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Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

nytimes.com

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Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#51

Post by Spooky23 »

soperj wrote: post #38
jonknee wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn't most American companies.

Yeah, most American companies don't collude to screw their workers.

Sure they do.

They lobbied for things like H-1B visas that let them get cheap people with limited options for career movement. You get the benefit of on-shore workers under tighter control and suppression of wages.

They colluded to influence labor standards over many years to declare broad swaths of overtime eligible employees as "exempt".

Apple and those tech giants got caught doing more direct collusion and unethical behavior. That isn't an unknown or shocking revelation. Pretty sure the mall bagel place I worked in tossed resumes from several other eateries.

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#52

Post by tomtang0514 »

xigency wrote: post #44
tekklloneer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be very likely that Apple was following by "the rules".

How could they? The communist party would have to literally read every book and watch every movie for approval, so to really go by the rules, the only content they could offer is media in favor of the cultural revolution. I doubt Apple even tried to play it like that, so why be surprised when it's shut down?

They don't have to read every book. People who actually read the books might just report/flag it. Consider why there's no porn on youtube? There must be quite amount of people tried uploading porn there.

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#54

Post by icebraining »

mtgx wrote: post #19
3pt14159 wrote: post #2

China has to play fairly carefully with Apple. On the one hand it's an American company that puts microphones and cameras into the cafes, offices, and bedrooms of many of their citizenry; but on the other hand, with decreasing competitiveness due to rising wages there isn't anything specifically _stopping_ Apple or other American tech companies from moving manufacturing out of China. Foxconn alone employs about 4.3 m…

Unfortunately, the Chinese government has only gotten bolder since the U.S. government has publicly become an enemy of encryption itself. The damage would be far greater if the U.S. actually passed a law mandating backdoors, but even just talking about it and making a "scandal" out of it, has probably encouraged Chinese government to be more aggressive about it in its own country. Remember when the U.S. government at…

Remember when the U.S. government at least pretended to care about things like privacy and human rights internationally.

No. When was that?

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#55

Post by makecheck »

codeisawesome wrote: post #46
makecheck wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple has one of the best chances to make real change here because they can afford to spend a hell of a lot of money without their short-term business being hurt. They could, for instance, speculatively set up entire facilities in new areas, hire staff, and experiment with parallel development of the same products to measure how well the new bring-up is going.

Why will they do it? Corporate entities like Apple exist to make profits. Change is not on the agenda. It's not healthy to be that hopeful when you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

Profits don’t just show up one day and stay fixed. There is always risk, and always opportunity.

This type of move could address both.

One risk is that the company’s ability to manufacture may be seriously affected by the actions of a single government. If their current factories were suddenly impacted by a policy decision, future profits would definitely be hurt. By spending money now (that, incidentally, their competitors might not be able to), Apple can lower that risk; and, they would also be acting on their own terms instead of having to react to someone else.

There is also the investment side. By spending money now, they could end up with even more capacity that will enable them to develop more products for more people and increase overall profit in the future. If they don’t spend that kind of money, their competitors could catch up. The time to invest is before you have a problem.

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#56

Post by rospaya »

Spooky23 wrote: post #53

This almost certainly a consequence of pissing off the USG. It's a pretty rare event to create a situation where the interests of the PRC are directly aligned with the US government's interests.

Are you referring to the FBI decrypting situation? If so, I very much doubt that decrypting phones is even remotely important as billions in taxes.

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#57

Post by thaumasiotes »

L_Rahman wrote: post #32
DannyBee wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's Apple that needs China's market". I always hear this, but given the experience of most american companies in china, it seems little stretched.

For most American companies in China, this is true. For Apple it is not. From Ben Thompson at Stratechery: This is a very big deal. Feel free to ignore anyone making snarky comments about China’s average monthly wage being the same as the price of an iPhone 5C. The two pertinent facts about China are that: There is tremendous income disparity There are a TON of people So while many Western markets may have a greater…

> Feel free to ignore anyone making snarky comments about China’s average monthly wage being the same as the price of an iPhone 5C. The two pertinent facts about China are that:

I've seen plenty of Chinese people whose actual individual monthly wage was almost certainly less than the price of an iPhone; it didn't stop them from having iPhones.

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#58

Post by Naritai »

xigency wrote: post #5

It shouldn't be too surprising with China's history of censorship that they would ban iTunes from selling books and movies to their citizens. What's surprising is that they apparently allowed it for several months.

There's an easy answer to this: The government provided the list of books and movies that were allowed to be sold. And Apple realized they couldn't make money selling only this list, so they dropped out.

Re: Apple Services Shut Down in China in Startling About-Face

#59

Post by WWKong »

_nedR wrote: post #13
bnolsen wrote: post #6

and this is a reason why china with the current government can never truly be a world leader in anything: Your entire enterprise can be distroyed at the whim of a few unrestrained individuals. Sort of like apple's app store, but at a much bigger level.

Being from india, i have come to the opposite conclusion. Chinese protectionism (aided by the language barrier) has served chinese entrepreneurs quite well. They have their own google. Their own fb. Their own twitter. Basically all services that India doesnt have. The list goes on. These services may or may not be inferior to the original but from an economic standpoint, its good since the money and data flows within…

The issue is that Trade agreements don't allow such a move. You either partake in global trade or not. Can't have it both way. For example India will export beef, clothes etc. but block Uber and Amazon. Doesn't work that way.
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