Apple Expanding 10-Minute 'Everyone' AirDrop Limit to All Users With iOS 16.2

[BaldiMac]

so how do you explain there is no way to opt in even if 10mins is the default? every court would throw out any suit where someone claims they opted in the feature and then okeyed receiving spam.
so unless you have a different reasonable explanation, you have to live with the only one.

Off the top of my head, another reasonable explanation would be that there is a security concern with leaving it on all the time. I have no idea if that’s the real reason, but it’s certainly reasonable.

I’d certainly consider it more reasonable than Apple implementing a feature globally as a cover story for China.

 

[itti]

No more dp I guess

 

[liberte1776]

Another authoritarian move by Apple cow-towing to China and limiting our right to choose. Tired of Apple making decisions for me. Let us choose.

 

[scrapesleon]

Always had mine to contacts only but soon software updates have to stop

 

[DiscoToast]

If you support the protests in China, you should be complaining about this OFTEN AND LOUDLY in the outside world. Why is the "Always" option removed? The 10 min option is nice to have as well... but it would be of trivial significance to just add a 4th option and not remove something. Why is Apple exporting tools for potential oppression to the world at large?

 

[mkschenk]

I prefer to leave mine on for convenience. I’ve never had anything bad happen ever. Annoying that this convenient feature is being taken away.

I’m right there with you, kinda annoyed about this change. They should add a time limit option, not change the always allow option.

 

[Maven1975]

Apple is showing their post iPhone customers their true colors. If they would have kicked Twitter, not even from an Elon supports position, I would have walked.

Honestly as consumers, we have nowhere to go.

Google/Android = Same thing as Apple. Gotta key that money press on.

Snowden warned us….

 

[Hayden_]

Not a fan of this to be honest, I think the freedom of choice is extremely important, and they should allow users to pick all the time if they want to.

 

[Mrjoedot]

Yeah, nah. If they wanna spread anything, Airdrop is one of its multiple ways to spread news.

 

[zakarhino]

"China china china"

"Xi Jinping kills dogs on a Friday night because he thinks it's fun"

"Xi Jinping personally beheads protestors because he's an evil dictator"

"Xi Jinping is causing a genocide in China!"

"Xi Jinping and the CPC are trying to stop protestors by asking Apple to limit AirDrop to 10 Minutes"

^All of those statements are as equally ridiculous to me as the next. Seriously.

As if there isn't a viral anecdote every other week about women getting unwarranted d*ck pics on a flight because the "Everyone" setting was enabled and not set back to Contacts or Off. I'm almost entirely confident this feature is about preventing unwanted content and trying to plug the many security vulnerabilities present in AirDrop protocols. Remember last year's story about AirDrop freely broadcasting sensitive information to all devices in the area?

Not everything is about Evil Xi trying to quell a gargantuan crowd of *checks data* no more than a couple thousand people protesting in China out of a population of 1,500,000,000 (do the math). The notion that Apple introduced this feature simply because the CPC wanted to stop protestors is absolutely laughable. The anti China propaganda has no limits apparently. Do people in the collective West think Chinese people have zero methods of having private conversations or sharing super secret anti Xi posters without AirDrop? Stop kidding yourself. I dare mention the astronomical Xi Jinping approval rate (verified by anti China institutions such as Harvard) or the fact that the CIA concluded in a recent report that subverting the Chinese people is practically impossible due to their extreme trust in Xi and the CPC. Every thinktank in D.C. is trying to get Westerners to hate China. Wake up.

MR staff, if you want to delete this post for being political in a thread that isn't marked as such then go ahead, I understand, but please be consistent and delete all other political posts complaining about China too including your own original article that mentions it:

"Apple reportedly made this change in China in the iOS 16.1.1 beta after protestors in the country used AirDrop to spread anti-government material."

If you're going to include that then please categorize this article under the Political News section. If people get to freely slander China on here (including the original author) then I get to defend it too. Otherwise it seems that the "No Politics" rule is not being equally applied because it's actually a "if you have a minority opinion, regardless of merit, you can't express it because it will cause an argument and we don't want to moderate arguments." Not wanting to moderate additional arguments is fine but again we need a semblance of consistency.

I don't love everything China does and consider myself an American Patriot... but I'm sick and tired of seeing all the China fearmongering across the entire Western internet. It's so ridiculous and we should be allowed to offer an alternative perspective if other people can casually get away with expressing unwarranted hypocritical hatred of China.

Oh and for what it's worth, I personally think the AirDrop limit should be decided by the individual's phone.

 

[icanhazmac]

Then people would leave it on for everyone,then get porn and graphic images from strangers.Then they would sue Apple for not ‘protecting’ them

People would set it to everyone then, complain and sue Apple

Apple just doesn’t want lawsuits with this.

Some people get curious and get to see graphic photos or child porn. Then they sue Apple for not ‘protectin’ them

They had that, and people keep it at that and get traumatized seeing child porn of graphic images. It’s good to get rid of it. People will have harder time to sue

Please provide some references or articles to back up your claims that people have set their phones to "everyone" received child porn or regular porn and then "sue Apple" because "Apple didn't protect them"?

 

[russell_314]

Off the top of my head, another reasonable explanation would be that there is a security concern with leaving it on all the time. I have no idea if that’s the real reason, but it’s certainly reasonable.

I’d certainly consider it more reasonable than Apple implementing a feature globally as a cover story for China.

I don’t buy this. This is at the request of the CCP and Apple figured oh no we got called out for it so let’s just implement it for everyone as a cover. I mean, perhaps they figure it can also slow down free speech in the rest of the world.

The option to turn it off was already there. I don’t have airdrop on for everyone but I’m also not protesting against the CCP. Now this just prevents users from turning it always on. This isn’t adding an option but taking away something.

 

[mookc1]

The China comments make me laugh.

Until the new boogeyman was rolled out, we were getting stories like airline pilots telling the plane they’d turn around if people didn’t stop Airdropping porn on the plane.

This isn’t a submission to China, it’s an answer to the seemingly never ending stories of AirDrop abuse.

Since when is it Apple’s job to protect us from ourselves? It IS submission to China and quest to stay in the CCP’s favor. Cook cannot be an advocate for human rights and limit the ability of these people to communicate en masse.

People need to take responsibility for themselves and stop relying on others to protect them. Ignorance of the feature’s abilities is not the responsibility of Apple. Understand or educate yourself on the features of the device. It’s not like there is a lack of info available to users.

 

[icanhazmac]

The notion that Apple introduced this feature simply because the CPC wanted to stop protestors is absolutely laughable.

What is laughable is the notion that all of a sudden Apple is beta testing things in China before rolling it out to the rest of the world. If this was planned all along as a new or upgraded feature it would have rolled out to everyone at the same time like just about every other thing Apple does.

While my opinion only a far more likely scenario is that the Chinese Communist Party found out AirDrop was being used by protesters, demanded Apple make changes and rather than facing bad publicity for making the change at the behest of the Chinese they claimed it was planned all along and just released in China first.

Why China first???

My guess is that Apple had to rush the changes to make China happy but didn't trust the changes enough to release it worldwide or they needed time to massage the marketing messages surrounding the change.

 

[zakarhino]

What is laughable is the notion that all of a sudden Apple is beta testing things in China before rolling it out to the rest of the world. If this was planned all along as a new or upgraded feature it would have rolled out to everyone at the same time like just about every other thing Apple does.

While my opinion only a far more likely scenario is that the Chinese Communist Party found out AirDrop was being used by protesters, demanded Apple make changes and rather than facing bad publicity for making the change at the behest of the Chinese they claimed it was planned all along and just released in China first.

Why China first???

My guess is that Apple had to rush the changes to make China happy but didn't trust the changes enough to release it worldwide or they needed time to massage the marketing messages surrounding the change.

Fair enough. I'm going to look into it some more and will revise my post if I discover something new. Much of China's politics is done out in the open and published for Chinese citizens for the sake of transparency so there is likely a document floating somewhere describing the decision process for this.

 

[zakarhino]

Since when is it Apple’s job to protect us from ourselves? It IS submission to China and quest to stay in the CCP’s favor. Cook cannot be an advocate for human rights and limit the ability of these people to communicate en masse.

People need to take responsibility for themselves and stop relying on others to protect them. Ignorance of the feature’s abilities is not the responsibility of Apple. Understand or educate yourself on the features of the device. It’s not like there is a lack of info available to users.

Cook is submitting to China and staying in the CPC's favor by doing the following:

1) Meeting and standing with US politicians currently advocating for ostracizing China, forcefully decoupling our economy from China, and increasing sentiment for nuclear war with them.

2) Announcing that iPhone chips will be manufactured in America (CHIPS bill, again a bill designed to hurt China)

3) Transitioning Apple production out of China into countries like Vietnam, India, and wherever else.

4) Announcing today that extended iCloud encryption will be available in mainland China

 

[mookc1]

Cook is submitting to China and staying in the CPC's favor by doing the following:

1) Meeting and standing with US politicians currently advocating for ostracizing China, forcefully decoupling our economy from China, and increasing sentiment for nuclear war with them.

2) Announcing that iPhone chips will be manufactured in America (CHIPS bill, again a bill designed to hurt China)

3) Transitioning Apple production out of China into countries like Vietnam, India, and wherever else.

4) Announcing today that extended iCloud encryption will be available in mainland China

1. Don’t know about this one.
2. He said he would buy them here, I would argue that this is a financial decision due to labor protests and lockdown issues in China causing supply issues.
3. See #2. Diversification.
4. Nothing agreed to by China. It is Apple’s hope that it will, according to the interview by Craig F.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

Which iOS fork is this on? iPadOS or iPhoneOS? Or both?

 

[randomthoughts]

you are lucky you never received any child porn or graph image yet. i thank Apple for doing this

If it is a concern, why couldn’t you just use Contacts Only? You always have had that option.

 

[svish]

Did not see this happening this quickly.

 

[davidg4781]

You don’t have to “dig through settings”. It's right in Control Center, where AirDrop controls have always been, and takes about 3 seconds to turn on.

I never knew it was there!

I forgot where it was before this Control Center but after it changed, I just went through Settings.

 

[Malus120]

To be fair, the existing option of "everyone" had some pretty serious problems and opened users up to unwanted abuse and potentially illicit material. To be clear I'm not talking about the PRC's BS designation of protest material when I say "illicit," I mean things like CSAM.

If memory serves correctly "everyone" was originally the default setting until people started sending out dick picks and other unwanted explicit material on mass transit here in Japan and in other countries. So most people I believe have it set to "contacts only" and just switch to "everyone" when they want to receive something from someone not on their contact list.

That said, precisely because of what is going on in China, and also because the default setting being "contacts only" has massively cut down on AirDrop spam I really do think Apple should continue offering "everyone" as an opt in second option beyond "everyone for 10 minutes." Just add a warning/disclaimer/nag saying "this setting puts you at risk of unwanted images of a sexual or illicit nature. Are you sure?"

 

[Fat_Guy]

Am I in some Twilight Zone movie? When this happened in China with the protests going on everyone was against it.


But who cares: USB C coming later this year! 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

 

[Sander]

People need to take responsibility for themselves and stop relying on others to protect them. Ignorance of the feature’s abilities is not the responsibility of Apple. Understand or educate yourself on the features of the device. It’s not like there is a lack of info available to users.

Unfortunately, not everybody agrees with you, and Apple (being a publicly traded company) has to take precautions. When someone does sue Apple for something (and they do - look at the recent AirTags thing), Apple's lawyers can't really point to the MacRumors forum and say "this guy mookc1 said that it shouldn't be this way, so please dismiss the case, your honor."

 

[cyanite]

Man, this comment section is quite a **** show. Good thing it's limited to only "older" accounts

Apple should’ve done this for everyone at the start.

At least then, it wouldn’t have made it appear that Apple is in the CCP’s pocket.

It doesn't really appear like that strongly to me, but I guess YMMV.

I think it is a welcome change for the spam reason, but if you really think it's just a coincidence they rolled it out in China first - at that specific time - then, I don't know what else to tell you...

Maybe you could tell us, then, what you DO think, instead of just a mysterious cliff hanger.

Apple has been in the CCP's pocket for a long time. Any doubts about this are delusional.

Ah yes, the good old "anyone who disagrees with me are idiots" argument. The pinnacle of science thinking

Kinda of reminds me of how most Americans think the world uses iMessage, when hardly anybody uses it.

Do most Americans think that? I doubt it. Also, iMessage is used plenty outside the US, if not everywhere the same.

Anti-CCP protester communication/propaganda prompted the CCP to talk to Apple and Apple changed the feature. The rest of your post is just filler.

Your comment is just speculation from start to finish. Maybe you're right... but maybe you're wrong. It's speculation.

so why not defaulting to 10mins and have an option to go back to limitless? yea, no other explanation than china.

You're doing an "argument from lack of imagination" here. Just because you can't think of an explanation doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

Then why was it implemented in China first? Honest question...

The question is good, but no one here, including you, knows the answer. It's just speculation.

It worked so well for suppression in China so they're gonna expand it globally.

I've never heard that AirDrop is the world's leading free speech technology, honestly. Can you substantiate this?