Guys ,not enough folks use FaceTime & iMessage in China to justify a ban.They do have no FaceTime installed on UAE iPhones. So please stop the whining.
IMO I would think Apple probably has at least as many users of iMessage and/or Facetime as Signal and Telegram did considering the Apple services come pre-installed and default, yet the presumably smaller Signal and Telegram encrypted messaging apps have been disrupted by the Chinese government.
In countries with a low iPhone market share Facetime is barely used and iMessage falls back to standard SMS services. If the iPhone has a market share of about 15%, then only 2.25% of all the connections are iPhone to iPhone and can make use of Facetime or the enhanced features of iMessage. Too low for any user to actually consider it. In my case I have an iPhone and I never consider to use Facetime, I use things like Skype, because it is available on all platforms and I don't have to worry that my correspondent can actually use it or not.
If iMessage falls back to standard SMS than the telco operator can read the message: it passes in clear on his infrastructure. So there is no issue fro the Chinese government
And by the way this is not a Chinese problem only. Microsoft lost last week the appeal of a similar case in Belgium. The Belgian judge said that according to Belgian law Skype is a telecom service and as such Microsoft is considered as a telecom operator and must provide a legal intercept service as any other telecom operator. The chances for Apple facing the same verdict are luckily small. The breakout mechanism in Skype to connect to the PSTN network is not available in Facetime.
Guys ,not enough folks use FaceTime & iMessage in China to justify a ban.They do have no FaceTime installed on UAE iPhones. So please stop the whining.
IMO I would think Apple probably has at least as many users of iMessage and/or Facetime as Signal and Telegram did considering the Apple services come pre-installed and default, yet the presumably smaller Signal and Telegram encrypted messaging apps have been disrupted by the Chinese government.
In countries with a low iPhone market share Facetime is barely used and iMessage falls back to standard SMS services. If the iPhone has a market share of about 15%, then only 2.25% of all the connections are iPhone to iPhone and can make use of Facetime or the enhanced features of iMessage. Too low for any user to actually consider it. In my case I have an iPhone and I never consider to use Facetime, I use things like Skype, because it is available on all platforms and I don't have to worry that my correspondent can actually use it or not.
If iMessage falls back to standard SMS than the telco operator can read the message: it passes in clear on his infrastructure. So there is no issue fro the Chinese government
And by the way this is not a Chinese problem only. Microsoft lost last week the appeal of a similar case in Belgium. The Belgian judge said that according to Belgian law Skype is a telecom service and as such Microsoft is considered as a telecom operator and must provide a legal intercept service as any other telecom operator. The chances for Apple facing the same verdict are luckily small. The breakout mechanism in Skype to connect to the PSTN network is not available in Facetime.
Thanks and that's a helpful bit of info.
Still doesn't explain tho why other lightly used apps like Signal and Telegram were "disrupted" by the Chinese authorities but Facetime and iMessage not any issue apparently... unless.... Are you saying iMessage in China isn't end-to-end encrypted to begin with, handled like a standard SMS which the government can access when needed? That would explain that Apple service being OK. First I'd read of that so thanks.
As for Facetime perhaps Chinese "dissidents" should communicate among themselves on that service as it is presumably still secure from government eyes. There's plenty of iPhones there, 130 million plus as of last year.
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Still doesn't explain tho why other lightly used apps like Signal and Telegram were "disrupted" by the Chinese authorities but Facetime and iMessage not any issue apparently... unless....
Are you saying iMessage in China isn't end-to-end encrypted to begin with, handled like a standard SMS which the government can access when needed? That would explain that Apple service being OK. First I'd read of that so thanks.
As for Facetime perhaps Chinese "dissidents" should communicate among themselves on that service as it is presumably still secure from government eyes. There's plenty of iPhones there, 130 million plus as of last year.