Apple Pulls 25,000 Apps From China Amid a Barrage of State-Media Criticism (wsj.com) 74
Apple has pulled more than 25,000 illegal apps from its App Store in China after coming under fire from state media for not doing enough to filter out banned material. From a report: "Gambling apps are illegal and not allowed on the App Store in China," Apple said in a statement Monday. "We have already removed many apps and developers for trying to distribute illegal gambling apps on our App Store, and we are vigilant in our efforts to find these and stop them from being on the App Store." The removals were reported earlier by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday, which said 25,000 apps were pulled. Apple didn't confirm that number. It offers more than 1.8 million apps in China, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Removing 25,000 apps would amount to about 1.4% of that total.
Good governance. (Score:1)
I wish my country would do more to stop multinationals shitting all over our people and their rights.
Gambling can be harmful and from what I see of the local casinos, it seems to particularly affect Asians. Well done to the Chinese government for protecting their people.
It's funny. Apple & Google will protest (Score:1, Insightful)
Apple, specifically Cook, Google, and other tech companies will protest to the world the tiniest slight of possible discrimination, perceived or real, with the force of their full companies & reach, but they all will immediately drop to their knees and suck China's red cock while ignoring every major and documented human violation and discrimination over there. Along with the Middle East as well.
"Hey, we have to have a major protest if a man can't go into the female bathroom with little girls, but we d
Re: It's funny. Apple & Google will protest (Score:1)
Apple opposes the US asking for help in decrypting a dead terrorist's iPhone, yet they're happy to help China oppress their citizens.
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One hurts their profits, one unlocks a market.
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It's not that it hurt their profits, it's that they saw a marketing opportunity to brand themselves as the most Fuck-Da-Police corporation out there (while simultaneously relieving themselves of the minor burden of responding to government unlock requests).
Ginning up paranoia and making a few extra billion by convincing people that they need end-to-end encryption for their fucking text messages to Mom wias simple; stopping the resulting inevitable legal crackdown on encryption by governments all over the world who find themselves unable to perform basic law enforcement tasks anymore won't be.
So your solution would be complete cooperation with LEOs and voluntary backdoors?
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The backdoor of automatic upgrades is already there. They just had to use it: put the phone on an isolated network with a fake upgrade-server and place the compromised "upgrade" on it signed by Apple's private key. There may be other methods too.
And they should have used it, when the government requested with the properly-obtained warrant issued in full adherence to the Constitution.
This is very important — usually such r
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Heres some other unrelated things to compare angrily: Tim cook has been known to prefer using an iphone over an android, and yet nobody has seen him wear a hat. Furthermore Google offer almost unlimited storage in their email product, but new programmers have to take a test.
Seriously though, wtf has "Grrrr apple isnt mean to transgender people" got to do with China and apps?
Because Apple.
Seriously, that's all the justification Apple-Hating Slashtards seem to require.
Not trolling; just stating undeniable fact.
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But hey, they revolutionized the industry with the gen 1 IPOD, remember? Remember how it was vastly inferior to the Creative Nomad, at twice the price? Smaller HDD, no video play, tiny B&W screen, etc.....? Apple's contribution to tech has been rounded cor
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Apple is not an innovator. They are a technology parasite. They won't bring manufacturing back to America, because it would increase manufacturing costs by $50 per unit. On phones that cost $100 to manufacture..... and are sold for $700-$1000.
But hey, they revolutionized the industry with the gen 1 IPOD, remember? Remember how it was vastly inferior to the Creative Nomad, at twice the price? Smaller HDD, no video play, tiny B&W screen, etc.....? Apple's contribution to tech has been rounded corners (they used a time machine to retroactively invent non-sharp corners) and white plastic.
Prove it. ALL of it.
And the Nomad comparison is so ridiculous, it is even a well-known /. meme...
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I haven't seen the Nomad meme, but if there is one, it exists for a reason.
Apple is a fucking parasite, and the most egregious of their crimes is subsuming the concept of online video (which had already existed for a decade) with the term "pod-cast".
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Heres some other unrelated things to compare angrily: Tim cook has been known to prefer using an iphone over an android, and yet nobody has seen him wear a hat. Furthermore Google offer almost unlimited storage in their email product, but new programmers have to take a test.
Seriously though, wtf has "Grrrr apple isnt mean to transgender people" got to do with China and apps?
Nice strawman, shit-for-brains.
The point is Apple and Google virtue-signal by posturing over political fluff in the US but immediately turn around and kowtow to dictatorship in China and the Middle East where REAL human rights are at stake.
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If they ignored doing business with any country that has human rights violations then I can't think of a single country on earth they could do business in, maybe some of the smaller Scandinavian countries. Certainly US/Russia/UK/AUS/All Asian and middle eastern countries, all communist and dictator driven countries etc would be out and most European countries too. really companies should stay the fuck out of politics, obey the local laws, if you object refuse to do business there, end of story.
Perfectly stated!
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If they ignored doing business with any country that has human rights violations then I can't think of a single country on earth they could do business in, maybe some of the smaller Scandinavian countries. Certainly US/Russia/UK/AUS/All Asian and middle eastern countries, all communist and dictator driven countries etc would be out and most European countries too. really companies should stay the fuck out of politics, obey the local laws, if you object refuse to do business there, end of story.
Perfectly stated!
I think it's nonsensical to consider a government's human rights violations as a binary variable. There is certainly a wide range of severity of human rights abuse. A binary variable would be essentially equate totalitarian regimes that kill tens of millions to states that are guilty of privacy or property violations. A similar viewpoint for parents would equate sex abusers with parents who yell at their kids.
More importantly, in the specific case of China, the government-mandated censorship of apps has
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China? Peaceful? Please.
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China could easily kick Apple out of Asia. The influence China retains on emigrants is something few (compared to the number), in the west fully understand. It's quite easy to control... say developers working in the US while still having family in Asia. And yes, it does get to the point of industrial espionage .
Simple example is using technology you know to be weak, say shared password databases stored online. If you can access it from your desktop, so can anyone else. Companies the size of Apple and
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Haven't you heard? [theguardian.com]
Unbalanced equation (Score:2)
Xi trying to scare Tim Cook? (Score:3)
So Apple is supposed to ban [wsj.com] "prohibited content including pornography, gambling and counterfeit goods." That sounds ok, but I wonder what the other prohibited content is. Does it include private free speech, without the Chinese government able to listen in?
The same WSJ article says,
Apple depends on China for about one-fifth of its revenue. When sales in the market fell 26% in the three months ended in March 2016, Apple’s stock tumbled to a low of $90.34 within months.
I wonder if Xi is trying to scare Tim Cook, hoping Cook will pressure the US government into backing down on tariffs against China.
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Good point about threatening companies in a swing state. But I was thinking about Tim Cook paying lobbyists to lobby Congress.
Apple is dead but the corpse is wiggling (Score:1)
Tim Cook and pals still think they have a future and they need their investors to believe it and keep investing, but the truth is that they killed the company years ago and it's just taking time for the various bits of the corpse to stop wiggling.
They put very high profit margins over everything and thus moved all production to China for the cheap labor and lack of environmental controls. They pretended they simply could not be profitable employing middle class Americans, even though [a] Apple originally ro
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Still very much alive, but in an increasingly saturated market with no original ideas. Their biggest problem is that they tried to appear as the "fashionable" hardware brand. Things eventually go out of fashion. People already have all the tech hardware that they want. That's why companies like MS, Google and Amazon have moved into cloud. Apple is being left behind.
Big difference!
MS, Google and Amazon are almost exclusively software-based companies.
Apple cannot move a Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch or Apple TV "into the cloud". They are HARDWARE. And the manufacture and sale of that HARDWARE happens to be Apple's main business model.
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Tim Cook and pals still think they have a future and they need their investors to believe it and keep investing, but the truth is that they killed the company years ago and it's just taking time for the various bits of the corpse to stop wiggling.
They put very high profit margins over everything and thus moved all production to China for the cheap labor and lack of environmental controls. They pretended they simply could not be profitable employing middle class Americans, even though [a] Apple originally rose to greatness while employing Americans in America and [b] far smaller and less-wealthy companies were doing fine and were profitable making stuff in America with Americans.
In order to manufacture in China, Apple management made the same short-sighted moron moves many other American businesses made: they "partnered" with Chinese "businesses" (arms of the Chinese govt/party/military) and they had to teach the Chinese everything important about the product, its tech, and manufacturing it. After that point, it's only a matter of time before a Chinese entity replaces Apple. It's already impossible to buy a cell phone made in America, where cell phones were invented. No amount of Apple software or services can stop the inevitable end and the only thing uncertain is the date the company is de-listed at the stock exchange. This move is part of the proof that China is already in the driver's seat re Apple.
So, if that is the case, almost every single tech (and most non-tech) American company that sources from China should be following them down the drain...
But it simply doesn't work that way.
Plus, Apple: Proudly going out of business for over forty years!
Surprised? Apple is a capitalist business. (Score:4, Insightful)
Their primary concern is increasing profits, which happens by increasing the revenue (getting as close to a monopolist as possible) and lowering the costs (a.k.a. optimizing the workforce and lowering the tax burden).
In established oligarchies, where "the law" is drafted between lobbyists and legislators over expensive lunches paid by the former, Apple is in compliance because they write the laws.
In places like China, where the ruling elite is more aligned to an ideology, they listen and obey.
The job of Apple isn't to ask for more "democracy" in China. That's the job of the US government.
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The job of Apple isn't to ask for more "democracy" in China. That's the job of the US government.
It's everyone's job to ask for more democracy everywhere, and the fruits of capitalism are supposed to be a reward for the operation of a Free Market. China is getting the reward without the responsibility.
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But if you think it is your responsibility to ask for more democracy in China, why aren't you there?
It would be easier to silence me if I lived in China, so that doesn't even make a small amount of sense. Guess we know why you didn't log in.
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It would be easier to silence you in China, but you'd have at least a minimal impact. Bitching on Slashdot, you have none.
The only impact I'd have in China is on their corrections^Wprison labor system, into which they would rapidly throw me. Or on their organlegging operation, same. But people in the USA bringing attention to how the USA fuels China's inequity may achieve some small amount of good, however trivial. That still helps the world more than becoming a source of spare parts for Chinese oligarchs.
Also, who's the "we", are you schizophrenic or does it come from drinking too much poo?
Slashdotters. None of them will consider you credible.
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Democracy isn't even democracy in the original, Greek sense
Point to where I brought up ancient Greece. Their system of choosing voters is what ours was originally based on — you had to be a racially privileged male landowner in order to have a vote. It's not relevant today.
There is no free market; all legal markets are regulated to some extent,
Free markets and regulation are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you can only have a free market when you have enough regulation to prevent fraud.
Finally, it certainly is not "everyone's job" to advocate for any system of government, let alone the particular type of oligarchy that relies on elections
I said democracy, not oligarchy. You got literally everything wrong.
China is not a friendly country (Score:1)
China is a severely repressed communist country. How these tech companies never understood this is beyond me? The US and Europe is a far cry from the controlling nature of a socialist or communist country. I would have to say Apple is losing out in places like China, India and elsewhere because Apple is not the Golden child like it is in the US and EU.
China's Consumers of Apple Appliances Non Trivial (Score:1)
MamaHuhu (YouTubeHome) [youtube.com]
When Chinese Can't Afford The Latest Apple Product [youtube.com]
Old news, really, but what the American people don't know about Chinese culture is why moronic posts about organ harvesting, and "human rights abuses" are as perennial as the grass on
China's firewall prevents western corporations from denying the government vital and private information of its citizens. Soon, a generation will have passed since Yahoo first agreed to grant this access to its servers
Central (Score:1)
So.... do we see the problem with centrally controlled app stores that don't allow easily adding other sources yet?
Gambling is rampant in China (Score:1)
apple themed garden of approved ideas (Score:1)
Locked app store (Score:1)
Hey Apple (Score:2)
"Touch the devil and you can't let go."