China forced Apple to remove any app where the developer isn’t registered in China. Meaning they asked Apple to remove 95% of the apps and games available in the App Store.
Poor iPhone users, basically they will get a “wechat handheld” and that’s it…
Apple is to blame too. They created a device that gives them so much power to make such lockdowns possible in the first place. The only proper response from Apple should be “we would really like to do it, but we can’t be sure users won’t install those apps outside of our store”.
Something like that should not be possible with universal computing devices. This is why freedom to install any OS you want on mobile devices is more important than ever.
Web is the universal open platform, and China just blocks it with a firewall 🤷♂️.
If you have universal devices Web cannot be blocked at all, you can install different browser or share websites via physical media, you can fit whole Wikipedia on SD Card. Same with overall computer networks, you can run a cable to your neighbor, unless you want to do it on a mass scale.
But I think you mean the Internet (please, don’t confuse Web and Internet), which is in fact very limited on ISPs side.
This is the difference. While with computers you can only censor what is done by them on public network (cables on the street, radio, etc.), with jail like iPhone you can also censor what is happening on the device itself. Those devices are dangerous and Apple made a big mistreatment for the world by creating iPhone like that.
You need to look at this from a practical standpoint.
The vast majority of phone apps are not local-only. They are merely the frontend to services provided by some company - e.g. a Reddit app is really about Reddit the service, a food delivery app is about the service, not the locally running code, etc.
Apple controls what users can and cannot install on devices made by them, but the web and things like PWA are an alternative that would be viable for some portion of these.
You can make a web app that can be added as an icon on the homescreen, can access the camera, location, notifications, storage, authentication (e.g. require fingerprint), etc. It still can’t do everything native apps can do, but it would be good enough for a good portion of popular apps.
But in China, that is not really possible without the government’s approval either, because China requires the same kind of registration and an ICP license for websites, otherwise things will get blocked. Which, even if you could install anything you want on a device, would effectively limit you to purely local-only apps anyway.
What’s stopping China from saying - “if you want to sell iPhones in China, disable sideloading”?
Nothing. The point is first, they shouldn’t be able to do it for devices already sold.
Second, Apple is the one developing technologies to make phones jails even without goverment looking. If Apple hadn’t done it for past years and China would force them now, then still next couple of generations of devices would be trivial to jailbrake, beacuse those locks won’t be as mature.
Makes sense.
The only thing stopping them is their own incompetency. Truly a thin wall, but as their older generations start dying off we’ll see that wall broken down.
as their older generations start dying off we’ll see that wall broken down.
We wish, but we expect the younger generations would be the same if not more strict (think Kim).
It’s like Dell selling a PC that only allows Dell approved OS systems to be installed. No Linux or Windows, only DellOS so they can get all the advertising revenue from showing ads on your pc
That behaviour is great for elderly customers I find. But I agree they shouldn’t be allowed to control the phones like that.
Corporate monopoly over a device (walled garden) means that a government authority has only one entity they need to “convince” to have full control over it.
We are in an Information War and I don’t see enough peer to peer friendships being made between The People of China and everyday people in USA, South America, Africa, North America, Europe, Australia, etc.
I don’t see China people on GitHub and YouTube like I did 5 years ago. Maybe the real war is power over technology and all of humanity isn’t winning. Isn’t that another way to interpret Climate Change, an education mistake on a global scale? Advertising and marketing defeating science teachers? The love for the singe-passenger automobile 9 to 5 commute job - exceeding the reality of global climate physics?
Like they say in The Orville - Dolly Parton was a hero! she basically turned out to be a great teacher, like Mr. Rogers on the true problems of childhood. 9 to 5 was kind of like showing children what your divorced single mother was having to go through. Not to say that fit the relationships in the film itself, but the office environment of white collar world. The technology of the Office Workplace and the era of typewriters as business machines. EDIT: It’s a real War: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Do6VWUxyg
A problem I have with Dolly Parton is that her partner company, Herschend Enterprises, bought the Vancouver Aquarium during the pandemic, and tried to strangle the marine rescue component of the aquarium to death.
She might be wholesome but the businesses she runs with aren’t.
This seems big. IPhones seem like they are kinda the main western luxury and status symbol in China. Now they’re not really any better than Android phones in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall.
Now they’re not really any better than Android phones in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall
What does this mean? You have been able to sideload apps on Android for a decade. How were the iPhones better in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall before?
I haven’t used a Chinese phone, but from what I understand, Chinese Android phones don’t come with play store and have Chinese app stores only.
Sideloading is an option, but apk sites can just be firewalled, so the ability to have the full apple apps store accessible through the firewall was pretty big.
I have a chinese friend and when I asked them to look for signal, whatsapp, or telegram, the apple app store had them all but they didn’t work after they installed it. They just got a loading screen or couldn’t sign up.
Android custom ROM scene was big back when I was rooting and playing with ROMs, as people found how to root their obscure phones by translating chinese forum posts. You don’t have to access apk sites, there are other ways to share apks. Last I heard fdroid was accessible from China as far back as 2014 until recently.
Here’s a quote from fdroid themselves.
In the Chinese app store market five to ten commonly used app stores, and yet even the largest has less than a majority market share. Most Chinese people have more than one app store on their phone, so there is no monolith there, whereas “outside of China, Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the app store market share”.
Do some research before you perpetuate misinformation that confirms your bias.
But fuck the CCP for authoritarianism.
Fair enough, I guess they were about the same once you had a vpn working.
But yeah, it seems really bad that the luxury IPhones are getting so nerfed.
Now they’re not really any better than Android phones in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall.
I don’t know about the Android capabilities in China but this move makes it seem to me that IPhone has now almost become a paperweight with in-built clock, messaging/phoning and heavily restricted browser.
So seems like even though privacy is talked up so much for Apple it might only be true for western countries. Best phone for overseas might be one with an unlockable bootloader that allows you to change the OS from the stock one.
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Apple’s iPhone App Store in China is getting a whole lot more locked down.
China recently updated an existing online software regulation to lay out strict criteria for app stores and apps in the country, and after looking for ways around it, Apple has started to comply.
Now, as Apple honors the regulation, it closes a loophole that had let iPhone users in China download and, with a VPN, use apps that the government there has blocked for most or all of the country, like WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube.
Reuters writes that, in order for an app to qualify for an ICP license, they are “effectively” required to host their back end in China.
Apple was pushing back on the requirement, but app stores from Tencent, Huawei, and others had apparently already complied with the rule.
We asked Apple for a comment and whether the rule has affected any apps yet but did not receive a response by press time.
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VPN?
Sadly doesn’t seem like it’ll help
Last month, China announced it would require an ICP license in order for apps to be listed in all mobile app stores. Now, as Apple honors the regulation, it closes a loophole that had let iPhone users in China download and, with a VPN, use apps that the government there has blocked for most or all of the country, like WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube.
You need to somehow download a VPN first and then somehow punchhole ISP’s restrict firewalls.
Normal VPN doesn’t work because China firewall uses deep packet inspection that looks for signs that traffic is being tunneled and then blocks the IPs involved. On the other hand, VPN use can land users in jail as well
I look forward to a day where third party app stores are allowed to exist on iOS, should it ever come.
