Russia presses Apple to install Kremlin-approved apps

If you are just going by the intent and marketing of any platform vendor, plenty of things are technically impossible. But exploits and flaws in software and hardware exist, and the resources a nation state can bring to bear to find and use them are significant.

There is a reason vendors run bug bounty programmes, why the jailbreak scene is still a thing, and cybercrime in general is booming.

No one vendor has solved computer security.

Taken at face value, the law, as approved by the Russian parliament [1], is, ostensibly, designed to improve the experience of the local customers (who, annoyingly, are depicted as too clueless to know how to install the applications they want). It is introduced under the rubric of "protecting customers rights", demands that smartphones, PCs and smart TVs come with pre-installed local software, and surely, surely, could be spun under a different narrative: an adorably humanist one, concerned with tailoring to the local language and culture (which might have been chosen by the left-leaning commentariat if it were about a small country obsessed with preserving its national identity), or a cynically economical one, focused on protecting local jobs.

Again, I am not defending the law — I find it offensive towards the customers who have to delete all that pre-installed crap. I am just amused by the tone that the Economist has chosen to present this news.

1 - https://sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/757423-7, in Russian

There was a series in a British magazine, many years ago, where a journalist would ring up a restaurant asking for special treatment for a celebrity. So they'd ring up The Ivy or whatever and say "Look, Madonna is coming in, is it possible you can serve her kid some chips?". The gag was that when it was an A-lister, the restaurant would always bend over backwards for them, but when they rang up as Kerry Katona or something, the restaurant would give a stiffly worded response along the lines of "The Ivy only serves the highest in culinary quality, and Ms Katona should leave her kids at home".

Anyway, China is a gigantic, buoyant market with a huge and growing middle class who will be Apple consumers for a long time, and also a crucial part of Apple's manufacturing strategy. CCP ain't going anywhere fast.

Russia is a failing state, and anyone who aides and abets the regime is likely to be considered an enemy of the people in a few years time, let alone the reputational damage in other Western countries of supporting Putin's regime.