Apple’s burgeoning slate of digital subscription services are blocked by China’s authoritarian government.
When it comes to many of Apple Inc.’s latest services, iPhone users in China are missing out. Podcast choices are paltry. Apple TV+ is off the air. News subscriptions are blocked, and Arcade gaming is nowhere to be found… Apple services such as the App Store, digital books, news, video, podcasts and music, put the company in the more precarious position of information provider (or at least overseer), exposing it to a growing online crackdown by China’s authoritarian government…
Many paid offerings that help Apple generate recurring revenue from its devices aren’t available in the country. That includes four new services that Apple announced this year: TV+ video streaming, the Apple Card, Apple Arcade and the News+ subscription. Other well-known Apple services can’t be accessed in the country either, including the iTunes Store, iTunes Movie rentals, Apple Books and the Apple TV and Apple News apps…
The company has been forced to remove several apps from the App Store in China, including The New York Times and Quartz news apps… Apple has also pulled hundreds of VPN apps that helped users evade China’s Great Firewall… one of Apple’s App Store decisions sparked a rare rebuke from the People’s Daily, a mouthpiece of China’s ruling Communist Party. Apple was excoriated by the newspaper for approving an app called HKmap.live that let users monitor Hong Kong police activity to stay safe in the midst of democracy protests in the city… Soon after, Apple removed the app, saying it violated local laws and endangered law enforcement.
MacDailyNews Take: What an awful catch-22 Apple has built for itself!
The bottom line is that the Chinese government is so deathly afraid of its own citizens that they’re (quixotically) trying to keep them from being exposed to new ideas, fearful that one day they’ll think for themselves. Wonder why? (smirk)
When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie. ― Yevgeny Yevtushenko
A word to the unwise.
Torch every book.
Char every page.
Burn every word to ash.
Ideas are incombustible.
And therein lies your real fear. — Ellen Hopkins
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]