Remember THIS Apple?

I hope you have a tear in your eye for a bygone fond memory. Because now they’re the folks who write the words for the guy on the screen to read.

The colorless drones in prison suits on benches are allowed to hear or read only state-sanctioned argle-bargle, and Apple is the arbiter. Should the well-nigh featureless creatures absorbing the approved messages become a tad restless, and begin to question their assigned lot in life, or the way things currently are done, Apple stands ready to reinforce the message of collective. Apple will utilize its iron grip on all communication to facilitate authorities herding sheeple back to their assigned paddocks.

Anti-government protests flared in several Chinese cities and on college campuses over the weekend. But the country’s most widespread show of public dissent in decades will have to manage without a crucial communication tool, because Apple restricted its use in China earlier this month.

AirDrop, the file-sharing feature on iPhones and other Apple devices, has helped protestors in many authoritarian countries evade censorship. That’s because AirDrop relies on direct connections between phones, forming a local network of devices that don’t need the internet to communicate. People can opt into receiving AirDrops from anyone else with an iPhone nearby.

That changed on Nov. 9, when Apple released a new version of its mobile operating system, iOS 16.1.1, to customers worldwide. Rather than listing new features, as it often does, the company simply said, “This update includes bug fixes and security updates and is recommended for all users.”

Hidden in the update was a change that only applies to iPhones sold in mainland China: AirDrop can only be set to receive messages from everyone for 10 minutes, before switching off. There’s no longer a way to keep the “everyone” setting on permanently on Chinese iPhones. The change, first noticed by Chinese readers of 9to5Mac, doesn’t apply anywhere else.

Other people noticed but we all know where Apple stands on that, whoever is doing the talking.

Congratulations, @Apple, for actively helping the tyrants in Beijing crack down on dissent and free speech https://t.co/6tjxto2Ihr

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 28, 2022

It’s not the first time Apple has supported the Chinese in crushing a nascent dissent movement, but this current iteration is the most boldly underhanded. A few years ago, the corporation helped China get control of the protests in Hong Kong in a similar fashion, but condemnation of their efforts blew over pretty quickly. It’s really advantageous when everybody loves and uses your cool stuff, with its edgy patina of freedom rebel. Frauds.

…Apple has repeatedly helped China control dissent, mostly by removing apps that protestors have used to coordinate, communicate, or gather information. (Quartz’s iOS app was removed by Apple, at China’s request, at the height of the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.) By hobbling the functionality of AirDrop in China, Apple is once again coming to the government’s aid.

“Oh, jeez. That’s awful for CHINA,” Americans think, ever so many of them blithely unaware that Apple is able – and fully prepared – to do that very thing here. Elon Musk is threatening their almost total control of information flow, and they act as if they are willing to cut AMERICANS‘ access to whatever-they-freely-choose-to-read off at the knees to regain control. Apple will simply take a different tack to do it.

It started with a classic, but admirably subtle, advertising slowdown gambit. Musk being Musk, he noticed.

What’s going on here @tim_cook?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022

For perspective, in terms of Twitter’s bottom line, Apple advertising represents a pretty fair chunk of change.

NEW: Documents show why Apple pulling its Twitter ads is devastating for Elon Musk: In the first quarter of 2022, Apple was Twitter's top advertiser, accounting for nearly $50M in revenuehttps://t.co/h9TWjdwFoH

— Faiz Siddiqui (@faizsays) November 28, 2022

When Musk’s “what gives” tweet went up, people started contacting him – there in that big, wide, open Twitter world, where everyone and God could read it – with stories of Apple’s myriad abuses, from censorship to usurious charges for app developers in the Apple store. Always poking the bear, Musk wanted to hear more, replete with his own take on the allegations.

Who else has Apple censored? https://t.co/lZculFIkAX

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022

Someone suggested he back off, as Teslas use the Apple iOS system, and Musk baldly threw out a “Are you suggesting” Apple would retaliate? *poke poke poke*

And then Musk did that thing that has all the Left/liberal/ruling junta control freaks in an absolute panic, in absolute frenzied melt-downs. A journalist working with Bari Weiss contacted him in the thread asking for a channel to discuss questions for some article they’re doing. I highlighted his answer. Oh. MAN.

HERE WORKS. Right out in the open. Transparent.

YOICKS

By last evening things had ratcheted up to the point where Musk was asserting (CNBC frames it as “claims”) that Apple had, indeed, “threatened to remove Twitter from its app store.”

Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process.

“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.

…Apple’s App Store is the only way to distribute software to iPhones. If the Twitter app were pulled, the social network would lose one of its main distribution platforms, although the service is available for the web.

In addition, Apple requires iPhone app makers to pay between 15% and 30% of any digital goods sold through their apps. Musk has said one of his plans for Twitter is to raise billions of dollars from subscriptions, such as Twitter Blue, which is offered through the iPhone app. If it were to grow to Musk’s goals, Apple would collect hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

Diverse parties are watching Apple’s machinations. Not everyone is pulling for them to prevail over Musk and what he ostensibly represents.

DeSantis on report that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from its App Store:

"That would be a huge, huge mistake, and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress." pic.twitter.com/FHqZrmbJ7N

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 29, 2022

It’s in all our best interests, Apple users or not (Android girl here), to watch this chess match closely, and just maybe root for the richest guy against the richest corporation. So we don’t become China, where people were only just beginning to see messages of dissent, sometimes for the first time in their entire lives…

A Shanghai resident was riding the metro on Tuesday when an AirDrop notification popped up on his iPhone: “‘Xi Jinping’s iPhone’ would like to share a photo.”

Curious, the man accepted the request and received an image denouncing Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. “Oppose dictatorship, oppose totalitarianism, oppose autocracy,” some of the characters on the poster read.

The slogans echoed what a man had written on two banners and hung on a highway overpass in Beijing last week in a daring act of defiance of Xi’s tight grip on the country…

…“This is the first time I saw or received a medium of any kind that is critical of the current regime,” he told VICE World News, speaking anonymously to avoid retaliation from Chinese authorities. “Word of mouth, even from the locals, is common, but never something of this nature.”

…and Apple shut it down on them.

What a horrific way to live. And Apple is helping keep them there – in bondage.

Your iPhone is buying your serfdom, slowly but surely. https://t.co/OYXYkFEy58

— Beege 🎃 (@WelbornBeege) November 29, 2022

Unconscionable.

I won’t say un-American, because they left those ideals behind long ago.