Yea but at least with android you can download and install apks and find a way around stuff. Apple has their stuff locked down and they make it difficult to do that sort of stuff.

...what? Use a VPN -> download the APK. Not hard.

APKs are signed so you can easily know if they were tampered with.

You can at least modify Android to get rid of crap. You can't do that with Apple.

What would be the point? If they don’t remove it, do you imagine they’d still be selling iPhones in the country?

Actually - yes I do. Any action against Apple would be a huge blow to both the Chinese and American economies. I'm sure China wants to do that, but right now they cannot do it.

Do you think anyone has ever criticised X Jinping in iMessage? Obviously the answer is yes - and yet iMessage is allowed while every other major (foreign) social network has just been banned. iMessage is now the only major foreign messaging platform allowed in China. That's not a coincidence - it's because so many iPhones are manufactured there.

It's also pretty clear Apple is transitioning to manufacturing elsewhere. They're on schedule to manufacture a quarter of iPhones in India by some time this year (up from zero not too long ago) and are dipping their toes in South American manufacturing as well. Banning iPhone sales in China would rapidly accelerate those plants.

Apple's contribution to China's economy is substantial - those manufacturing plants are huge and have hundreds of thousands of other companies supplying them. Also the workers are very well paid (for a factory job in China).

Correct. There is no Play Store in China, and although some of these apps have APKs that are hosted on the web, I’m imagining that the great firewall is going to block that eventually, if it’s they’re not already being blocked.

So, yeah, you’re going to have to side load APKs and IPAs if you want these apps in China. And hopefully you’re not installing a binary that has been compromised by the state.

The point isn't what they did or do. It's what they claim. They claim to care about you and your privacy but comply with governments.

If they really care about privacy, they would allow sideloading of apps to circumvent bans. But, in fact, they created a walled garden where the walls follows the governments requirements to maximize the profits at the cost of the privacy.

Yes, but play that tape forward as someone living in China. Lets pretend you wanted to use Signal

• you can’t download Signal’s APK directly from their site. It’s behind the great firewall
• you can’t VPN to their site or services via popular local VPN services. Chinese VPNs are regulated and monitored by the state.
• western VPN services get thrown behind the great firewall and or obscured from search because the government censors Baidu.

Etc etc.

There a ways to pull it off, but China does not make it easy. Android is over 80% of phone sales in China. Censoring comms on Android is the state’s priority.

Oh, certainly I would advocate using Android anywhere, but especially China.

Yeah, Signal is a funny one. Claim to be about privacy and then don't put their app on F-Droid.

This is why I also mentioned "a source we chose". On GNU/Linux package managers and F-Droid I can add additional package sources which can be managed by the developer.

Point is, it shouldn't be a thing that Apple or Google or anyone has this kind of power.

What a stupid thing. What is this preventing? Like if Apple is trying to prevent you from side loading a malicious app, it's cool if it's only malicious for a week?

Unless the app is delisted which can also happen. Flappy Bird was one of the more well known examples of that (I remember people seeing phones on eBay with it still installed for stupid money). If that happens you can't reinstall it.