Apple is locking down the iPhone App Store to comply with a new law in China

Moonrise2473@feddit.it to Technology@beehaw.org – 195 points – Apple is locking down the iPhone App Store to comply with a new law in China
theverge.com

China forced Apple to remove any app where the developer isn't registered in China. Meaning they asked Apple to remove 95% of the apps and games available in the App Store.

Poor iPhone users, basically they will get a "wechat handheld" and that's it...

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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.

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.

In the Chinese app store market five to ten commonly used app stores, and yet even the largest has less than a majority market share. Most Chinese people have more than one app store on their phone, so there is no monolith there, whereas “outside of China, Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the app store market share”.

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.

Now they’re not really any better than Android phones in terms of apps and being able to bypass the firewall.

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.