I wonder what Foxconn, a Taiwanese company and massive Apple manufacturing partner, thinks of this.
Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
331–340 of 730 posts
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
You genuinely believe Tim Cook has more leverage than China? By what fraction do you think Apple's profits would drop if it had to rebuild all of its factories outside of China? By what fraction do you think China's GDP or tax revenue would drop if it kicked Apple out of China? Even if that situation were reversed, Tim Cook answers to shareholders via a board of directors. He's legally obligated to maximize sharehold…
> He's legally obligated to maximize shareholder value. Is this actually true? Or just a "institutional wisdom"?
"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI...
If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock." - Tim Cook
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it simply a reminder to their people of who's in charge, at this level of pettiness? Most countries have petty border disputes. A famous country occupies territory in Cuba where it built a military prison. Cuba claims that the military presence is occupation of territory it rightfully owns. The famous country refuses to leave; it claims it only leases it based on a hundred-year-old document, and sends $4k checks…
China decided to take control of Hong Kong based on a hundred year old document.
A document signed with Taiwan instead of POC I would add.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can easily build the feature that can be misused. Think of it as a general region filter or an emoji set to increase engagement. You want to ensure your design team and product matches the demographic you're trying to target so you can choose which ones are approved for that area. Completely reasonable, not a malicious feature to build either. Except when it prevents you from selling your device in China.
From what we know about how the emoji blocking was implemented for mainland China, I doubt it's a benign feature just being misused: https://objective-see.com/blog/blog_0x34.html Notably, the code specifically looks for the "CN" locale, and calls "removeEmoji".
Wow, that is depressing. I would definitely be ashamed to implement a feature like that.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. We shouldn't blame the engineer but the managers asking for this in the first place and knowing they can get away with any sort of "small pressures" they put on their employees.
I put the blame on both. We have a responsibility to exercise ethical discretion in our work, and we have the power to do so. If you get fired for refusing to remove the Taiwanese flag from iOS, then take to your blog, set a fire under Apple's ass, and wait for the interview offers to roll in.
Isn’t it likely that would be an NDA violation?
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a simplistic view. When push comes to shove, companies don't behave with political principles. Apple is not going to throw away access to 1/6 of world's population over a political dispute. It's unrealistic to expect any company to, if they're sufficiently large. The only way to achieve political goals is to apply political pressure directly at the state level, or to work with domestic movements that seek to…
Google did. Yea they want to head back (now that they realize nobody cared), but they pulled out of China entirely back in 2011 over censorship.
That was the public reason but i’ve also heard they simply could’t compete and decided to use that excuse to save face.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, AFAIK my blog isn't. Yet. I get visitors from China on my post about controlling the world's cheapest quadcopter from a PC via arduino and nrf24l01+... edit: I just checked, it's accessible from mainland China, though quite slow.
If anyone else wants to check their website's accessibility from China, I run a service that lets developers proxy HTTP requests through real Chinese (and worldwide) residential ISP customers: https://packetstream.io We have a worldwide network of real users that install a relay app on win/mac and we proxy customer requests through their home ISP connections like this: ``` developer@Developers-MacBook-Pro-2:~% curl -…
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
China is showing the ability to control one of the world's largest, and most advanced companies. It isn't petty–it is scary. The U.S. and others have sold their soul to the devil for $299 flat screen tvs.
> The U.S. and others have sold their soul to the devil for $299 flat screen tvs. This seems to suggest the populace is at fault, wanting and buying cheap gadgets no matter what the consequences are? In truth, I think most people are simply unaware of the many problems caused both by consumerism, and the moral spinelessness of pretty much all large corporations and how that is brought about by market forces. Even in…
Most people think if the government allows this then it is okay.
People are buying based on price, quality and for some products image.
The products purchased based on image can be shamed away. The other two cannot. No matter what some will buy the best quality and some the cheapest. Government can't help with the first but can control the second.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
I put the blame on both. We have a responsibility to exercise ethical discretion in our work, and we have the power to do so. If you get fired for refusing to remove the Taiwanese flag from iOS, then take to your blog, set a fire under Apple's ass, and wait for the interview offers to roll in.
Isn’t it likely that would be an NDA violation?
Maybe, but for my part I'd break it in a heartbeat and let them sue me. Perhaps the right answer is a tech workers union.
Re: Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong
#340What's it take for an engineer in the US to actually do something like this? If my boss/product manager wanted me to do something like this, I'd be calling them out for shitty politics, and telling them they need to find a new engineer because I'd quit immediately - and likely incite others to come with me. Maybe I have a higher sense of morality than others, but I'm no shill for China's power over Taiwan. I can use…
Perhaps the engineer in question is a Chinese citizen, or immigrant from China who still has strong ties to their homeland. Maybe they think it was right to remove the Taiwan flag, and has been quietly annoyed for years that it'd still been there.
Or, hell, maybe the person is an American citizen, not even of Chinese descent, and agrees with the PRC's stance on Taiwan.
(Frankly I probably wouldn't get along with someone like this, but at a company the size of Apple, there are bound to be more than a few.)