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The story is that major Chinese companies and the state are working together to develop an alternative to Apple’s IDFA. While aggressively pushing back against

The story is that major Chinese companies and the state are working together to develop an alternative to Apple’s IDFA. While aggressively pushing back against companies in the U.S. tracking users, Apple seemingly doesn’t mind having a double standard for China.

CountSessine 6y ago
It's a bigger choice than that for them, or for anyone. If the government requires pervasive tracking, it's either allow it or stop selling phones in China, the world's biggest market for cell phones. And given that economies of scale matter (for things like swallowing flat rate development costs for those nice SOCs they design), it's hard to say goodbye to half your market. Samsung certainly won't take a principled stand on this and stop allowing app tracking. And in a competitive market, deciding to not sell cell phones in China means less development capital for designing the next generation of hardware. They'll start circling the drain and wind up like Motorola or HTC. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be consistent - just that choosing to not sell in China will mean losing everything outside of China eventually.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> Apple seemingly doesn’t mind having a double standard for China. That seems to be the case with many businesses. Nobody wants to lose that entire market just to stand on principle.
- Larrikin 6y ago
  Google did and didn't stop existing as a company
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    Google opted out of the Chinese market because it violated their principles? They didn't try to make a censored Chinese version of Google?
    - summerlight 6y ago
      A part of Google tried to do so and the majority of its employee (enough to scare its senior executives) fiercely rejected that attempt, so it gets overturned.
      - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
        Is that true? A _majority_ of Google employees protested Dragonfly? Last I heard there was a petition with just ~1% of them on it.
- gridder 6y ago
  China is also the place where most of Apple products are produced, this matters a lot as well...
freeflight 6y ago
Is that really the story? When the USG requires Apple to access something on the basis of legal intercept then Apple will comply, as they did with the FBI and that mass shooter guy: Apple granted the FBI access to the iCloud account, the FBI botched it and then wanted access to the data on the physical phone, which Apple couldn't provide due to not knowing the encryption key. The only other "big stance on privacy" that Apple has is that, unlike their main competitor Google, they are not an advertisement business. So they have no real financial motivation to add tracking to their devices and software vs a Google were advertisement and user tracking are pretty big pillars of their financial income. Infrastructure like that is trivial to hijack for surveillance once in place, which privacy wise makes Google devices and software by default the worse choice unless using specifically cleaned and hardened custom roms. So while these two issues are related, legal intercept and privacy, they are not as easily conflated as you make it sound when you claim Apple is having "double standards" when they really are not "double standards" but simply abiding by local laws and regulations.

CountSessine 6y ago

It's a bigger choice than that for them, or for anyone. If the government requires pervasive tracking, it's either allow it or stop selling phones in China, the world's biggest market for cell phones. And given that economies of scale matter (for things like swallowing flat rate development costs for those nice SOCs they design), it's hard to say goodbye to half your market. Samsung certainly won't take a principled stand on this and stop allowing app tracking. And in a competitive market, deciding to not sell cell phones in China means less development capital for designing the next generation of hardware. They'll start circling the drain and wind up like Motorola or HTC. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be consistent - just that choosing to not sell in China will mean losing everything outside of China eventually.

rootusrootus 6y ago

> Apple seemingly doesn’t mind having a double standard for China. That seems to be the case with many businesses. Nobody wants to lose that entire market just to stand on principle.

Larrikin 6y ago
Google did and didn't stop existing as a company
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Google opted out of the Chinese market because it violated their principles? They didn't try to make a censored Chinese version of Google?
  - summerlight 6y ago
    A part of Google tried to do so and the majority of its employee (enough to scare its senior executives) fiercely rejected that attempt, so it gets overturned.
    - carmen_sandiego 6y ago
      Is that true? A _majority_ of Google employees protested Dragonfly? Last I heard there was a petition with just ~1% of them on it.
gridder 6y ago
China is also the place where most of Apple products are produced, this matters a lot as well...

freeflight 6y ago

Is that really the story? When the USG requires Apple to access something on the basis of legal intercept then Apple will comply, as they did with the FBI and that mass shooter guy: Apple granted the FBI access to the iCloud account, the FBI botched it and then wanted access to the data on the physical phone, which Apple couldn't provide due to not knowing the encryption key. The only other "big stance on privacy" that Apple has is that, unlike their main competitor Google, they are not an advertisement business. So they have no real financial motivation to add tracking to their devices and software vs a Google were advertisement and user tracking are pretty big pillars of their financial income. Infrastructure like that is trivial to hijack for surveillance once in place, which privacy wise makes Google devices and software by default the worse choice unless using specifically cleaned and hardened custom roms. So while these two issues are related, legal intercept and privacy, they are not as easily conflated as you make it sound when you claim Apple is having "double standards" when they really are not "double standards" but simply abiding by local laws and regulations.