According to the report, citing a source within the Ministry, Apple struck a deal with the government that will show users a prompt when first configuring a device in Russia to pre-install apps from a list of government-approved software. Users will have the ability to decline the installation of certain apps.
The new legislation is an amendment to the existing “On Consumer Protection” law that will require the pre-installation of software on all devices sold in Russia, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and smart TVs. The pre-installed software will include antivirus and cartographic apps, social media apps, and “Public Service” apps for payments and civil services.
Apple bending over backwards to please Putin’s totalitarian regime will open the (back)door to countless other governments – western or not – demanding the same thing. As always, it seems Apple only cares about privacy and user experience if they can pull the wool over the eyes of gullible westerners – but as soon as the choice comes down to money or values, Tim Cook is jumping at the opportunity dump his proclaimed values in a ditch by the side of the road.
Speaking of bending over backwards to please totalitarian regimes and dumping proclaimed values in a ditch by the side of the road, Tim Cook will attend the Chinese government’s China Development Forum, despite the ongoing Uighur genocide and crackdown on the democratic rights of the citizens of Hong Kong.
Classy move, Tim, but then, anybody with even a modicum of pattern recognition skills is not surprised by your never-ending quest to please dictators.
Apple bending over backwards to please [insert name here]’s totalitarian regime, because _greed_.
People need to stop thinking companies have moral values.
IBM provided the Nazis with the machines they needed so they could round up Jews more efficiently ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust) .
Firefox claims it fights for an open web while at the same time calling for Communist type censorship.
This has been going on forever and will keep going on. People can be held to standards but not companies which is why being a “fanboy” is so stupid.
joe,
Yeah, it’s unfortunate that people fail to recognize this is what happens when owners don’t have control over their own devices. I’ve warned against it years ago, this was inevitable and will continue because people declined to fight for their rights as corporations took them away. Many people are so against government control they’ll protest it tooth and nail. Yet too often they aren’t even fussed when their favorite corporations are pushing the very same owner restrictions that are enabling government control. “Owners need to be protected from themselves” the argument goes…to this day I still think there’s a lot of hypocrisy from fanboys who won’t want to admit the role they’ve played in this And it’s not just phones either, owner restrictions are increasingly showing up on general purpose computers too, which should worry everybody given the rise of authoritarianism.
This! Their objective is to make money anyway they can, and they don’t care who they hurt in the process. They’re like a junkie; it’s all about the next fix. Nothing more, nothing less.
The vast majority of Jews rounded up lived in Jewish communities and had typically Jewish names. They were easily identifiable without any help from IBM.
Brisvegas,
“Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 million”
Seems like the they made quite a difference to me.
I don’t think you understand the logistics of rounding up and exterminating over 11 million people.
That’s basically US foreign policy. Appease, or install, US/Western Europe friendly dictators in order to drain the country of its resources.
This is why the US and Western Europe are so mad at China. Those uppity Chinese have the audacity to stand up to the US and Western Europe.
China has been making moves to acquire control of resources for the last decade, which is why the smart money is on figuring out renewable resources.
I fail to see why you incessantly target Apple. It was the US government, not Google, who decided Google would no longer be allowed to sell Android to China – and as Ars Technica has shown, HarmonyOS is just Android with restrictions.
Does the fact that the Chinese and Russians can take Android and Linux and use them mean that open source advocates like us, who tend to be left libertarians, defenders of free speech, advocates of democracy and human rights and the rule of law are hypocrites? Of course not. I might prefer that Apple prefer not to do business in China and Russia but as others have said, doing so makes them no worse than IBM of the thirties and forties.
And since you dislike Apple so much, you probably write your articles on a PC made possible by…oh yes, IBM.
Thom!
OSAlert always was ultimate source of news and very interesting point of view in IT industry.
When & why it becomes political propaganda site?
Why do You call Russian government a “totalitarian regime”? How much Russians do You ask what they really think about president and Federal Assembly they elect?
Why do You think that EU did right when forced Microsoft to provide alternative browser to EU Windows users, and Russia go wrong providing Russian Apple iOS users choice of social network app or search engine during device setup?