> hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first. Not hard at all. On Oct 13, 2022 this protest happened (https://en.

> hard to come up with a legit explanation for why they rushed that change to China first. Not hard at all. On Oct 13, 2022 this protest happened (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Sitong_Bridge_protest), which the CCP considered a serious offense, potentially on the same level of the 1989 protest. At the time people, especially college students around that area (lots of universities nearby), were using AirDrop to share photos of the protest, because social medium was heavily censored. University administrators were tasked to make sure iPhone-carrying students to disable allowing AirDrop from everyone to stop the spread of the images. A few weeks later, iOS public betas were found to come with the change to limiting AirDrop to 10 minutes, and nothing about it was ever mentioned in release note. Was Apple pressured by the CCP to rush this? I don't know. Look at the evidence and judge by yourself. But there's a more nuanced perspective. It is rumored that CCP has the ability to actually track and uncover the identity of iOS devices sending AirDrop. Think about it: how else AirDrop can limit to receive from contacts only? If so, AirDrop would provide a false sense of anonymity and deniability, and Apple would put some of its customers in jeopardy if they do nothing. By limiting AirDrop from everyone to 10 minutes, Apple achieved three objectives: 1. They showed compliance (they have to, if they want to keep the business in China); 2. They avoided the potential reputation damage in the scenario where protesters are caught AirDropping offensive materials (e.g. “iPhones aren't as secure as Apple advertises after all”); 3. They closed a loophole in which people get spammed (yes, allowing AirDrop from everyone gets you mostly spams anyway). The “mistake” Apple made was that it did not a) rush the change to all regions, and b) mention it explicitly in release note, therefore completely exposed them to the first objective and failed to convey the nuances.