provide evidence of that.

Apple very publicly refused to unlock the phones of the San Berbardino shooters, and consistently refuses to back door their phones for law enforcement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93Apple_encryption_d...

In a country with strong rule of law, where it's quite clear where the legality of this rests, and where they had almost nothing to lose by refusing to unlock the phone.

Yet icloud is dencrypted in China as soon as that's what the authorities want.

Standing up for things doesn't really mean much when you have nothing to lose. It's like the world cup players talking about LGBT rights and then stopping it as soon as they are threatened with yellow cards. That's boring cowardly virtue signalling, it's not standing up for something regardless of consequences.

You know what? You've made a good point, and I'm now a little less positive on Apple and a little more critical of Spineless Tim Cook.

> Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics?

by "power dynamics", do you mean lies propagated by the CCP?

> Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame?

Apple isn't a government. What do you mean here exactly? Money? That propagating lies for money is a legitimate way of doing business?

Hm.

Parent is likely referring to Apple's position in the market[1], where their profit - not revenue - alone ( 141b in 2021 ) dwarfs many nations' GDP[2] in the world.

I would not call it a lie.

[1]https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/gross-p... [2]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?most_rec...

Considering that China has the ultimate power over apple with Foxconn manufacturing their device in China. Apple makes a lot of money because of China, China can have a lot of influence over Apple. I'm not pro-China, pro-America, pro-anything, just stating this fact.

Foxconn does assembly and that is not a big cost of an iphone [0]. Like literally just a fraction compared to American IP, Taiwan CPUs, or Japanese cameras and the latter are all much harder to move compared to assembly.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apple-iphone-7-and-...

Whatever the case is, Apple took their sweet time making changes. Microsoft, Google and even Facebook pulled out of China years ago, and Apple is acting like a storied history of human rights abuses is news to them.

> [...], Google and even [...] pulled out of China years ago

Wasn't the Pixel 6 assembled by Foxconn? And the upcoming Pixel 7 / foldables apparently also going to be assembled by Foxconn? That's not pulling out...

[edit to clarify we're only talking about Google]

Foxconn isn’t even a Chinese company (unless you’re a “one China” person). They’ve been doing the assembly on the mainland and they have had to relocate a few times to keep labor costs low. The writing is on the wall for iPhone assembly in China and has been for some time.

it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship

If one believes Elon Musk's view of the Twitter situation with the app store, Apple seems to be for more censorship!

You know what actually makes sense? Creating a setting that the user can change as they see fit.

Customization? On an Apple device? Are you out of your mind?

Have you looked at how much stuff there is under Settings on a recent version of iOS? Admittedly it's not the Windows Registry, but...

Sadly it's missing a few things that would be really nice, like being able to turn off the %*(% home bar.

What's the beef with the home bar? Seems pretty innocent?

Because I absolutey do not need it, and it's infuriating to have a high contrast item in view when using a dark app (Like, say, a video player...)

There is an API for developers to use to signal that a view should hide the home indicator [1]. It doesn't guarantee that it will be hidden (the user may have accessibility or other options enabled which take precedence and prefer to display it)

When playing fullscreen video on my phone, I do not see the home indicator, as it hides after a short delay due to most developers adopting this API. Just tested in VLC and the home indicator is hidden after about 3 seconds of fullscreen video playback

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiviewcontro...

It’s much more problematic on iPad Pro, since lots of devs don’t have one. It’s also geometrically larger, especially in landscape.

Getting app developers to fix it is a very mixed bag. One app I use a lot (F1 TV) had had this issue forever, and many many many people have complained to F1 Media about it. They don’t care, apparently, and that’s a high end app that costs upwards of $80/yr

Also, erm, Safari. I was actually complaining about this (with a screenshot) just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=33770571

As stated in my sibling[0] to your comment, the developer may have limited ability to fix it, since its a preference the system will often override. That said, its literally a one line change to implement it (for each view controller class), so there is little reason for them not to put it in, even with its limited effectiveness.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33781895

This is not the behaviour I am seeing as I compile to my iOS devices right now. The home indicator is consistently hidden on view controllers which adopt this preference, but will reappear whenever a user interacts with the application, only to hide again after a few seconds.

I agree that it can be annoying if the developer of an app does not adopt the correct behaviours. But in the case of Safari we should not be allowing web developers to hide persistent OS UI elements. The better solution to your screenshot, I think, is to design with safe areas[1] in mind so that the overlap does not occur and persistent OS UI remains accessible.

[1] https://webkit.org/blog/7929/designing-websites-for-iphone-x...

But why on earth does it NEED to be persistent?

It’s instinctual behavior.

Like imagine if a desktop pc had 3 dime sized dots on the bottom of the screen to remind you a mouse has 3 buttons.

It’s noise, not signal.

It wasn't instinctual when iOS introduced the swipe up to close apps in 2018?

It's also a clear indication that you can swipe up to go home. If the indicator is invisible, you cannot swipe up. You need to interact with the app to make the indicator appear (eg. tap the screen). I appreciate the visual indicator and that it can be disabled when there is full screen content

False. Swiping up in the YouTube app with the bar hidden goes home just fine.

You're right. I confused two APIs, there is also `defersSystemGestures(on: edges)` which allows an app to prevent a swipe to go home initially. A lot of fullscreen apps do this so I thought it was the same API

> It doesn't guarantee that it will be hidden (the user may have accessibility or other options enabled which take precedence and prefer to display it)

In my experience as an iOS developer using this API, the only time the preference to hide the home indicator is respected is in the case you mentioned, when a full screen video is playing. Otherwise the home indicator always appears whenever the user stops interacting with the screen. So the GP is correct that there is no user control to make it hidden, and not really any developer control either.

It consistently hides the home indicator in my experience.

I just compiled two of my apps with `prefersHomeIndicatorAutoHidden` set to true. This resulted in the home indicator disappearing after a second or two on the view controllers where it was configured. Neither of the apps were video apps.

The home indicator does come back if you interact with the screen. Tap the screen and it will appear briefly, before disappearing again.

> Windows Registry

That's a term I haven't heard in years. I wonder if anyone still remembers the literal thousands of settings that were possible to change and all the "tweaking" programs that were made for it.

Google gpedit.msc if you really want your mind blown.

Both are still around.

Yes, I have seen. Most of them barely do anything worthwhile. It’s like publishing an entire book in title sized fonts.

"10 minutes ought to be enough for anybody."

“10 minutes just works”

I recognise the current truth of this, but I feel a deep wave of sadness as I remember that the computer to have in the 90s if you wanted to customise evvvvvvery little thing was a Mac. A ton of custom aspects were available right in the base system, plus of course a seemingly infinite array of inits and cdevs to tweak things, and finally you could resort to ResEdit to modify anything by hand. Apple fell so far in the 2000s and especially the 2010s from that ideal.

Perhaps that didn't receive approval from a higher power.

But options are so complicated and boring. Can I just pay you to pick the best one for me?

Pay apple, multiple recurring subscriptions to do what they want you to do. This is always the answer.

I want to play this spotify track through my appleTV. A. No, you can't, it doesn't work without rebooting the appleTV, which will work but only until you pause the music. A: "You can pay for an apple music sub."

I want enough space on my phone. A: No. You Can't. We're taking that for OS stuff to sell you things you don't want. A: "Buy a new phone with more storage and a vastly inflated flash price." Or A: "You can pay apple a sub to have your private files hackable and released as "the fappening" like happened to Jennifer Lawrence." You'll have to take steps to avoid this if you are able which you might no be, ha!

I don't want any of my private files from my phone or my computer on someone else's computer. Have you tried using apple without paying for their backup service? You probably did manage, do a survey of your friends to see how they went.

I want to use firefox with uBlock origin (or whatever) on my phone. No, you can't. I'm sure there's a way to pay apple for something to do something I don't want here. Chime in with it.

I want to run Kodi on my appleTV to be able to watch my DVD library that I own, using the device that I own plugged into the tv that I own. A: "No. You can't. You can pay apple a sub for appleTV the app which entitles you to pay again for anything you actually want to watch that you already own."

The answer is always pay apple more money and probably a recurring payment. Always. And by design. They pay economists to optimise the models to make it happen.

I want to pay Mary for her app. A: "No you can't, you can pay apple and apple can tax Mary 30% of her gross revenue for a service you can't opt out of.

You pay apple to be their product. The market power is utterly phenomenal. The answer is always pay Apple more money.

Yes, that's called having a default, and it's a good thing. An even better thing is to let someone change it afterwards, if they want to.

That would be nice, right?

Unfortunately, <queue some made up story from Apple's PR team about how some soldier's lives were saved by limiting AirDrop time to exactly 10 minutes>.

I legitimately don't understand how this has been spun into some sort of pro-censorship move. Leaving your phone open to getting AirDrop-ed by anyone in the vicinity just seems like a terrible idea in general, but especially in China. Apple is helping the authoritarian dictatorship by checks notes not having your phone advertise to everyone nearby that it can receive files from anyone?

The ability for dissidents to airdrop messages to passers-by seems silly as well. All of a sudden spamming people is good due to the content of the message? Never mind that there's nothing stopping the other side from doing the same thing.

It ultimately feels to me like the country that's always in the news for hackers and ubiquitous surveillance should be the last place in the world you want to have AirDrop on, period. Even the contacts-only mode has leaked personal information in the past.

I agree with all of your points. To me this seems like correcting an oversight in Apple’s original implementation vs Apple taking away a ‘feature’.

I’ve gotten AirDrop spam here in America and welcome this change.

You've always been able to change AirDrop to contacts only. This "feature" just makes it harder to send AirDrops to people who want to receive them.

Assuming that anyone with airdrop set to everyone wants to receive your files is just wrong

What else would be the interpretation of the "Everything" setting, especially at a large gathering like a protest?

Also, it's not like they just receive the file without consent, last I used an iPhone there was a popup allowing the other user to accept/decline the file.

So it's less like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to receive your file" and more like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to be asked if they want to receive your file".

The usage in HK that everyone keeps citing was as a way to spam incoming Mainland tourists' phones with protest flyers. Like okay, you might agree with the content in this case, but it can (and has) easily be dick pics instead.

By your logic Apple's default setting of "contacts only" AirDrop visibility is also a nefarious way to prevent protest literature from being distributed

> The usage in HK that everyone keeps citing was as a way to spam incoming Mainland tourists' phones with protest flyers. Like okay, you might agree with the content in this case, but it can (and has) easily be dick pics instead.

It's entirely possible it's misleading, but the tweet in this post pretty heavily implies it was from protester to protester, you're the one who brought up the "spamming tourists" thing.

Also, I'm not even sure I agree with the "a tool can be used for evil so therefore taking features away is good". Anyone can email you a dick pick, does that mean email provides should stop accepting images in emails that aren't from contacts (with no option to disable this filtering, except in 10 minute increments)?

> By your logic Apple's default setting of "contacts only" AirDrop visibility is also a nefarious way to prevent protest literature from being distributed

Context matters. If the default used to be everyone, and Apple pushed out a new default to users in China immediately around when protests, then yes I would say it was nefarious.

https://qz.com/1660460/hong-kong-protesters-use-airdrop-to-b...

"Thing A is happening" isn't proof for "Thing B isn't happening". Also, you missed the rest of my comment.

What's really the problem here is that they take it away without choice.

There's nothing you can do to keep it working as it did, due to iOS being so incredibly locked down. Because this has been used as a free-speech feature whether you like it or not, this makes it a very questionable thing to do whether it was done for good causes or bad.

All they would have needed to do was to introduce a new 10 minute option along with the other existing options, and leave the forever option available for those who wanted to keep it and didn't care about spam.

I have always had mine set to “Everyone”. I have been amused by some of the files (photos, mostly) I have received. I hope I continue to have the option to leave it open.

Removing ‘always everyone’ as an option only in China means you are probably wrong.

They can easily add a ‘temporary everyone’ button for people that want to use that.

Because people sending dick pics and spam had been a known issue for ages, yet this change came soon after China complaining about people sending protest flyers, rolled out in China first, and with no option to leave your phone open. One can argue whether it's Apple's job to fight censorship (and I might agree that it's not), but you have to willfully blind say this is not pro-censorship.

so the title of this post is incorrect, this setting was not enabled due to the protests

Of course the zero-covid protests were also around a couple weeks ago..

But it wasn’t until today that Musk decide to start a propaganda war against Apple.

It wasn't until Apple (apparently) threatened to withdraw Twitter from the app store.

Which was very foolish given he's already in a propaganda war with most of the news media and an entire political movement.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/10/23450967/apple-airdrop-l...

It was brought in because of protests in mainland China. Just not because of the current ones, but previous ones.

A setting with 10 minutes default would be reasonable change for users sake, in case they forget to turn it off.

Force 10 minutes with no optoon to turn it back? Yeah...

> but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.

The China told them to and they complied. They have every interest in China's government keeping their people in check so the Apple factory production continues without problems.

Follow the money and all that

> hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.

Not hard at all.

On Oct 13, 2022 this protest happened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest), which the CCP considered a serious offense, potentially on the same level of the 1989 protest.

At the time people, especially college students around that area (lots of universities nearby), were using AirDrop to share photos of the protest, because social medium was heavily censored. University administrators were tasked to make sure iPhone-carrying students to disable allowing AirDrop from everyone to stop the spread of the images.

A few weeks later, iOS public betas were found to come with the change to limiting AirDrop to 10 minutes, and nothing about it was ever mentioned in release note.

Was Apple pressured by the CCP to rush this? I don't know. Look at the evidence and judge by yourself.

But there's a more nuanced perspective.

It is rumored that CCP has the ability to actually track and uncover the identity of iOS devices sending AirDrop. Think about it: how else AirDrop can limit to receive from contacts only? If so, AirDrop would provide a false sense of anonymity and deniability, and Apple would put some of its customers in jeopardy if they do nothing.

By limiting AirDrop from everyone to 10 minutes, Apple achieved three objectives:

1. They showed compliance (they have to, if they want to keep the business in China); 2. They avoided the potential reputation damage in the scenario where protesters are caught AirDropping offensive materials (e.g. “iPhones aren't as secure as Apple advertises after all”); 3. They closed a loophole in which people get spammed (yes, allowing AirDrop from everyone gets you mostly spams anyway).

The “mistake” Apple made was that it did not a) rush the change to all regions, and b) mention it explicitly in release note, therefore completely exposed them to the first objective and failed to convey the nuances.

Why does it seem "the right thing"? I mean, it's pretty stupid to actually keep it open for everyone forever, but if I want that (and I don't know why it was even an option, but I assume somebody wants that) — that's my business, it doesn't hurt anyone. Also, limiting it to 10 minutes doesn't help, since I just can keep turning it on and on it seems.

Adding one more option could make some sense, but it's weird anyways. Why arbitrary 10 minutes? How turning it for 10 minutes in a crowded place is better than turning it on for an hour? It's silly.

The AirDrop spam has been a headache in China for sometime: https://www.pingwest.com/a/256995

It's because recently there's report on the internet that some people are receiving nude photos from random guys over AirDrop (*on subways), and the fact that sexual harassment charges in China are pressed rather weakly.

For context: AirDrop was one of the only ways protesters had to communicate en-masse.

Signal is unsafe for Chinese protesters, since it requires SMS verification upon signup and is therefore linked to your identity.[0] Mesh networks are the only real solution there, and AirDrop is about the only mainstream one. AirDrop has been used by Asian protesters for years.[1] I highly recomment you read the full China Digital Times article, which gives excellent context, and lets these protesters explain the value of AirDrop in their own words.[1]

Apple's timing is unmistakeably suspicious; keep in mind that there have been protests for weeks, which preceded the iOS update.

It must also be pointed out that Apple issued an official statement to Western media outlets that the goal was to prevent spam.[2] At no point did Apple ever admit that this was done to follow any government demand. It's unknown whether Apple could be under a Chinese gag-order, but we shouldn't speculate that it's the case unless experts say it's likely. If Apple is complying with a Chinese government orders, then it has an ethical duty to make that public, and again, we have, as of yet, no reason to assume there are gag orders related to this. Apple deserves criticism for the update, and for trying to hide its true purpose.

[0]: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/159707255662827929...

[1]: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...

[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-10/apple-lim...

Note: AirDrop is unsafe for broadcasting message anonymously. It will also broadcast your hashed phone number and email[1], which can be reversed by rainbow table.

[1]: https://privatedrop.github.io/

True, but invalidated by burner and jailbroken phones which are widespread in China. They can definitely catch somebody with a concerted effort but I'd be surprised if the average Chinese teenager couldnt figure out how to make a burner email

I think the problem is the majority of people don't know that airdrop isn't actually anonymous, sure there are workarounds but it doesn't matter if 99% of users don't follow them.

People in China have burner Apple phones? That sounds kind of crazy. Even if jailbroken I doubt they are mitigating for this.

There are markets in China where you can buy all the parts super cheap and build your own iPhone. It's like nothing you'd ever see in the western world. Hundreds of stalls all selling an individual specific selection of phone components, and if you ask for something they don't have, they'll recommend their friend's stall to you.

Apple have sold billions of iPhones. All those second hand "recycled" parts go somewhere.

That sounds like an incredible place to visit

Devil's advocate: If you already don't worry about exposing this info then why not just use Telegram or Signal?

Because AirDrop only exposes the info of the sending phone, not the receiving phone.

An iphone can be bought and emails can be registered without doxing yourself, so this info isn't strongly tied to your identity the same way a phone number is.

To be fair, it's the only real solution anywhere, and it's just us who is playing dumb and pretending SMS verification is absolutely fine and totally acceptable for a "secure messenger" in our free and happy democratic society. Jesus, the level of absurdity here...

Signal can't be used at all in China anyway since the verification texts are blocked. I've tried contacting Signal support about this (I live in China and want to use Signal) but as soon as I tell them I love in China and have a Chinese phone number they stop replying :)

> ethical duty to make that public

There are gag orders in the US and UK too, which companies have to follow or they are breaking the law. Are they unethical too?

Or do you mean, it is unethical for apple to not tell Americans what the Chinese government has asked them to do within China, to Chinese citizens, in order to benefit from being legally in good standing and able to continue to do commerce within China?

If so, then is it unethical for them to follow US gag orders and not tell the Chinese public?

Please read the full sentence.

> If Apple is complying with a Chinese government orders, then it has an ethical duty to make that public, and again, we have, as of yet, no reason to assume there are gag orders related to this.

I am saying that if there's no gag order, they have an ethical duty to reveal why they're doing this.

Oh, I see. This makes even less sense to me now!

Considering we live in a world of constantly updating SaaS, where is the ethical obligation to explain changes?

I'm happy to receive a change log that says 10% of what has changed, and generally expect to not get a reason.

How many entire products has Google killed with no explanation?

I have a feeling this is only become a question of "ethics" because this change tangentially touches protests & CCP.

It's not "tangential". It was only rolled out in China. My phone outside of China, with latest iOS update, still has no time limit on Airdrop. Protesters in China as of now have a time limit. (It depends on the country in which the phone was purchased, like with missing Taiwan flag emoji.)

These pro-freedom protests are the event in China and there is simply no way Apple flipped this change just now just for China by accident for completely unrelated reasons.

I have to admit that when you actually look at the details this is a rather perplexing change. Ditto for reading the comments here.

Is Apple being Pro-CCP with this change? If you open airdrop to everyone, your device can be tracked and identified individually. When this setting is disabled, this becomes far harder.

I'm of the opinion that this change is good and actually increases security across the board, including for the people who are using it to exchange information during protests since it disables a vector for tracking devices.

Also, anyone who rides public transportation in a major metropolitan area has probably experienced perverts airdropping them pornography, and this would fix that issue.

I have not experienced this in my 10 years on the subway.

I am not sure if you are a man or a woman. Try changing the name of your iPhone to something like "Heather's iPhone" and then turn on AirDrop to "Everyone" on your subway rides. I am sure your experience will be vastly different.

Are you just guessing or do you actually have a reason to believe this?

Commuting in NYC on Subway.

My wife's phone is actually "Heather's iPhone" and it happened any time she accidentally left "Everyone" after e.g. a conference.

While she's more amused than offended, she thinks it's a good idea this promiscuous mode will now turn itself back off if she forgets.

Do you think your wife could handle one extra option that is not the default where some users could change the 10 minutes to 1 or more hours? Or is that too many options for the average users?

She's got no problem with settings, but it's preferable if it remembers for you to turn it back off.

What Apple does for a lot of things (see Focus, or DND) is "until I leave this place" (or event if in a calendared event) and "until tomorrow", those make more sense to me than a particular time frame.

So in this case where someone has for some special event to enable this feature they can get a few options. I was asking because Apple and GNOME fanboys claim that the average user is incapable to choose for themselves.

But honestly in this case they needed to release it globally, then designers would be happy they removed a feature, Apple could continue selling the idea that they respect human rights and privacy.

Sure, in any particular case, users could handle multiple options. But if you add multiple options in every similar ambiguous case, your phone suddenly becomes an Android or worse. And those who want that can already use Android; as someone who prefers the minimalistic design of Apple, I sure don't want options to multiply and spread in the UI, even if it occasionally means working around some limitation.

I don't believe this, a good designer can handle the task of showing all important options in a intuitive way and hide some of the stuff in an Advanced section.

There simply isnt a need to "Set the feature" for any kind of event. It's not like you can turn this on, put your phone in your pocket and then have people send unsolicited files to your phone all day long. Airdrop only works when your phone is unlocked and in use. You already have to interact with it to receive something, and you can put a shortcut button in control center for it. Making the privacy-preserving setting the default is the right call. Whether or not China had anything to do with it is honestly irrelevant.

> Making the privacy-preserving setting the default is the right call. Whether or not China had anything to do with it is honestly irrelevant.

One of us is wrong, here, my understanding is not that Apple changed a default , but Apple removed/wiped the default option . You claim that you can change the default back to what it was before ?

AirDrop harassment is a thing and sometimes arrested in Japan, shame. https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190821/p2a/00m/0na/00...

Do you ride public transportation in a major metropolitan area? This is not a thing I've ever even heard of happening (I'm sure someone has done it) in the real world

It happens enough that the UK government want to outlaw it. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cyberflashing-to-become-a...

> The practice typically involves offenders sending an unsolicited sexual image to people via social media or dating apps, but can also be over data sharing services such as Bluetooth and Airdrop.

I'd wager the majority of cases they refer to being via social media and dating apps given the language.

Why is it being rolled out in China first?

Because China told them to after protests last month or so. This did not just happen in the last two days.

This is arguably a good setting too, as there are plenty of stories of people in other parts of the world who AirDrop lewd/violent/disgusting pictures to anyone around with their phone set to “allow anyone”. It’s happened on planes, for example.

But this is a tool people figured out they could use for a different purpose: spreading info during protests. So now it’s caught up in politics.

For all the “evil Apple”, they’ve been better than others. But they are a total hostage. The vast majority of the stuff is in China. Piss off the CCP and the company practically dies overnight.

Yes, they should have fixed that long ago. But here we are.

>If you open airdrop to everyone, your device can be tracked and identified individually.

That can already be done using cell towers (especially with 5G) and GPS enabled state-supervised apps like WeChat, etc. So that's not a good reason.

If only iPhones had a way to turn off its cellular radio, some kind of “airplane mode” or something

Why should we possibly believe that any software switches actually fully disable anything? If there isn't a hardware killswitch, there is no reasonable expectation that the cellular radio is actually disabled...

There are trustworthy sources claiming that the NSA still tracks devices that are completely "powered off".

No reason to believe that the CCP doesn't have that ability as well.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm just pointing out that there is a tangible benefit to end-user privacy that is enabled by this change inasmuch as the features are advertised to work and inasmuch as I personally have investigated how they operate.

Certainly the CCP has other means to surveil their dissidents, and at a certain level of paranoia, leaving the cell phone behind might be a good idea. However that is a completely separate topic that does not deserve to be convoluted with this discussion.

It seems in the fervor to lambast Apple, very few people seem to be fully considering that the original feature is extremely problematic. People will often enable 'Everyone' when they need to exchange a file with someone, but forget to change it back. If you need any more evidence that this is so, I invite you to go into a public space and scan for Airdrop targets.

It's pretty easy to test this with a meter. I don't get any emf with my Samsung or my MacBook when I'm in those modes.

Hardware killswitches are security theatre, if you can’t trust the software layer to that degree than you are just lost behind saving.

Strong disagree - defense in depth is a thing.

I once had my phone, which I had turned off, loudly ring during a moment of silence I was attending. It was extremely embarrassing, and until I replaced that phone whenever I was in a similar situation where it was critical to be quiet, I removed the battery. It wasn't that I didn't trust the phone or it's software, but mistakes and accidents happen, and for some critical situations it's better to be safe than sorry.

Same thing applies to phones with hardware switches.

No. You can inspect the hardware. If you can verify that the switch disables the radio, you don't have to worry about software do you?

... unless there is some other way to exfiltrate data, such as:

1. alternative antennae, chipsets?

2. some kind of filtering + buffer + delayed send

3. something else...?

Whatever the case, such techniques are not free of cost and increase the chance of exfil detection. So, killswitches provide a later of protection. Therefore, the claim that killswitches are of _no_ use is not adequately argued above.

> hardware. If you can verify that the switch disables the radio, you don't have to worry about software do you?

Until the next time you turn radio on, when it could just send out anything, anywhere if the software stack is untrusted, so we are back at square one.

I'm aware. You apparently did not notice my point #2 above:

> 2. some kind of filtering + buffer + delayed send

Resources (compute, storage) are needed for filtering, buffering, sending. However, these actions are not "free": (1) they increase the chance of detection later; (2) they require electrical power; (3) they require additional design and testing for the device using them. Isn't raising the cost of breaching security the basic idea?

So my point stands: A hardware kill switch serves as a security layer. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it is not (in general) simply security theater (your point above).

I do recall reading something about the cellular/radio chip is separate from the rest phones hardware.

It can still communicate with towers even when phone is off. The phone can’t control that behavior.

> It can still communicate with towers even when phone is off. The phone can’t control that behavior.

It cannot and does not. Please do not perpetuate this ridiculous fantasy.

Doesn't "airplane mode" disable "airdrop" as well?

Airdrop uses a combination of bluetooth and wifi and does work with Airplane mode enabled.

Which can be tracked… Likely all the way via satellite.

Assuming the MAC randomization does not work as advertised and airplane mode does not actually disable the cellular and satellite modems as advertised, and airdrop's identity hashes are not as secure as advertised, or the attacker can fingerprint your specific radio and trilaterate its location via satellite, then sure, it can be tracked. Boy, do I feel stupid.

If on the other hand you want to enjoy having your phone broadcast your name and picture to everyone just because you forgot to change that setting back after the last time you AirDropped a video to your coworker, then by all means, Apple has done you a disservice.

if people started doing it in mass it would be pretty strong and obvious signal in and of itself due to the manual and intentional nature of the action

> Is Apple being Pro-CCP with this change?

I don't think Apple is Pro-CCP, Apple is Pro-Being-Able-To-Do-Business-In-China, which means doing whatever the CCP tells you to do, even if it means compromising your ethics.

At the risk of being an Apple apologist, their manufacturing is effectively held hostage by China. Yes Apple is taking the "make more profit" choice, but the alternative is pretty devastating to the company. Long term, Apple needs to diversify their manufacturing footprint.

(Note that I still think Apple would adhere to the CCP's requests/laws just to be able to sell in China. China would ban Apple products if they believed Apple was not cooperative.)

All tech companies that rely upon China for manufacturing are in this situation -- not just Apple.

Agreed to a point. Smaller companies can more easily get enough manufacturing capacity elsewhere, but larger companies are trapped by finding that capacity, technical ability, and hitting the price points they need at scale.

They’re already diversifying their manufacturing to Vietnam, India and Malaysia because random draconian zero-Covid lockdowns have been very disruptive to their supply chain, not out of any high principle.

The protesters should use these little gizmos instead:

https://www.sandisk.com/goto/connect

Basically micro web servers with MicroSD cards for storage, a battery and WiFi AP with 2h battery life and in the form factor of a chunky flash drive. You can power them off a power bank for more airtime.

> compromising your ethics

My more cynical view is that there are no ethics to compromise. The ethic is make money. Any appearance of ethics is there as a marketing gimmick.

Apple is a publicly traded company. It's beholden to the ethics of its shareholders.

> compromising your ethics

Is disabling a feature for all citizens within a geographical region "compromising your ethics" I would argue not. Different countries have different laws, including what kind of radio spectrum a phone is able to use. These have to be respected. As distasteful as it is, "respecting" the laws of an autocratic country.

Now if Apple was handing over geolocation information for apple users on bulk to the CCP, or compiling lists of "likely" dissidents or <insert-minority-group> then I think we are at least knee-deep in unethical waters. But they'll probably be some people out there who say Apple-the-company is completely ethical unless they themselves are the ones pulling the trigger. I kind of disagree on this outlook, but legally again they might be right. (If you take your ethical/moral bases on that of current law.)

I'm a little confused by the "Apple's doing bad here" sentiment. The easier to implement, and definitely more effective solution would have been to just disable the Everyone feature completely. Just remove it from the menu. This would have been something like

    action.isEnabled = self.isInChina

Instead, they went through the effort to actually make it still there, but time bombed. They had to add a timeout function, and record the time it was enabled, etc. And at the end of the day, the activist/protestor at a street gathering now has the inconvenience of re-enabling "everyone" 6 times an hour.

For me, this basically feels like lip service to the Chinese government, but otherwise a finger. Maybe I'm beeing too myopic.

Yeah, I quite agree. Reposting my comment from above here because this makes a better thread ... I think this 10 minute delay might actually be intended to be protective for the protestors. Any radio transmitter is a beacon that can be localized and destroyed. In serious warfare this is a major issue. "I'm up, they see me, I'm down" is drilled into military operators early and often.

You think Apple is trying to protect protestors?

Do you know which country manufactures the iPhone?

Apple is not suicidal.

There is a delicate balance of action and phrasing in China, no? It seems two contradictory ideas can coexist for significant lengths of time; e.g. see the complexities around Taiwan's relationship with China. Perhaps someone with a deeper knowledge of the culture can explain it better.

> For me, this basically feels like lip service to the Chinese government, but otherwise a finger. Maybe I'm beeing too myopic.

Plus they led everyone know about China in rolling the feature change there first.

I guess it works both ways though. If everyone had it on, you can't easily arrest every iPhone user. And people could spread information really quickly. Now you have to turn it on for 10 minutes at a time so you aren't organising that mass protest as fast.

The main use case here is sending stuff in high traffic places w/ plausible deniability such as during your commute or at a mall.

No, that’s a silly solution because airdrop everyone is super useful.

We heard about this over 2 weeks ago https://www.macrumors.com/2022/11/10/airdrop-10-minute-limit...

This is not in response to this particular protest. iOS16 just dropped, so the timing was coincidental I guess.

If you don’t believe this is in response to protest then how do you explain it being rushed out ONLY IN CHINA?

I said "This is not in response to this particular protest."

This already existed. They did not see the current protest and then suddenly released it.

Nothing in the original tweet suggested it to be in response to this _particular_ protest either.

There have been protests via airdrop in china for months.

I think it could be interpreted that they pushed it out because of these protests. Most people won’t know about the feature until it matters and it’s too late.

When you work on software available globally, it's very normal to deploy or roll out features region-by-region. This seems par for the course.

If they rolled it out to China first, that's a pretty huge region to start with if you want to test something isn't broken.

The article I linked says

"The setting was reportedly added after protesters in the country used AirDrop to spread anti-government material."

Most other articles also mention this. I'm not unconvinced this had nothing to do with the feature. I'm just pointing out that this was already in the works. This was not a fast reaction to the current protests.

I don't think this is good. But Apple didn't just roll this out at a whim.

I'm curious what they mean by "was reportedly added". "Reported" by whom? What is the source for this information?

I think the timing and China-only bit is eyebrow-raising, but it'd be nice to know if this is just speculation, or if there's a credible source within Apple that's saying this is the reason why it was rolled out in China right now.

> The setting was reportedly added after protesters in the country used AirDrop to spread anti-government material

"Event A happened after Event B", is the only thing we can infer from this.

Right, and usually you roll out first to a smaller region, perhaps in a place where you have customers you don't care about as much for some reason. I don't think China is that region.

No one can explain the confidential-NDA internal workings of Apple in this forum, but here’s a constructed, plausible, scenario that contradicts the claim “Apple implemented this for China”:

If Apple was planning to release this in a point release of iOS 16, and then the Chinese government asked them to do something, then they could have said: “We have a feature in testing that we’d planned to ship later this cycle, so we’ll push that up and soft launch it in China first and then roll it out worldwide once any bugs are hammered out.”

This constructed example both satisfies the condition “why China first?” and also contradicts the assertion “it is certain that Apple implemented this at China’s request”. It is not known whether or not, and to what degree, that Apple considered and/or acted upon a request from China.

(It is also very unlikely that China requested this “after 10 minutes” option specifically. China would rather not have unmonitored peer-to-peer communications, and Apple tends to include temporary timers in their UI for RF/GPS features.)

iOS 16 came out months ago.

Did it? OK. I don't keep up with the release dates anymore. But I just got the notifications on my iPhone and iPad literally last week. I've only been on 16 for a few days.

I realize apple hates options, but adding a 4th option to leave it as everyone indefinitely would have been sooo easy. And I see people were commenting about the protests as a motivating factor 2 weeks ago in that story.

When the CCP says “take that option off phones in China”, you do. Because if you don’t those hundreds of millions of devices they produce for you every year may stop being produced. Or find a new $500/each tariff on them. Or some other company killing thing.

Apple should have hedged years ago, now they’re stuck.

Right. It was a response to a previous protest.

But it gets far more clicks today than weeks ago.

I'm not an expert on China, but my understanding is that there has been a wave of protests over the past several months/weeks in which Airdrop has been used to disseminate protest materials. The intensity of the protests has ebbed/flowed, and they are happening in many different locations. Even "the current protest" is not well defined: there are currently many different protests that share a common grievance, happening in different cities across China.

Being pedantic about whether this was was a response to "a previous protest" is like arguing about which specific mosquito caused you to put on bug spray.

My point was that this wasn’t something Apple just did in the last 2-3 days. It was done weeks ago.

And my point is that the protests have been going on for months. This story seems like it's probably related to them and it's just getting proper attention on HN this week.

Any Apple employee (or really, any large-company employee) would agree that this change is months of work. From the original problem statement (people get spammed when they leave AirDrop set to Everyone), to many strongly-opinionated discussions on how to solve (There's not a problem; Pop up a reminder to disable after an hour; Enable only for some period of time [5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, user-configured]), and then arguments about how to phrase the UI (yes, even for something this small) and mock-ups and product reviews, and then development + QA and internal/Livability testing, and then coordinating for the actual iOS release.

It's a mountain of work, which would have kicked off a long time before any of these protests.

I worked at Apple. It really depends on how big a change this is under the hood. iOS already has similar infrastructure for bluetooth toggles.

If it is low risk, it could make it into a dot release with minimal effort.

But yes, minimum time frame a month standard, maybe a couple weeks if it came from high up (which it did) and was time sensitive.

And is it standard procedure for Apple to release these kinds of changes only in China? They're clearly putting massive priority on this change launching in that geography ASAP (for one reason or another), so it doesn't seem hard to believe that this bypassed most of their other process as well.

Normally it would be several months of work, but if it was a top level company directive (e.g. from the CEO) it would probably take 3-4 weeks at minimum. Note that protests have been going on sporadically for this entire year.

See this article about a protest from Peking university from May 2022: https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-shanghai-china-cbcac...

and Shanghai in April 2022: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/shanghai-videos-residents...

And in Henan in June 2022: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61793149

> it would probably take 3-4 weeks at minimum

Maybe even less than that. I can't imagine the prototype would take longer than a day.

I can see a prototype being done in a day, but getting it past content review, legal, QA, etc will take some time.

Sooner or later Apple will have to losen its grip on the device because if they not, counties will simply try to use Apple as enforcer. Just as with privacy the best road being "We don't have that data", the best road with this is to be able to say "We don't have control over it".

it already has in China. I don't know how much is known to the public but in order to do business in China, Apple has created a parallel Chinese app store/icloud/etc.[1][2] I imagine even the operating systems and possibly hardware differ from what they sell elsewhere.

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208351

[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce...

I'm aware. My guess is, it mostly flies under the radar because this is not happening in Europe or the USA but for how long? What happens when Italy&Hungary starts demanding modifications to protect their citizens against godlessness, abortion, sex out of wedlock, political organisations against them or whatever agenda the far right has?

You might say its the same about the "woke culture censorship" but it is not, in the case of the trends that are in mission to design society those people don't shame people out of society or they don't boycott - they physically target people. Many people lost their lives since 2016(The year of Brexit&Trump).

I don't know if a third-party app might be able to duplicate this functionality, but even if so the problem is third party apps can be banned, and can be seen on phones by authorities and used as a reason for suspicion. People have to be bold enough to install it to receive messages too.

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently...

... for 10 minutes

... for a greater China

That was Steve Jobs' mantra. Not Tim Apple's. Different administration.

Apple wasn't making and selling devices in China before Cook? Interesting.

Jobs might just leave China.

Time for a new operating system (if we didn't already hit that mark with the 2013 NSA leaks).

Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei: they all exist at the pleasure of the state. Please ignore their glitzy PR-laden presentations about protecting people's privacy and upholding human rights. They will sell you out in a second if it's convenient.

On the mobile side of things, we need, at the barest minimum:

- a web based OS with granular permissions for any application that needs to access hardware APIs (just like a web browser)

- a general-purpose mobile SOC that hasn't hitched its wagon to Samsung/Apple/Huawei orders.

- FairPhone style modular, user replaceable parts, and to encourage an interest in self-repair.

- no native-app lock-ins. it's not 2007, the majority of apps people use run fine on a mobile web browser.

- significant efforts to fund tech literacy. More than a billion people have smartphones as their first computing device. They don't have the benefit of past knowledge, so they simply accept the locked-down nature of smartphones without question. Meanwhile in 2011, we could openly port Windows Phone 7, Android OS and the original Windows Mobile 6.5 on the same phone.

Does this not all exist already in the form of Pinephone and Firefox OS?

FFOS was discontinued in 2015. Pinephone is an option however.

Mozilla stopped developing FFOS, yes, but https://capyloon.org/ is still here.

One could argue that Firefox OS does not exist at all.

This sounds like https://serenityos.org/

As much as I love serenity, I think the parent is talking about a mobile OS.

At least Google and Samsung don't give in to dictatorships. Yes, hypothetically the US and South Korea hold some power over them... However Google has stood up to Russia, China and others. Unlike Apple...

I'd somewhat hesitate to give out credit like that. It's more of that China kicked out Google, thus freeing Google to "stand up" to the CCP. I would love to see more of an example where a company had a lot on the line and still oppose the CCP

Google was kicked out for not censoring certain things lol. That's literally standing up to China...

fair enough!

No, Google never stood up to Russia. A year ago they blocked a perfectly legal list of candidates published by Navalny team.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-is-fined-390-mln-r...

If Apple breaks Chinese law in any big or meaningful way... there is no iPhone 15. Full stop. Apple is dead in the water without their CCP-jurisdiction manufacturing which produces approximately 100% of their products (and all of their biggest moneymakers).

And they chose to be reliant on a dictatorship... The reasons don't matter, the fact is Apple cooperates with whatever the CCP demands.

What happens when China invades Taiwan? Will they aid our enemy?

They were reliant on the cooperation of an authoritarian dictatorship with or without Chinese manufacturing; they are one of the largest companies in Silicon Valley.

You can't fight city hall.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-fbi-icloud-exclusiv...

It works precisely the same in every huge superpower. Absolutely nothing about this situation is unique to China.

China didn't become an authoritarian police state AFTER Apple went in there with their manufacturing. They absolutely knew about CCP behavior, but they went there anyway in order to save money. So, they can't really play the helpless multi-hundred-billion-dollar-corporation victim card.

Apple don't move to China to save money, they moved to China in order to meet high demand. There was simply nowhere else that could produce the volume. And technically, Foxconn is a Taiwanese company, but that's not an important detail. Point is, only Chinese/Taiwanese contract manufacturers could give Apple the volume they needed.

I really wish you could talk to some more manufacturing types -- there are many on this site. A lot of things at scale can't be done anywhere except in China.

Now, you can argue that's just about "saving money", because Apple should have built its own automated ports and infrastructure and commodity trading hubs and paid to relocate workers to create a bespoke manufacturing center somewhere else -- but subject to realistic constraints, there was China and no second option to produce iPhones at scale.

>Apple don't move to China to save money, they moved to China in order to meet high demand. There was simply nowhere else that could produce the volume.

This is the situation now, but was it also the same situation when Apple started iPod production there in 2001?

From what I understand most of these electronics supply chain advantages China enjoys now are due to large companies like Apple building those out in China in the late 90's and early 2000's. You might remember Japan had a massive electronics manufacturing industry which became "too expensive", so China was the answer to the need of cheap(slave?) labor.

Don’t forget that this isn’t one company: Apple circa 2000 couldn’t afford to buck an industry-wide trend and since they were using more components made by other companies you get a lot of synergies from having assembly happen near where other parts are made.

This doesn’t excuse them – I think MBAs gave China enough leverage to include Harvard’s business school in human rights lawsuits – but it’s the kind of thing which is larger than the company whose logo is on the box and the answer has to be legislative.

> Apple don't move to China to save money, they moved to China in order to meet high demand. There was simply nowhere else that could produce the volume.

I'm calling BS. Money is based on volume (supply) and demand. China does mainly assembly which makes up a paltry 4% of costs [0] and assembly is low skill labor. With a 25% profit margin, there's no way they couldn't spend/invest in other countries to build up assembly capacity.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apple-iphone-7-and-...

I would add:

- The ability to send push notifications without replying on GCM/APN

- Support for mesh networking (multiple low power peer connections)

- Convenient "lockdown" mode that encrypts your phone's contents for international travel

- Included hardware wallet/keystore for signing all data that you upload to social media

Is it even possible to do push notifications without relying on a centralized system (Google, Apple, or whoever)? Sounds like a very difficult problem to solve while preventing privacy leaks, spamming, DOS attacks and still being reliable and globally available. Who would pay for the infrastructure?

(Please, no 'blockchain will solve this' answers!)

Doing it without killing battery life is... challenging. There are good non-user-hostile reasons it's centralized. Google was a bit wild-west about it for a while and lots of Android apps used custom push services, and the results weren't great.

It's a very difficult problem, no doubt. Implementations are currently battery-constrained, hence the usefulness of GCM/APN for efficiently batched polling. I suspect a fully decentralized system could be feasible for use cases that can tolerate higher latency.

Push is already possible with https://unifiedpush.org/. Apps use a local API and you choose the push provider.

This would be awesome if it worked on iOS too

You might like Librem 5 phone with the smart card running GNU/Linux.

The operating system is not the missing part of the puzzle. There are plenty of FOSS operating systems already.

The missing part of the puzzle is that phones are much more than an OS. To get a phone, you need an SOC, baseband, drivers, regulatory approval, manufacturing, etc. Those are the missing parts.

I think it's a pretty futile effort to make a completely open phone. Even the richest companies on the planet outsource much of the above. Pretty much every previous effort to make an open phone has failed to make much of anything open beyond the OS, let alone all of it.

> I think it's a pretty futile effort to make a completely open phone.

No, it's not: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5.

If you can afford one, which most people can’t.

I don't think you can call anything with GSMA IP in it "open". Same goes for systems that won't run without their closed binary blobs loaded at boot or runtime to enable hardware.

So far, there has only been 3G-ish experimental SDR-based true open hardware, but it's the size of a shoebox, not a phone.

The Librem 5 is not completely open -- neither the hardware nor software. https://puri.sm/faq/

The Librem 5 is the best effort to this date, but the wifi, bluetooth, and baseband software are proprietary, as well as much of the silicon, and part of the boot chain.

There simply aren't any open source options that exist for these components, and due to regulatory constraints, it's unlikely that an open source baseband will exist any time soon.

You are right. For the ultimate openness, you could have a look at Precursor, but it's not really a phone.

The silicon on it is also proprietary. The wifi radio is fully proprietary, and while the FPGA is programmable, the silicon is proprietary.

It does solve the mobile radio problem though, by not having one :)

You don't need a whole new OS, Android is open source and can be forked. The problem is that people's expectation of polish on their phones is through the roof and nobody has figured out how to fund that kind of development effort. CyanogenMod came close but was torn apart, though LineageOS is still there.

In my opinion LineageOS should ditch the neverending cycle of trying to keep up with Google's increasingly useless Android releases, just pick a branch point and leave Google behind. It's the only way to implement OS features and be able to maintain them going forward. Then they should focus on features users actually want and that Google would never implement, for example OS level adblock and firewalls.

Instead of other existing attempts that focus on nebulous privacy and security, things that users don't really care about, the focus should be on giving users back the control that Google and Apple have taken away from us. Note that user-control and security can often be seen as being at odds. An OS that chooses user-control could be a strong differentiator that would set it apart from Google/Apple, who always frame their removal of user-control as a security/privacy feature.

But still, the tricky bit is figuring out a funding model.

> a web based OS

I consider decent battery life and a low-latency interface table stakes for a mobile OS. I'd regard the floor for this as Android, though I'm only setting it that low to avoid charges of being contrary (I'm not happy with how much iOS has slipped on this, even, especially latency/responsiveness). It would be billionaire-mintingly novel if a team managed to clear that bar with webtech.

Regarding low latency, one of the reasons FF OS failed it was laggy on 2014-era mobile web APIs and device hardware. That's definitely not the case today.

* Apple is not a green company

* Apple is not a free speech advocate

* Apple builds their products with unethical labor

Neither is Tesla.

Musk does not give a shit about the free speech of left-wingers. Tesla's also even more in bed with China than Apple is; both in terms of exploitative labor practices and China owning their demand. And electric vehicles are just a way to greenwash suburbs.

EDIT: Nevermind, I got confused with another thread that was talking about Tesla. Leaving this comment up for posterity.

Musk showed some true colors with the Twitter debacle, my interest in buying a Tesla went from an 8/10 to a 0.

Apple is about money, nothing else. Look at their quarterly reports, they are not a byproduct of a higher ethics or anything

But, hey, at least they removed the phone charger and there's no plastic inside their product's boxes.

Nothing else? The profit motive ("money") drives a _lot_, but does not explain everything. Different companies make different trade-offs; there are various ways to optimize profit for different audiences with different risk profiles.

My point? Don't oversimplify. Few (any?) people here are claiming that ethics are the key driver. We know the PR and ads are a veneer. But there is no need to exaggerate.

It is clear that in addition to making money, Apple wants to project a certain brand and ethos, not to mention a penchant for big moves. At times, they are willing to risk some profit in order to invest in, say, a new processor technology.

WRT "explanation" / ie interpreting the why behind actions ... Not all large companies make those kind of investments or take these kind of risks. Saying "money" is the only driver fails to account for much of Apple's storied history.

Not to mention prediction... Saying that the profit motive is the best or only way to explain Apple (and many other companies) defies multivariate statistics and won't serve well to predict the future.

Technically speaking none of these giant corporations are "our friend". They are with the people until their bottom line is impacted / threatened. Frankly, I'm not surprised.

The power dynamic between China and Apple doesn't get enough attention. Apple needs China, but China doesn't need Apple.

There are few if any places capable of manufacturing the amount of products China does for Apple, especially at the price. China is also an enormous market to Apple.

I don't agree with the treatment of protestors or the use of technology to surveil its citizens, but the bottom line is that in China, China calls the shots. Apple can either get in line or manufacture its phones elsewhere.

Agreed.

And maybe they should not take the high moral ground on other issues, telling others how to think and behave, when they themselves are happy to accept filthy lucre in return for compromising their own ethics.

I personally cannot stand these sleazy companies, happy to "take a stand" when it costs them nothing (cheap public relations!!!) but it's a "complicated world" and these issues are not simple, when they themselves bear the cost.

Seriously, they can go F themselves.

In what way does this censor anyone? Censorship would be Apple disabling Airdrop altogether, not coming up with some compromise so that its users could still do their work.

Imagine you want to invite a lot of people you don't know, to a protest. This is generally really difficult to do in China without being spotted for re-education. In contrast, Airdrop was previously a good way to do this discreetly. Now it's useless. That is censorship.

Doesn’t seem useless, seems like a good way to make sure people aren’t broadcasting PII by default if they leave “everybody” on.

If it's an unalloyed good, why implement only in China right after protests arranged by airdrop?

Your phone is always brodcasting PII when the goverment has unfettered access to cell logs.

I guess this is the kind of blind obedience to an authoritarian regime that 275 billion dollars gets you

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/07/apple-chi...

But never mind, they have rainbow hashtags and censor pepe memes so they are the good guys...

I note the downvotes on this post.

Silicon valley people are not our friends.

It actually blows my mind how many Apple zombies exist out there. 99% of them would chastise Microsoft for doing similar things in the 90s/2000s with Windows.

Or perhaps your comment is not considered useful. Be open to the possibility that you can share interests with people that criticize you.

> I guess this is the kind of blind obedience to an authoritarian regime that 275 billion dollars gets you https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/07/apple-chi... But never mind, they have rainbow hashtags and censor pepe memes so they are the good guys...

Speaking for myself (no comment on if I downvoted or not), I tend to not value exaggerations such as "blind obedience". That is not what is happening here. We are seeing parts of a complex power dynamic between a superpower and supercorporation. Dumbing it down is insulting to this audience.

Can you provide examples where Apple has taken a stand (at their own personal cost) against China?

Doesn't seem to be such a "complex power dynamic" at all maybe?

Maybe some "dumbing down" might be useful to a crowd that is disconnected from reality and likes to hide behind language?

> Maybe some "dumbing down" might be useful to a crowd that is disconnected from reality and likes to hide behind language?

Please describe your data justifying the characterization about the crowd you are referring to. The HN crowd, you mean, right? Please use a statistical understanding and don't overgeneralize.

Does it justify "dumbing down" or exaggeration?

At this point, based on what you've written so far, it seems to me you have an overly pessimistic and stylized view of the audience here.

> Can you provide examples where Apple has taken a stand (at their own personal cost) against China? / Doesn't seem to be such a "complex power dynamic" at all maybe?

I don't need to provide examples in order for my point to stand: the power dynamics between China and Apple are not about blind obedience. What I mean by power dynamics is well understood. It applies to geopolitics, economics, as well as personal relationships. It means (approximately) that the parties are aware of their relative power and influence and act accordingly. This is clearly different than "blind obedience".

If you are looking for examples by the way, there's plenty of discussion of this around this general thread. I don't need to repeat it.

Additionally, and arguably more importantly, there is observational bias: outsiders are unlikely to be privy to all relevant negotiations between China and Apple. If we were, perhaps we could better understand the "push and pull" (a phrase referring to power dynamics) and therefore Apple's influence and corporate policies and "ethics" if you want to call it that.

In these comments, my goal is not to defend Apple, blindly or otherwise. Rather, I'm trying to show that there are nuanced and useful ways to discuss these topics. I get it -- it's common to be annoyed, disappointed, or even irate at how Apple behaves in comparison to its PR and branding. Hypocrisy is not something I overlook either.

(Aside: But I aim for a standard higher than "common" when I put comments onto HN. I get the impression many other people do too. Even more of this would help a lot.)

But are such emotions and vocalizations primarily the result of a quest for truth? Or do they mostly serve some other purpose?

I have a guess. Based on your comments, I think you are expressing dismay in a way that is too blunt to be useful to many people here.

Lastly, it is worth mentioning the Hacker News guidelines that discourage comments or complaints about down votes. I waded in and replied to your complaint because I hoped you were a bit curious and not completely dug-in to your position. I'm not sure at this point. It has been very challenging for me to try to give you feedback in a way that you will consider to be useful.

China does not need Apple, in fact there would be significant benefit to Apple exiting China. More power, more control for the CCP. China has the capacity to do very serious damage to Apple, potentially even put the company at risk if they acted quickly and with malice. This is a completely one-sided relationship. "the parties are aware of their relative power and influence and act accordingly..." Agreed. In China Apple does what the CCP wants. Not a "complex power dynamic" IMO.

I may be "expressing dismay in a way that is too blunt to be useful to many people here". In return I think you are expressing very little beyond obsfucation and misdirection which I don't find particularly useful either.

Lastly I'd like to offer you some unsolicited advice in return. Please try not to be so condescending when dealing with others if you want them to respond positively.

I'm sorry if I sounded condescending. What part(s) bothered you? How would you suggest I offer my particular feedback in a way that is not condescending?

I was offering some feedback in response to your complaint about downvotes. I didn't want to replicate the same debates had in other threads on this topic.

Generally, this kind of interaction -- relatively positive, to your credit -- is illustrative of why, I think. What I mean is this: I don't think either of us feel particularly satisfied with it, do we?

This seems like a lost opportunity. I feel like you and I could easily have a productive conversation with another medium, such as in person or perhaps some platform with a different interaction pattern.

How does this actually limit the dissemination of information? You have 10 minutes, and then can reinitiate? Seems like a reasonable security precaution.

I'm an educator and one thing that's actually been happening is some of our older kids will see school buses out on the road and will just try to airdrop obscene content to kids ON the bus. We had literally talked about hoping there could be some default "off" behavior for airdrop, so this actually will (at least for me) be a welcome change in behavior!

Yes, this has been a problem on public transportation for years.

That is a good reason to have airdrop default to off but not a good reason to remove always on, if you want it.

I am wondering if there is pattern recognition that the Chinese government can access where you can see people constantly toggling AirDrop and identify them for prosecution.

Regardless of where it's rolled out first, this is a good example of reducing the attack surface from remote exploits (which China is known to have and use at contests like Tianfu Cup). Seems in line with changes they made with "Lockdown Mode" that users can opt into.

I want to believe this is just badly timed. I don't know, I very often want to AirDrop with someone I don't know or have a contact for -- clients of clients, usually... And I've found I set it to 'Everyone' and forget. Which isn't ideal on the odd plane-trip with people trying to be funny...

There’s a big difference between adding a 10-min option and removing the permanent option though.

Plus, it’s notable that apple didn’t use the same 1 hour / end of day / forever system that they use for location sharing.

Even if they really did this motivated by avoiding spam, the fact that dissidents were (not just hypothetically) using it to organize is literally a reason to leave it.

But rolling it out to China first is pretty damn suspicious of what their "true" motives were too.

Apple's relationship with China is a colossal liability.

China's relationship with everyone else is a larger liability.

Your suggested alternatives Apple should consider?

Taiwan.

The apple apologists in this thread is weird.

Sure the timing of this tweet is weird, as people pointed out, that the change actually happened a few weeks ago (there were tweets about it then, but those are mainly in Chinese). But protesting via airdrop has been happening in China for months before this change.

Even if we give Apple the benefit of doubt, that they actually planned this change long time ago unrelated to any protests (spams maybe), and the plan is to roll it out to a market for testing before roll out to all markets, with the protests they _should_ change the market for the test. Not changing the plan (that's _assuming_ they really have good intention aka fight spams behind it) will make themselves look bad and they have no one else to blame.

This is in response to people spamming AirDrop, a common complaint. Don't jump to conclusions.

If that were true, Apple would just add limiting Airdrop to 10 minutes as an additional default option. Removing Always on airdrop was done because it's the only form of community communications that doesn't go through the Censors.

Apple changes features and removes configurations ("simplifies") all the time. They have a strong bias towards not adding options.

Good defaults and good options are not mutually exclusive.

You could just turn it off (as it is by default).

Just a coincidence that this gets rolled out 9 years after Airdrop debuted.

That's literally the definition of coincidence: unrelated things happening at the same time.

Interestingly, there are two different meanings: (1) accidentally happening at the same time; (2) co-occurrence (_without_ any implication about causality)

Now define irony!

I don’t know that one

How are they using it?

Airdrop is based on proximity as measured by NFC and/or Bluetooth (?), and you can't use it as an ad hoc network mesh to route messages across it.(?)

So Activist Organizer 1 can't coordinate with Activist Organizer 2 3 km away using Airdrop unless activists in the space between forwards / routes messages in the right physical direction.

If they are well organized from the beginning, then each person (node) can forward each message to 3 - 5 contacts but that requires them to maintain physical formation during the activities.

I am not an expert on AirDrop, I am just trying to figure out how it helps out.

core organizers typically work in small cells, when an event is decided, that infor needs to filter out first artists/promoters which make the materials then to general public. airdrop is used for the last step, helping an event go viral by spreading material horizontally at high traffic areas like transit hubs and malls with some palusible deniablity. after a recipient recieves that info, they can then airdrop it to their own circle/cell or via word of mouth like normal.

I remember in Hong Kong that protesters used a bluetooth app (Bridgefy and maybe others) to communicate.

IIRC, Firechat was The Thing for PRC and Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireChat

Sessions is better than Signal since it doesn't require a phone number. IYAM, it should add Android + iOS serverless&internetless BT support.

AirDrop was frequently used in Hong Kong, but by far the most popular app for protest stuff was Telegram. There was also a widely used protest website.

For what it's worth, Apple also took down a crowdsourced map from the app store that helped people avoid areas with tear gas and heavy police activity, on the grounds that it was somehow endangering the cops. Very shady stuff.

Well, after that image scanning story I've switched to Android with CalyxOS and later migrated to GrapheneOS. Also migrated most of my workflows from MacOS to NixOS. Can't be happier.

It's not painful at all to drop Apple phones. And the only thing which is constantly bugging me on NixOS desktop is totally inconsistent hotkeys system. So, it's not that hard drop Apple, just do it.

are people really surprised the world biggest corporation has to cave to the worlds second largest economy? What do people expect really? Do people even understand the kind of incentives at play here?

What does this have to do with the quality of their products?

Apple is an artificial entity, a corporation and it's only loyalty by design is with the wallets of it's shareholders.

What's surprising about this?

In actual practice corporations are only loyal to the board of directors and the officers. Shareholders are just the suckers used to jack up the share price.

You are right of course. But by definition of the law / "algorithm", it should be all shareholders

The difference is Apple insists on removing most of the user's control over their device, which makes it an ideal target for authoritarian regimes. Android gives you more control and more options.

Well for one thing, many people seem to believe Tim Cook and other individuals at Apple when they say things like "We believe privacy is a human right". It's worthwhile to point out some of the examples of their actions being contrary to their words.

Those people are naive and have never heard of PR and "spin"

Why 10 minutes? Why not "until tomorrow", which is how disconnecting from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth works from Control Center?

It says on the tweet: the aim of the update is to prevent people from sharing protest materials at protests. If you set it "until tomorrow", then they would still be able to share materials

Can someone make an automation that enables AirDrop for Everyone, waits 10 minutes, and then repeats?

I assume that this is the CCP asking apple to do this or get banned from China. What should apple do instead? I'm curious what people think, it's a tough spot to be in obviously.

If you buy Apple products and call for Apple to change their behavior, it will have much less of an effect on their decision making than if you stopped buying their products.

I'm not sure I'm following the options you are comparing.

(A) keep buying and criticize

(B) stop buying

Correct?

What am I missing here? (B) has a bigger impact and sends a bigger signal. Right? Talk is cheap. Leaving the Apple ecosystem is hard and demonstrates a very serious complaint.

A. Criticize but keep buying

B. Criticize and stop buying

Two notes: before scream against Apple remember a thing: a company MUST legally comply with States rules where it exists. Witch means: Apple, based in USA, must allow USA authority access anything on their servers AND Apple in China must respect local laws, EVENTUALLY doing various gimmick to respect both.

The lesson here is not finger point "someone evil" but finger point the use of proprietary software and services. Theater like "Apple do not decrypt phones for FBI" or "Apple censor Chinese Citizens" etc are theater. The reality is that IF you are a company you comply with local laws. If you just publish free software, NOT services, the end user must, formally, comply with local laws.

Sorry for my poor English, not my mother tongue, but I think the concept is pretty simple and anyone with a bit of IT knowledge must know that AND HAVE ALREADY accepted such reality.

For Democracy we can't allow proprietary software nor black boxes. No matter if domestically made or not. Is someone with an IT background do find this as extreme and even criticize Apple for it's choice must stop and think a bit: it's an hypocritical behavior even if genuine.

Bit of a sidenote but I heard that in China iOS has a setting to disallow an app from accessing the internet (either wifi, cellular or both). Why can't that feature make it to the the rest of the world?

Because only China has the means to effectively backdoor it.

When I signed up for this site 12 years ago I was a huge Apple fan and almost steered my web dev career into iOS dev. Really glad I didn't do that, but also wish I could change my HN username now!

Likewise. People should watch Apple's famous 1984 commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIE-5hg7FoA

Apple is not the same company it claimed to be back then. Dare I say Apple today is now the company they were against back then.

While there's no UI for this, you can email the HN admins for a username change.

Alright, who changed the title? It's now completely incorrect, because AirDrop is only limited to 10 minutes _in China_.

Is this possibly protective to the user?

It is plausible to track people using airdrop. This move does also protect protest attendees who can still turn airdrop on when they think they want to receive things.

But cause and effect and consequence is for other people to jabber about.

I’m not some massive hypocrite like others here. I have Apple products, I don’t need to love Apple. I think the alternative is worse, but that doesn’t mean I need to get into an off-topic rant about how Elon is being mean… because somehow that organically keeps coming up.

I would Apple to act in the best interest of their customers. This move is at least some percentage that.

I got AirDrop spammed at the airport just recently, after accidentally leaving it enabled for Everyone. I can only imagine what the video contained if I'd clicked on it...

AirDrop to everyone seems like a great idea until your teenager gets airdropped genital pics on an airplane [0].

0. https://jezebel.com/passengers-keep-airdropping-nudes-and-ai...

Someone did this to me, jokes on them, I know where they live now- airdrop does not strip exif location unless you tell it too :)

Should all iOS users enable Lockdown-mode in protest?

They should implement that in the U.S. too. Plenty of people are getting laughs sitting in public looking for phones to airdrop anything from dumb memes to straight up porn onto.

Sounds like a fine option, but it should not be the only option (as it is displayed in the tweets).

More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33768185

It's difficult to defend Apple in this scenario but Apple's relationship with China is just like every other company's (western or otherwise) - at the end of the day, China holds all the cards. If you don't bow to their authoritarian edict, you are kicked out of the country.

The energy and anger should (as per usual) be directed at China and the Chinese communist party to a much greater degree than Apple.

I'm assuming, of course, that Apple was forced to make this update. Hard for me to believe they proactively made this freedom-violating, protest-suppressing change.

> If you don't bow to their authoritarian edict, you are kicked out of the country.

Apple, of all companies, can probably afford to do that though.

But they keep on doing business there. That’s a bit depressing.

(Written on my iPhone)

The reason is the same one that most electronics companies (and certainly most cell phone brands) do business in China:

It's cheap.

Cheap labor, few/no penalties for pollution, abundant cheap electricity, inexpensive labor safety, etc.

It's the dream of outsourcing realized.

I don’t know how current it is, but Bunnie Huang wrote a series of posts in the 2000s about what it was like building things in China. It was more than just being cheap, and non-trivial to replicate elsewhere (one memorable quote: “I hadn’t seen blind dedication like this since I worked with the autonomous underwater robotics team at MIT”).

Here’s the first one:

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=183

This is a breathtakingly naive take. Like yes sure, get mad at the CCP but Apple have a long history of shit like this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

We need sanctions. You can't expect corporations to wage international campaigns for human rights, nor do we want that corporations to exercise such power.

We need govt action.

There has been a major ten year push inside of government to try and get companies (especially those in tech) to start decoupling from China on national security grounds as a way to get a similar outcome and not leave the US companies massively exposed to sudden action like sanctions.

Those calls have mostly gone unanswered and Apple in particular has repeatedly gone out of its way to double down on its China relationship over that same time period.

Think Differently...and we will erase you.

As they erased themselves, all their tweets deleted since somewhere in October :)

Oh, the good ole days, when Apple was bad because they allowed people to Airdrop crash pictures to random people, like pilots and fellow passengers

When will the world Apple's duplicity? They are NOT private, secure or consumer friendly.

kow-tow to xi jing ping

it's been like this for weeks, this is not news

And yet, all the media will be posting every day about Elon Musk decisions and how evil they are :)

I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics.

I’ve lost count of how many scandals have come out of their relationship with China from the suicide nets to the repeated investigations showing their supply chain was riddled with slave labor that they would later campaign against protections that would prevent it. Now this. They are fucked as a company, I can’t get out of their ecosystem fast enough.

I mean, to be real here, it's continuing the principles of being run for a very long time by a world class, top tier, grade A asshole. Steve Jobs was well known for screaming at people and throwing fits of rage and such. Petulantly demanding that he get his way as the only possible method something could be done.

Does anyone seriously think that Jobs cared even the slightest about the Foxconn/Hon Hai Precision Industry factory workers? Or anything else other than the bottom line?

Hundreds of such anecodotes from hundreds of people. What do you expect from the corporate culture established by such a person?

No fan of Jobs here, but there's no logical connection between him being an asshole and Apple's decision to change AirDrop behavior more than a decade after his death.

I would posit that a hyper-aggressive corporate culture established by such a person, and continued in a not-very-modified form up until the present day, is more likely to make "accommodations" to things like the CCP and government of China for their local Apple cloud services subsidiary, provide crypto keys/copies of data on request, etc.

Because obviously it serves the global revenue and china-source-revenue figure to sell more Apple devices in China no matter the human rights and privacy consequences.

The problem is that the alternative (Google) is worse.

Pretty sure Google has been mostly out of China since Operation Aurora.

They're still trying to get back in. See project Dragonfly for example.

Dragonfly was discontinued in 2018, MAYBE mid 2019. That is 3-4 years ago.

And? They were booted out of China over 12 years ago. 3 years ago isn't that long, in that timeline. Given their known attempts to get back in, it's likely there are other such secret initiatives we don't know about.

China represents a huge potential market for Google that their investors won't let leadership forget about.

3 years ago some team was probing reopening search in China and when more employees found out about it they leaked and protested the project, shutting it down. Hardly seems like a point against Google.

> China represents a huge potential market for Google that their investors won't let leadership forget about.

China represents a huge potential market that Google investors have already given up on because no one is expecting that market to reopen to Google any time soon

Strawman.

A large chunk of Apple's revenue comes from China. The majority of assembly occurs in China.

Google does a rounding error of business in China - assembly for Nest devices.

All I've been able to find on "Google moves pixel manufacturing out of China" is rumors. Rumors they were moving some of them to Vietnam. Rumors that they were moving some to India. But no official notification that they've been moved. No notes on their storefront on where the pixel phones are being manufactured.

The most convincing article I found was an un-sourced piece from "hothardware" (and nothing shouts legitimacy in a source than a name like that) which says that only the budget pixel phones were actually moved to Vietnam, the high end versions are still in China.

As such, I have to assume that their production is still largely occurring in China.

I wouldn't mind being proven wrong though.

As a side note about the strawman accusation; pointing out Google's attempts to re-enter the lucrative Chinese market when the parent is using their absence to justify the position of "Google's Better" is absolutely relevant.

The fact is that Google left China 12 years ago and never returned. They gave up on the search ad revenue in the world's second largest economy. They gave up on the app store revenue in the world's largest smartphone market. That's a hell of a thing for a big company to do as a matter of principle. Some exec tried to run a project to re-enter China with search, and the project was axed the moment it became widely known in the company.

All through that time Tim Cook hasn't just been betting on China for manufacturing, but are addicted to the Chinese revenue. Apple is being held over the barrel by the CCP, both sides know it, and Apple are not doing anything to wean themselves off. As a result, Apple gives user data to Chinese authorities on requests thousands of times per year, and accept the vast majority of data requests [0]. In comparison, Google has given data on 2 accounts in the last decade. [1]

Isn't it pretty obvious that we'd like more companies to behave like Google in this situation, and no companies to act like Apple? Why are you trying to tear down the company that's done the right thing in this situation?

[0] https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/cn.html

[1] https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?hl=...

> Why are you trying to tear down the company that's done the right thing in this situation?

Yes, Google got out (arguably, they got kicked out) of China. But their stealth attempts to get back into that market matter just as much. Because they display the current direction Google's leadership wants to take the company.

They want to take it back to China. And that matters.

Opinion time:

Wanting to get back into China is worse than having an existing relationship. Because they know the shit it will cause, the censorship they will have to implement, the human rights they'll have impinge upon, and they're ready to dive right fucking into that with their eyes wide open - ready to accept it all as the cost of tapping China's phat assets.

They can't even use the (weak assed) "we're a frog that's been slowly boiled" or the "what's capitulation to one more command" arguments.

Yeah the company that has been out of China for over a decade (someone tried to renter years ago but idea was killed by higherups) is worse than the company that paid the Chinese government $300B to build out their manufacturing for the pleasure of selling phones there.

> Google does a rounding error of business in China - assembly for Nest devices.

The Pixel 6 is exclusively manufactured by Foxconn in China. They are looking to move it to India, but as of right now, it's still in China.

https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/after-iphones-...

It’s not even a little bit close. Go on… tell me about how Google spent millions lobbying against human rights or worked with authoritarian regimes or had workers killing themselves in such high numbers that they had to reconfigure their workplaces.

Google did what Apple should have ten years ago and pulled out of China when faced with similar problems.

Google builds phones at Foxconn too.

Google has also worked on many projects in order to appeal to China's government as well.

Google doesn’t position themselves as some savior of mankind and human rights. They don’t market grandiose claims about privacy and ethics like Apple does. I’m a bit more okay with Google because at least they aren’t lying through their teeth and hoping their customers are dumb enough to believe them.

> Before Google China's establishment, Google.com itself was accessible, even though much of its content was not accessible because of censorship.

> Because of its self-imposed censorship, whenever people searched for prohibited Chinese keywords on a blocked list maintained by the PRC government, google.cn displayed at the bottom of the page (translated): In accordance with local laws, regulations and policies, part of the search result is not shown. Some searches, such as (as of June 2009) "Tank Man" were blocked entirely, with only the message, "Search results may not comply with the relevant laws, regulations and policy, and cannot be displayed" appearing.

> Do no evil. (still a part of their public motto)

> In their first letter to shareholders, our founders highlighted Google’s goal to “develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible.” This vision continues to guide all of us at Google. We believe in technology’s power and potential to have a profoundly positive impact across the world.

Google has capitulated to the Chinese government, taken "moral high ground" via their doodles (but only when it won't offend the censors), and absolutely sees itself as a savior of mankind.

What are you quoting? Google stopped doing that more than a decade ago, and "Do no evil" was never part of its motto.

Google stopped their service in China. This is what most western companies can't do.

What do you think that Apple says that is BS that Google doesn't also say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AmADoGiWZo

> Google doesn’t position themselves as some savior of mankind and human rights.

Prior to 2018, Google's code of conduct was summarized with the phrase "don't be evil."

(edit) They appear to have taken some flack on that and you can find it in their investor code of conduct again: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/

This isn’t an illuminating way to discuss the topic. Take a break and come back ready to engage and educate, or please rage elsewhere?

Who died to make you king?

Absolutely no one. Just a suggestion really, I have zero authority here. Tried to indicate that with the question mark since emojis are stripped.

Is it? With the Android Open Source Project you can create your own completely Google-free Android distribution that you can install on quite a lot of devices.

Not that I like Google, I actually actively dislike it and hate all the anti-competitive things they did (with Android, too), but let's stay with the facts here.

> Project you can create your own completely Google-free Android distribution that you can install on quite a lot of devices

This is like saying you can eat for free for the rest of your life by just starting a farm. Sure, it's possible but it's out of the reach of most the population.

You can download one right now, for free at lineageos.org. So I don't get your point

The problem is you're still using Android. You can paint it up however you like, it's still Android, and for many iOS users thats still an instant nope.

Even with an AOSP rom, can't the same thing happen here? "Nearby Share" seem to require Google Play store functionality: https://support.google.com/files/answer/10514188?hl=en#zippy...

I suppose the alternative AOSP rom wouldn't even have "Nearby Share" as a feature? I suppose in that case you could use some other protocol/service that wasn't bound to Google (maybe Briar?).

Is this true even if say you use GrapheneOS?

GrapheneOS and its GApps sandbox are awesome, highly recommend.

At this point everything just works there, including network location provider, with only one exception - google pay won't allow you to add a card for contactless payments in most of the cases. But GrapheneOS is not at fault here.

I'm genuinely curious, how so?

Aside from avoiding China, Google gives users control of their phones. That makes Google leagues better. Not that Google is good — Apple just sets a particularly low bar.

In general the problem is that there are very few players in even the same general space as Apple, and practically none of them seem to really be chasing the same market as Apple, so for many Apple users there's basically no suitable substitute. It lets them have entire dud releases (several models in a row of macbooks, for instance) but if you start looking around for alternatives it quickly becomes clear you'll gain two or three problems for every one you avoid, even when Apple releases an unusually-bad version of one of their products.

It's like that with everything. "Apple spies on you more than you might think"—OK, that's bad and I'd rather they didn't, but who's better? Hell, who's not worse? And god no, not Linux, I did that for over a decade and I mean a product that you can pay for to solve problems for you, like computers and tools generally are supposed to do, not one you can spend a bunch of time manually tuning and working around various limitations and problems and still not have something as useful as Apple's stuff in actual day-to-day real-world life. I want to solve problems, I don't want another hobby of maintaining my problem-solving machine, that crap's why people hate computers so much.

No surprise it's like this, really—there are two smartphone operating systems and three viable desktop operating systems (I'm being generous and counting ChromeOS) controlled by three total vendors. Of course the market's totally fucked up.

> I can’t get out of their ecosystem fast enough.

I don't know if you mean this literally but to me it was very simple. Just stopped buying their products. I am still alive, productive and with a clearer consciousness.

Is there anyone who isn't dependent on Chinese labor or the Chinese market? How are the Android vendors in this respect?

From what I can see the entire world is completely addicted to China as a cheap source of medium to high skill labor and as a place where manufacturing can be done with little environmental regulation.

> From what I can see the entire world is completely addicted to China as a cheap source of medium to high skill labor and as a place where manufacturing can be done with little environmental regulation.

Your view matches what I can see from here too. And there's so many things you simply can't buy if you want manufacturing done in an ethical manner, no matter the price you're willing to pay.

Samsung Galaxy S23 -- Vietnam, South Korea

Possibly some Google Pixel 7 -- Vietnam

ASUS -- Taiwan

Sony -- Japan

(Sometimes it's only specific models.)

https://notochina.org/best-cell-phones-not-made-in-china/

https://chinanever.com/categories/phones-not-made-in-china

Pixel 7 is made in China according to this tweet: https://twitter.com/vvaiibhav/status/1580454957580681216

I mean you don't really believe that OP is actually on the apple ecosystem do you? And that this one thing is the straw that broke the camels back?

On one hand, yes, it's not ideal. On the other hand it's still probably a better alternative to a Chinese phone that spies on you. What is the alternative? If they take a stance, they will be banned from China completely.

You need to pick your battles instead of being idealist. Look at Russia. There was an opposition back in the day, but they couldn't agree between each other because of smaller differences. And now we have a complete dictatorship.

Getting banned from China shouldn't be looked at as something a business can't consider. If so, it gives tremendous leverage to China to control western corporations.

What we need is govt sanctions against china before this goes any further. Take china off the table so companies don't have to make these hard choices that impact their competitiveness.

> Getting banned from China shouldn't be looked at as something a business can't consider.

It shouldn't but the fact is that if China decided right now that they were done with Apple the company immediatly loses all ability to make every single one of its products.

Even the ones that arent given final assembly in China still rely on chinese produced components.

It would obviously be a very foolish move for the CCP as it would be an instant red flag to the worlds tech companies who would all start the ball rolling on moving out. Meanwhile Apple would be all but dead in the water for a good few years, with no ability to manufacture anything at all for a fairly signficant amount of time.

Well yes, that's the privilege of being a world power and all. If "the west" could just sanction China leaders would have done so already but "we really do need them as a trading partner" makes it infeasible.

There are many steps in between. Warning about TikTok. Discouraging Chinese drone purchases. Changing priorities around chip sourcing. And so on.

”If they take a stance, they will be banned from China completely.”

Unlikely as that kind of a move would have a huge global impact. That might lead to all Chinese companies (Bytedance, Xiaomi etc.) being banned in the west/US etc.

There would be consequences though.

China has already banned Google which is of a similar scale and impact.

Apple loves to keep up appearances, but they are behind some of the worst behaviors in our industry.

Apple has already soured competition in computing by making the App Store the only way to reach 51+% of Americans with your software. They heavily tax it, artificially limit your ability to update and deploy, force you to devote resources to regularly adhere to Apple standards, let people place ads under your name, kill your customer relationships, force deep Apple product integrations, etc.

"CSAM device scanning" is a Trojan horse that will absolutely be abused in situations like we're seeing in China now.

Apple sells itself on privacy, yet collects more info on you than Facebook to feed their growing ads business. It's hypocrisy.

Other major tech companies looked at China and said no. Why can't Apple?

> If they take a stance, they will be banned from China completely.

Google did, and they were. Is it too much to ask that Apple be as courageous and idealistic as Google on privacy?

I think that can true to a point and is probably true of governments. The United States Government may need to hold its nose and work with Saudi Arabia in some cases despite their problems because of other geopolitical tradeoffs, but I'd argue that is not necessary for companies. In the case of companies, it's mostly about rationalizing something they want to do anyway (in this case operate in the Chinese market).

In the case of western companies operating in China it's even worse because this becomes a soft power the CCP can influence on the west creating a form of self-censorship or even capture (see Ray Dalio).

A lot of companies have told themselves that their presence will be a positive influence on problematic policy of a country they want to enter, but what ends up happening is that the policy is a corrupting influence on the principles of the company.

https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/13/zoom-in-china.html

They should have pulled their manufacturing out of China years ago, and forgone the market. It's pretty clear that the compromises Apple makes are worse overall than any supposed benefit of taking market share from Chinese phone manufacturers.

Their ethics are terrible. You pay $1000 for a computer, and you are only allowed to install software on it that Apple says you are allowed to. You can only pay for software on their own store. Complete bullshit, and it makes me sad that so many here on HN and elsehwere, tech people who learned to program because their 8088 was completely open and free to let you actually create things and learn about computing, so many of you will defend this terrible situation.

> You pay $1000 for a computer, and you are only allowed to install software on it that Apple says you are allowed to.

For i-devices, yeah, true.

> You can only pay for software on their own store.

As nice as exposing the App store to more market effects might be, the app store monopoly enables them to force other companies to be less shitty on the platform (or else abandon it—but it's lucrative, so most don't), so it's a feature to me. I'd rather some of the behaviors they ban were simply illegal everywhere, but until then I like having the option to live the libertarian dream of paying for a private regulatory agency (Apple, that is). Beats having no option of that sort.

That also enables unreasonable monopolistic behavior, like not allowing ANY browser besides Safari. Why not allow alternative browser engines that follow strict privacy practices? What about native ad blockers? Why not encourage privacy-friendly apps that don't collect data by lowering/waiving their fees?

Because everyone will use Chrome and websites will not support Safari. It happened with IE.

"like not allowing ANY browser besides Safari" are you saying this is potentially an issue? Because I have Chrome and Firefox installed on my iPhone and MacBook Air. I also have DuckDuckGo's browser on my iPhone.

Any browser on iPhone is just a skin for Mobile Safari. In particular, you can't install uBlock Origin/similar there. Every time I browse web on an iDevice I feel like I'm losing 20 IQ points.

Apple doesn't allow any other browser engines on iOS except Webkit.

Despite the branding, "Chrome for iOS" and "Firefox for iOS" are fundamentally different products than their Android or desktop counterparts. They're both just wrappers around the same bundled version of Webkit that Safari uses.

What the parent means to say, is not allowing any browser engine other than WebKit. Chrome, Firefox, Brave, etc, are just wrapping WebKit.

The big issue, as I understand it, is JIT. You can run any browser engine you like on iOS, but only WebKit (its JavaScriptCore component) is allowed to JIT JavaScript. Without JIT, the JavaScript performance will be bad; and considering the contemporary JavaScript-heavy nature of the web, that makes any alternative browser engine a non-starter.

(I wonder how it is implemented. I'm guessing that WebKit runs out-of-process, and that process has the JIT entitlement, whereas the host app process doesn't.)

> The big issue, as I understand it, is JIT. You can run any browser engine you like on iOS, but only WebKit (its JavaScriptCore component) is allowed to JIT JavaScript. Without JIT, the JavaScript performance will be bad; and considering the contemporary JavaScript-heavy nature of the web, that makes any alternative browser engine a non-starter.

IDK how it is now, but Apple used not to allow e.g. alternative Javascript engines in apps—you had to use Webkit's.

Having developed an app-building engine for Android in the days when some vendors shipped different engines to supply webview functionality (is that a thing? I actually don't know if they ever stopped) I can say I'm extremely in favor of this part of their policy. God that was a pain in the ass.

> IDK how it is now, but Apple used not to allow e.g. alternative Javascript engines in apps—you had to use Webkit's.

App Store guidelines say you have to use WebKit JavaScript for web browsing. I believe you are allowed to use third-party JavaScript for non-web-related purposes. That’s a rather small use case though.

Also, we have to distinguish between App Store policy and technical constraints. If you are just running your own software (e.g. developer, adhoc distribution, enterprise distribution), you don’t need to care about the former only the later-lack of entitlements to JIT is still an issue for the later.

> Why not allow alternative browser engines that follow strict privacy practices?

It isn't just a privacy argument. Browsers need security exceptions for full performance, such as compilation of Javascript/WebAssembly. The browsers may also not have enough process infrastructure to support their native sandboxing strategy on iOS.

Someone can make arguments on whether Blink's rendering engine would have business motivation for an iOS port. However, the sandboxing and javascript differences were large motivating technical factors in Blink forking from WebKit in the first place.

> Why not allow alternative browser engines that follow strict privacy practices?

A few reasons for me, personally:

1) I like the consistency of all web pages being rendered by the same engine and having access to similar capabilities, no matter if it's a web-view inside an app, or in a browser.

2) Safari's a pretty great default for mobile devices, so I don't feel like I'm losing out by being "stuck" with it.

3) From a big-picture perspective, Apple forcing Safari on iOS is the only reason the entire Web client space isn't completely dominated by Google and subject to that—omitting some words I might choose to describe them, for civility's sake—company's every whim (instead it's only mostly dominated by Google)

4) Conveniently for me, I also happen to have no interest in having other browser engines on my phone or tablets, since this one's pretty good, and in some ways best-available, anyway. I have zero clue why I'd want another browser engine on my i-devices, and I've been doing this whole Web thing a while, long enough that I happily adopted and evangelized Firefox back when it was still called Phoenix—normal users have even less reason than I might. As in, I can't think of a single reason being able to install other browser engines would make my time using the devices better. Better battery life? LOL no, it'd be worse. Features I want? Nope, but several I actively do not want developers to even have as an option. I'd rather keep those capabilities away so developers can't start depending on them, so start forcing me to choose between using sites I want to use and avoiding things I don't think browsers should be able to do in the first place (I'm sad Safari's given up as much ground on this as they have, frankly, but again, it's only because of their i-device browser engine monopoly that they have any leverage at all here).

5) Meanwhile, this doesn't get in the way of my using the actually-important features of other browsers, they'll just have Safari's engine under the hood. Not a big deal, or even a small one (to me).

> 1) I like the consistency of all web pages being rendered by the same engine and having access to similar capabilities, no matter if it's a web-view inside an app, or in a browser.

Then use Safari and don't install another browser. Why should other people be prevented from installing other browsers based on your preferences?

> 2) Safari's a pretty great default for mobile devices, so I don't feel like I'm losing out by being "stuck" with it.

Then use Safari and don't install another browser. Why should other people be prevented from installing other browsers based on your preferences?

> 4) Conveniently for me, I also happen to have no interest in having other browser engines on my phone or tablets, since this one's pretty good, and in some ways best-available, anyway.

Then use Safari and don't install another browser. Why should other people be prevented from installing other browsers based on your preferences?

> Then use Safari and don't install another browser. Why should other people be prevented from installing other browsers based on your preferences?

Already answered in my post. A cookie for you if you can quote the relevant sentences.

> Then use Safari and don't install another browser. Why should other people be prevented from installing other browsers based on your preferences?

Ditto.

> Then use Safari and don't install another browser. Why should other people be prevented from installing other browsers based on your preferences?

Ditto.

I'm pretty torn on all this. Obviously the 30% is exorbitant. But the positive effects from it are very hard to see once you are used to everything working.

Yeah, the 30% sucks and is one of many things I wish Apple'd do differently. But... where else am I gonna go?

Ultimately, I really wish they had significant, competent competitors for the specific sort of thing they do. I like Apple because government has entirely failed to regulate absolutely horrible behavior by software vendors, so at least I can pay Apple to enforce some basic and largely no-brainer regulations instead, but I hate that the OS/platform market is so screwed-up that there's effectively no alternative that offers anything like what Apple does, and not just when it comes to defending against all-too-common bad actors.

Most developers aren't paying 30%.

From a bit ago: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s...

> The new App Store Small Business Program will benefit the vast majority of developers who sell digital goods and services on the store, providing them with a reduced commission on paid apps and in-app purchases. Developers can qualify for the program and a reduced, 15 percent commission if they earned up to $1 million in proceeds during the previous calendar year.

---

If you are making more than $1M, then its 30%. If you are making less than $1M, its 15%.

For subscriptions...

https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/06/08/apple-announces-i...

> Although the company's current 30 percent revenue cut will remain in most cases, once a customer maintains a subscription for over a year, that cut fall to 15 percent, giving developers a larger share of revenue for long-term subscribers, Schiller told The Verge. Subscriptions are also opening up to all kinds of apps, including games, instead of just categories like music services and magazines.

Fair - although all of my app store purchases are with large companies so im essentially still paying 40% more than what the company is receiving directly. I'm not a developer, just a consumer.

It is also my understanding the cut they insist on taking on e-books and audio and movies etc. makes it impossible to sell those at all in the app. I guess that strictly makes the in-app experiences on the iPhone more secure, though still pushes it out.

The "in the app" part is key when referring to movies and books and the like - and its for credits in the app.

With Audible, I have a subscription and get credits and can use those credits in the app... but I can't use real money to buy a book in the Audible app. Similar with Kindle.

The tangent to that is that Apple is managing it. When my nephew, as a very young child, bought in app purchases that was able to be refunded through a single point of contact - Apple and they did it (I normally am the only user of my iPhone and thus have rather permissive permissions on device).

I am not sure that Outfit7 (makers of Talking Tom) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outfit7 note the "Acquisition and leadership change" section and consider the difficulties involved with international charge backs) would have been amenable to refunding the purchases if they were the payment processor instead.

As it was, it was a notification of credit card activity on another iPhone, looking over at it, and then going through https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084

So for me, the question is "is being able to manage my subscriptions through Apple worth it?" And for me, the answer is "yes." My subscriptions to various news sites are managed through Apple so that I can cancel them easily (compare the infernal nightmare of canceling WSJ subscription otherwise - https://darkpatternstipline.org/sightings/difficulty-in-wsj-... ).

For the sites with a subscription, they likely wouldn't have gotten it if I had to purchase it through them instead at all. 70% (now 85%) is much better than 0%. Similarly, the ease and security knowing the Apple is the only one touching my credit card when doing an in app purchase.

The PC is sadly moving in the same direction.

Can you expand on what you mean by this? Outside of video games I feel that any operating system can do 99% of tasks I need it to.

secure boot with keys outside your control, mandatory TPM chips, remote attestation, etc

True, but it seems it is still another example of cat and mouse game ( for example, unRaid seems to be able to run Win11 with TPM ). I am not suggesting that the issue you raise is unfounded, but at least for now as many people are working to make it a reality as ones, who do not.

[1]https://forums.unraid.net/topic/113817-virtualizing-windows-...

edit: adding missing not

Secure boot can largely be turned off at least for now, and TPM is mostly a passive thing, but the seriously real threat to freedom is remote attestation --- unlike the others, it's something that you can't get around by "simply" building your own platform, by design. External entities will have the power to compel "your" computer to do what they want, or else you will be denied access to many services. Unless we act quickly to fight against it, this will be the beginning of an authoritarian dystopia unlike anything we've seen in the past.

You can already see attempts at dissolving the rebellion against RA by Big Tech and the propaganda they disseminate. They don't want people to know this until it's too late. This warning should be taken in the same way as Stallman's "Right to Read".

> tech people who learned to program because their 8088 was completely open and free to let you actually create things and learn about computing, so many of you will defend this terrible situation.

There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

I have a Mac, and I also have Linux machines. Nothing is stopping people learning about computers.

Why would anyone spend $1000 on a computer from Apple if it’s not what they want?

>>There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

I just don't understand this argument. Never did and I don't think I ever will. If apple allowed you to install custom apps, it would change NOTHING for your 80+ year old mother. Literally nothing. Her device would still be just as safe and secure as ever before.

Clearly not true. A lot of spyware and malware masquerades as legitimate software.

And literally none of it would be allowed on the app store, just like it isn't now. Again, it would change absolutely nothing. Scammers would sooner convince his 80+ year old mother to tell them her bank details than they would walk her through the process of installing a dodgy app through sideloading.

Apple lets you install custom apps on Macs, it’s just iOS devices where it’s a pain.

On iOS devices, you have to use a developer account to sideload the app and it only works for a short time, IIRC. I’m fuzzy on the details because the places where I’ve worked, it mostly just worked although the experience was way, way better on Android. At one point I was on a team that ran a system for deploying apps for sideloading, and for years I’ve been carrying both an Android and iOS phone, so I feel like I have a handle on these differences, but I also am missing out on some of the problems that our team already solved.

On macOS, you can download an app and run it. Depending on the provenance of the app and the security settings, you may get a message like “this app is from an unknown developer” with no apparent way forward. The solution is to right-click the app and select open from the context menu. When you open an app by right clicking on it, the OS gives you an option to open the app. This depends on security settings, but I think this is allowed by default.

There’s a lot of malware out there these days and I think it is good and correct that it should not be obvious how to run arbitrary software you downloaded. We know people will just click through dialog boxes to try and get where they’re going, which is way (for example) there’s no button to visit an HTTPS site with a broken certificate in most browsers these days. Some things should not come with instructions, because the risks are too great for unskilled users.

I believe the right click method for opening an unsigned app no longer works as of MacOS Ventura. It appears to work on your own computer but once someone downloads it and tries to run on a new computer, you can’t get around it through regular UI, I think.

It does still work, but you need to change the gatekeeper settings to allow it.

> If apple allowed you to install custom apps, it would change NOTHING for your 80+ year old mother. Literally nothing. Her device would still be just as safe and secure as ever before.

Not it would not still be as safe.

Malware and scams would come with instructions to install their custom bad app.

“Install this custom Deals app to save money”

Exactly this. People forget that most of hacking is social engineering.

All I can figure is these notions that it'd be fine and exactly the same come from the generation after all of us who experienced the horror of removing 20 "search bars" from every single one of our relatives' computers... and repeating every few months. And that's when they didn't manage to get outright viruses on the regular, which many of them did. They simply haven't seen how awful Internet-connected computing was for most people, at exactly the time when most people finally started to use computers at home (in the US anyway), which was right around the year 2000.

Or maybe we have 80+ year old relatives using Android and not having these problems.

>>Malware and scams would come with instructions to install their custom bad app.

I would love a single example of that happening(on android)

At the same time, almost everyone in my family over the age of 60 who uses a non-Apple device has their devices completely sodden with crapware (and probably worse), to the point where they periodically have to taken them in to some sort of computer "repair" person to have them serviced (i.e., the garbage removed).

Some people apparently need help making judgment calls about what is and is not safe to install on their devices. I feel like Mac OS might strike the right balance here: you can install anything you want, but the OS throws up speedbumps if the app doesn't have the right signature, is not from the App Store, etc. These protections can be easily circumvented, but they send a signal that you should think twice about doing so if you don't really know what you're doing.

I agree with you - MacOS is the correct model to follow.

>There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

in contrast to what other phone? Was your 80+ year old mother sideloading bootleg apks on her android after turning on developer mode? This is the reverse version of "but think of the children" except it doesn't even make any sense. In every one of these threads there's a mysterious influx of senile parents who apparently can be trusted with the call function of the phone and fend off every fake grandson phishing attempt but not the option to install software

This isn’t in contrast to Android. That’s just a matter of usability.

It’s in contrast to the openness of the platform people seem to be demanding from Apple. Current Android is obviously not open enough for them, so it’s not a valid as a point of comparison.

> Why would anyone spend $1000 on a computer from Apple if it’s not what they want?

Because marketing.

Then again, maybe the truth is that what people really want isn't the best tool for the job but the best-marketed tool for the job, and they spend their money accordingly.

Apple explicitly advertise that their computers are locked down. It’s part of their marketing. If people didn’t want it, this wouldn’t work.

Except that Apple's computers aren't locked down. That canard really needs to die. iPhones and iPads are locked down. Macs aren't. I can run whatever the I want on my Mac, and I do.

I have never seen this 'locked down' advertising, care to share an example?

> Nothing is stopping people learning about computers.

Hell, it's easier and cheaper than ever. You can run Linux in your browser on an iPad, just by visiting a URL. Or shell into various free-tier VMs, for... free. Maybe a one-time cost for an SSH/Mosh client if you're on iOS I suppose. Swift Playgrounds and a hundred other learn-to-code apps and sites exist. And that's if you're "stuck" with a locked-down device running iOS—you can pick up cheap but pretty damn powerful second-hand x86 computers with money earned from a shift or two at McDonalds and do whatever you want with them. Practically all libraries have lots of computers now (and see again that you can run Linux in a browser, or remote into VMs from the browser, if you're concerned about how locked-down a library computer might be). I routinely end up with free or nearly-free surprisingly good computers (even Apple ones!) without even trying.

Resources, including entire books, available for free and on demand—and almost any information relating to computers is free if you're willing to sail the high seas and hoist the Jolly Roger, which is exactly what learners did back in the "good old days", too (but we pirated software, not books, mainly because the books were rarely available in digital form and we had worse ways to read them than we do now, even if they had been available).

But hey - I'm free to send multicast packets from that iphone on a network I own, right? Because part of the learning is the doing things with the skills you learn later.

I'm free to install software I write on that iphone, right?

I'm free to sell the software I write using those skills to those other people, without risk of Apple arbitrarily shutting me out, right?

Or much more malicious, moving me down below their own shitty version, right?

All of those things - the things someone who goes to the trouble to learn about computers might want to do - I'm free to do those?

My point is that broadly speaking, learning computing is something like 100x more accessible than it was in the "good old days", and that mostly holds even on an i-device.

I couldn't (practically) develop for my NES, either. But it'd have been rad if I could at least write software on it that'd run somewhere else. Or in a sandboxed environment on the NES, also allowing me to share it, even if the capabilities were a slightly nerfed. Way the hell better than nothing. ("Well yeah but you could have bought a Commodore 64"—OK, cool, sooo.... why are we worried about iOS devices when the same 'so get a different device' counter applies there, and also you actually can learn a great deal of computing on them?)

Meanwhile ordinary computers are practically free. Like you can probably go beg around and make a couple Reddit or Craigslist or Facebook posts (use the library computer I guess if somehow you live in the developed world and don't own or have access to any other Web-capable device?) and land one (maybe not a great one, but hundreds of times more powerful than what many of us learned on) for $0 in a matter of weeks, at most. Or scrape together $100 or so and go to Goodwill. Not $0, but it's very cheap. Your library probably even has free computer classes. So might your community college. Learning how to "really" use and program a computer is vastly more accessible now than it's ever been, and i-devices aren't harming that a bit.

They might not be harming the learning (I'd argue they are) - But they are unquestionably harming the practice.

You keep harping back to some bullshit hand-me-down machines, as though that's what my customers will want to carry in their pocket. As though that's the ideal machine to implement software on - and I'd argue you're just soundly avoiding the real discussion by mentioning them (perhaps intentionally, given your fascination).

Trust me, I fucking have those machines, they're great for some things (they run my home network, they run my home cluster) - but they're not the things that people walk around with. They're not the computer in everyone's pocket. They're not the laptop my potential user-base is working on at work.

Doesn't it strike you as somewhat sad and pathetic that you're arguing that folks who want to do general purpose computing should be relegated to cast off devices, or be subject to the whims and mercy of the richest company in the world? Begging for the scraps after Apple shoves their own products right to the top, cuts off and strangles any real competition, charges racket money to allow users to even install your damn software, prevents you from using the devices they claim you own?

Pathetic. Locked down proprietary systems that trap folks in what they believe is a benevolent dictatorship. At some point you'll look around and realize you're being robbed blind. You claim to value learning computer skills, without realizing the learning has NO value without the ability to use those skills. And if you can only use those skills when Apple lets you... who's really in control?

> There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

This - this line is the part of your argument I find fairly bullshit.

There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it. Hell - They can even bury it in the settings, or lock it down through a provisioned profile so you can help your mom by turning it off if you're worried.

Instead - you're arguing that apple should abuse their position to keep other competition locked out. Because you think it makes you "safer". I don't think it makes you safer. I think it makes life easy for you, at the expense of everyone in the long term.

You have fallen - hook, line, and sinker - for the marketing of the richest company in the world, telling you "trust us - we'll keep you safe". You should ask more questions about why they need to do it this way. Why keeping you safe involves abusing their power.

That's the same safety China promises with their great firewall. Trust us - we'll keep you safe, happy, and ignorant.

Maybe that's a good deal to you - I think it's a shitty trade.

> There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it.

They do, at the app level. As a developer you can install whatever app you want on your own devices, even apps which would never be allowed in AppStore or TestFlight (although still not with all the entitlements Apple’s own apps can get.)

OS level, your point stands.

Even then - apps which might want to do things like send multicast packets (very useful in lots of home automations situations) can't do it, using the developer program, without going through approval on the store.

You utterly do not own those devices. Apple sells a house where they kept the keys to all the locks, but people think it's ok "because they'll keep me safe and unlock my doors when I need them to!".

Nevermind the risk is mostly a marketing boogeyman in the first place.

You can do this only if you pay Apple $99 / year and deanonymize yourself with billing details. If not, you have to reinstall weekly, losing your local data.

> There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it

You... don't think you can install your own software on MacOS?

His 80 year old mother isn't using MacOS. She's on an ipad or an iphone - where I do genuinely think I can't install my own software.

They're both perfectly fine general purpose machines - except apple holds the keys to the engine, and only hands them out when they approve of the use case.

I think it’s useful to remember why so many people jumped to iPads, because we did that experiment for a couple decades. When people have the ability to install arbitrary code we know they will, and will click through almost any warning if they’ve been promised money, games, or porn. I think the sandboxing approach is getting closer to where you could potentially safely have third-party stores but I think that would still leave a lot of abuse if it allowed VPNs or content filters, full screen use, background operations, etc.

I don’t love where that leaves us but it does make me wonder whether a better compromise would be something like regulation requiring third-party app installs but with some kind of business liability & registration requirement so e.g. Epic could set one up but fly by night scammers couldn’t easily set something up and spam AARP members.

They didn't jump to a completely new category of device because of the toolbars and malicious software.

They bought them because it was a new category of device (and extensive marketing from Apple - although I don't mean to discount the product with that statement - very solid phones, but also very excellent marketing). If anything - the early tech adopters moved to the iphone because it was more open than the existing phones at the time, which were definitely not general purpose computers. The iphone got us halfway there - I'd like to see us take the last few steps.

> making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use

only today, I was talking to a lady walking her dog, who's close to 80 (I don't ask her that), and she owns an iPhone. When my phone started talking, she commiserated that she's always getting woken up because the phone is making noise and she can't make it stop. I told her to keep it in another room like I do.

I have Android, but if I look it up : https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208353

apparently there IS a way. Either it doesn't work, or she doesn't know about it.

> There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use.

You're right. It's also true that there's nothing terrible about making devices that Chinese dissidents can safely and easily use. Luckily there is no government that wants to limit your mom's freedom (unless she happens to be a Chinese dissident).

"There is nothing terrible about Apple making devices my 80+ year old mother can safely and easily use."

There very clearly is something terrible about this level of control. You're arguing that there's also some benefit -- yes of course there could be. But the point is that there are also massive problems with this level of control, some of which pose existential threats in areas far more important than (entirely debatable) usability improvements.

These problems can be solved in other ways. You can do what I did and remove administrator access entirely. You can create a curated list of appropriate apps without the totalitarian aspect. You can let people opt-in to various levels of filtering and control over software without excluding people who want to ahem think different.

You're presenting a pretext, not a credible and necessary conclusion.

> Easily use

I am tech savvy. iPhones are not "easy" to use. It's a nightmare of hidden gestures to accomplish even the most basic things.

Yes, for someone who spend 8 hours / day on their phone you eventually learn the necessary gestures. But that's no different from Android or any other electronic device.

This exact situation is why this year was the first Thanksgiving that I didn’t spend 3/4 of my visit to my parents doing tech support and cleaning up malware. I bought them Apple hardware last Christmas and I’d do it again.

In 2022 the Internet is a hostile landscape where trillions of dollars are made on the back of malicious adtech by some of the largest companies in the world and there is no pathway for the average user to truly control their own system. At least Apple’s walled garden is better than Microsoft’s brothel and Google’s crackhouse.

How does that look like bad ethics? You know you’re buying a walled garden with an Apple. If you care, then don’t buy Apple. That doesn't make Apple's ethics bad. It just goes against your prefences.

i don't think walled garden is the correct term to describe what OP was describing.

I am instead looking forward to the EU forcing Apple to allow third-party app stores on iOS.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/01/eu-force-third-party-app-stor...

> you are only allowed to install software on it that Apple says you are allowed to

This isn't accurate. macOS' default security settings (System > Security & Privacy) have "Allow apps downloaded from:" set to "App Store" by default. Selecting "App Store and identified developers" allows you to install anything from the App store, or anything that's been code signed.

If you want to execute unsigned code, you can disable SIP (System Integrity Protection) and relive all your 8088 glory days.

> You can only pay for software on their own store.

Also entirely inaccurate. Almost all of the macOS software I've purchased was done so outside of the App store, paying developers directly.

I am not intimately familiar with the Apple ecosystem.

This still reads like all or nothing. All as in "App Store and identified developers", or user can turn off "System Integrity Protection" completely. Turning off SIP eliminates any protection.

Is that what it means to disable SIP?

If you want run an unsigned installer you just right click in Finder and select 'Open' instead of double clicking.

I'm not aware of any Mac user among my friends who isn't aware of this.

Most OSS installers but even many commerical ones aren't code signed because devs don't want to pay the Apple tax.

> I'm not aware of any Mac user among my friends who isn't aware of this.

I don't think any of my non-tech friends would know this.

I think that's the point though. Our non-tech friends are exactly the people who shouldn't be downloading and installing random (unsigned) binaries.

As much as I love to hack and tinker with my OS, I also appreciate the safety inherent in the Apple ecosystem. That's why even as a life-long Windows user, I bought my Dad an iPad - I know the chance of him getting p0wned via some social engineering attack and having his banking password stolen are a lot lower than with a Windows or Android tablet.

My understanding is that SIP makes certain locations read-only, like /System, /usr, applications bundled with the OS, etc. You’d turn it off if you had a bunch of wacky Unix packages from the old days that expected to run from specific paths.

I think if you want to just run any code you want, you sudo spctl --master-disable. I’ve never had to use it.

SIP is a collection of protection features. You can disable bits and pieces, or all of it.

Disabling SIP is generally a bad idea, but there are times when it can be useful, e.g. modifying stock applications like Dock.app.

You don't need to disable SIP to run unsigned code. If a binary is unsigned all you need to do is hold a key down while clicking the program. macOS will show a warning popup and let you continue. This isn't super user friends, but then again the majority of Apple's customers are not going to (or want to) run untrusted code, and if you do want to run untrusted code it is not that big of an inconvenience.

That’s an overly reductive to prove a biased point. Typical users do not have the same motivations as programmers. The market for connected devices does not have to conform to your expectations.

It’s really exhausting pointing out how your argument would effectively force others to produce what satisfies your sensibilities and to protect what you feel is sacrosanct.

Programming is “just math”. I don’t need an 8088 to prove its adding, subtracting, comparing memory addresses. All the cognitive structure and literalness of the past has nothing to do with software and everything to do with hardware engineering.

That the industry has not clung to your nostalgic ideal does not mean there is a tyrannical conspiracy. It means the industry evolved.

Perhaps you’re just on the wrong career path?

> Typical users do not have the same motivations as programmers.

This is actually very untrue in my experience. I can't tell you how many "normal users" ask me whether there is an open source equivalent they can use so they don't have to pay for X, for example, and many have shown interest in doing what they can to optimize their setup and/or reduce their financial burden by getting smarter about how things are set up.

Oooh anecdata time; I can’t tell you how many times software engineers have just put libs in a dep file to avoid recreating the wheel.

Reusing existing software is not equivalent to expecting users who want share pics to learn from 8088 on up. In fact it’s quite the opposite; it’s good engineering to not waste time recreating the wheel.

> I can't tell you how many "normal users" ask me whether there is an open source equivalent they can use so they don't have to pay for X

I don't think I've ever had a non-dev ask me about "open source". Asking for free alternatives, sure, but it's very rare that I'd recommend open source alternatives for whatever normal people are doing.

I've had many people come to me asking for "that open source office thing instead of word"

Have you really? I worked in an org full of fairly technical non-devs and never had someone ask that. Mostly because corporations usually have no problem paying for Word... and google docs exists.

Thinking about the motivation of programmers. Some programmer did make the changes to limit AirDrop... Like there is a room in a meat factory where animals go in alive and come out dead. Who was that and to what extent is he responsible?

I don’t think users intrinsically care about open source, what they want is free. If it’s closed source then that’s probably ok too.

Not grokking this knee-jerk reaction to freedom a slightest bit. Freedom to do whatever you want with your own device (which is something companies like Apple and manufacturers of ie household appliances will contest more and more) doesn't mean everybody wants immediately hack the hell out of it.

Installing app from any source is not outrageous, I use it for my Pioneer receiver who would otherwise have no remote, I use it for my paragliding variometer. And I could use it for anything else I chose to, since I am free to decide. The list of what I can do with similar other devices but can't do with the most expensive of them is quite long. This is not expert level, experienced beginner at best (not for Apple products obviously since jailbreaking is advanced topic).

Due to above also being 100% stuck with only Apple payment system which takes 30% all the time vs having the freedom to choose. This can't be more un-american (at least to ideal, reality is another topic).

Life for others does not need to conform to your ideal - that goes both ways. Closed vs open systems to 'hackers' have a special meaning to many people here on this forum. And yes these topics are exhausting to us all, explaining ad nauseum why more freedom is better for users especially long term, and why Apple et al desperately don't want users to have it.

It would require Apple engineer for the use case, and opens them to legal risk in our society.

So the freedom angle to them is they don’t have to schedule the meetings and be compelled to speak the questions and answers to output what you want, or open themselves to repercussions of a hack in a stack that would never be there if they’d not built it.

Because computers are also real resources they’re making devices for a broader audience than computer hackers. The hobbyist hardware scene has a questionable set of ethics given the long term impact of meeting hobbyist demands to consume whatever number of widgets they want, but that’s another thread.

If you’re arguing for an open boot loader, I’m here for it, but you’re going to need to change law to force it; they can freely stick to their choices. Posting grievances such as yours; we’re not oblivious as you seem to believe but HN is not a forum of real influence, preaching to the choir is not influencing anyone that needs to be influenced.

But iOS is a result of workers speaking free of coercion. If the output is not up to your expectations… I dunno what to say except other people don’t have to put you first, you know? Freedom equals tribalism. It’s a demand of freedom to allow tribalism not one size fits all literalism. deal with it gif

> You can only pay for software on their own store.

I would love to see Apple adopt a more open ecosystem, and I could see it happening in the net 5-10 years.

But, nobody cares about this aside from the tech community. The average smartphone user is fine with the status quo.

Completely agree with you here. Even in my circle of engineer friends I'm generally viewed as the open source zealot for only buying Pixel phones purely because I can unlock the bootloader on them and root them still. I only have one app that actually uses it (for making backups of installed apps) but it's the principle of the thing: if I bought and paid for a device I should be allowed to run whatever darn code I want on it, not only code that the manufacturer says I'm allowed to run. It's my device, not theirs.

Apparently that's a radical position to have these days and I find it irresponsible that software folks of all people won't stand up more for the right to run their code on their own devices without the approval of the manufacturer. As you said, the existence of our industry is due in large part to the openness of previous systems. We owe it to ourselves and those that will come after to ensure this level of openness persists.

The perception of "Free Software" is that it's a lot of extra work, which most people don't want to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

I don't know many engineers who actually like how Apple locks down their platform—it's just to them the perceived trade-off of "Apple's polish" vs "configuring free OSS software" isn't worth it.

If we're being realistic, most people I encounter want Apple to loosen their grip a bit so they can run software without Apple's permission or paying their 30% App Store tax.

Right, but my point isn't that "we all need to use only Free Software" (even though I think it would be great if we did), but rather that these companies, let's take Apple for example, consist of engineers like ourselves. Why are we not fighting harder internally that these products & platforms should be less restrictive? There's a myriad of arguments about "security" and whatever else that can be made, but even something like in the case of Apple with macOS just having a checkbox that lets you run unsigned code and if you select that then you acknowledge the risks would go a long way in my book. It's similar to how Pixel devices work. There's a barrier to unlocking the bootloader that requires the user to acknowledge what they're doing, but it is possible. It doesn't need to be everyone using Free Software, but we should at the very least be far more insistent that these companies give us the option to use our devices as if they are truly our devices.

Any engineer I've met knows Apple's "security argument" about the App Store and Sandboxing/Isolation are two completely separate things, the problem is most non-technical people believe Apple when they say the App Store keeps them secure.

At this point I don't think it's realistic to expect engineers to solve this problem —Apple would retaliate by booting them from the App Store of burying app reviews in red tape. What's probably needed is legislation that mandates hardware manufactures can't restrict what users are allowed to run on their devices.

I recently abandoned Apple, went with a frame.work laptop running Ubuntu.

Asahi Linux will be the best of both worlds. I can't wait!

75% of my non-techie relatives who have retired from office jobs in the past 15 years - from workplaces where using MS Windows, Office, etc., etc. was required every working hour - have downsized to having only a iPad and iPhone. And they're completely happy that they did so.

They mostly just want a web browser and e-mail. They buy ~zero non-free apps. And they want the "freedom" you're selling about as much as they want the "authenticity" of living off the land in rural Alaska.

I have always been surprised by the popularity of Apple products in the programming community, I feel like Apple's philosophy is something no one [from the tech world] should want the programming community to move towards.

> suicide nets

I assume this is about Foxconn. Does that mean you'll be boycotting other companies that also work with them, like Amazon, Dell, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Vizio, Acer, Lenovo, Nintendo, and Sony?

I'm genuinely asking. It's a tough pill to swallow to learn all our tech stuff we all enjoy is built on the backs of poor people on the other side of the planet.

The raw materials have a pretty bad track record as well.

As they do for every tech supplier, Apple is just the very large and easy target to pin it all on. Your Lenovo, Dell or Samsung products are no cleaner.

> It's a tough pill to swallow to learn all our tech stuff we all enjoy is built on the backs of poor people on the other side of the planet.

Watching some in depth documentaries on the global low-cost-fashion trade in textiles and garments is also a real eye opener.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Rana_Plaza_factory_collap...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...

I remember reading some reports that actually looked at suicide rate based on the number of people working there and didn't find it that elevated compared to the average. Fact is, anytime you have a big concentration of people in a small place you will have some suicides just by virtue of statistics, so I'm not sure if there's really a much higher number of suicides or if the few that did happen were sensationalised because it sells.

That's not to say that working in a company like Foxconn is the nicest possible job (it's not but it seems to be better than a lot of places) or that China is great and can do no wrong (I'm generally very critical of the CCP) but I do think that sometimes it's easy to just spin up a story to shock people because that sells.

Yup - the suicide nets story is pure disinformation. Yes they had nets, but the suicide rate at the factory before the nets were installed was lower than of students at US colleges.

Do you have a source for this?

In addition, while suicide nets might sound silly, they actually do reduce the suicide rate.

They're being installed on bridges all over the US for exactly that reason.

For example: https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicid...

Suicides or no, I watched a documentary about how the women who work at chipmaking companies, due to the chemicals involved, all developed serious health problems with their hormones and reproductive system.

I have been using second hand phones for a while. My current phone is running Android 5.

I don't treat them as secure, however. I have not entered credit cards nor my Google account.

The hysteria about Foxconn suicides was complete clickbait garbage. Even during their worst year of suicides that was reported by Wired, the suicide rate at FoxConn was 1/10th of that of the US and 1/20th of that of China overall.

>It's a tough pill to swallow to learn all our tech stuff we all enjoy is built on the backs of poor people on the other side of the planet.

This is actually overwhelmingly a good thing. Life expectancy and living standards have exploded in Asia. They just haven't reached the point of developed Western nations yet. It's impossible to transition from very shitty conditions to good conditions hitting a midpoint of moderately shitty conditions. For example, the abundance of relatively high paying manufacturing jobs incentives teenagers to drop out of school and work instead. Of course, we are right to call out Apple for relying on child labor, but the goal should be to have a better control of their supply chain rather than move manufacturing back to the US.

>It's a tough pill to swallow to learn all our tech stuff we all enjoy is built on the backs of poor people on the other side of the planet.

It's far far more than 'tech' stuff. A lot of everything we enjoy is built off the backs of the poor and exploited, that's how most of the system we have works at a fundamental level.

> I assume this is about Foxconn. Does that mean you'll be boycotting other companies that also work with them, like Amazon, Dell, Google, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Vizio, Acer, Lenovo, Nintendo, and Sony?

It would be easier to just ban them with legislation, similar to what's been done with Huawei

They look like they are good at privacy simply because they are so possessive and controlling of their users. Of course they stop other companies from getting your data, your data belongs to Apple, not to the other companies.

Apple in many cases goes out of their way to avoid collecting your data. See Maps for example. Users' usage of Maps is associated with a random rotating identifier not tied to their accounts. This is quite different from Google Maps.

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-maps/

I think it's fair to point out these inconsistencies but what do we expect them to do? China is a sovereign country _and_ it's the one where they make most of their hardware. It is unclear to me what options they have other than expanding manufacturing in other countries, which seems to be in progress.

its like 5 post down in twitter, it was a planned update from a while ago

> I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics.

Counterpoint:

They could have just rolled out the feature change globally. Instead Apple makes it clear with singling out China, that this change was demanded by the CCP.

They've had years to pull manufacturing out of China to avoid having to make these compromises, but they chose not to. They could forgo the Chinese market, as many other companies have, in order to avoid needing to make unsavory choices, but they chose not to. And don't blame the shareholders for pushing Apple to stay in China. By that logic, no company is guilty of anything.

It's very hard to pull manufacturing out of China.

No other nation has the combination of infrastructure, production networks, human capital, affordable energy, investment financing. I've long been fascinated by productive eco-systems -- how do they arise, what can destroy them, but suffice it to say that they are magical things. They often spring up out of nowhere, as a result of historical accidents, and then many try to duplicate them, usually without success. Lots of municipalities think they can create a new silicon valley in their dilapidated downtown areas if they throw in a few bike lanes, smoothie bars, and lofts -- and what happens is similar to Polynesian cargo cults, where you have bamboo air traffic control towers erected hoping that planes would arrive. Apple's failed attempts to move production to India should be an object lesson in how irreplaceable Chinese manufacturing is. Many Americans, which prize IP and design, yet are confused about manufacturing and insist it's just grunt work anyone can do, can't really fathom how uniquely productive Chinese manufacturing is compared to the rest of the world, and how difficult it is to matching even a fraction of that productivity.

New productive ecosystems will need to arise to replace it -- and it will eventually happen somewhere, but it's not going to happen on a corporate schedule and in locations you control. Similarly, attempts to "reshore" production to the U.S. are also doomed to failure. We do not have those manufacturing ecosystems anymore.

The productive ecosystems that sprung up in China are truly unique and stand along side the Ruhr valley, Silicon Valley, Detroit in its heyday, as world class ecosystems. You can't just move to another place and hope to get anywhere near the same productivity.

I get that it's a monumental problem. But Apple is the largest company on earth, with a mind blowing amount of cash on hand, so if anyone could afford to build a plant somewhere else, it would be them. It's not the same tier as recreating silicon valley - they would be building their own factory, not an entire tech ecosystem in a particular region. It's a difficult but solveable problem.

Yet they still and will continue to operate largely in China. "Hey consumers, China bad, but China cheap."

The problem is expecting companies to "do the right thing" and not "make money".

If there was ever a time companies were good stewards to the world - that time ended before I was born.

Yes, Apple is not doing the right thing.

Show me any fortune 100 company in the world that would do the right thing...

What's frustrating - I think - in this case, is the amount of Apple fanboys who insist that Apple is literally the incarnation of God as a company, existing solely to bring about harmony and make the world better through the iPhone, not to take your money and put it in their shareholders' pockets.

> Show me any fortune 100 company in the world that would do the right thing...

Companies don't do anything. People do. The individuals who make up any Fortune 100 company most likely do want to do the right thing individually, but communication at scale is really hard which leads to all kinds of unintended consequences.

> Companies don't do anything. People do. The individuals who make up any Fortune 100 company most likely do want to do the right thing individually, but communication at scale is really hard which leads to all kinds of unintended consequences.

Maybe the majority of the worker bees.

The people who make decisions have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits.

> The people who make decisions have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits.

This is a myth. There is an obligation to serve the share holders' "best interests", but that doesn't necessarily mean profitability. It probably doesn't mean maximizing profitability a lot of the time as shareholders are not single dimensional characters. Often shareholders of public companies are just plain old people with a retirement fund, who live regular lives like you and I. The choices made within the business, especially a Fortune 100, are bound to impact them in other ways.

But communication at scale is hard. Shareholders may not always accurately communicate to their nominated trustees what is in their best interest. Profit is an easy one to communicate, but "do the right thing", which likely requires a lot of nuance to understand, is definitely not.

> It probably doesn't mean maximizing profitability a lot of the time as shareholders are not single dimensional characters.

If you look at any shareholder lawsuits - it's pretty clear what the obligation means, what you get sued for, and what you'll lose a lawsuit over.

The vast majority of Apple shares outstanding aren't owned by people who want to turn it into the world police or a charity. They want a return on their investment - not to turn their investment into a charitable donation to make the world a better place.

If you wanted to invest in charities - there's better options than owning stocks...

> If you look at any shareholder lawsuits

Indeed. And you will find that not maximizing profitability doesn't always lose. But if shareholders are suing for not maximizing profitability then that indicates that there are no other competing concerns among the shareholders, so no doubt it would be a challenge to defend that. It would be easier to defend more complex cases where there is nuance. As mentioned before, profit is the one thing – and probably the only thing – that is easy to communicate at scale.

> They want a return on their investment - not to turn their investment into a charitable donation to make the world a better place.

Shareholders want their world to be a better place. Profits are one way to grease that, but not when it is at odds with competing interests. There are countless examples where companies have not sought maximized profits to seek other benefits instead. Shareholders have to live in the world they create after all. Granted, because communication at scale is hard there are unintended consequences to be found.

1. The suicide nets is misinformation.

2. The supply chain is not riddled with slave labor.

3. The chance to airdrop was made weeks before the protest.

You might not be basing your evaluation of Apple’s behavior on reality.

7 Apple suppliers in China have links to forced labor programs, including the use of Uyghur Muslims from Xinjiang, according to a new report

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/apple-c...

Apple is lobbying against a bill aimed at stopping forced labor in China

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-u...

Chairs Issue Statement about Forced Labor in Apple’s Supply Chain

https://www.cecc.gov/media-center/press-releases/chairs-issu...

I’m not the one here who isn’t basing their evaluation on reality.

This is a comment filled with sheer hate. No facts, no nuances. Just emotions.

> I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics.

They champion them here in the USA where saying so is good for business.

They champion censorship in China because it's good for business.

They'll champion whatever it takes for them to break into a lucrative market.

Best not to conflate ethics and privacy.

The most private digital world — one in which everything is e2e encrypted — is arguably totally ethical (impossible for anybody to infringe on your personal rights) or the least ethical state of affairs imaginable (free for all for criminals, terrorists, etc…).

> Best not to conflate ethics and privacy.

Indeed. I'd suggest everyone in our industry study ethics, particularly with an eye towards its (i) philosophical foundations and (ii) cultural differences. If one of those underpinnings doesn't grab your interest, try the other.

There is a rich body of ethical writing around individual behavior. When that discussion starts to involve groups of people, ... yikes ... it becomes even more complex.

Also threatening to ban twitter for allowing freedom of speech.

Lol the presence of apple hardware is literally a litmus test for how much an individual gives a shit about ethics particularly in tech and employment ethics. They aren't graded well if they buy apple. Applies 10x if they actually work in tech. Use it to your advantage.

Capitalism giveth, and capitalism taketh it away. -KosherHurticane

I still like them for privacy for my use case.

Beyond that is there a better company that operates in China that is doing better?

> suicide nets

Like the ones installed all over Europe and the US?

Netherlands for example also does suicide nets, here's one in a small town city hall https://www.tubantia.nl/almelo/anti-zelfmoordnetten-geplaats...

If you think they’re fucked, you don’t know what a fucked company is. Twitter is fucked. Apple is thriving, selling massive amounts of products and sitting on a huge cash horde. Get a grip.

> They are fucked as a company

Their profit margin would suggest otherwise.

I don't trust any mega-corporation very far these days. That said:

> the suicide nets

I know this was painted as a scandal, but was it actually?

First, at the time Foxconn — or rather more specifically, Longhua Science and Technology Park, which was the site of the suicides that got in the news — was employing approximately 50-80% the population of Wyoming at the time depending on who you ask. For reference, there were 170 deaths by suicide in Wyoming in 2019.

Second, I've seen anti-fall nets on the inside of the Galeria department store in Alexanderplatz Berlin, which has no relevant reputation I've ever heard of, and therefore seems like a straightforward health and safety measure.

The per-capita suicide rate at the building with the suicide nets (before the nets went up) was half the per-capita suicide rate in the entire province in which the building is situated.

It's agenda-based narrative pushing.

> I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics.

It is easy to criticize an organizations' behavior.

It is easy to criticize someone else's ethics.

What are your ethics? What would you do if you were in Tim Cook's position?

Why? I'd like to see how you perceive the options available.

As for me, the following is an open question: can organizations have something analogous to a conscience? How does it work?

Apple: where it's totally fine to build products with what amounts to slave labor, and aiding the CCP in censorship is totally cool too, but Twitter is far too dangerous to be allowed on the app store because a meanie is in charge of it.

Once again we have a situation where the only person making that final claim is a known serial liar and shit poster.

Just like how last week he made that ridiculous claim about the promises he thought brand safety groups had made to him and then everybody else who was in the meeting said he was making shit up. Again.

> Once again we have a situation where the only person making that final claim is a known serial liar and shit poster.

No, it's not just Elon. It is common knowledge that Apple uses this abusive behavior to censor and restrict app makers.

Definitely not just him. It's also very subjective they took Parler off in 2021 but didn't do anything to Discord which has huge child abuse and extremist problems. Apple seems to only act when it's politically expedient for them.

Except Discord views that content as a problem and Parler views it as a feature.

Parler got shut down because the entire tech industry was in full-scale panic mode at potentially having helped Trump incite a riot to interfere with the US presidential election.

As for Discord, Apple actually has special privileges to ban certain NSFW servers they don't like from being viewed on an iOS device. If they were to act "more" to stop child abuse and extremism, then we'd be talking about how Apple is censoring Discord for Android users.

For good measure let's also point out that an App Store reviewer found CSAM on Tumblr and browbeat the company into banning all nudity and porn.

The only constant of tech company moderation is that it's consistently inconsistent. Strictly speaking, Apple cannot permanently cut off every competing social network, because nobody would buy a phone with no social networking apps on them. But they can whisper in the companies' ears and demand they do a certain thing (e.g. Discord's banned-from-Apple toggle). The really big events (Parler, Tumblr) happen because of breakdown of process, not because Apple only acts when people are looking.

You expanded my viewpoint on these topics, thanks. I also didn't know about the Discord's 'banned-from-Apple' toggle.

Speaking of twitter, it's weird Musk hasn't commented yet on the protests in China. Looking forward to him taking on censorship and standing for free speech around the globe, particularly in China.

Twitter is already blocked in China

That does not stop him from speaking out about it, thankfully. I hope to see him doing so soon. I don't expect that his work with Tesla will stop him, given his views on free speech.

You're probably being sarcastic? I would say that's not likely to happen with how he's already bowed to China multiple times in order to get benefits for Tesla.

edit: I see you commented regarding Tesla below. I'm not confident that his respect for free speech is universal. He seems to care more about the free speech that he prefers at times, mostly related to what impacts him on a personal level. That being said, that's unfortunately normal for most people too.

https://twitter.com/TinaDesireeBerg/status/15955262149359042...

To summarize:

Elon Musk: "No far left accounts have been banned from twitter"

Commenter: "False, here are four examples"

Elon Musk: Suspends commenters account.

Champion of free speech indeed.

Here is same info summarized in newsweek, since we've all learned how trustworthy twitter screenshots are in recent weeks https://www.newsweek.com/activists-accuse-elon-musk-banning-...

It's a private platform- Also, have you ever heard of the paradox of tolerance? You can't blame him for taking a stand against these extremists...

I can blame him for lying!

https://i.ibb.co/dDp0HQW/Smart-Select-20221128-150152-Firefo...

I uploaded the screenshot to this direct link

This is false info, that account was suspended for doxing people, contacting employers of people on Twitter and getting them fired by mass calling the businesses.

Source? Genuine request - “chad loder suspended” doesn’t bring up any stories with info not in that newsweek article for me. Unless you’re meaning a different account?

[edit]

Had another go and the closest i can find is a report from Dec 2021

"However, Los Angeles-based activist and researcher Chad Loder said their account was permanently blocked after reports to Twitter over publicly-recorded images from an anti-vaccine rally and a confrontation outside the home of a former Vice journalist."

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/startups-tech/technology/tw...

So it seems like he may have been suspended in the past for things that might count as doxxing - but his account had been re-instated since then. Either way, I can find no evidence to suggest there was another reason for his most recent suspension.

Looking forward to LeBron James and the NBA doing the same

You're joking right? He is so far up china's behind that he was offered Chinese citizenship which is almost impossible to get.

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/tesla-boss-elon-musk-offered...

Yes, I am joking.

I'm aware of the record China sales for Tesla. Of his expressed pro-China views. Of his favorable treatment by the government there. Etc.

he did in fact, also be aware that we might be able to get his deleted tweets via archive.org

Link? I will edit if so.

I have found some pro-China tweets from Musk, but that's it.

You don't buy a majority stake in a $44bn company where the 2nd largest pre-existing, long standing early investor and shareholder is the Saudi royal family unless you're very comfortable with authoritarian regimes.

edit: the saudis still own their shares, https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/10/31/saudi-prin...

He didn't buy a majority stake, he bought the entire company.

He took on a bunch of partners, he does not own all of it.

Those are loans right? So he owns all of it, and they own a big chunk of him.

Loans from banks, and also equity to investors

I'm not sure why you want to hear Musk's opinions on the protests in China, I assume it's either because you're a big fan or because you think its essential that every rich person opine about every issue so that the poors know how they should think about it.

What I wonder is why so many libs are so happy about anti-covid lockdown protests? Backwards day, or just nationalists?

>Speaking of twitter, it's weird Musk hasn't commented yet on the protests in China.

Tales about what people haven't done are pure propaganda. I first noticed this under trump. News outlets constantly decried him for things he didn't do. That isn't news. News is fundamentally what did happen. Everything else is propaganda. It's a particularly insidious way to malign someone that seems rational, but with absolutely no substance behind it.

How about faulting him for his pro-China tweets -- praising China for having zero domestic COVID cases; calling on Taipei to hand over some control of Taiwan to China. Meanwhile, seeking favorable treatment from China's government.

I disagree with your premise (as does Musk who is faulting Apple for NOT advertising on Twitter; or anybody who has ever been faulted for not, say, doing the dishes or any other common thing), but even by your standard there's a real problem here.

> I disagree with your premise (as does Musk who is faulting Apple for NOT advertising on Twitter; or anybody who has ever been faulted for not, say, doing the dishes or any other common thing), but even by your standard there's a real problem here.

Ignoring china/musk/etc in this argument, I just wanted to say that's not what's going on here. Apple isn't being called out for "not doing [X]" they are being called out for an action, changing their advertising strategy.

Not doing the dishes as your example, is being called out for an inaction ("why won't they say they disagree with [X]") and not equivalent. If the example was "they started doing the dishes then quit" that would be a fair equivalent to this, as they actively performed an action.

I think Russell's teapot is adjacent to this. The burden of proof is on the claimant, i.e. "they haven't publicly denounced [X]" is trying to shift the burden to the other party when it should be "through action {Z} they have shown they agree with [X]".

It depends on how many related topics they are talking about and usually talk about. And "weird" is a weak implication.

It's both self-interested and hypocritical, in my view.

"Weird" was a reflection of the sarcasm of the comment.

What is this a reference to? Twitter is currently not only available in the Apple App Store, but is an Editor's Choice award winner.

Apple has threatened to remove it from the App Store and I would love to see that happen just for the chaos of it all.

Why not both? This is a false equivalence, they can be and are all bad.

> This is a false equivalence

> they can be and are all bad.

This sentence is arguing against itself, because you felt like you had to stick two twitter cliches in. Por que no los dos? Porque cuando dos cosas no son identicas, no son identicas tampoco.

Musk is also in China's pocket via Tesla. Anything to the contrary is posturing. Look into how much China factors into Tesla's bottom line.

The fact is that we are all in China's pocket to some extent. We are addicted to cheap Chinese labor.

It's true, and it won't stop me from buying iPhones. I just wish Apple could recognize this and drop the ridiculous self-righteous moral facade. Same with pretty much all companies.

Twitter is far too dangerous to be allowed on the app store

Has this actually happened, or is just another attention-seeking rumor being misrepresented as fact?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597300125243944961

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33779111

The fact that Apple has threatened to withhold it at all is answer enough. But feel free to live life with your head in the sand

I'm not convinced that it is a fact, though.

what the product you typed that with built by a different contract manufacturer than whatever Apple uses?

(I don't know the set of all such)

I'm sick to death of seeing these corporations pretending to care about human rights, then doing stuff like this

Or pretending to care about the environment, then forcing people to buy new devices (with packaging) instead of repairing the ones they already own

Or pretending to care about privacy, then scanning local files for "undesirable content" (it doesn't matter what the content is, once the infra is there, it's there to stay)

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that whenever a corporation says something that sounds good, it's probably a lie.

The only thing that will ever force Apple's hand with regard to this human rights issue is legislation, they've lost the right to trust long ago

Apple is a deeply evil company.

Another reply said it was coming because of spam. Can this be verified. I’m suspicious of triggered woke/knee jer reaction twitter posts as any source of reliable info.

Just google "airdrop spam". It's well-publicized.

Ok, so people jump directly to the conclusion that this was introduced because the CCP asked for it. Yet, if that was the case why limit it only? Why not ask for a complete stop? Is there a case where a protestor benefits from AirDrop but only if it’s more than 10 minutes?

It's pretty simple: sometimes people do want to receive airdrops from anybody in a state approved way - when someone is not your contact, but you want them to send you something. Your distant uncle took a photo at a family gathering, for example.

Thus, previously, users in China could set their phone to be able to receive airdrops from anybody, all the time.

But, problem! Now they can receive information antithetical to CCP propaganda, anywhere they go. On a bus, on a train, at the supermarket, at a grocery store, literally anywhere, they could be exposed to ad-hoc free thought via airdrop. Perhaps something like: "protest tonight at the grocery store! They can't arrest all of us!"

In response, now iPhone users in China can still choose to receive airdrops from anybody, preserving the valid use case, but only for 10 minutes after pressing the button. They are now safe from uncensored information for the rest of the day. Train, bus, supermarket, etc. The airdrop protest invite is now dead.

A complete ban of receiving airdrops from anyone would cause outrage - it would be removing a useful feature entirely. But the timer is a clever way to neuter its position as a social communication platform without taking the useful feature away.

This is how effective social control works - you can't just shackle everyone, you have to give them the impression of freedom.

Sorry. That’s not convincing. How can a 10min limit suppress protests? You’re not answering the question, just telling a story.

Okay. Let's make it more concrete. Imagine theres a bus full of people and you want to invite them to a protest, discreetly.

Before state: some of them have airdrop set to open always and you can just airdrop to them. Move on to the next bus.

New state: some of them may have had airdrop set to open always, but it timed out. You cannot airdrop it to them. Protest quashed.

I'm still telling the same story but perhaps this makes the mechanism more obvious to you. The fact that you genuinely don't seem to see the censorship shows how effective this strategy is.

Thanks for getting back. That explanation makes more sense now.

I can see how this limit would make free data exchange much more difficult. I am still not convinced that by this protests are “quashed”. We’ll see about that I guess.

I appreciate your willingness to discuss! :)

Yeah sure :) I’m here to learn.

So presuming airdrops are logged, a trivial mechanism for implicating a lot of people in a crime against the state is now more complicated.

You're saying the recipients of anti-CCP information would be implicated? I don't love this take because I think it's the other way around - it's removing common plausible deniability of "oh, that image? Some hoodlum airdropped that to me without my consent."

It's a 10 minute limit on receiving, which needs manual intervention to reset.

That pretty much kills Airdrop as an open P2P communication channel (the "undesired" usage) while still enabling one off intentional file transfers (the primary Airdrop use case).

So a 10 minute limit easily kills 99% of "bad" usage without impacting common usage, leading to less resistance/complaints from average users. Killing Airdrop full stop would have greater push back/outrage, with only marginal improvement against the undesired usage.

Q: How does 10 min limit kill the P2P communciation usage?

A: Imagine your cell phone could only receive calls from non-contacts for 10 min. After which you had to remember to push a button to re-allow calls for another 10m, rinse/repeat. With that UX, the chance you ever successfully call or be called by a non-contact is near zero. People wouldn't opt-in frequently enough to have a reliable network.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com