But they didn't uninstall 'a program'. The product itself was unaffected. And, again, this was done in consultation with the makers of the 'program' who had screwed up badly enough to be unable to fix the problem themselves. Nothing happened here that doesn't regularly happen when all sorts of things update.

These are unimportant details, the issue is with Apple modifying people's computers silently and the users themselves having no knowledge or any say about it.

Replace this instance with something that you disagree about (imagine Apple removing VPN software from Chinese customers due to demands from China or "fixing" existing VPN software with backdoors that enable Chinese authorities to wiretap Chinese people) and see what the issue is here.

(if that example would happen or not is irrelevant, i'm making it to help you see the issue in a context i think you'd disagree with Apple about, i'm not making it for you to argue if that would happen or not)

You brought up the details, inaccurately, to now tell me the details don't matter. You can understand, I hope, how this starts to feel like an exercise in eel juggling.

I didn't brought up details, i explicitly mentioned in my first reply to you to ignore the specifics of this case, ie. the details, and see what happened without them.

> something something Apple, a US-based company who prides itself on privacy helping China spy on people.

Apple engineers go to China. Anything they do to help the Chinese government can immediately affect their own workers. If they did that, and a bunch of people with Apple devices got thrown in jail / whatever, their stock, and moral standing, would suffer some serious blow-back for it.

Google Chrome has a thing that pops up when it thinks you might be getting attacked / phished by somebody. I wouldn't mind if OS X terminated my connection and said "Hey, we don't think this is safe" to me, especially if it was something that the average person isn't likely to notice and can cause damage to them (also, in China [relative to the US], the stakes for everything are generally higher- the US probably tracks you around, China for sure does that and is actively nabbing people a lot more frequently, too.)

I already wrote

> (if that example would happen or not is irrelevant, i'm making it to help you see the issue in a context i think you'd disagree with Apple about, i'm not making it for you to argue if that would happen or not)

It is in its own paragraph. That China part wasn't meant to be debated, it was meant as an example of an event that if it happened would make you disagree with Apple. The important part of this example is you disagreeing with Apple, not the reason why.

>terminated my connection and said "Hey, we don't think this is safe" /

That's not equivalent, equivalent would be doing something you don't realise, the point is about user agency: keeping users uninformed and, for those that get the information out-of-band, unable to exercise their own control over the situation.

>the users themselves having no knowledge or any say about it.

This is not true. You can disable all the automatic updates in System Preferences.

This is a nuclear option and the issue isn't getting updates, the issue is being silent and not offering any control over that. See my other replies about Windows Defender about what i meant with that.

What do you mean? They're silent because they're malware updates. You can turn those off.

>uninstall a program they had nothing to do with from your computer without your consent.

Incorrect. Users who are vulnerable to this had already decided to uninstall Zoom and that's why it was a vulnerability. Zoom had decided to ignore the user's wishes and leave their server behind so that it could re-install the software. Apple's update simply enforces the users' past decision to uninstall the application.