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Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

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Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#71

Post by nitwit005 »

TillE wrote: post #56
game_the0ry wrote: post #25

When the west opened trade to China, policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west. Instead, the west is becoming more like China. [1, 2, 3] [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/ready-for-your-e... [3] (countless more examples, especially recently...)

> policy experts assumed China would become more liberal No one actually thinks that, it's just the line they use to justify themselves to the public. Like how Saudi Arabia has been promising amazing "reforms" for the better part of a decade.

It does work to an extent. I doubt Saudi Arabia would have let women drive if it hadn't been for the influence of the wider world.

What isn't going to happen is the leadership suddenly deciding they love democracy and giving up power.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#72

Post by CamperBob2 »

goodbyesf wrote: post #38
dvt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and trying to force every country around the world to adopt their 'values'. Hot take: Yes. Because classical liberalism, the free market, and bottom-up government has done more for the advancement of humankind than sharia law, tyrants, oligarchies, theocracies, or dictatorships have ever done. Let's stop pretending like all values have the same ethical valence.

> Hot take: Yes. Because classical liberalism, the free market, and bottom-up government has done more for the advancement of humankind than sharia law, tyrants, oligarchies, theocracies, or dictatorships have ever done. That's not 'the west' and has never been. The US was born protectionist and pretty much stayed protectionist til today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism_in_the_United_St... Of course today…

Question. Do people get shot trying to break out of your country, or into it?

That's really the only question that matters, when comparing economic/political systems.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#73

Post by em-bee »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #62
MichaelZuo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a duopoly, but it's still surprising that there was no third option at all. Are you sure they couldn't even bring printed out forms?

> Are you sure they couldn't even bring printed out forms? In China your health status (green/yellow/red) was automatically calculated based on what neighborhoods of the city you had been in, what other people you passed by in the street or on public transportation, etc. So, it could change in an instant, and that is why it was shown from phone apps that constantly updated. It wasn’t a fixed thing like vaccination st…

yes and no. you needed regular testing and in most cases you only needed to show that you had a clean test. you could get that on paper, it just wasn't practical. i had the issue that sometimes the test station was not able to enter my data because i don't have a chinese ID. in that case they had to print out the test results and i would use those. when i travelled that sometimes meant that they sent me a photo of the results because i did a test in the morning in one city, but the results were not available until i arrived in the other city.

to get your digital travel status there was an app you could download (actually each province hat their own app) and you registered on that with your phone number and passport details (or chinese ID). no wechat or alipay required.

if you didn't have a working phone then you could log in to that app on any other phone at see your status there. in theory it was possible to travel without a phone and not have the fact that you travelled reflect in the app, but in practice it was not worth the trouble.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#74

Post by fmajid »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #4

Much like Adobe did to Macs in the 1990s, WeChat has become so powerful they control the platform. Apple can’t remove WeChat because most consumers would rather change device hardware than lose access to WeChat.

Marc Andreessen famously predicted Netscape would reduce Windows to "a poorly debugged collection of device drivers". WeChat, as the "everything app" Musk aspires to turn Twitter into (ha!) has effectively done that to both iOS and Android.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#75

Post by em-bee »

wkat4242 wrote: post #70
em-bee wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wechat got popular all on its own. nobody is forced to install wechat. there are also no government services that you might want to use that would "encourage" you to install it.

No but they make their society depend on it. People don't install it because it's so great, but because without it you can't do anything. They don't push it on the user side but on the vendor side.

i didn't see an pushing. and from all the social media and messaging apps that i have seen or used, wechat is the most convenient to use. it beats telegram, and it leaves whatsapp and signal in the dust with the things it can do and the convenience it provides. it really is that good.

people elsewere depend on facebook just as much as people in china depend on wechat. not more and not less. alternatives do exist for the determined. you just have to accept that you can't easily stay in contact with everyone. the same tradeof you have to make if you don't use facebook.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#76

Post by squeaky-clean »

joshstrange wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this article has the slam dunk it thinks it does. Those aren't "apps" they are at best "web apps". They use a JS framework and some special markup from what I can tell. In this sense WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it. > Since these are “apps within an app”, many of these mini-programs are flouting the App Store rules since they were not downloaded from the App Sto…

I thought Apple disallowed apps from downloading things that were executable. A team I was on got rejected for this in 2015 or so. We were using Ionic to make a WebView based app for a news station. We wanted some of the css and js to be loaded from the internet so we could change various things without needing an official app update.

We were told to we could fetch news story data from an api, and get back json/xml/etc, but not JS and CSS files.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#78

Post by em-bee »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #76
joshstrange wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this article has the slam dunk it thinks it does. Those aren't "apps" they are at best "web apps". They use a JS framework and some special markup from what I can tell. In this sense WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it. > Since these are “apps within an app”, many of these mini-programs are flouting the App Store rules since they were not downloaded from the App Sto…

I thought Apple disallowed apps from downloading things that were executable. A team I was on got rejected for this in 2015 or so. We were using Ionic to make a WebView based app for a news station. We wanted some of the css and js to be loaded from the internet so we could change various things without needing an official app update. We were told to we could fetch news story data from an api, and get back json/xml/e…

i don't know what you did, but see this discussion here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23247809/does-apple-reje...

though it's not really clear to me what it means to change your app's functionality in a way that would not be appropriate for an App Store product

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#79

Post by trompetenaccoun »

TillE wrote: post #56
game_the0ry wrote: post #25

When the west opened trade to China, policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west. Instead, the west is becoming more like China. [1, 2, 3] [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit... [2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/ready-for-your-e... [3] (countless more examples, especially recently...)

> policy experts assumed China would become more liberal No one actually thinks that, it's just the line they use to justify themselves to the public. Like how Saudi Arabia has been promising amazing "reforms" for the better part of a decade.

That was genuinely assumed to work and arguably did somewhat happen initially until Xi got to power.

Re: Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

#80

Post by detourdog »

srvmshr wrote: post #2

I use WeChat to talk to my in-laws in Mainland China. I am aware of the mini-apps that exist but they are severely lacking features & more of add on utilities to the WeChat interface. For e.g. a popular one is a mini-app for DiDi cabs. It'll allow you to book a nearby cab & place a call/text using the WeChat integration. It is more of utility to WeChat/Weixin rather than an appstore within their app. Agreed it is som…

It is probably exciting for Apple to contemplate support for this type of platform. To see other cultural approaches is probably worth giving some freedom to becuase it will stretch their own thinking.
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