Wait…Apple’s still doing business with/in Russia?
It’s a shame but it seems most companies only pretended to cut ties.
Pretty much every brand, that was doing business there before, does it the exact same way, but under a shell company name. Capitalism doesn’t give a fuck who’s doing what, and how wrong it is
See how iPhone sales peak in Kazakhstan and Georgia after the war and sanctions. Does apple work in Russia? No, they just ship their shit to Georgia and don’t ask why every Georgian needs 2 iphones and one MacBook every year.
Lots of western companies are. Not everything is subject to sanctions — the U.S. government still buys uranium from Russia and there’s cooperation on space launches — but even the companies that tried to divest for moral reasons found it challenging, to say the least. The ones who tried often had their assets essentially stolen or sold for pennies on the dollar to a Putin loyalist oligarch.
I’m not sure what Apple is doing there besides having the App Store. They did stop all exports so any new Apple products there are smuggled and probably way more expensive. On balance, I think it’s better keeping the App Store and software updates available to Russians. Some dissidents and journalists use Apple products too and you don’t want their devices left insecure.
probably way more expensive
Nope. iPhone 15 pro max 128 gb could be bought in Moscow for 109490 руб, which is $15 higher than in the US.
Before the war Apple had a weird price policy in Russia when they just multiplied the official US price by the factor of 100 to get the price in roubles. It resulted in a +30-60% increase in prices.
So… the war has actually dropped the price for the Apple products dramatically for regular russians. The only problem with the Apple products the war has introduced is that you can’t pay in AppStore
Well of course it does when pretty dumb and easily visible schemes to do that do not lead to prison sentences and huge fines.
All those government regulation supporter types look right at this and don’t realize that this is the answer to “why people of more libertarian views on economics don’t want everyone to be happy”. Because government regulation just gives someone power to collect bribes when there’s a power difference involved.
What? You thought this conflict was actually real?
Well, just a month ago they couldn’t pay out a bounty to Kaspersky for a 0day exploit they found due to the sanctions, so this seems a little off.
Can Russians still buy stuff from the App Store?
Only via complicated shady schemes. The simplest option is to go to another country, open a bank account and buy a sim.
Can’t they block ip addresses or gps coords?
Interesting. Thanks for the info.
God forbid Apple take a 0.01% hit to their profits to allow the flow of factual information to people stuck in Russia under a monstrous dictator.
The vast majority of russians support imperialism and a majority hold genocidal views (they would never openly agree to this, but on an outcome basis they do support eradication of Ukrainian culture and not only).
Even to this day, every russian with a smartphone has access to uncensored youtube available within 10 secs on their phone.
Not saying what apple did was right, just pointing out the “lack of factual information” narrative is largely incorrect. It’s more a lack of respect for the rights others, nihilism and overwhelming supremacism; no VPN or technology is going to solve this.
I’m not talking about the people happily living in self-delusion. We have plenty of those in the US too. Free information channels are still important and can be a crushing loss to the people who do care about reality.
There is different people in different countries. No question about that. And free information channels are definitely very important. My argument is that in the case of russia, this factors don’t really come into play in a meaningful way.
Information channels even after the full scale invasion are available and easy to access, it was less restrictive before Feb 24 2022, but the difference is somewhat marginal. Access to information isn’t going to magically change the imperialist, supremacist mindset of the overwhelming majority of russians.
It’s not an access to information problem, it’s a social and cultural problem. I’ve lived there for 10 years (in addition to living a decade in north america and many years in asia), the imperialist/genocidal mindset has survived 3 regimes (Tsarism, USSR, authoritarian capitalism) with very different technological currents and economic structure profiles. It’s not going away just like that.
Full disclosure: I am Ukrainian, but I would argue you can come to the same conclusions by taking a critical look at their history, current attitudes (even among the “liberal” opposition) and broad worldview.
Just wanted to share my thoughts. Re-reading my posts, I think I come off a bit more pushy than I wanted to.
I’m not advocating for free information because i think it’ll make a significant difference in current geopolitics or change how things would have gone. I simply view it as a human right. But I do think it is particularly important in a country that is in the process of violently suppressing increasingly important information (e.g. who the terrorist attackers were so Russia isnt in a blind rage against Ukrainian “butchers”). These small drips of reality into the information space do temper the level of dishonesty Russia can get away with. They aren’t quite yet to North Korean levels of mass delusion and if a tiny portion of Apple’s profit help spare people from that misery then it is a small price to pay for what little seed of hope that can sow for the future. Other countries have been expected to endure much more to deal with trade restrictions etc. so it’s a bit much that Apple can’t even do this tiny thing.
Full disclosure: I am Ukrainian
So your country is butt friends with Azerbaijan yet you are moralizing on genocides. Fuck off. Being invaded by Russia is not an indulgence paper for other crimes.
The vast majority of russians support imperialism and a majority hold genocidal views (they would never openly agree to this, but on an outcome basis they do support eradication of Ukrainian culture and not only).
Don’t pretend there’s any difference to yourself in this though. Just different allowed targets.
Even to this day, every russian with a smartphone has access to uncensored youtube available within 10 secs on their phone.
You have access to whole ass uncensored Web yet I’m certain you don’t know shit about siege and ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, while the 3 mediators there were (and formally still are) USA, France and Russia.
And the USA representative publicly said they won’t allow ethnic cleansing days before it happened. And, say, in case of Ukraine they well knew months before and were very loud with warnings. And after said ethnic cleansing they immediately started talking the way it became clear that they supported it. And no sanctions have been put on Azerbaijan (which is also a big proxy for Russian strategic exports and imports, but that’s unimportant, of course).
So being Armenian I say shut up.
Also no, vast majority of Russians don’t support anything such, they are just in apathy because kinda big protests were not successful in changing the government.
I’ll add that when those protests were happening, “the West” mostly supported Putin by recognizing his stolen elections, just like they did during Chechen wars and, of course, with opposition to Yeltsin’s fascist tendencies. Cause there were lots of money to be made in Russia for politicians making those decisions.
Any such moralizing westerner should go to the frontline and replace some Ukrainian life in the total number of the dead.
Just different allowed targets.
I’m sorry, I can’t get past that first paragraph. What “targets” do you think most people are okay with genociding? The fact that you think everyone has a group they’d be fine with wiping off the face of the earth completely is extremely concerning.
I dunno, any of more than a dozen happening right now on this planet with no notable protests or anything in democratic countries and with their governments just doing business as usual with governments perpetrating those.
Where I live it’s been 20+ years since a protest changed anything, and now those kinda may get you jailed for an arbitrary amount of years or sent southwest as cannon fodder.
Where you live it’s likely different. So.
Fascinating assumptions on your part!
You’ve made an even more fascinating blanket statement against Russians, and it so happens most decent people I know are Russian, living, well, in Russia.
So if it’s fine, I’m doing mine.
I never said all russians. That’s ridiculous, I personally know several who a good, reasonable people.
Your statements about Ukrainians’ thinking on NK/Artsakh seems knowingly provocative and exaggerated.
I think you’re trying to stir the pot a bit, because you don’t really have anything else to say.
Your comment read differently.
seems knowingly provocative and exaggerated.
There’s nothing exaggerated in it, Ukraine’s government is complicit in genocide.
I haven’t said anything on Ukrainians in general thinking about it. I mean, plenty of supposed Ukrainians in the Interwebs are complete ghouls on this particular subject, but they are likely bots.
How is Ukraine’s government complicit in genocide?
What country do I want to invade and destroy their culture/language/society?
What are you on about?
I am Ukrainian, I live in Ukraine. I’ve also lived in the russia for 10 years and even to this day have a few russian friends.
The vast majority of russians support imperialism and a majority hold genocidal views (they would never openly agree to this, but on an outcome basis they do support eradication of Ukrainian culture and not only).
That’s a major simplification. The fact that russians do not stand against a genocidal war doesn’t mean that the vast majority do support it.
I disagree. While my statement did not include any kind of elaboration. This is not a simplification.
At the very least a strong majority (and I am being conservative) support the annexation of Ukrainian territories and elimination of Ukrainian culture and language in areas under occupation. On the quantitative side this is confirmed by various polling initiatives that use different methodologies (including in-direct polling with attempts to estimate preference falsification).
On the qualitative side, you can look at genocides committed in the last ~100 years by the russians (and there are several, includes less well known ones) and review the attitudes towards these crimes among various socio-political groups (not necessarily in a purely quantitative manner).
I have one interesting anecdote. Currently among the “liberal” russian opposition there is a big debate around a 3 hour YT series about the 90s in russia.
One bit topic that was completely excluded was the actions of russians in Chechnya; the creators (Navalniy’s organization) said it was out of scope.
During their intervention in Chechnya in the 90s, they killed approximately 5% of the civilian population; it would be like if 7.5 million russian civilians were killed.
Don’t get me wrong, a relatively small % of russians would openly admit to that they support extermination of Ukrainian identity (still 10s of millions). But even among the reminder, there is a strong undercurrent of supremacism, a desire of expansion that de facto is support for genocide.
I’ve been recently banned for putting links that lead to russian sites, so I’ll reference the sources by name in italic.
On the quantitative side this is confirmed by various polling initiatives that use different methodologies (including in-direct polling with attempts to estimate preference falsification).
AFAIK it is neither confirmed nor refuted. I don’t know how one would interpret results where 91-93% just refuse to talk to a sociologist and 4-5% more abort the interview when asked about something related to the war. That’s the results by Russian Field, one of a few agencies that publish these numbers. They do interpretation of these results, but they differ from month to month: you can numbers from Feb 2024 to prove your point, I can put numbers from May 2024 to prove mine.
On the qualitative side, you can look at genocides committed in the last ~100 years by the russians (and there are several, includes less well known ones) and review the attitudes towards these crimes among various socio-political groups
That’s a bold point implying that history defines the attitudes for a whole nation for decades. There were a lot of atrocities made in the name of Russia in the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, towards Circassians, Germans, Tatar and Georgians (probably forgot something). But for some reasons, russians want to exterminate only Ukrainian identity, conquer Baltics and befriend Georgia and Germany. That’s a political/propaganda surface, not a historical one.
Talking about qualitative research, there’s a publicsociologylab group that conducts interesting narrative research. Their last project is concerned with the view on the war from a non-central city. They conclude that people do ignore the atrocities and view them as something that is alien to them. The only question they ask is whether it is worth it to go to war for $10k + $3k/mo.
I hope that I was able to draw a picture where Russia is not a country of pests that should be exterminated. It’s a complex evil system that could be built anywhere in the world, even in Ukraine or the US.
So what exactly do you think a russian citizen can do to opose the war? Are you aware of the people protesting with blank peaces of paper being taken away? Or even high ranking people “falling from the balcony”
Do you also think that North Koreans support and enjoy their way of living?
There is a long way from not having much choice in oposing something to actually supporting it…
Outside of the political sphere, life in russia is nothing like in NK.
I am aware of the such protests and of public condemnations that result in jail sentences and even acts for sobotage.
Realistically, there are three options 1. Do nothing (understandable) 2. Leave the country (not available to all) 3. Join rebel forces and/or engage in sabotage (this takes a lot of bravery, and people have dependents). [1] is the only realistic option for most.
That being said, I never claimed that the situation for those russians who oppose the full scale invasion (and genocidal imperialism in general) is not dire. Nor did I claim that every single russian is a genocidal imperialism.
I did claim that at least a strong majority (if not an overwhelming majority) are genocidal imperialist and provided some high level points with respect to quantitative and qualitative approaches.
I strongly disagree that my statement is a simplification and I tried to explain why.
Your welcome to say I am wrong or claim that the current situation is influencing my thinking (don’t forget, in my OP I did mention that I lived in russia for 10 years, this was before the invasion of Georgia) but you can’t say this is just a quick simplification; “a stereotype driven by a stressful situation” or something like that.
Another argument for alternative appstores
Another argument for Android.
I’m of the opinion that Apple services ought to be geofenced out of Russia entirely.
Google too.
C’mon, google works with China
Weak. Pathetic apple
More like greedy and nihilistic, like all corporations.
As a result, anyone wanting to access blocked sites from Russia is forced to use a VPN, a protective tunnel that encrypts internet traffic and changes a user’s IP address.
I hate how media describes VPN. It doesn’t “change your IP address” but rather makes your traffic appear to come from a remote endpoint when configured to do so.
I use VPNs all the time that don’t “change my IP address” at all.
They do change the source IP from the perspective of the host receiving your connection.
But there’s an important difference here. Sometimes you want the IP address to look like it’s coming from a different location because of region locking. Eg Netflix.
Other times you want the origin IP hiding along the data stream to stop snoopers. eg the government.
So changing your IP from the perspective of the receiver isn’t much use if you’re trying to hide from the government. People who are not very tech savvy may not necessarily realize this important distinction until it’s too late. So it’s best to explain the difference.
If you’re routing internet traffic via the VPN tunnel then yes of course that’s true.
But you can be connected to a VPN and only direct specific subnets (like the traditional office network example) to it. You’re not always forced to use it as a default route (using the term loosely here).
That’s pedantry that serves zero purpose to the story. It’s an article for layman, and the only reason to even bring up a VPN is to mention Apple listening to the Kremlin. It serves little to no narrative purpose.
And the VPNs that people use for these purposes usually tunnel all traffic unless individual programs have been explicitly added to a list.
I don’t get it, why else would you use VPN if not to spoof your IP address?
To access a different LAN, e.g. a network at work, or your NAS at home. You configure it so your internet traffic still goes over your normal connection but only the LAN requests to the specific subnet goes over the VPN. This was the original use case they were built for (roadwarrior businessmen logging into their corporate portal from a hotel or whatever)
when you want to be on a different local network?
You won’t be “on a different local network,” you’ll be accessing specific networks (or subnets) via the VPN tunnel rather than some other network interface on your machine.
So if you’re at home with a 192.168.0.0/24 network and you want to access an office resource on the 192.168.141.0/24 network, likely what will happen is your machine with have a route to 192.168.131.0/24 via the network the VPN provides (let’s just say 10.0.0.1).
Depending on how everything’s configured, the server you’re accessing might see it coming from the VPN server (masquerade) or it could very well be passed on as-is (which would only work if the server has a routing table back to you via the VPN).
Typically when people use VPNs for internet access, the traffic is sent out masqueraded so that it appears to come from the VPN’s WAN IP address.
To not disclose to your internet provider the sites you are visiting.
Yes but this isn’t the point I’m getting at — VPN doesn’t always mean you’re sending all your Internet traffic down the tunnel. You can choose to configure only specific networks to use the VPN tunnel.
That’s the case of corporate VPN I believe
To ensure your unecrypted data(which is rare these days) is not clear-text in an untrusted network such as public wifi.
Yes but this isn’t the point I’m getting at — VPN doesn’t always mean you’re sending all your Internet traffic down the tunnel. You can choose to configure only specific networks to use the VPN tunnel.
Are you talking about split tunneling?
Because last I heard it was considered bad as it was haibg a hard time deciding what traffic to tunnel and what traffic to not
deleted by creator
Yeah, Russia doesn’t arrest Apple employees in Russia
Ooof
Apple is a shit-hole company, if you support them, you deserve all the wrath headed your way.
Posted from my Lenovo running Microsoft Windows 11
That’s hilarious
