Recently Larry Salibra, the founder for Pay4Bugs software testing service, has come forth with somewhat of a shocking discovery. While roaming on his phone, Salibra has found out that Apple decided to disable news app support for China.
In a tweeter post which he just released, Salibra said that the Chinese decided to censor all news content coming from the Apple news. Subsequently, he stressed out that he wasn’t even in China that, but his mobile phone happened to connect to a floating signal that travels outside China’s border. Although there are no official statements coming from either of the two parties, this silent age dispute continues to annoy iOS users who keep receiving the same message, over and over again, “Can’t refresh right now. News isn’t supported in your region”.
Could this be a subversive move coming from China’s press trusts in order to stop Apple’ advancement on Chinese markets. What’s even stranger is the fact that the Apple News application works fine when using Hong Kong mobile networks.
Apple unveiled the News application on the 16th of September this year and has made it available for all users around the globe that switched to the new iOS 9 operating system.
Also, in order to impede the upcoming wave of discontent from Apple users, Apple released a statement yesterday in which they justify the deactivation of their application in China. Sources say that Apple chose to take this radical step because of the strict content censorship that the Chinese government enforces on all media.
As of now, the application is only available for download only in the US, although unconfirmed sources say that any user can trick their phone in installing the news application simply by tweaking the region setting. Developers confirmed that the application works great in Germany.
This comes as a shock to the ever popular Apple users in China after the tech giant released at the end of September Apple Music, iTunes Movies and iBooks for Chinese market. Still, Apple feels a wave of confidence in their endeavor to keep up with China’s censorship.
What it all boils down is this: Apple did not feel the need to come up and inform their users that the platform has been deactivated because the application can’t be launched outside of the US.
So, if you intend of travelling to China in the nearby future, please don’t get very frustrated when the news page doesn’t refresh.
Image source: www.upload.wikimedia.org
