I continue to be perplexed at the apparent backlash over "the Airdrop change". (The change which limits the visibility of the recipient to "Everyone" for a max of 10 minutes.) When I consider the technical details of Airdrop's capabilities and implementation details, it is my conclusion that Apple's change increases end user security and privacy, and is not at all the kind of thing that would benefit an authoritarian government.
I am seriously bothered that everyone seems to have the opposite reaction. Am I missing something obvious?
1) Is there any definitive evidence that "China" requested the change to limit Airdrop's discoverability to 10 minutes? What rationale would they have for requesting this specific change?
2) How is protestors use of AirDrop negatively affected by this change?
I do know that protesters attempt to send images to any available airdrop recipient, but on the other hand, these users devices are advertising their presence publicly, in many cases without the awareness of the user. Airdrop beacons cause enough trouble in public spaces as it is, that I'm surprised the feature was ever designed this way in the first place.
Anyone purposely looking to disseminate protest information already has many better ways to do it: a wireless hotspot with a splash page, for instance. IMO this focus on Airdrop is a red herring, and worse, may be based on a flawed premise.
Apple is notoriously secretive about their decision-making. There's very little public information about the rationales behind even the most mundane decisions.
However the feature was limited to phones purchased in China. It makes no sense as market segmentation and it wasn't advertised in release notes as a safety change either. If it's not to comply with the government in some way, then what reasonable alternative explanations are there?
They could be threading a very fine needle for a reason no one knows. Limiting airdrop seems like a lose lose. If they did it for the government, then it is a lose. If they did it to improve privacy, for some reason, then if that gets out it could cause China to retaliate.
Will be interesting to see how this develops. I find it hard to understand why they did anything at all here.
The “at” in the headline implies it’s a protest and hunger strike within the apple HQ.
Perhaps a more accurate way to describe it would be “in front of”.
I am seriously bothered that everyone seems to have the opposite reaction. Am I missing something obvious?
1) Is there any definitive evidence that "China" requested the change to limit Airdrop's discoverability to 10 minutes? What rationale would they have for requesting this specific change?
2) How is protestors use of AirDrop negatively affected by this change?
I do know that protesters attempt to send images to any available airdrop recipient, but on the other hand, these users devices are advertising their presence publicly, in many cases without the awareness of the user. Airdrop beacons cause enough trouble in public spaces as it is, that I'm surprised the feature was ever designed this way in the first place.
Anyone purposely looking to disseminate protest information already has many better ways to do it: a wireless hotspot with a splash page, for instance. IMO this focus on Airdrop is a red herring, and worse, may be based on a flawed premise.