In Mother Russia, any device that has access to Apple’s iCloud will be banned right after the New Year’s Day. It all seems like a pretext now, considering recent events, but if the iCloud is at fault, that it must be so.
Last week, Tim Cook discussed openly in an essay written for Bloomberg Businessweek about his sexual orientation. Seeing how many countries have already legalized same-sex marriage, most people encountered this with a big “So what?” Russia, on the other hand, which is known to be a very conservative country, did not actually look at this matter with good eyes. In fact, the 2-meter high iPhone monument that had been erected as a Steve Jobs memorial on a university campus in St. Petersburg was taken down in response to Tim Cook’s message. The decision to ban the iPhone and the iPad starting on January 1, 2015 is said not to be related to the previous incident, but the events took place on consecutive days, so calling this a coincidence is exaggerated.
Russian authorities seem not to trust foreign servers, as this is the reason they invoke for their ban. Since data saved in the iCloud is not stored locally, I assume that Russia’s biggest problem with this is that its intelligence companies cannot access it that easily.
Call me an Android fanboy, but I’m convinced that Apple products are overrated and overpriced. Using iCloud vulnerabilities as an excuse, Russia put its homophobic reactions under the spotlight and banned the iPhone and the iPad starting with the first day of the next year. Considering this country’s past, I can’t help but wonder if the snobs who already own an Apple product will be persecuted.
iPhones and iPads are not the only things related to Apple that are getting banned in Russia. One politician even suggested Tim Cook should be banned from entering the country under the pretense that he might bring Ebola. Because having a particular sexual orientation and carrying a deadly virus must be related, right? Maybe if that country and its politicians wised up and got more open minded, there would be room for progress. But with such an attitude, I don’t see Russia getting far at technological advancements and social evolution, in general.
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