As nationwide protests broke out in China over the weekend threatening to undermine the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under President Xi Jinping, Quartz revealed that Apple plugged a crack in the regime’s “Great Firewall” that dissidents exploited to communicate. Apple’s latest iOS update released in November placed new restrictions on “AirDrop,” a file-sharing feature on iPhones that allows users to share files directly from one phone to another (and consequently under the nose of government monitors). The update erased unlimited use for Chinese users only.

“Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, ‘This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users,'” Quartz reported. “Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the ‘everyone’ setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones.”

Apple’s new update to benefit the CCP is neither a recent development nor an isolated incident. According to a report from The New York Times last year, Apple routinely compromises privacy and security practices to appease communist leaders.

“Apple’s compromises have made it nearly impossible for the company to stop the Chinese government from gaining access to the emails, photos, documents, contacts and locations of millions of Chinese residents, according to the security experts and Apple engineers,” the Times reported.

its most groundbreaking and revolutionary product yet, the Newton MessagePad. It was released to great fanfare a year later, but as a product, it could only be described as a flop. Widely mocked in popular culture at the time, the Newton became a poster child for expensive but useless high-tech gadgets. Even though the device improved dramatically over time, it failed to gain market share, and it was discontinued in 1997. Yet while the Newton was a failure, it galvanized Apple engineers to create something better—and in some ways led to the creation of the iPad and the iPhone.

As we recently detailed in a 25,000-word article, Google's messaging history is one of constant product startups and shutdowns. Thanks to a lack of product focus or any kind of top-down mandate from Google's CEO, no division is really "in charge" of messaging. As a consequence, the company has released 13 halfhearted messaging products since iMessage launched in 2011. If Google has anyone to blame for the iMessage's dominance, it should start with itself, since it has continually sabotaged and abandoned its own plans to make an iMessage competitor.

Messaging is important, and even if it isn't directly monetizable, a dominant messaging app has real, tangible benefits for an ecosystem. The rest of the industry understood this years ago. Facebook paid $22 billion to buy WhatsApp in 2014 and took the app from 450 million users to 2 billion users. Along with Facebook Messenger, Facebook has two dominant messaging platforms today, especially internationally. Salesforce paid $27 billion for Slack in 2020, and Tencent's WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, is pulling in 1.2 billion users and yearly revenues of $5.5 billion. Snapchat is up to a $67 billion market cap, and Telegram is getting $40 billion valuations from investors. Google keeps trying ideas in this market, but it never makes an investment that is anywhere close to the competition. //

Google once had a functional competitor to iMessage in the past, called Google Hangouts. Circa 2015, Hangouts was a messaging powerhouse, which in addition to the native Hangouts messaging, also received SMS and Google Voice messages. Hangouts did group video calls five years before Zoom blew up, and it had clients on Android, iOS, the web, Gmail, and every desktop OS via a Chrome extension.

As usual though, Google lacked any kind of long-term plan or ability to commit to a single messaging strategy, and Hangouts only survived as the "everything" messenger for a single year. By 2016, Google moved on to the next shiny messaging app and left Hangouts to rot. //

Despite Google's whining about iMessage, it seems to have learned nothing from its years of messaging failure. Today, Google messaging is the worst and most fragmented it has ever been. As of press time, the company runs eight separate messaging platforms, none of which talk to each other: there is Google Messages/RCS, which is being promoted today, but there's also Google Chat/Hangouts, Google Voice, Google Photos Messages, Google Pay Messages, Google Maps Business Messages, Google Stadia Messages, and Google Assistant Messaging. Those last couple apps aren't primarily messaging apps but have all ended up rolling their own siloed messaging platform because no dominant Google system exists for them to plug into.

It is an incredible mess, and no single Google product is as good as Hangouts was in 2015

in order to use the App Store, you have to agree to the iTunes Store Terms of Service and/or the App Store Terms of Service. You can confirm this yourself just by reading the documents: they say as much in their all-caps preambles. The two documents are pretty similar; this post will give section numbers from the App Store Terms of Service, but the same language appears in the iTunes Store Terms of Service and so our analysis applies identically to it. You can read both those documents on Apple's site, and we have a copy of that page as it exists today to provide this commentary.

Along the same lines, we'll be talking about GPLv2 specifically in this blog post, since that's the license at issue, but this analysis would apply to all versions of the GNU GPL and AGPL. Section 6 of GPLv2 says:

Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

(Emphasis added.) This last sentence is a crucial part of the strong copyleft in the GPL and AGPL: it prevents distributors from using separate legal agreements, like Terms of Service or NDAs, to take away the freedoms that the license is supposed to grant. This is the license condition that Apple is violating when it distributes GPL-covered software through the App Store. //

That's the problem in a nutshell: Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that. This specific case involves other issues, but this is the one that's most unique and deserves explanation.

We would've liked to see Apple do the right thing and remove these limits, but it looks like that's not going to happen. Apple has removed GNU Go from the App Store, continuing their longstanding habit of preventing users from doing anything that Apple doesn't want them to do. As we said in our initial announcement, this is disappointing but unsurprising; Apple made this choice a long time ago. We just need to make sure everybody else gets the message: if you value your independence and creativity, you should be aware that Apple doesn't. Take your computing elsewhere.

Nonfree (proprietary) software is very often malware (designed to mistreat the user). Nonfree software is controlled by its developers, which puts them in a position of power over the users; that is the basic injustice. The developers and manufacturers often exercise that power to the detriment of the users they ought to serve.

This typically takes the form of malicious functionalities.

The “jails” are malicious operating systems that are designed to impose censorship of which applications the user can install. The image of the iPrison illustrates this issue.

These systems are platforms for censorship imposed by the company that owns the system. Selling products designed as platforms for a company to impose censorship ought to be forbidden by law, but it isn't.

This page lists a few jails, along with some of the methods they use to censor apps, and includes specific examples of apps that were blocked using this censorship power.

For Google, not buying WhatsApp in 2013 feels like a major turning point. Google would go on to launch seven competing messaging and video apps over the years: Google Hangouts in 2013; Google Spaces, Google Allo, and Google Duo in 2016; and Google Chat and Google Meet in 2017. The company also pushed for RCS over Google Messages in 2019. Cue's prediction that the company could "lose" to a Google-led WhatsApp now seems like a dream from a bygone era.

Cue also called messaging "one of the most important apps in a mobile environment," which represents a striking difference from how Google approaches messaging. At Google, messaging is only ever handled by an endless series of underfunded, unstable side projects led by job-hopping project managers. Google releases a new messaging app about every 12-18 months, making it very difficult for any single app to gain traction and reducing consumer confidence in any individual product. The heads of these projects often leave the company shortly after a splashy product launch, and with no top-down direction on what the company should support, the products usually start winding down once the leader bails.

Federighi's comments echo Apple's longstanding position that iMessage is a key lock-in component of Apple's walled garden and that the company shouldn't make it easy for "iPhone families" to incorporate Android devices. The Epic case earlier revealed a 2016 comment from Apple's Phil Schiller, saying that "moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us."

The term “monopoly rent” might be jargon, but the concept it describes is intuitive. Don’t underestimate the power of a simple argument. Google’s and Apple’s alleged rent-collecting days might be numbered.

Apple is facing two class-action lawsuits over the meaning of the words “rent” and “buy.”

In the first suit, lead plaintiff David Andino argues that Apple’s definition of the two words is deceptive since the company can terminate people’s Apple IDs and, along with them, access to content they purchased using the “buy” button. Thus, Andino is arguing that Apple allows consumers to rent content rather than purchase it outright. If he had known that his access could be cut off at any time, he says he would have not spent as much on iTunes content.

Just like Best Buy cannot come into a person’s home to repossess the movie DVD that such person purchased from it, [Apple] should not be able to remove digital content from its customers’ Purchased folders,” the suit says.

Apple countered by arguing that “no reasonable consumer would believe” that content purchased through iTunes would be available on the platform indefinitely. But US District Court Judge John Mendez wasn’t buying it, as first noticed by the Hollywood Reporter. He rejected a motion filed by Apple that sought to dismiss the suit. That means the suit can move forward with its claims of false advertising and unfair competition, though it could still be settled before going to trial.

Apple is also up against a second class-action suit related to terminating Apple IDs. In this one, lead plaintiff Matthew Price claims he lost $24,590.05 in iTunes, the App Store, and in-app purchases, along with $7.63 in account credit, which became inaccessible when Apple terminated his account. Price’s lawsuit was filed on Tuesday.

Price’s $25,000 worth of purchases is perhaps an extreme example of what many consumers may encounter when they buy content on digital platforms, only to find it unavailable when their accounts are suspended or terminated. At issue is whether digital content available through various platforms is truly owned by individuals if the platform owner can prevent them from accessing it in the future.

Amazon is defending itself against a similar lawsuit filed last April by people who claim the company falsely advertised that they would have unlimited access to content purchased through Prime Video. They are concerned that Amazon “secretly reserves the right to terminate the consumers’ access and use of the Video Content at any time,” the suit claims.

Quote:
Apple countered by arguing that “no reasonable consumer would believe” that content purchased through iTunes would be available on the platform indefinitely.

Amazing just how very many of us are unreasonable, isn't it?

If "no reasonable consumer would believe..." then shouldn't Apple be happy to have a jury verdict on it? Should be easy to have 12 "reasonable" jurists. //

I have friends who think I am silly to buy Bluray movies and rip them to my personal NAS that has redundancy. I just don't trust these companies to do right by me in the slightest. //

If this results in a digital version of the Doctrine of First Sale I will be dancing in the streets. This whole "you only license anything digital" thing has been a naked power grab from the start and the courts should never have gone along.

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