I liked Timothy Buck’s explanation of why accessibility matters in everything, and the simple list of tips to improve it in tech products. A key thing to think about is that, when you make things more accessible for more people, you make those things better for every user. Nobody wants things to be harder to use.
Update: As of November 17, 2021, Trieu Pham dropped this case. The original post follows.
In the lawsuit (PDF), Trieu Pham, the App Store reviewer, alleges he was harassed at work on the basis of race and national origin — he is of Vietnamese ancestry — and that he was fired for his 2018 support of an app created by a Chinese dissident that claimed to showed corruption within the Chinese government.
Michael Tsai has a good summary of the suit and some related links, including this excerpt from the suit:
After plaintiff Pham approved the Guo Media App, the Chinese government contacted defendant Apple and demanded that the Guo Media App be removed from defendant Apple’s App Store. Defendant Apple then performed an internal investigation and identified plaintiff Pham as the App Reviewer who approved the Guo Media App.
In or around late September 2018, shortly after defendant Apple provided plaintiff Pham with the DCP, plaintiff Pham was called to a meeting to discuss the Guo Media App with multiple defendant Apple supervisors and managers. At this meeting, defendant Apple supervisors stated that the Guo Media App is critical of the Chinese government and, therefore, should be removed from the App Store. Plaintiff Pham responded stating the Guo Media App publishes valid claims of corruption against the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party and, therefore, should not be taken down. Plaintiff Pham further told his supervisors that the Guo Media App does not contain violent content or incite violence; does not violate any of defendant Apple’s policies and procedures regarding Apps; and, therefore, it should remain on the App Store as a matter of free speech.
I think this is a more complicated story than how it is being covered. It sounds like another clear-cut case of Apple’s deference to Chinese government interests — and that may be true. The judge in this case has denied that Pham was subject to a harassing work environment, but is allowing him to make the case that he was fired as retaliation for his approval of this app.
However, the app in question is a complex story in its own right. Guo Media was formed by Guo Wengui, a billionaire who fled criminal charges in China in 2014 to hide in his massive Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park. It was aboard Guo’s yacht where Steve Bannon was arrested last year on fraud charges; Bannon worked with Guo to raise funds and launch Guo Media.
According to the New York Times, many of Guo’s corruption claims appear valid or plausible; many appear to be fictional. Guo’s media company was responsible for the fictional story that the pandemic originated in a Wuhan bioweapons lab, and has a history of spreading disinformation. The G News app remains available in the Canadian App Store as of publishing. So, Guo Media is a shady company with potentially criminal founders, and G News publishes a lot of nonsense. But, according to Pham’s suit, three reviewers for the App Store in China approved it before Pham, and it was only then that Chinese government officials allegedly demanded its removal.
Apple’s dependency on its China-based manufacturing partners remains what I see as its biggest liability heading into 2021.1 Regardless of whether Pham’s claims turn out to be true, even the appearance of deference to a specific government’s censorship campaign is worrying. If government officials were so concerned about Guo Media, they could block it with the national firewall without involving Apple. But it appears that Apple is okay with being complicit. Apple has a China public relations problem because it has actual problems tied to its complex relationship with the country’s government.
This is true to some extent for every participant in a worldwide economy that depends on manufacturing and supply chains in China. Apple’s situation is more complex and perhaps a greater liability because it has physical products and apps and media distributed under its name. ↥︎
Pei Li, Reuters:
Apple removed 39,000 game apps on its China store Thursday, the biggest removal ever in a single day, as it set year-end as deadline for all game publishers to obtain a licence.
[…]
Including the 39,000 games, Apple removed more than 46,000 apps in total from its store on Thursday. Games affected by the sweep included Ubisoft title Assassin’s Creed Identity and NBA 2K20, according to research firm Qimai.
Qimai also said only 74 of the top 1,500 paid games on Apple store survived the purge.
Yuan Yang, Financial Times, reporting in July that App Store updates were frozen for games before the deadline was extended until the end of the year:
Until now, Apple has allowed Chinese games to be downloaded from the App Store while their developers wait for an official licence from Chinese regulators.
[…]
Analysts and lawyers in Beijing suggested that the Chinese government had decided to step up enforcement on Apple, the largest US company operating in China, after broader tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Apparently, getting a license for paid game titles in China is a huge pain in the ass that requires approval from government censors and having an office within the country. But if Apple wants to continue providing apps through its own App Store, it has little choice but to comply with these requirements. Of course, requiring that iOS apps come from the App Store is also a choice, but one that increasingly comes with trade-offs for the company and third-party developers. Is it still a fair compromise?
Amphetamine is a simple free app that sits in the menu bar and keeps a Mac awake — the spiritual successor to Caffeine, which has not been updated in years. It is well-liked; Apple liked it so much they featured it in a Mac App Store story.
So it surely came as a surprise to William C. Gustafson, the app’s developer, when Apple decided that it was in violation of policies that prohibit glorification of controlled substances:
Apple then proceeded to threaten to remove Amphetamine from the Mac App Store on January 12th, 2021 if changes to the app were not made. It is my belief that Amphetamine is not in violation of any of Apple’s Guidelines. It is also my belief that there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way as me, and want to see Amphetamine.app continue to flourish without a complete re-branding.
[…]
Apple further specified: “Your app appears to promote inappropriate use of controlled substances. Specifically, your app name and icon include references to controlled substances, pills.”
I can see how this app could be interpreted as violating those policies. It has a pill for an icon, and amphetamines are controlled substances in most countries. But:
It does not promote drug use any more than the MacOS feature named “Mission Control” gives users the impression they can now work at NASA.
Apple gave this app a dedicated editorial feature in the App Store, thereby increasing awareness of an app called “Amphetamine” — and it is only now that it says the app’s name is incompatible with its policies? That seems like a bait and switch.
I get that App Review might not catch policy violators on a first pass or even after several updates. But surely there comes a time when Apple has to decide that it looks less petty to treat a violation of a policy as minor as this as a special grandfathered case. If an app is featured by the App Store team, Apple ought to suspend their right to complain about superficial rule-breaking — if that is what this is, and I am still not convinced that Amphetamine violates the spirit of those policies.
The slightly good news here is that, unlike an iOS app, the removal of this Mac app would not entirely destroy its existence. It could be distributed outside of the Mac App Store if the developer chooses. But it should be allowed to remain.
Update: Gustafson says that Apple confirmed Amphetamine will stay in the store without a name change. In a parallel universe where this story did not receive press coverage, would the outcome be the same?
Michael Cavna, Washington Post:
The final “Calvin and Hobbes” strip was fittingly published on a Sunday — Dec. 31, 1995 — the day of the week on which Bill Watterson could create on a large color-burst canvas of dynamic art and narrative possibility, harking back to great early newspaper comics like “Krazy Kat.” The cartoonist bid farewell knowing his strip was at its aesthetic pinnacle.
“It seemed a gesture of respect and gratitude toward my characters to leave them at top form,” Watterson wrote in his introduction to “The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” box-set collection. “I like to think that, now that I’m not recording everything they do, Calvin and Hobbes are out there having an even better time.”
Calvin and Hobbes are two characters that felt like old friends from the moment I met them, and that has never faded. It is the finest American comic strip there has ever been.
Jon Gotow (via Michael Tsai):
Yes, the Open and Save dialogs keep appearing at their smallest possible sizes in Big Sur 11.1. It’s not just you, and it’s not something you’ve done wrong – it’s a bug in Big Sur.
[…]
Sadly, resizing the dialog so it’s larger only works on the current one. Every time you’re presented with an Open or Save dialog, it’ll be back to its uselessly small size again because Big Sur doesn’t remember the past size like it’s supposed to.
If this feels like deja vu, it might be because there was a similar bug in Yosemite where Open and Save dialogs grew by twenty-two pixels every time they were opened. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Yosemite was the most recent major redesign of MacOS before Big Sur.