"For a company that usually measures umpteen times before cutting anything, it’s both sad and startling."
Apple measured their risk of people getting upset over a BS excuse to ban an app and compared it to the risk of pissing of the Chinese government, and made the appropriate cut. It seems to me that Apple have been incredibly careful and precise here. What's happened though is that the author of the post made the all-too-common mistake of thinking that Apple is a friendly, caring company who are "different" when it comes to things like this - they're not, they're just a regular company.
Yep that's the sad arithmetic behind capitalism - Apple are no different from any other corporation in this respect. But the problem is that people often see them as friendly and caring, when they maybe should step back and realise that such corporations are not their friends, don't care about them and would sell them out in an instant if it benefit them.
Apple measured their risk of people getting upset over a BS excuse to ban an app and compared it to the risk of pissing of the Chinese government, and made the appropriate cut. It seems to me that Apple have been incredibly careful and precise here. What's happened though is that the author of the post made the all-too-common mistake of thinking that Apple is a friendly, caring company who are "different" when it comes to things like this - they're not, they're just a regular company.
It's sad, but entirely unsurprising.