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Apple Adopts Tighter Chinese App Store Rules, Closing Foreign App Loophole
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The disagreement is what is the most significant long term goal. Some might say this will negatively impact investors in the long term, while other will say it will be good.
Short term revenue isn’t of importance. And maximizing shareholder value/profit isn’t their responsibility. Their responsibility is to the company board firstly and secondly to their customer base. Shareholders are investors who might try to influence their actions or believe the board will do profitable decisions.
Apple did that to themselves, it’s part of their brand recognition and marketing. They stand for user privacy and freedoms. Just how they fought against the FBI getting access to an iPhone.
Apple could have just left or stood their ground, but China has them by the balls so they can’t do anything really. The problem is Apple have publicly and officially states what their beliefs are, their foundational principles and beliefs in privacy.
People tend to get a little upset when every time these principles are challenged they always lose next to their monetary goals. That’s fine but spineless.
China would simply not allow side loaded apps or require phones to report installed apps that are forbidden. Never underestimate an authoritarian regime's efforts to exert control to stay in power.
Their first responsibility is to shareholders and to maximize the company's value. Customers are how you do that.
lol @ the comments section. China is not the USA. Their house - their rules. Don’t like it? Don’t do business with them. Period.
I actually like apps, but not as simple web wrappers. Websites are websites, and they belong to the browser. But, with services such as Spotify, I prefer the native app experience over the web.
It wouldn’t be something they could prevent. Just how android phones, macOS,windows, Ubuntu etc etc are fundamentally able to install applications outside of a store or official sources.
They have zero responsibility to shareholders. There’s no law requiring this.
Shareholders are just glorified loan givers.
So, practically speaking, what they're supposed to do is stop acting so high and mighty. I'll agree with that.
I think it's no secret, especially to the Chinese, that Apple wants to diversify away from China. The geopolitical implications of that are going to be interesting. I know I just said it's not Apple's place to try to change China, but the sheer size of their business has political implications in manufacturing and communications.
I would love to see everything both made and sold in America and around the world, but people keep telling me that's not possible.
Yeah I highly doubt this feature will be available, or fully functional, in China.
That is only partly true. There are a number of China based influencers on Instagram and some of them are labelled 'State controlled media' even though some are language teachers. There's one rural girl with almost a million followers and all she does is show her farm life and her best friend the family cow.
You can just search the location tag of any Chinese city and see posts from phones all the time from Chinese netizens. It seems some of the people are nepobabies and they don't need VPN. They are from the privileged class and the laws don't apply to them.
There are also many scam accounts coming out of China (also Cambodia and India) that use filtered stolen photos of girls and these are used to target western men with honeytrap scams and pig butchering scams.
If you report them it seems Meta won't do anything and in some cases you will be told that IG saw no problem with the account, including sex pests who randomly connect with anyone including children.
Do you think there could be a sort of agreement between the Chinese government and Apple Inc. where Apple tries to keep manufacturing in China mainland (PRC), while defending their service’s freedom and lack of concessions to the Chinese government? Excuse me if I didn’t explain myself well enough, I’m not a native speaker.
What I mean is that Apple, after starting this manufacturing diversification between China, Taiwan, India, Vietnam and maybe other countries (such as USA maybe?), could say to the Chinese gov: “look, we can keep investing in manufacturing plants here in China, but you will have to interfere a little less with our products and services”
I guess the Chinese market is so BIG that Apple will still want to appease the Chinese government… well, I guess I can understand it from the business point of view.
PS: I’m curious about your Nick name and if it means anything.
So this is the way China prevents VPN's being used in the country and thus prevent it's citizens from knowing what is going on in the outside world, basically forcing developers of VPN's to have a work place within the country OR be aligned with a local publisher (which incidentally would automatically force a lot of other laws onto the VPN's) because without either they cannot get an ICP filling which would result in the app developer not being allowed to operate in the country.
It is about time the rest of the world treated China the same way China is treating them. Force Chinese app developers to be registered with the country they want to operate in and if they don't, their app cannot be used.
It is about time the rest of the world treated China the same way China is treating them. Force Chinese app developers to be registered with the country they want to operate in and if they don't, their app cannot be used.
L
in EU: but Apple should just leave. It’s an American company who can do whatever they want
But in China, but it’s China they must follow the rules.
Lol, no it’s just funny hypocrisy
in EU: but Apple should just leave. It’s an American company who can do whatever they want
But in China, but it’s China they must follow the rules.
It’s available and encrypted. However, the question is who has access to the encryption keys for Chinese Apple IDs. They are stored in Chinese data centers officially owned by the Chinese government. Draw your own conclusions: https://thehackernews.com/2021/05/how-apple-gave-chinese-government.html
If I were Chinese and didn’t want the Chinese government to see some of my data or communications, personally I wouldn’t use iCloud services for that. The new App Store rules now make it difficult to use anything not approved by the Chinese government though.
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Apple suddenly implements side loading 🤪
Arguably only the investors in stock at the initial public offering do anything to help the company. After those stocks are traded over and over again, the company accrues no benefit from the trading, and the investors are best thought of as gamblers who can rig the game by threatening CEO's and boards with dismissal if the stock price, dividends, and stock by-backs aren't high enough. This actively works against the company because profits are not reinvested, but go to the stockholders. It's lunacy.
I don’t think Apple’s investment in China is that big compared to the rest of the Chinese industry, that the Chinese government would feel compelled to agree to that. The risk for the Chinese government from uncontrolled services is much too high.
Free as long as the EU governments have backdoor access to the phones or other devices. For their own good of course. Free to use crypto as long as everything is completely accessible by the state. Free as long as you are not anonymous. No, no censorship at all. No, no plans to be able to impose censorship at will.
Let's face it, there are no (or nearly no) governments worldwide who don't want to control their citizens, spy on their citizens and limit their citizen's freedoms as they see fit. Just ask Snowden, Assange et al.
Welcome to capitalism.
Still, surely people here wouldn't want Apple to violate the laws of countries in which it was selling products. Besides it doesn't really have a choice about that - it must comply with local laws. Changing which countries Apple sells products in, on the other hand, is something under Apple's control.
That’s what’s great about EU. We have 27 countries who don’t want their citizens being spied by others. Especially USA or China.
No back door is required to allow side loading. It’s just freedom of the citizens trumping corporate interests
In the US where Apple is incorporated, the Board of Directors of a company most definitely have a fiduciary duty to shareholders. These duties that a BoD owes to shareholders are specified in the statutes of the state that they are organized. And shareholders are most definitely NOT glorified loan givers - they are owners of the company.
There are lots of laws specifying the duty of the board to shareholders and since the board hires and fires management, management has the same duty. In Apple's case, that would be California.