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Comment by jonas21 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, just a small fraction of countries, like the United States and the European Union. I'm sure nobody cares about those places.

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Can you think of any reasons why it would be limited to just those countries? Note that I'm _not_ asking why those countries are nifty. I'm asking what you think Apple gains by limiting it to just those countries in the first place or would lose by not limiting it to just those countries. The feature technology would be the same regardless of where you are, so saying "only available to users in X" seems like an arbitrary restriction. And there are surely orders of magnitude more Apple iCloud users in Japan or India than in Liechtenstein.

Easy migration to a competitor could hurt their customer retention.

Why offer it at all then? At least in Europe the GDPR requires direct transfer of your data to a competitor where technically possible.

The GDPR (or some similar requirement) only appears to apply to a subset of the chosen countries.

Note that the GDPR applies to businesses established in Europe, effectively regardless of the location or nationality of users. For instance, the UK authority recognised a US resident's right to invoke GDPR, during the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

It also apply to every data owned by a citizen living in EU (EU != Europe), regardless of the country the company is located.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Apple and Google probably have a contract that covers how this transfer takes place, and it takes some amount of effort from their legal teams to ensure that it's a valid contract that complies with the laws of each jurisdiction. As a result, they started with the highest-value jurisdictions like the US and EU first.

Regarding Liechtenstein, it is (along with Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland) part of the European Single Market [1] via trade agreements with the EU, so it's possible that it was trivial to adapt whatever contract they were using in the EU to cover them as well. I don't think it's a coincidence that all 4 are on the list -- but again, this is just a guess.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market

GDPR covers the whole EEA (and UK), so the data portability right also applies in Liechtenstein.

> I'm asking what you think Apple gains by limiting it to just those countries in the first place or would lose by not limiting it to just those countries.

Pretty much all Apple services roll out in phases. From MacWorld Magazine (last year):

> As part of its staggered roll-out, the iPhone 11 launched in a total of 30 countries simultaneously on 20 September 2019. Customers in Israel had to wait another six days; and then the day after that, another 28 countries were added to the list.

When Steve Jobs introduced new products / services, he would have a slide for the first countries in line, then another slide of the next group. Here's an example:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/52/fa/e1/52fae1ce1b1da1e01341...

This isn't Apple ignoring or favoring anyone. It's Apple starting with what they've got so far.

Is there a good reason for the code implementing this to know anything at all about the fact that the world is divided into countries? I don't think there is.

Yet every code implementation exists in some country bound by laws.

So we can't accept a premise that these are countries that mandate such transfers, because not all of them do. And we can't accept a premise that these are countries that all have the same laws, because not all of them do. And we can't accept a premise that these are the countries whose laws make doing this easy, because many other countries place no obstacles whatsoever. So what other law thing should we be thinking of?

That is, in fact, a small fraction of the world population.

Yes, only a billion people in the wealthiest countries in the world who are most likely to own an Apple device.

You don't think that more people use Apple iCloud in Japan or India (total population 1.5 billion) than in Liechtenstein (total population approximately 0)?

Liechtenstein is a part of the EU and is subject to the same regulations as the rest of the EU. Launching a product in Japan or India require an entirely new set of legal and regulatory work.

> Liechtenstein is a part of the EU

No it isn't, which is why Apple specifically calls it out when they also have an entry for "the European Union". Economic Area, yes, Union, no. And Switzerland is part of neither and has their own data regulation separate from the GDPR.

There is a single trade framework that contains them all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market

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