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Apple is locking down the iPhone App Store to comply with a new law in China
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Technology
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This seems big. IPhones seem like they are kinda the main western luxury and status symbol in China. Now they're not really any better than Android phones in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall.
What does this mean? You have been able to sideload apps on Android for a decade. How were the iPhones better in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall before?
I haven't used a Chinese phone, but from what I understand, Chinese Android phones don't come with play store and have Chinese app stores only.
Sideloading is an option, but apk sites can just be firewalled, so the ability to have the full apple apps store accessible through the firewall was pretty big.
I have a chinese friend and when I asked them to look for signal, whatsapp, or telegram, the apple app store had them all but they didn't work after they installed it. They just got a loading screen or couldn't sign up.
Android custom ROM scene was big back when I was rooting and playing with ROMs, as people found how to root their obscure phones by translating chinese forum posts. You don't have to access apk sites, there are other ways to share apks. Last I heard fdroid was accessible from China as far back as 2014 until recently.
Here's a quote from fdroid themselves.
https://f-droid.org/en/2022/11/23/why-curation-and-decentralization-is-better-than-millions-of-apps.html
Do some research before you perpetuate misinformation that confirms your bias.
But fuck the CCP for authoritarianism.
Fair enough, I guess they were about the same once you had a vpn working.
But yeah, it seems really bad that the luxury IPhones are getting so nerfed.
I don't know about the Android capabilities in China but this move makes it seem to me that IPhone has now almost become a paperweight with in-built clock, messaging/phoning and heavily restricted browser.