<story><title>Apple reveals App Store takedown demands by governments</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/apple-app-government-takedowns/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arijun</author><text>An interesting contrast is the story on the front page about Chinese border patrol installing spyware [1]. There, the fact that every app needs to be signed by Apple meant that the surveillance app could only be installed on Android phones. So I guess, yes, nobody can dictate what apps you can install, but also nobody can dictate what apps others can install.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=20342063&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=20342063&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>qwerty456127</author><text>This is the №1 reason I choose Android - nobody can dictate what apps I can install.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t approve, e.g. an open-source YouTube downloader only available on GitHub) but once I&amp;#x27;ve found out you can&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mirimir</author><text>&amp;gt; also nobody can dictate what apps others can install&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s one of the main reason why I don&amp;#x27;t use smartphones: I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be in control of my own device. With iOS, Apple is in control. With Android, apparently nobody is in control.&lt;p&gt;But on my Linux machines, I&amp;#x27;m arguably in control. If I can find stuff somewhere, I can install it. And nobody else can, unless they root them. It happens, I know. But with LUKS FDE, even booting is arguably hard unless they could read the key from RAM.&lt;p&gt;So how come we got this smartphone crap, instead of actual portable computers that could, among other things, work as cellphones?</text></comment>
<story><title>Apple reveals App Store takedown demands by governments</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/02/apple-app-government-takedowns/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arijun</author><text>An interesting contrast is the story on the front page about Chinese border patrol installing spyware [1]. There, the fact that every app needs to be signed by Apple meant that the surveillance app could only be installed on Android phones. So I guess, yes, nobody can dictate what apps you can install, but also nobody can dictate what apps others can install.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=20342063&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=20342063&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>qwerty456127</author><text>This is the №1 reason I choose Android - nobody can dictate what apps I can install.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t approve, e.g. an open-source YouTube downloader only available on GitHub) but once I&amp;#x27;ve found out you can&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tushar-r</author><text>From the article:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The iPhones are plugged into a reader that scans them, while Android phones have the app installed to do the same job.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they cannot install an app, but that doesn&amp;#x27;t make your data secure from being taken.</text></comment>