This is the №1 reason I choose Android - nobody can dictate what apps I can install.<p>I always knew you can only install apps from the store on Apple devices and strongly disliked this (I already use some apps which even Google won't approve, e.g. an open-source YouTube downloader only available on GitHub) but once I've found out you can't get some apps (and books) in particular countries (e.g. a book I wanted was only available in the US store) and a government can ban something from the store I facepalmed.
The actual report[1] is very interesting to read.<p>I was surprised that there were zero App Store takedown requests from governments in North America, South America, and Australia.<p>All of the takedown requests came from China, Vietnam, and Europe; including Norway and Switzerland.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2018-H2-en.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2018-H...</a>
> Germany issued the most legal demands for the six-month period ending December 2018 with 12,343 requests for 19,380 devices. Apple said the large number of requests were primarily due to police investigating stolen devices.<p>In scenarios like this, is "... primarily due to ..." good enough? I'm inclined to say no: They need to all be accounted for.
> Apple said it received 29,183 demands from governments — down almost 10 percent on the last reporting period — to access 213,737 devices in the second half of last year.<p>> Apple also received 4,875 requests for account data, such as information stored in iCloud — up by 16 percent on the previous reporting period — affecting 22,503 accounts.<p>I wish they were more specific. What does "access" mean? Location? All local data? Even encrypted data?<p>What data from iCloud? Email addresses, or the full contents of Notes and Drive?<p>Maybe I'm being naive, but I assumed that when something says "Apple can't read X data" it means under all circumstances. But if they have a backdoor, client-side encryption probably doesn't matter.
The common thread here seems to be<p>"there are bad governments in the world, and mobile phones should allow people who want to oppose their own bad governments to install apps that will help them in their opposition?"<p>Honestly if our goal is to rid the world of truly bad governments then <i>phone apps</i> are in not in anyway the first or most effective method.
Also interesting, but not mentioned in the article, is that Apple provides data on how often they comply with such requests in addition to how many they get.
Reports available at <a href="https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report-pdf.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/report-pdf.html</a>.
Not paying your Youtube Premium subscription is enough to take down the entire App Store on your phone.<p>Imagine if Windows wouldn’t let you install software until you updated your Paypal with a valid credit card.
How is this categorically different from other goverments demanding social media credentials?<p><a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/445766-government-surveillance-of-social-media-related-to-immigration-extensive" rel="nofollow">https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/445766-government-su...</a>
I'm glad this article puts a spotlight on this, but my gosh! Could it be more vague? What are the subjects of the NSLs? Was this article written too soon after the documents' release to give a summary of the juicy bits?<p>To me this basically reads like "a company released some government documents". Is this typical of TechCrunch?
If only Apple reported it's own takedowns - a.k.a. censorship of the competition on the app store. Anyone remember how they retroactively changed their policies to "takedown" Steam?