Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones
Apple Pressed by India to Pre-Install Government Apps on iPhones
Apple and other smartphone makers are being pressed by India to pre-install government-developed apps on devices before sale, echoing a similar 2021...
The push comes as India seeks greater regulatory control over global tech companies. The initiative would require manufacturers to include the government's GOV.in app store and related apps like BHIM, DigiLocker, VoterID on smartphones sold from India.
Beyond pre-installation, they also requested that their apps be available for download outside the company's app stores from third-party sources without triggering "untrusted source" warnings.
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What are the nature of the apps? If it's just things like digital IDs and government services, that's not bad since it helps tech illiterate people accessing them. Big room for fash fuckery though.
And as always, preinstalled apps should be deletable.
No. If you allow one country to shirk the norm, other countries will also start pushing
I don't think the slippery slope argument works here, you can object to any rules and regulations by saying other countries would start pushing bad rules and regulations if you comply. It's not all or nothing.
I don’t think of it as slippery slope, I think of it as setting precedent
How can it be a precedent of something else entirely?
Russia already has a norm to show “Russian apps” the first time activating an iPhone or iPad, so that ship has sailed
The ship hasn't sailed; the more countries you let do that, the more problematic the precedent becomes. This isn't a binary thing.
It really should be a binary thing. Company policy should be to ship the same, base OS to every customer in every country, and the only differences would be configuration for things like which radio bands to activate.