• dinckel@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Pretty much every brand, that was doing business there before, does it the exact same way, but under a shell company name. Capitalism doesn’t give a fuck who’s doing what, and how wrong it is

    • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Lots of western companies are. Not everything is subject to sanctions — the U.S. government still buys uranium from Russia and there’s cooperation on space launches — but even the companies that tried to divest for moral reasons found it challenging, to say the least. The ones who tried often had their assets essentially stolen or sold for pennies on the dollar to a Putin loyalist oligarch.

      I’m not sure what Apple is doing there besides having the App Store. They did stop all exports so any new Apple products there are smuggled and probably way more expensive. On balance, I think it’s better keeping the App Store and software updates available to Russians. Some dissidents and journalists use Apple products too and you don’t want their devices left insecure.

      • humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        probably way more expensive

        Nope. iPhone 15 pro max 128 gb could be bought in Moscow for 109490 руб, which is $15 higher than in the US.

        Before the war Apple had a weird price policy in Russia when they just multiplied the official US price by the factor of 100 to get the price in roubles. It resulted in a +30-60% increase in prices.

        So… the war has actually dropped the price for the Apple products dramatically for regular russians. The only problem with the Apple products the war has introduced is that you can’t pay in AppStore

    • humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      See how iPhone sales peak in Kazakhstan and Georgia after the war and sanctions. Does apple work in Russia? No, they just ship their shit to Georgia and don’t ask why every Georgian needs 2 iphones and one MacBook every year.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      Well of course it does when pretty dumb and easily visible schemes to do that do not lead to prison sentences and huge fines.

      All those government regulation supporter types look right at this and don’t realize that this is the answer to “why people of more libertarian views on economics don’t want everyone to be happy”. Because government regulation just gives someone power to collect bribes when there’s a power difference involved.