And when the FBI said, "Hey, can you write and sign a custom bootloader for this phone to bypass that stuff?" they told the FBI to pound sand and made the hardware security features stronger so even Apple couldn't break them.
And then they bowed to China regarding iCloud and in-country servers, which clearly are accessible to the government. And then this. Whatever claims they've been making about privacy are obviously now crumbling under some external pressure.
You didn't really believe that cheesy open letter, did you? The real reason they declined was because FBI innocently said “We can't bother to transfer phones to Apple all the time, just give us the tool, we've seen how it's done enough times, and can use it just the same. Here's the official demand.” If Apple did that, the next day the tool would be leaked to multiple other agencies and actors, and on the day after any stand on any Chinese market would offer the iPhone unlock and reset for a small price. In other words, the shattering of the legend of privacy protection marketed so hard, and financial trouble. The FBI effectively demanded to hold one of the keys to Apple's power, and was found not significant enough to be esteemed.
Then they all pretended to have a legal fight to smokescreen the public. Apple itself said that it had always cooperated in doing the job on premises, and you can be pretty sure that every official case, semi-official case, and special case leaving no paper trail was routinely accepted. Apple was protecting its own secrets, not yours.
On the contrary, if my iPhone really was "my device" then Apple wouldn't make it so hard to sideload software (it was literally impossible to sideload without building software from source yourself until very recently) - and they'd let me change my default browser/maps/contacts/email apps too.
Apple's stance on privacy is something that really doesn't cost them anything but from which they gain massively by using it as a bludgeon against Google and Android (and Facebook...).
The nation state is still supreme- cyberpunk was wrong on that.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/14/podcasts/the-daily/apple-...
My pet theory is that because Apple can ship personalized iOS software updates to specific iPhones - and assuming that iPhone has automatic iOS update installation enabled (which is the default now, previously it wasn't) then Apple could essentially OTA-push an intentionally compromised iOS build to someone's phone and they'd be none-the-wiser.
That hardly requires any backdoors or even any security vulnerabilities - just someone with access to Apple's iOS build signing keys.
Given this, Apple was not a bad person to trust. Yes they wanted you to pay them money, but were a) quite happy to deliver value in return, b) prepared to do lots of hard work to fight on your behalf and c) it was quite clear that you were their customer, not their product. Google is an advertising company, even if you pay them money you are always also the product.
I am seriously wondering what happened to Apple that they came up with this idea, it doesn't seem to be in their interests at all.