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Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

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Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#141

Post by rendall »

fnordprefect wrote: post #10

This all comes down to the statement near the end: "I believe Apple should simply refuse to cooperate with oppressive governments" Which is another way of saying "I believe Apple should either not operate in certain countries, or should try to operate in those countries in defiance of the laws of those countries." The beef is primarily with the government. Companies are stuck in the middle -- either operate in compli…

Aside, OT: Cool username, fnordprefect. It's so clever I wish I had thought of it.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#142

Post by mrweasel »

m-p-3 wrote: post #139
john_minsk wrote: post #28

I just paid for 12 months worth of Skype subscription which I have used for just 2 calls back in January. I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store. Once I subscribed to New York times. The newspaper that was advertised to me for years in all Hollywood movies as a place where honesty and freedom are of highest priority. I had to spend an hour on a phone with their representatives to cancel it…

Personally I don't want all my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay, I want a system that all banks supports where I can manage my recurring payments/subscriptions, in which I can generate virtual, revocable credit cards to which I can set custom limits and track my expenses. I can do it for my emails, why not for my payment systems?

Not exactly what you're looking for, but I talked to a developer of a solution that integrates with online banking and recognizes subscriptions and allow you to cancel them directly from your online banking thingy.

Only downside is that it's the banks that has to do the integration. I can't really figure out how they deal with the actual unsubscribing bit. The subscriptions people are most likely to want to cancel has to be those who with the worst unsubscribe process.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#143

Post by pjmlp »

rglullis wrote: post #125
pjmlp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I checked everyone is free to ask for their help. Now if we are discussing that their support should be gratis, ok that is another matter.

The point is that - if we were to take seriously the claim that consumer rights are well protected by the governments outside of the US - their help shouldn't even be needed. My feeling living in Germany is that consumer protection rights goes as far as the "right" for some bureaucrat to keep their job. It's a constant feeling they create the problem so that they can sell the solution and get people to be oh-so-thank…

I see if differently, the EU governments have made it possible that such kind of help exists, and is actually empowered to protect us.

In US, as far as I am aware it isn't even possible to have such kind of help, and those organizations that do try to help, just go through the same endless court sessions as hiring a random lawyer would do, plus having to pay them way beyond the almost symbolic "Gebühren" that you pay here.

So while the situation isn't perfect, it could be much worse.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#144

Post by mrweasel »

jevgeni wrote: post #99
webmobdev wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want ALL my subscriptions to go through Apple Pay and App store. You do so only because you believe have no choice as you know that your democracy is so crippled that you don't expect them to protect your rights as a consumer any more! Where as many Europeans and Asians, who also enjoy democratic rights, will tell you openly that we would prefer that our democratically elected government protect our consumer righ…

First of all, as a European, I'm not sure what you are talking about. Try cancelling your mobile contract in Germany early. Secondly, I might want to buy/subscribe to things that come from companies outside of EU.

I thought it was an EU regulation, but perhaps not. In Denmark you can't bind customers to a mobile contract for more than six month. You can sell them a phone and have them pay that off for 24 months, but that different, you can pay that off at anytime, for a fee.

That's also why you're not getting a new phone from your carrier every two years like most Americans seems to do.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#145

Post by [deleted] »

donkeyd wrote: post #45
smnrchrds wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would consider Epic's action the corporate equivalent of civil disobedience , which is a form of protest. Fighting back seems an apt description for such a protest.

The term being correct doesn't take away that they weren't banned for fighting back. They were banned for breaking rules that were clear beforehand.

[deleted]

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#146

Post by acdha »

Nextgrid wrote: post #75
theshrike79 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Allow the iPhone to be fully unlocked, which makes it possible to install any software. There isn't a disclaimer in the world that would make this worth it. If someone bricks their phone with a dodgy app after "fully unlocking", they WILL be going after Apple, not the app developer. I consider the locked nature of Apple devices a feature and an useful at that.

We've had unlocked desktop PCs for decades and the only "bricking" you can imagine is BIOS updates going wrong, and even that is nowadays going away with things like fallback BIOSes. It's perfectly possible to allow arbitrary third-party software without exposing the device to a risk of bricking.

It’s possible to compromise a device at the firmware level - as evidenced by the recent UEFI attacks in the wild - but the better comparison would be ransomeware. That’s shut down businesses, school systems, hospitals, etc. and is completely prevented by the iOS security model. Whether or not I like the impact on flexibility, there are inarguable benefits to the users from having devices which cannot be resold, permanently compromised, etc.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#147

Post by simonh »

vetinari wrote: post #120
simonh wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I'm fed up with people criticising Apple because it refuses to instruct it's employees to criminalise themselves. Nobody expects any other companies to do this. It's bizzare to me how distorted a moral framework can be that people blame a company for obeying bad laws, as if breaking laws and criminalising employees was an acceptable and moral way to run a business. Sure a company can fight governments in cour…

> people criticising Apple because it refuses to instruct it's employees to criminalise themselves. That's not what they criticize. They criticize Apple because Apple positioned itself to be the sole actor capable of enforcing such a bad laws. That they do it, surprised nobody. In this case, if they were not capable of destroying Telegram on iOS platform, their request would have no teeth and even the governments wou…

This really hasn't got anything to do with App Store exclusivity. They have a business model that's widely used and has been perfectly legal and established for many decades before they adopted it. This happens to make them vulnerable to certain forms of regulatory control. That's a government and regulatory issue, not a business issue.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#148

Post by hengheng »

sveme wrote: post #106
rglullis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea is one of my favorite tells to find out the level of alienation of people regarding their own governments. The top 10 conglomerates from South Korea amount to more than half their GDP. This level of centralization alone should tell you how the regulations are enacted to protect the corporations, not the people. If Germany (and more generally Brussels) was actually serious about environmental regulations, VW…

why do the workers of VW have to pay with a loss of their jobs for the wrongdoings of their managers? Several of those responsible have already spent time in prison, others will follow.

Companies with rotten culture are ripe for their own kind of disruption. Above a certain level of decadence, it is more promising to build a parallel company on the other side of the street rather than trying to remove the rotten apples. Countless examples in history. One of the few ways to keep a megacorp alive at this stage is government subsidies, corruption or contracts, with the goal of exploiting its scale advantages.

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#149

Post by microtonal »

ummonk wrote: post #122
microtonal wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, perhaps vote for politicians that do have your rights and not corporation's rights at heart? Convince people that protecting their rights and livelihoods is not socialism or unamerican? I know that this is difficult in the US, both because there is so little choice in elections and it is difficult to convince other people to vote differently. But you can be sure that if everyone puts all their eggs in A…

Dude you're responding to someone in Belarus. Americans voting for nonsocialist candidates is not the issue there.

Wait what? Googling the user name that I am replying to leads to:

https://github.com/baddox

San Francisco, CA

Re: Falling Out of Love with Apple, Part 3: Content and Censorship

#150

Post by pdimitar »

pjmlp wrote: post #111
jevgeni wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, as a European, I'm not sure what you are talking about. Try cancelling your mobile contract in Germany early. Secondly, I might want to buy/subscribe to things that come from companies outside of EU.

Depends if you are willing to have some support from Verbraucherschutzzentrale or not. I can tell you that my almost impossible to resign contract from Vodafone got quickly sorted out with their help.

Most people aren't aware of these extra entities that can help protect their interests. So to them the system has failed and I can see their point.

Navigating your rights as a citizen and/or consumer shouldn't be a thing. It should be an automatic action.

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