“The usual suspects came out in force yesterday to misreport claims that the Chinese government had banned use of Apple products due to security concerns. Which is why iPads and MacBooks aren’t listed, but security isn’t the concern,” Johnny Evans writes for Computerworld.
“The situation apparently reflects nothing more than an administrative problem created when Apple was late delivering documents about energy saving. It had to do so to get its products included on China’s approved product list but Apple failed to manage this in time, and that’s why its systems aren’t listed,” Evans writes. “‘Fang Honggang, vice president at Detecon International GmbH (China), told Caixin that speculation that national security reasons caused the Chinese government to reject Apple products is unreliable. The Chinese government uses foreign brands, with companies such as Dell still on the list,’ according to China.org.”
“China has been highly suspicious of US technology firms since Edward Snowden revealed that the US spies on almost everybody on the planet. Google and Facebook have been slammed by Chinese media for working with US spying agencies, while both Kaspersky and Symantec were skipped off the latest Chinese government approved equipment list. Windows 8 is now banned from Chinese government PCs,” Evans writes. “It may be true that Apple’s solutions are not included on the latest list simply because of an administrative error — but the situation for US tech firms in China has certainly become more difficult as a result of US surveillance activities.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As said early yesterday, as one of the first and only outlets to correctly report this story, the reports for Apple products being banned by the Chinese government are nothing more than echo chamber-amplified FUD.
Related article:
No, China has not ‘banned Apple products from government purchases’ – August 6, 2014
Yup, you were the only one to ge this one right. But, it sounded like a hit piece when I first read the article yesterday.
This is the first time I can remember that Bloomberg has started the FUD campaign. Typically, the usual suspects are Forbes, The Wall Street Journal or CNBC. The payments from the “institutions” must have been large.
its funny how some “bloggers” want so desperately make apple look bad and they turn good news into bad ones cropping the news or making bad headers.
Look at how engadget presented the same news in a bad way:
China bans Apple products for government use:
http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/06/china-procurement-ban-apple-government-use/
None of the numbnuts that commented on that article (and there were like 130 comments) even questioned the validity of the article. There was rampant speculation written as though it was fact because it came from another moronic article. It’s no wonder there are so many bloggers publishing crap. Their average dolt readers eat it up. Jaheezus, the brainless gene pool is gargantuan.
There are a lot of things to criticize the Chinese government about but this is certainly not one of them: “Windows 8 is banned from use in Chinese government.”