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AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

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Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is expecting companies to "do the right thing" and not "make money". If there was ever a time companies were good stewards to the world - that time ended before I was born. Yes, Apple is not doing the right thing. Show me any fortune 100 company in the world that would do the right thing... What's frustrating - I think - in this case, is the amount of Apple fanboys who insist that Apple is literally the i…

> Show me any fortune 100 company in the world that would do the right thing... Companies don't do anything. People do. The individuals who make up any Fortune 100 company most likely do want to do the right thing individually, but communication at scale is really hard which leads to all kinds of unintended consequences.

> Companies don't do anything. People do. The individuals who make up any Fortune 100 company most likely do want to do the right thing individually, but communication at scale is really hard which leads to all kinds of unintended consequences.

Maybe the majority of the worker bees.

The people who make decisions have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder profits.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#422
The power dynamic between China and Apple doesn't get enough attention. Apple needs China, but China doesn't need Apple.

There are few if any places capable of manufacturing the amount of products China does for Apple, especially at the price. China is also an enormous market to Apple.

I don't agree with the treatment of protestors or the use of technology to surveil its citizens, but the bottom line is that in China, China calls the shots. Apple can either get in line or manufacture its phones elsewhere.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#423
I'm sick to death of seeing these corporations pretending to care about human rights, then doing stuff like this

Or pretending to care about the environment, then forcing people to buy new devices (with packaging) instead of repairing the ones they already own

Or pretending to care about privacy, then scanning local files for "undesirable content" (it doesn't matter what the content is, once the infra is there, it's there to stay)

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that whenever a corporation says something that sounds good, it's probably a lie.

The only thing that will ever force Apple's hand with regard to this human rights issue is legislation, they've lost the right to trust long ago

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#424
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics. Counterpoint: They could have just rolled out the feature change globally. Instead Apple makes it clear with singling out China, that this change was demanded by the CCP.

They've had years to pull manufacturing out of China to avoid having to make these compromises, but they chose not to. They could forgo the Chinese market, as many other companies have, in order to avoid needing to make unsavory choices, but they chose not to. And don't blame the shareholders for pushing Apple to stay in China. By that logic, no company is guilty of anything.

It's very hard to pull manufacturing out of China.

No other nation has the combination of infrastructure, production networks, human capital, affordable energy, investment financing. I've long been fascinated by productive eco-systems -- how do they arise, what can destroy them, but suffice it to say that they are magical things. They often spring up out of nowhere, as a result of historical accidents, and then many try to duplicate them, usually without success. Lots of municipalities think they can create a new silicon valley in their dilapidated downtown areas if they throw in a few bike lanes, smoothie bars, and lofts -- and what happens is similar to Polynesian cargo cults, where you have bamboo air traffic control towers erected hoping that planes would arrive. Apple's failed attempts to move production to India should be an object lesson in how irreplaceable Chinese manufacturing is. Many Americans, which prize IP and design, yet are confused about manufacturing and insist it's just grunt work anyone can do, can't really fathom how uniquely productive Chinese manufacturing is compared to the rest of the world, and how difficult it is to matching even a fraction of that productivity.

New productive ecosystems will need to arise to replace it -- and it will eventually happen somewhere, but it's not going to happen on a corporate schedule and in locations you control. Similarly, attempts to "reshore" production to the U.S. are also doomed to failure. We do not have those manufacturing ecosystems anymore.

The productive ecosystems that sprung up in China are truly unique and stand along side the Ruhr valley, Silicon Valley, Detroit in its heyday, as world class ecosystems. You can't just move to another place and hope to get anywhere near the same productivity.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#425
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the alternative (Google) is worse.

Is it? With the Android Open Source Project you can create your own completely Google-free Android distribution that you can install on quite a lot of devices. Not that I like Google, I actually actively dislike it and hate all the anti-competitive things they did (with Android, too), but let's stay with the facts here.

Even with an AOSP rom, can't the same thing happen here? "Nearby Share" seem to require Google Play store functionality: https://support.google.com/files/answer/10514188?hl=en#zippy...

I suppose the alternative AOSP rom wouldn't even have "Nearby Share" as a feature? I suppose in that case you could use some other protocol/service that wasn't bound to Google (maybe Briar?).

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timing of the change seems quite conspicuous [1], and it's also weird that Apple would introduce this in China first and only roll it out to the rest of the world next year. The same article mentions that Apple blocks the Taiwanese flag emoji in China, for which it's hard to come up with an explanation other than bowing to censorship. 1: https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2022/11/netizen-voices-apple-r...

Apple certainly tailors the emojis available to the local political climate. They don't, for instance, have the flag of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, instead using the flag of the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Truth. And it's not just apple, on android we (U.S.) get a "water gun" for gun and no emoji shows up when you search for rifle.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#427
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.

You know what actually makes sense? Creating a setting that the user can change as they see fit.

But options are so complicated and boring. Can I just pay you to pick the best one for me?

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#428
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only iPhones had a way to turn off its cellular radio, some kind of “airplane mode” or something

Doesn't "airplane mode" disable "airdrop" as well?

Airdrop uses a combination of bluetooth and wifi and does work with Airplane mode enabled.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#429
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.

You know what actually makes sense? Creating a setting that the user can change as they see fit.

That would be nice, right?

Unfortunately, .

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#430
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…

The operating system is not the missing part of the puzzle. There are plenty of FOSS operating systems already.

The missing part of the puzzle is that phones are much more than an OS. To get a phone, you need an SOC, baseband, drivers, regulatory approval, manufacturing, etc. Those are the missing parts.

I think it's a pretty futile effort to make a completely open phone. Even the richest companies on the planet outsource much of the above. Pretty much every previous effort to make an open phone has failed to make much of anything open beyond the OS, let alone all of it.

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