AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes • Hacker News Board

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#361

Post by esskay » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

mhoad wrote: post #9

I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics. I’ve lost count of how many scandals have come out of their relationship with China from the suicide nets to the repeated investigations showing their supply chain was riddled with slave labor that they would later campaign against protections that would prevent it. Now this. They are fucked as a company, I can’t get out of their ecosys…

> They are fucked as a company

Their profit margin would suggest otherwise.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#362

Post by sergiotapia » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

rchaud wrote: post #213

Time for a new operating system (if we didn't already hit that mark with the 2013 NSA leaks). Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei: they all exist at the pleasure of the state. Please ignore their glitzy PR-laden presentations about protecting people's privacy and upholding human rights. They will sell you out in a second if it's convenient. On the mobile side of things, we need, at the barest minimum: - a web based OS wit…

This sounds like https://serenityos.org/

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#363

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

throwaway23597 wrote: post #2

Apple: where it's totally fine to build products with what amounts to slave labor, and aiding the CCP in censorship is totally cool too, but Twitter is far too dangerous to be allowed on the app store because a meanie is in charge of it.

[deleted]

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#364

Post by colordrops » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

tananaev wrote: post #35

mhoad wrote: post #9

I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics. I’ve lost count of how many scandals have come out of their relationship with China from the suicide nets to the repeated investigations showing their supply chain was riddled with slave labor that they would later campaign against protections that would prevent it. Now this. They are fucked as a company, I can’t get out of their ecosys…

On one hand, yes, it's not ideal. On the other hand it's still probably a better alternative to a Chinese phone that spies on you. What is the alternative? If they take a stance, they will be banned from China completely. You need to pick your battles instead of being idealist. Look at Russia. There was an opposition back in the day, but they couldn't agree between each other because of smaller differences. And now w…

They should have pulled their manufacturing out of China years ago, and forgone the market. It's pretty clear that the compromises Apple makes are worse overall than any supposed benefit of taking market share from Chinese phone manufacturers.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#365

Post by MBCook » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

sfusato wrote: post #132

gorkish wrote: post #73

I have to admit that when you actually look at the details this is a rather perplexing change. Ditto for reading the comments here. Is Apple being Pro-CCP with this change? If you open airdrop to everyone, your device can be tracked and identified individually. When this setting is disabled, this becomes far harder. I'm of the opinion that this change is good and actually increases security across the board, includin…

Why is it being rolled out in China first?

Because China told them to after protests last month or so. This did not just happen in the last two days.

This is arguably a good setting too, as there are plenty of stories of people in other parts of the world who AirDrop lewd/violent/disgusting pictures to anyone around with their phone set to “allow anyone”. It’s happened on planes, for example.

But this is a tool people figured out they could use for a different purpose: spreading info during protests. So now it’s caught up in politics.

For all the “evil Apple”, they’ve been better than others. But they are a total hostage. The vast majority of the stuff is in China. Piss off the CCP and the company practically dies overnight.

Yes, they should have fixed that long ago. But here we are.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#366

Post by Covzire » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

snoot wrote: post #191

brandur wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair: (1) it seems like the update landed recently, and (2) the article you linked does cite the same reasoning as the Twitter posts. Even if was a little ahead of the more recent Zero Covid protests, it seems like AirDrop's been a known vector in China to share government criticism, which is why Apple's cracking down.

> which is why Apple's cracking down. This is absurd. Apple is doing this because of government pressure, not because of their own desire to crack down.

They may not desire to crack down, but they desire to crack down to preserve profits, which means they still end up desiring to crack down.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#367

Post by ben_w » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

mhoad wrote: post #9

I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics. I’ve lost count of how many scandals have come out of their relationship with China from the suicide nets to the repeated investigations showing their supply chain was riddled with slave labor that they would later campaign against protections that would prevent it. Now this. They are fucked as a company, I can’t get out of their ecosys…

I don't trust any mega-corporation very far these days. That said:

> the suicide nets

I know this was painted as a scandal, but was it actually?

First, at the time Foxconn — or rather more specifically, Longhua Science and Technology Park, which was the site of the suicides that got in the news — was employing approximately 50-80% the population of Wyoming at the time depending on who you ask. For reference, there were 170 deaths by suicide in Wyoming in 2019.

Second, I've seen anti-fall nets on the inside of the Galeria department store in Alexanderplatz Berlin, which has no relevant reputation I've ever heard of, and therefore seems like a straightforward health and safety measure.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#368

Post by GekkePrutser » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #8

This seems to have been announced a couple of weeks ago, so we don't need to just trust the tweet: https://www.macworld.com/article/1377200/apple-to-limit-aird... Having it open to everyone for only a limited amount of time actually kind of seems like the right thing, but it's hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first.

Of course the zero-covid protests were also around a couple weeks ago..

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#369

Post by gruturo » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

macinjosh wrote: post #52

When I signed up for this site 12 years ago I was a huge Apple fan and almost steered my web dev career into iOS dev. Really glad I didn't do that, but also wish I could change my HN username now!

While there's no UI for this, you can email the HN admins for a username change.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#370

Post by LordDragonfang » Mon, Nov 28, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

esskay wrote: post #318

jackmott42 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their ethics are terrible. You pay $1000 for a computer, and you are only allowed to install software on it that Apple says you are allowed to. You can only pay for software on their own store. Complete bullshit, and it makes me sad that so many here on HN and elsehwere, tech people who learned to program because their 8088 was completely open and free to let you actually create things and learn about computing, so m…

Quoted post unavailable.

If you're referring to what I think you're referring, one of those "hoops" is paying Apple $100 a year.