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Apple Blocks Google From Running Its Internal iOS Apps (theverge.com)

Apple has now shut down Google's ability to distribute its internal iOS apps, following a similar shutdown that was issued to Facebook earlier this week. From a report: A person familiar with the situation tells The Verge that early versions of Google Maps, Hangouts, Gmail, and other pre-release beta apps have stopped working today, alongside employee-only apps like a Gbus app for transportation and Google's internal cafe app. UPDATE: Apple has restored Google's Enterprise Certificate so its internal apps will now function.

4 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Good to see by redback · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Good to see that Apple are not letting these big corps get away with breaking the rules.

    1. Re:Good to see by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Interesting

      How do you figure? The enterprises affected so far have all been caught redhanded in the act of flagrantly misusing a "for in-house, internal use applications" license to intentionally deploy applications externally. The only enterprise level purchases who should be quaking in their boots are purchasers acting in bad faith.

  2. Re:Privacy: prevent internet access per app! by ledow · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ask them for a GDPR compliance statement.

    The tumbleweed will be deafening.

    Apple iCloud is run on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud instances in all kinds of territories, and they can't even be bothered to pass on the guarantees of those same places to their own customers because they just shift your iCloud data anywhere they like.

    Literally. I spent six months asking, pre-GDPR, no answer. They failed to provide anything other than their current "working towards"-like statements they have on their website, whereas every other cloud provider instantly gave me a written guarantee for my legal territory.

    Read their statements on their website. They don't say they are GDPR-compliant, even when they release their "new GDPR features". Because they're not. And currently can't be.

    And that cost them every bit of business in my workplace, even if other workplaces in the same industry didn't bother to do their diligence and even try to get a statement from them, but just assuming that iCloud would be GDPR-compliant.

    Apple don't give a shit about your privacy or personal data. Hell, they don't even store it themselves most of the time, but just hire their competitors to do so! The Register has run articles on it from time to time but nobody seems to care.

  3. Re:Privacy: prevent internet access per app! by ledow · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Reality:

    In my professional capacity as an IT Manager, I requested, demanded and ultimately have never received - despite hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment in Apple kit - a GDPR compliance statement that the compulsory inspectorate for my industry, the data protection authorities in my country, or my employers themselves, would accept. As in, I didn't just get something they didn't like, but Apple could not, did not, and refuse to supply such compliance, where ALL their major competitors did.

    I don't care what they SAY they are doing. They are refusing to state that they meet their legal obligations, thus they are making us unable to state that we meet our legal obligations, thus after months of discussion, complaints and refusals to comply, their services and equipment were removed and the company blacklisted.

    I will not go to jail or get sacked because Apple won't say that they are GDPR compliant to me on paper, like EVERYONE ELSE did. Most of them didn't even need to be asked. It was literally, GDPR is now law, here's our compliance statement.

    Apple do not, have not, and I believe CAN not comply with GDPR, which is a basic, legally-required tenet of operating as a data processor in the UK and EU. And here "data processor" is basically every company that stores any kind of company record.

    Your assertions about Apple are parroting of their PR statements and vague guesses at what their internal processes are (which aren't described). In the "reality", they are NOT GDPR-compliant and thus no company that needs to be GDPR-compliant can possibly use them.

    Seriously, go search "iCloud GDPR compliance" and then "Google GDPR compliance".

    The closest thing Apple says is "as part of our work towards GDPR compliance" and "features will be available". Whereas any decent cloud service gives you cast iron written guarantees that are accepted by the UK DPO.