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AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

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Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#551

Post by acdha »

horsawlarway wrote: post #406
CiaranMcNulty wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing stopping Apple from making the same device, but giving you the keys to install your own software on it You... don't think you can install your own software on MacOS?

His 80 year old mother isn't using MacOS. She's on an ipad or an iphone - where I do genuinely think I can't install my own software. They're both perfectly fine general purpose machines - except apple holds the keys to the engine, and only hands them out when they approve of the use case.

I think it’s useful to remember why so many people jumped to iPads, because we did that experiment for a couple decades. When people have the ability to install arbitrary code we know they will, and will click through almost any warning if they’ve been promised money, games, or porn. I think the sandboxing approach is getting closer to where you could potentially safely have third-party stores but I think that would still leave a lot of abuse if it allowed VPNs or content filters, full screen use, background operations, etc.

I don’t love where that leaves us but it does make me wonder whether a better compromise would be something like regulation requiring third-party app installs but with some kind of business liability & registration requirement so e.g. Epic could set one up but fly by night scammers couldn’t easily set something up and spam AARP members.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#552

Post by int_19h »

sn_master wrote: post #451
bell-cot wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at how much stuff there is under Settings on a recent version of iOS? Admittedly it's not the Windows Registry, but...

> Windows Registry That's a term I haven't heard in years. I wonder if anyone still remembers the literal thousands of settings that were possible to change and all the "tweaking" programs that were made for it.

Both are still around.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#553

Post by whimsicalism »

int_19h wrote: post #547
whimsicalism wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

How does that standard apply to Taiwan?

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#554

Post by mrep »

thisisnico wrote: post #544
anon400232 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Foxconn does assembly and that is not a big cost of an iphone [0]. Like literally just a fraction compared to American IP, Taiwan CPUs, or Japanese cameras and the latter are all much harder to move compared to assembly.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/apple-iphone-7-and-...

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#555

Post by oneplane »

fsflover wrote: post #486
kube-system wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 out…

> I think it's a pretty futile effort to make a completely open phone. No, it's not: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 .

I don't think you can call anything with GSMA IP in it "open". Same goes for systems that won't run without their closed binary blobs loaded at boot or runtime to enable hardware.

So far, there has only been 3G-ish experimental SDR-based true open hardware, but it's the size of a shoebox, not a phone.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#556

Post by vjulian »

int_19h wrote: post #547
whimsicalism wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Perhaps Yandex maps could be perceived as representing an ideal future devoid of essentially arbitrary political boundaries and silly notions of citizenship.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#557

Post by cmeacham98 »

wonnage wrote: post #548
cmeacham98 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

It's entirely possible it's misleading, but the tweet in this post pretty heavily implies it was from protester to protester, you're the one who brought up the "spamming tourists" thing.

Also, I'm not even sure I agree with the "a tool can be used for evil so therefore taking features away is good". Anyone can email you a dick pick, does that mean email provides should stop accepting images in emails that aren't from contacts (with no option to disable this filtering, except in 10 minute increments)?

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

Context matters. If the default used to be everyone, and Apple pushed out a new default to users in China immediately around when protests, then yes I would say it was nefarious.

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#558

Post by hirsin »

ipaddr wrote: post #487
zerocrates wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gun emoji became a toy on all major platforms everywhere several years ago. This is surely related to the political climate but I believe the entities involved applied that change worldwide.

I would love to learn more about backroom emoji politics. It sounds foolish on the surface but emojis have a big reach.

Here's some folks taking emojis very seriously. Including the poop emoji face. It's a good read - https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17393-wg2-emoji-feedback.pd... (pdf)

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#559

Post by tshaddox »

_jal wrote: post #436
snoot wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. They were taking about Apple cracking down. That’s not the same as being forced to make a software change at the governments demand.

Whatever "Apple's" feelings (really, the executive team's; a corporation does not have feelings) about it, Apple is the entity that made the change. And it is a weird kind of "force" they face. Apple, over the course of decades, has willingly made a huge investment in a state with an authoritarian government in order to pursue their goals. They did this knowing full-well that China's suppression apparatus would take…

Surely it depends on the extent to which Apple was indeed forced to make the change. You wouldn't say "convicted murderer imprisons himself."

Re: AirDrop is now limited to 10 minutes

#560

Post by ithkuil »

mmmpop wrote: post #460
gruez wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afghanistan =/= Iran The parent poster was referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Afghanistan

Quoted post unavailable.

Not everybody knows everything. Would you be so kind to share what's up with the Iranian flag? It's seems interesting. I happen to not know much about it and I love when people bring up some interesting curiosities here (sometimes unfortunately obscured by sarcasm or other convolutions)
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