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Russia Demands Apple Remove Telegram From Russian App Store
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For Russia to have a big enough interest in banning something, it must be used by large enough group of people. iMessage is more limited from the start as it only works between iPhones (which have a market share of less than 30% in Russia). That is just one reason why Telegram ended up massively dominating the messaging market in Russia (created by a Russian likely helped as well).
Note also that Russia hasn't asked Apple to remove Signal (or other encrypted messaging services) as well. They care about being able to do bulk 'filtering' of messages, and thus they mainly care about what service the vast majority uses. They know that if somebody really wants to hide their communication, they'll be able to so regardless.
Apple should start a promotion campaign in Russia for encryption. Preventing 'terror attacks' is an infinitesimal part of what they would use the information granted to them for.
Absolutely, but that doesn't mean they could not decide to see who blinks first and do risk their Russia business by putting their foot down. Russia is still more liberal than China, kicking out Apple could result in some notable backlash. And Russia is a much smaller market for Apple than China.
It's okay to hate some aspects of a company without hating the whole thing.
I hate the fact that you can't sideload apps, but I like how well iOS performs and runs, and the Mac platform is excellent as well.
I think Apple could be better with less restriction on the platform. Does it piss me off enough to make me not use it? Not yet. But it might someday.
Exactly. Its one thing to ask for a third party app to be removed from app store, its another to ask that built in apps be removed. Apps that are built to work seamlessly throughout the os. Thats not going to happen, and not because they already have a backdoor. Also, and I know its easy for me to say, but if I was Apple, I would say......Ummm, no. We wont be removing legitimate apps that do not violate any App Store policy. If you cant get your telco's and ISP's to block them.....thats your problem. Dont come to us for a work-around. We will be more then happy to take our business elsewhere but we are NOT going to be going country by country, dealing with a mish mash of regulations. This country ok, that country no good. Not going to happen.
I believe things of that nature have already been in existence for some time, like FaceTime not being available in some countries, for example.
Wait, I thought they already did allow it, provided it was signed*. I was able to load a very old version of FB Messenger onto my iPhone by dragging the IPA into iTunes. I don't see why it wouldn't work unless Telegram gets their dev certs revoked (even then, you could set your time back, but bleh).
* Apple has to sign, so you can't put unapproved apps in this way
Edit: As Seoras pointed out below, you can also build the src in Xcode and load it that way. Sounds fine to me.
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Yeah. So the only thing Apple won't allow is sideloading closed-source and unsigned bundles, which I don't have sympathy for anyway. 99% just pirated stuff, much of which is likely malware-laden.
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It's not the same. Apps side loaded this way expire after a week (you have to load them every week) and can't use the push notification service.
Not sure about the expiration thing cause I've never had that happen, but maybe I've never built without a paid dev account.
Lack of APNS for push sucks, but I wouldn't expect it to work in any scenario since the dev's servers have to authenticate and send through Apple's for that. The alternatives would involve Apple really bending over backwards to allow it. Third party push servers are probably out of the question due to power consumption (maintaining a connection for each).
It pretty much is. Oh wait, no you are correct. App developers, like myself, don't get our apps stolen and freeloaded. There's one reason Apple's App store makes 60% of revenue with only 15% of the smart phone market.
If you don't have a developer account then, yes, but if you can sign the app with a developer account then it's indefinite.
Boo hoo, so you have to load it once a week or you can pay ($99) and load it once. Sounds like a freemium model to me.
So you don't get to see your secret, government prohibited, app's notifications on your screen.
There's a problem here?
Let's face it. This move by Russia, which will be aped by ever other country (one's as bad as the other) is about keeping an eye on the masses.
Anyone badass enough to need to cover that ass will take Telegram's open source, modify it and use it for their own organisations needs under another name as an enterprise release. Even the governments themselves.
then if a terrorist attack happened, blame the government for their inability to stop before it happens
I thought about this comment for some reason. I wonder if this is the reason Apple doesn’t put iMessage on Androind. If they put it on android, maybe it would be an issue for Russia and anyone else that doesn’t like Telegram?