Apple’s iOS 16.1.1 update in China disables ‘Everyone’ sharing via Airdrop after 10 minutes, forcing users to frequently re-enable it if they want to use it. Apple says they added this ‘feature’ to prevent ‘unwanted’ file sharing. But it’s the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that doesn’t want anti-government protestors quickly sharing information with each other, off the grid and beyond the reach of CCP censors. Meanwhile, CEO Tim Cook threatens to remove Elon Musk’s Twitter app from the App Store? How long will U.S. iPhone users put up with Apple’s anti-free speech actions?
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20 replies on “Apple Bows to Chinese Communists with Update that Cripples Protestors Quick Info Sharing Power”
Elon’s “I may make my own cell phone”, threat to Apple may not be as spontaneous as it seems. I saw reports several years ago that he had bought people in from the cell phone industry. Some said that was so the cameras worked on his rockets and barges but you don’t need a dozen cell phone experts for that, and the camera feed on the barges still don’t work. Arguably a Mars rated cell phone system is something he needs but that’s longer term. He may be 90% of the way to finishing a freedom phone or buying the one already out there. Or is this actually the phone Elon’s talking about? Has he funded it on the sly? https://www.freedomphone.com/
I’m going to take a contrary position on this. The auto off function may be for the benefit of the protestors. Having air drop on in your phone may get you beaten up and sent to the gulag. Turning it off while you escape and evade may be hard. Particularly if your half blinded by tear gas and smoke. If it goes off automatically it may mess up the secret police. Turning it back on once your safe may be slow but doable. The auto off may be saving lives. It may seem to be pandering to Poo but that’s part of the process. 10 minutes is probably the length of time needed to reach the audience while also being the time it takes the communist enforcers to attack a rally. If your a secret police officer using the app to monitor the crown, the thing turning off will be a problem. You get short blind spots. You need good organization to keep your monitoring up and the protestors, by knowing when to turn on, have the advantage. Some one at Apple may be being sneaky. I doubt its the board or top staff.
I used to have an I Phone. I’m particularly pleased about my decision to switch to Android long before Apple decided to make this particular decision to help destroy freedom and individual rights.
Oh, how far they’ve strayed….
it was such a ‘groovy’ concept – a full color blonde woman with a sledgehammer breaks a video screen where a Big Brother type is yakking to thousands of gray obedient humans, quietly sitting in a gray world. So full of hope. So full of promise. So full of B.S.
… such a bald-faced amazingly blatant lie. This is what I was talking about with the skill and genius Apple applied to marketing and I went into some detail on that in my comments on this page.
Marketing is perception not substance.
A prime example of ‘Marketing’ is a slick talking used car salesman convincing you to buy a vehicle that he wants to sell you, not the vehicle you want to own. The good cars will sell easily and quickly, it’s the bad ones that are hard to turn over. The first car a used car salesman points you to is one that’s harder to get rid of than the good ones. It will almost always be the car you don’t really want to buy.
I learned this lesson very early in life and it applies to all marketing strategies in the retail world. Not that everything presented is always going to be the worst choice but that there are marketing strategies behind what you’re seeing up front.
Apple is one of the best, most successful examples of manipulative marketing. Even really smart people not only fall for the marketing ploys of Apple, they fall so hard that they don’t even know they’ve fallen and continue to insist they made the very best choice. This is marketing brilliance.
Brand loyalty to Apple is a thing in the IT world we call “Drinking the apple juice”, being an “Applehead” or an “Apple Fan Boy”.
This is a very well known phenomena among IT professionals who are compelled by the nature of their work to select the best, most secure, highest performance, easiest to deploy and use options available.
Apple products are never among those selections. This is not a matter of prejudice or personal opinion no matter what Apple tells you. Contrary to the ad Road Rider is citing buying into the Apple ecosystem does not free you and it’s not designed to free you. It’s designed to enslave you to Apple for the rest of your life.
Look around you, if you’re surrounded by Apple products that designed-in slavery is working.
In the world of sales this thing where people continue to believe they’ve made the best choice even after the facts are presented is called the “post close”. (There are three elements to a sales pitch: Pre close, Close and Post close.) Post close is the sales technique that prevents people from returning merchandise or selecting some other brand next time.
In the world of marketing these techniques are not only well known but are highly refined and tuned so that they work on a majority of people. A professional salesman knows that people like me who are not susceptible to marketing techniques are rare. So he will burn me off quickly in order to move on to the next pigeon who is more likely than not susceptible to tried and true marketing ploys. This maximizes his sales.
It also incidentally results in me buying the thing that will suit me best and not buying the thing the salesman wants to sell me. They are seldom one in the same.
To badly paraphrase something Scotty said in Star Trek -The Wrath of Khan … “Once you know HOW things work you know how to apply them to your own advantage.”
Caveat Emptor.
Heard term last night that caught my attention- MAGA democrats. Microsoft, Apple, Google and Amazon.
The left has been successfully avoiding censorship laws by outsourcing to these companies. And then they simply state”we cannot control private industry and their decisions. Meanwhile, I recall Psaki stating clearly that they had a special access portal to these apps that allows them to tell the MAGA’s what they did not want to allow.
I avoid all Apple devices like the plague myself and am likewise not surgically joined to my android phone. Which in case anyone is interested is a Motorola G7 Power. It costs less than $200 and does everything I need it to. The battery lasts for 5 days and it charges from 10% to 100% in three hours. 90% of the time it sits on a mount plugged into power right above the keyboard I’m typing this on.
I use a texting app that connects from my PC to my phone and allows me to type text messages with my computer keyboard, I hate those tiny little phone screen touch keyboards. 98% of the text communication I do that way is business related. Other than that, I use my phone as a … wait for it … prepare yourself for a shock — a PHONE that I talk to people on. (GASP!)
Apple products are an ecosystem for people who don’t want to learn how a computer or other electronic device works. That’s fine with me, I don’t care and I think it’s wonderful that some people can get some use out of technology no matter how they go about it. Apple gives you a package that any dummy can figure out how to use, it’s purposely designed that way. I’m not saying “user friendly”, Apple goes beyond user friendly to cater to the lowest denominator and up.
That’s why kids all want iPhones, they’re simple to use and Apple aims its features at that market. Back in the days of PC wars when every electronics company on the planet was trying to get people to use their stuff, before the landscape settled out to three main operating systems, Apple sold their computers to schools at a loss. They did this so that every kid growing up learned how to use an Apple and most of them stuck with the brand even up to today. This was a clever but nefarious business move that paid off for Apple big time.
But Apple locks you out of the guts of their stuff too. I’m not talking about jailbreaking or anything like that, most people who use Apple devices would only brick their equipment if they tried that. I mean that Apple designs its ecosystem to make it easy for people to learn and stay with Apple.
To do this, Apple takes control away from the user and keeps Apple firmly in control of Apple hardware and software. Again, I’m not saying this is a totally bad thing, it lets Appleheads do things they probably wouldn’t be able to do or willing to learn on a Windows based machine.
That doesn’t suit me at all so I don’t use Apple stuff. There is Windows software that does this too. Two common examples are Norton and McAfee security software and I won’t use those for the exact same reason. I want to be in control of my electronics gear as much as possible and I don’t want to just ‘trust’ a company to always do what’s in my best interests.
This is why Apple is preponderantly used by individuals and very seldom used in business environments. Most Apple patrons have to learn both IOS (of some sort) and Windows for PC if they work somewhere in any capacity where the business requires computers. Which is almost all businesses these days.
The Windows 10 machine I’m typing this on has seven monitors, 3 video cards, is water cooled, has15 hard drives, at least a dozen fans in the full tower case, runs all my home entertainment stuff via Emby server, runs my camera system with 15 IP cameras (on Blue Iris camera server software, WIndows only. There’s an app available for iPhone and Mac but not the server software which is PC only.), is integrated with my home security and telecommunications systems and much, much more. I built this system myself. Good luck doing all that on an Apple.
I set up my system, network, wifi etc with the very best available components and software that I can afford. There is no “Apple can do the same thing with a different app, program or software” involved here. Apple cannot do the same thing. It just can’t. I.E. there is no camera server software on the market that outperforms Blue Iris and comes anywhere near the price point for performance ratio. BTW neither can Linux though Linux can come a little closer the software selections are much more limited.
For me any sort of Apple computer would be a serious downgrade in capability and capacity. Steve can keep his Mac but his Mac won’t do what I need my IT gear to do. Steve doesn’t need his stuff to do what I need and if he likes his Mac that’s fine with me but it’s not what a genuine techy would use. Steve is a user, I’m a System Administrator (NOT the same as someone with Admin user rights on a computer), computer and network designer and provide support for clients of the IT business I own. A Mac is never going to cut it for me.
Thus the argument that “My Mac will do anything your PC will do” is limited in scope, understanding, experience and to my ears it is a completely absurd thing to say.
There’s a lot more I could say on this topic but this post is getting long enough as it is. You can have your Apple products, I won’t use them. Windows and Android have their issues too. I’m not a ‘Windows fan-boy’, I just use the thing that is most available and works best for my purposes. That will never include Apple products of any sort.
Oh, one more thing. If Apple will help the Chinese government suppress freedom in China then it will help the US government do that to us too. Precedent and history are important. Google, Windows and whatever else is on the market may do that too but Apple has already proven it’s willing to do so. If you think the illusion of Apple respecting your privacy is more important than the proven fact that Apple will not respect your liberty, that’s on you. On your own head be it.
The most important point everyone is not talking about is, if they will do it for China, when will it happen here? And at whose behest?
Perhaps turn off the automatic upgrades until others tell you they are safe? That’s how they did it in China.
If you do that, your device is susceptible to vulnerabilities, malware and hacking that the other updates would fix. It’s never a good solution to turn off updates, it can easily be a “cut off your nose to spite your face” situation.
If you have to turn off updates then you should be looking for a different device to begin with. If you can’t trust the manufacturer of your operating system then you really ought to consider using a different operating system rather than kill vital updates. That you know you cannot trust the people who make your stuff and still use that stuff is a definition of insanity.
That’s just the thing, they don’t give anyone any warning that they’re going to do it so “when will it happen here” is answered by “whenever they feel like doing it”.
They DID do it so we KNOW they will do it because they have proven that to be a fact.
As for at whose behest goes, all you need to do to know that is look at their historic stance. Obviously Apple nor any other tech giant is going to do anything at the behest of someone like Donald Trump and just as obviously they would be receptive and amenable to diddling with your devices at the behest of people like the unelected committee that pulls Potato Joe’s strings.
I find it amazing and amusing that people who swear eternal damnation on Google run around all blissfully unaware that they’re carrying an Apple spying device in their pocket. I don’t know where Steve Green gets the idea that Apple respects his privacy more than Google to a significant degree, Apple has proven they do not respect privacy at all.
I don’t know where Steve gets his information but here’s the first two paragraphs from an article just released last month —
Apple doesn’t respect your privacy they’re just really underhanded and sneaky about what they do. This alone should scare people away from Apple devices because we don’t know what else they’re doing in their underhanded and sneaky approach to things. As far as I’m concerned, Apple is wholly untrustworthy.
“Thus the argument that “My Mac will do anything your PC will do” is limited in scope, understanding, experience and to my ears it is a completely absurd thing to say.”
Yes, that. Definitely my experience as well.
Macs are made for non-technical types so you can’t expect anything better than that from their target market. That it just isn’t true is irrelevant because people who say things like that don’t know enough to formulate an informed opinion.
In my work I have to know all 3 of the major operating systems fairly well. Those 3 are; Windows, IOS and Linux. (For personal devices and workstation applications. I’m not including Unix or Apache server etc. OS’s.)
Of those three, Apple/Mac/IOS/iPhone are the least secure. There’s a good reason why banks and U.S. government military and intelligence agencies do not use Apple products. There are damn good reasons why you’re not allowed to carry any phone and especially an iPhone into a secure government area.
Worst of all is the fact that while Apple does a terrible job of protecting you from bad guys around the globe, it does an even worse job of protecting you from Apple itself.
Almost every Mac I’ve ever checked over has had something bad running on it. From keyloggers and trojans to rootkits and bitcoin miners. If someone owns a Mac and it’s “getting slow in its old age” the likelihood is that there’s nothing wrong with the computer itself, it’s the malware that the system has picked up on the internet that’s causing the problem.
I get all the CISA bulletins and there is nearly always a great gallumping slug of Apple product vulnerabilities in every bulletin released.
All the while Mac users are blissfully ignorant because hey, they’re running the best possible most secure stuff available, right?
There are always a good amount of Windows notices in those bulletins too. That’s why I get them, so I can see if they apply to clients running Windows systems. Windows patches those holes once a month on Patch Tuesday so generally I get the bulletins more for information than for tactical action purposes. There are a few Out Of Band patches released every year so I need to know when those crop up too.
I don’t even bother reading the Apple/Mac/IOS/iPhone releases. My opinion is anyone who is running that kind of thing deserves whatever happens to them.
Another of my pet-peeves is “Macs are the best at _____”. Fill in the blank. Usually it’s “graphics work” for example. Macs are not “best” at graphics work, we don’t run Macs on engineering design computers that are heavily graphics intensive. Macs run the same hardware I can buy off the shelf for a PC but high end multi-core serious, expensive graphics cards are not meant for Mac computers and even if they were, good luck finding graphics drivers. People got that idea because years ago printers wanted Mac files because they had invested in huge font packages that wouldn’t work on a PC. The myth has carried over to today but myth it is even so.
The truth is that anything a Mac can do a PC can do and usually at least as well if not better. With a Mac what you’re using is a crippled computer that phones home without your knowledge or permission and is not only less than reasonably secure but cannot be made sufficiently secure by user efforts. The proof that a Mac is just a crippled PC is that as time goes on Apple computers become more PC-like. They now all use the same hardware components and the difference is largely in the fancy GUI slapped on top of a proprietary UNIX 03-compliant OS. Apple spends a ton on that GUI to make it look all pretty and modern but it’s just the GUI.
The biggest difference between Mac’s IOS computers and a Linux machine (also a flavor of UNIX) is the pretty GUI and the Mac is a lot less flexible. You can get into the guts of Linux but you’re locked out solidly with a Mac.
One more time … I’m NOT saying no one should use an Apple product. If that works for your needs that’s fine and dandy. What I am saying is that people should be aware of what they’re actually paying for and not harbor any delusions about Apple devices. Delusions are for dummies.
I agree with you 100%.
Like you did a “Being John Malkovich” but instead Being Road Rider. You climbed through an ear tunnel and ended up in my brain! Sorry, messy I know….
While your expertise is far greater than mine, I knew enough about building non Apple boxes (starting with intel 386’s), and over the years I kept thinking that the Artist “lumps” sitting in their office chairs doing nothing but gawking at a non functioning apple mac, Mac, MAC, MAAAAAACCCC! were just that…useless lumps. If I had a dollar….when someone told me Macs are so much better than my PC for graphics….I’d be retired by now. I started with Autocad and now with Solidworks and other rendering packages and also photo/video and graphics software, and I’d never consider running anything else. If something goes wrong, either i can deal with it or I know dozens more who can, on the payroll or off, now, as in this second. Just not the same with Apple.
Or a dollar every time someone told me that Apple is the most secure computer, far superior to Windows machines. They’re also the ones still wearing spandex neck gators as PPE for a virus that’s not going to kill them. And, still standing out by the loading dock smoking cigarettes looking cool. But I digress.
Go ahead, use an Apple product. I don’t and I’m happy and productive. I had an Iphone and hated it. Didn’t like that it didn’t play well with others, just with it’s own kind. Wow, that’s not very inclusive of Apple! Didn’t like the app store. Love me my Samsung Note Android and it does everything I need and much more than i don’t need, and it plays well with other non Samsung Android devices as well.
Thanks to your post for clarifying my messy thoughts .
Lol, messing up people’s brains is one of my patent specialties.
I’m just scratching the surface in the comments on this thread, I could go into a lot more detail but I think I got my point across.
Like I said to Barbara above, what amuses and amazes me is that people who damn Google all to hell smugly run around with Apple Spying Devices in their pockets and sit at Apple Spying Machines to do their computer work.
To me that’s a cognitive disconnect.
Google isn’t a candidate for sainthood either and I’m not saying it is. I’m saying that if you know how things work you’d realize the choice is always the lesser of evils. Apple is the ultimate evil in the IT world and makes everyone else look like rank amateurs.
Like I said to you above — Where performance, security and reliability are the tantamount requirements you will never see an Apple product selected on the basis of superiority. There’s a lot of reasons for that and they are reasons not the hollow excuses that Appleheads make.
(I.E. Appleheads often whine that “Microsoft bought the market” and, um, no it didn’t. Back in the days of the PC-Wars Microsoft DOS was an equally obscure OS to things like CPM and TPM3. IBM tested all of them and selected MS-DOS as the base OS for their new PC offerings. It was IBM that put Microsoft on the map. If they had selected anything else the world would never have heard of Bill Gates.)
I’ll give Apple some due credit over their brilliant marketing applications though. They really pulled out all the stops on being nefarious and deceptive by creating ways to generationally lock people into their less than optimal closed ecosystem while getting their patrons to say things like “I’m never giving up my Mac”. Then hold them for the rest of their lives in the delusional miasma of sunk investment.
Just the myth perpetuation of Apple is a thing of infernal beauty.
Seems to me like that sort of thing bears a marked similarity to what the Democrat Left does. The Left gets people to believe their crippled ideology is the best thing since sliced bread and swear that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is just not as in the know as they are. It’s the exact same phenomena psychologically.
I’m not sure who taught who to apply that kind of thing. Whether the Left learned it from Apple or vice versa.
However that went, Apple did an amazing job of marketing itself to come out of the PC-Wars with a viable product with a minor but not insignificant market share. Whatever market share Apple may hold, it’s not a merit related accomplishment, it’s a result of marketing policies because if Apple had to survive on merit alone it would be long since confined to the garbage can of history.
The Left, the people who care about “the people”, “the little guy”, and democratic principles, are in fact the oppressors making sure the “elite” are kept in control. After all, the “elite” know what is best for the rest of us. It’s a great system, as long as you are one of the “elite”. Am I right, Lebron?
Turns out the Left was for the little guy until they were no longer one of us. They like being the elite much better and want to stay on their thrones. It’s good to be King even if you have to put down a peasant revolt now and then.
Danggit I just upgraded my iPhone! Problem I see (& as mentioned) is that all the big teck (or “tick”…….sucking our freedom blood) is they’re all in together to squelch anything but the narrative.
To Scott’s observation that the gracious, accommodating CCP doesn’t demand that Apple outright remove Airdrop from their iOS, it’s yet another example of “death by 1,000 cuts.”
And yes, Scott, you frequently play the role of devil’s advocate — not that that’s a bad thing.
I do not own ANY Apple devices and am not married to my Android phone. I use it as a phone, not as a be-all-end-all-gotta-have-it leash.