China forced Apple to remove any app where the developer isn’t registered in China. Meaning they asked Apple to remove 95% of the apps and games available in the App Store.
Poor iPhone users, basically they will get a “wechat handheld” and that’s it…
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Apple makes the situation worse, by having an exclusive app store, and not allowing people to load apps directly. Without a developer key, having to renew every week, etc it’s effectively not allowing.
F Droid is currently accessible from China, I believe. Even if it isn’t, you can share Android apps via Bluetooth, nearby. It’s a far more partitionable and repairable situation with f Droid then with the Apple store.
So if iOS allows other app stores access, then that will give people more options inside of China
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The stores aren’t relevant, the operating system allowing apps to run that aren’t signed by an Apple certificate is the important thing
Given the choice to sideload apps, I’m sure it wouldn’t matter what store you get it from–just the fact that you can install the apps. I’m sure people can skirt developer registration.
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So it’s the same story for Android?
Yup, but since Google is not in China, we don’t hear about Google complying, but every other Chinese app store is complying with this new law.
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