It would be good to remember this moment next time some of their marketing bullshit about privacy will surface again. Their word extends no further than the next paycheck. And people still fall for it.
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Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
721–730 of 931 posts
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#722"On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984.'" -Apple, 1983 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)
"2019, on the other hand..."
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#723Blizzard and now Apple. I think this is very serious and it should be a wake-up call. As simple citizens we don't have much choices but vote with our wallets and use social networks to attack the most valuable asset of those companies, their reputation.
That is unfortunately the essence of the issue surfacing with South Park, Blizzard, NBA, & now Apple. The Chinese market is the "wallet" and China is "voting" with it.
They have the ability to almost instantly evaporate a multi-billion dollar market. That is the kind of "wallet power" (somewhat idealistic) democratic-capitalist consumers like to think they have, but never really execute on with the same impact. This isn't defeatism on my part - things could be different - but they aren't for now.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#724Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “just don’t spend money there” is a bit reductionist and trivializes the problem of corporations with more power than nation-states. You're totally mistaken if you believe that boycotts and the like aren't taken seriously by big companies, especially companies like Apple where the brand is more important than the product. Of course, it all depends on the size of the boycott, but it doesn't have to cost them million…
Nobody is gonna boycott something they use daily and depend on
They can and do when a substitute product exists.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#725And 2 days ago I got down voted for making the point that Apple is trying to slowly put macOS users in the same cage by nagging developers and pushing them to their crappy store.
In this regard, macOS works almost exactly how I wish the iPhone worked. Apple makes a curated app store available to users which they monitor for security and privacy violations, and they prevent the execution of unsigned code.
However, users can allow unsigned apps with a quick Terminal command, and even grant them low-level privileges like kernel access with a somewhat less-quick Terminal command.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, come on, there are reasons which are less bad: Not accepting an app because it steals cc data. Virus. Etc. Let's not pretend this is business as usual, however morally bad the usual business already is.
But isn't this all the same thing? Apple made a decision: "This form of speech is dangerous, so we're going to decide what our customers are allowed to see." And so Apple blocks both dangerous speech, and safe speech that could harm Apple's revenue, and safe speech that powerful individuals dislike. People always seem to think of this as a false dichotomy, so I want to emphasize again that I think Apple's curated App…
I don't think it's the same thing. Apple has at least three options:
- Have a store with, say, quality control, and the option to side-load
- Have a store with "quality control" (and, as I see it, some rather large levers to fight competition), no option to side-load, but don't bow to state actors
- same, but bow to state actors.
I wish it's the first, I thought it's the second, but we now see it's the third. I think the the third is worse than the second option.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally I think the real problem is that the OS is fundamentally broken. All current OSes are fundamentally broken from a security point of view because they all pre-date the era when security was such a concern and are designed to run only de-facto trusted code. All the security we have including all iOS's security is a bolt-on afterthought. A modern security and privacy conscious OS would be "principle of least…
This is what happens when you try to do that - you pop up so many prompts that everyone just clicks "Allow" out of frustration anyways, which defeats the purpose. https://tyler.io/macos-10-15-vista/ https://tyler.io/broken/
The UI for it may be the toughest unsolved problem. Something must be done to simplify and group concepts. You can't just give the user a barrage of micro-permission dialogs.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#728This is why Apple will always be a second-class citizen to Android. If I have a good reason, I can toggle a setting and install APKs built by anyone. If I have a good reason, I can wipe my phone and unlock the bootloader to literally replace and de-Google the entire OS. When I buy a phone, it's a hardware product I'm buying. Just like when you buy a PC/laptop, what you run on it is your business, not the manufacturer…
> When I buy a phone, it's a hardware product I'm buying.
Not to me.
Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s not how this works. Apple is one of the wealthiest companies in the world, and saying “just don’t spend money there” is a bit reductionist and trivializes the problem of corporations with more power than nation-states. You need to fight fire with fire: governments of the world (especially the US government) need to create laws that restrict and punish this kind of behavior. Otherwise, I sincerely doubt Apple’s…
There is no reason you can't do both. Yes, this does mean not buying next year's iPhone model, suck it up or stop pretending you care so much.
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Re: Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
China is a big growing market and the CCP cleverly share a huge piece of the pie with Western companies. Western Democracies are growth addict and China is their dealer. Another "problem" is that despite its corruption and autocracy, the CCP still manages to make life better for the average Chinese. On the street it is not a hopeless hell, so right now giving up some of their freedom looks like a good deal to them. S…
> right now giving up some of their freedom looks like a good deal to them. Getting that freedom back once the deal sours will be very hard, and get much harder each year as surveillance and repression grow.
As much as this seems like a foreign concept to westerners, most Chinese citizens (outside of the European provinces) simply do not care about it the way westerners do.
To GP's point, their lives have and continue to improve, with the fastest growing middle class this decade. And before you project western ideals on China and start doomsaying about their impending economic collapse, understand that people have been saying that for a decade too.