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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)

#151

Post by Andrex »

bunga-bunga wrote: post #43
meowtimemania wrote: post #39

I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"? Do people like the wechat experience because you have one login and don't have to go through an onboarding process in every mini-app?

> I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"? Why are you downloading apps from the App Store instead of running separate OSes? This is the same concept, just one level down. Really, WeChat is just a browser with extra APIs and a website catalog. > Do people like the wechat experience because you have one login and don't have to go through an onboarding proce…

> I’m not fully familiar with its history, but from what I understand Tencent added more and more “apps” to their chat app and eventually let third parties into it. This is exactly what Facebook did in 2010: we also had third party “apps” on Facebook. They were also just iframed websites with extra APIs.

It's crazy how long ago this feels. FarmVille legitimately took over the country for a bit.

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

#152

Post by jamil7 »

interpol_p wrote: post #121
ecedeno wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exclusive to that app. Being able to update the app without going through the App Store was one of the big selling points of React Native a few years back. Apps are not allowed to download native code, however.

You cannot download and execute native code on iOS, the sandbox prevents it. Memory protection ensures that pages marked as data cannot be executed There is a special entitlement to allow some Apple apps and frameworks to do this — Apple’s JavaScriptCore can do JIT, which requires executing data pages. Similarly, Swift Playgrounds can compile to native code and execute that code So, for example, you could ship a C co…

> Apple’s JavaScriptCore can do JIT

Only for Safari or if you use a WKWebView, otherwise if you use JavascriptCore yourself on iOS, JIT is disabled and quite slow. On macOS it’s enabled.

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

#153

Post by tumult »

lalopalota wrote: post #149
tumult wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any information about this? Where did you hear this? I'd always heard it was because some people at Apple used Twitter, but nobody used Tumblr, so Tumblr didn't get a free pass from arbitrary torment.

Do you have any information about this? Where did you hear this?

From news links and comments here on this site, especially around 2018 when Tumblr was going through repeated App Store rejections. I think people, including myself, infer it from this information:

1. Apple executives like Phil Schiller used Twitter for years.

2. Apple bought advertising on Twitter.

3. https://sreegs.tumblr.com/post/671649355334336512/alright-le...

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

#154

Post by pokepim »

aio2 wrote: post #125
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... That really wasn't what the Tienanmen Square Protests were about, at all. The protest were a massive mixture of different ideologies, but the dominant ones were democratic politics, and communist economics, opposing the trend towards oligarchic/autocratic rule and liberalized economy.

And now look at what they got.

Now they got to be the second biggest economy soon to be the biggest in terms of nominal GDP. Pretty sure they will surpass us in the next decade.

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

#155

Post by flohofwoe »

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 worked mostly fine for most of Eastern Europe after 1990 (with a couple of notable exceptions, like Russia). We tend to focus on the few black sheep where it didn't work, maybe because in hindsight the cases where it worked look so "obvious".

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

#156

Post by peoplefromibiza »

Barrin92 wrote: post #127
eunos wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west. There are many flavors of liberalism and yes 2023 China is more liberal than 1980 China. If you could explain 2023 China to Deng Xiaoping in 1980 he'd think China would be a degenerate state. The fethism with political liberalism above all needs to stop

Yup, Deng literally invaded Vietnam and rolled tanks over dissidents. In Lee Kuan Yew's Biography he recounts talking to Deng shortly after Tiananmen, and Deng by LKY's account just said straight to his face "if I had to kill a hundred thousand students to restore order, I would have done it". I genuinely have to laugh when people tend to say things like "I wish China was as liberal as it was back under Deng", people…

> if I had to kill a hundred thousand students to restore order, I would have done it

Deng was only being blatantly honest.

How many people died due do US involvement to "restore order"? [1]

I know from experience what happened to Greece and Argentina and I wouldn't call it an accomplishment nor something that made the World a better place.

There are no reasons to consider "being liberal" a goal, it's just one of the options, doesn't mean it's the best or the only one.

Of course the US cannot afford to not be hyper-liberal (meaning in reality hyper-capitalistic-run-by-greedy-corporations) because it would kill their economy, even though it could benefit a large squat of the population that, for one reason or another, is being considered a burden for the society by the "liberals" whose only solution is "throw money at the problem and hide it under the carpet".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

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

#158

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #49
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the issue is that this double standard is conscious and intentional, rather than simply an artifact of probability

At the very beginning it likely conformed to all the rules as there likely wasn't much functionality in v1.0. By the time it attracted the attention of Apple decision makers, it was too sticky to ban as another user pointed out. i.e. Wechat users would rather switch to Android than lose the app. I guess the lesson is that exceptions will be made if you can grow an app literally a million fold in a few years and becom…

I agree: this double standard is conscious and intentional, rather than simply an artifact of probability & randomness

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

scarface_74 wrote: post #141
kelnos wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Apple was the one who was unreasonable here, not Adobe. I loathe the idea of giving Microsoft credit for anything, but one thing they got right was their focus on backward compatibility. Certainly that has frayed at times here and there, but MS generally doesn't ask their developers to completely rewrite their applications to use a new application framework.

And because of that, even as far back as 2005, there were 10 ways to create a string in C and depending on which Windows API you were using, you had to convert between them constantly. Considering how Microsoft has failed to move past Windows while Apple uses the same OS more or less for watches, phones, tablets, monitors, set top boxes, etc without having to support legacy crap.

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by qwytw »

selectodude wrote: post #110
deciplex wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the average Russian would agree that the precipitous drop in life expectancy in the 90s, the rampant child prostitution, etc., along with what our idea of "democracy" for them turned out to be - you want to talk about election interference let's start with Russia in 1996 - was worth selling off their natural resources so a few oligarchs could get rich.

That’s why I picked 1988.

Which mean what? You should've picked ~2000, the 90s saw significant decline (of course you're only looking at GDP which not something we have reliable figures for from the 80s).
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