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AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

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Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#541

Post by colordrops »

rsj_hn wrote: post #424
colordrops wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get that it's a monumental problem. But Apple is the largest company on earth, with a mind blowing amount of cash on hand, so if anyone could afford to build a plant somewhere else, it would be them. It's not the same tier as recreating silicon valley - they would be building their own factory, not an entire tech ecosystem in a particular region. It's a difficult but solveable problem.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#543

Post by jsnell »

khazhoux wrote: post #531

Any Apple employee (or really, any large-company employee) would agree that this change is months of work. From the original problem statement (people get spammed when they leave AirDrop set to Everyone), to many strongly-opinionated discussions on how to solve (There's not a problem; Pop up a reminder to disable after an hour; Enable only for some period of time [5 minutes, 10 minutes, 1 hour, user-configured]), and…

And is it standard procedure for Apple to release these kinds of changes only in China? They're clearly putting massive priority on this change launching in that geography ASAP (for one reason or another), so it doesn't seem hard to believe that this bypassed most of their other process as well.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#544

Post by thisisnico »

anon400232 wrote: post #397
ThePhysicist wrote: post #127

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...

Bowing to censorship? Bowing isn't necessarily done happily. Or maybe more ideas are also in play? Perhaps recognizing the existing power dynamics? Perhaps playing the game over a longer time frame? Not all ethicists recommend "dying on your sword" so to speak. Sometimes it is useful to maintain influence and fight another day. These things are far from simple. If you want Apple to push back on censorship in China, l…

Considering that China has the ultimate power over apple with Foxconn manufacturing their device in China. Apple makes a lot of money because of China, China can have a lot of influence over Apple. I'm not pro-China, pro-America, pro-anything, just stating this fact.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#545

Post by interpol_p »

TylerE wrote: post #468
chrisseaton wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the beef with the home bar? Seems pretty innocent?

Because I absolutey do not need it, and it's infuriating to have a high contrast item in view when using a dark app (Like, say, a video player...)

There is an API for developers to use to signal that a view should hide the home indicator [1]. It doesn't guarantee that it will be hidden (the user may have accessibility or other options enabled which take precedence and prefer to display it)

When playing fullscreen video on my phone, I do not see the home indicator, as it hides after a short delay due to most developers adopting this API. Just tested in VLC and the home indicator is hidden after about 3 seconds of fullscreen video playback

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiviewcontro...

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#546

Post by TylerE »

interpol_p wrote: post #545
TylerE wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I absolutey do not need it, and it's infuriating to have a high contrast item in view when using a dark app (Like, say, a video player...)

There is an API for developers to use to signal that a view should hide the home indicator [1]. It doesn't guarantee that it will be hidden (the user may have accessibility or other options enabled which take precedence and prefer to display it) When playing fullscreen video on my phone, I do not see the home indicator, as it hides after a short delay due to most developers adopting this API. Just tested in VLC and t…

It’s much more problematic on iPad Pro, since lots of devs don’t have one. It’s also geometrically larger, especially in landscape.

Getting app developers to fix it is a very mixed bag. One app I use a lot (F1 TV) had had this issue forever, and many many many people have complained to F1 Media about it. They don’t care, apparently, and that’s a high end app that costs upwards of $80/yr

Also, erm, Safari. I was actually complaining about this (with a screenshot) just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=33770571

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#547

Post by int_19h »

whimsicalism wrote: post #328
ThePhysicist wrote: post #127

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.

That would be because IRA remains the sole government of Afghanistan recognized by relevant agencies such as UN. Which companies generally defer to when they came, because it cuts down on a lot of individual political decisions they'd have to make otherwise.

Yandex is an interesting showcase of how bad this can get - they literally dropped country borders from their maps last year "for better user experience". And I don't mean just lines that you normally see while browsing the map, but even when you ask for it deliberately. For example, if you look up a city, you get its territory highlighted on the map - but that's not the case for countries, it just puts a marker "somewhere in the middle".

They also removed administrative regional boundaries without announcing that change - probably because looking up regions at the border would have to include a part of said border into the displayed boundary, making it discoverable.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#548

Post by wonnage »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #471
wonnage wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that anyone with airdrop set to everyone wants to receive your files is just wrong

What else would be the interpretation of the "Everything" setting, especially at a large gathering like a protest? Also, it's not like they just receive the file without consent, last I used an iPhone there was a popup allowing the other user to accept/decline the file. So it's less like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to receive your file" and more like "anyone with airdop set to everyone wants to be asked…

The usage in HK that everyone keeps citing was as a way to spam incoming Mainland tourists' phones with protest flyers. Like okay, you might agree with the content in this case, but it can (and has) easily be dick pics instead.

By your logic Apple's default setting of "contacts only" AirDrop visibility is also a nefarious way to prevent protest literature from being distributed

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#549

Post by fishywang »

The apple apologists in this thread is weird.

Sure the timing of this tweet is weird, as people pointed out, that the change actually happened a few weeks ago (there were tweets about it then, but those are mainly in Chinese). But protesting via airdrop has been happening in China for months before this change.

Even if we give Apple the benefit of doubt, that they actually planned this change long time ago unrelated to any protests (spams maybe), and the plan is to roll it out to a market for testing before roll out to all markets, with the protests they _should_ change the market for the test. Not changing the plan (that's _assuming_ they really have good intention aka fight spams behind it) will make themselves look bad and they have no one else to blame.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#550

Post by kaba0 »

bitwzrd wrote: post #414
dymk wrote: 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

Why should we possibly believe that any software switches actually fully disable anything? If there isn't a hardware killswitch, there is no reasonable expectation that the cellular radio is actually disabled... There are trustworthy sources claiming that the NSA still tracks devices that are completely "powered off". No reason to believe that the CCP doesn't have that ability as well.

Hardware killswitches are security theatre, if you can’t trust the software layer to that degree than you are just lost behind saving.
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