To illustrate this point, Apple gives up users' data for about 150,000 users/accounts in the US[1] a year in response to government data requests.
Yes, Apple is no different than any other tech company in that regard. The difference is that Apple's PR tells you otherwise. The whole San Bernardino shooting case had many people on HN saying that it meant that Apple would refuse to work with law enforcement when law enforcement would ask for users' data, even to the point of challenging subpeonas and warrants in court. That is clearly not the case.
One of the issues I have is that those warrants are rubber-stamped out. We should change how the judiciary approaches that, raise the bar law enforcement has to meet to be able to request that data, while also encouraging the use of encryption at every level.
Until we make those changes (which I'm of the opinion the wider society does not have an appetite for the legal and usability trade-offs that come with the even if I personally do), I guess I'm confused by what we're demanding when we point out that a company based in the US cooperates with valid legal requests from the US government.
The sentiment towards Apple is just disappointment today. Their 'ecosystem' approach has had detrimental effects on the consumer electronics market, and has given them a frightening amount of power over the flow of information. Apple's treatment has been generally irresponsible, though: they do nothing to assuage the general public of what's running in their OSes, rather choosing to occasionally throw out unverifiable whitepapers of how these systems might work, but we've got no way to verify that. For a company that claims 'privacy is a human right', I was really hoping to dig into something more profound.
The biggest issue is that we're taking Apple at face-value. They're documented liars, and their insistence on being right contrasts with their tacit rejection of transparency. They operate without accountability, and the only people keeping them in check have a mutual interest in creating a monopoly. Their factories are staffed by political prisoners, and they're the only FAANG company who's comfortable operating in China's homeland. It's crazy how people forget this with nothing more than a little marketing and some diversity in their iPhone commercial.
I expect better from a company with more money in the world than anyone else. But maybe this is yet another reminder that shareholders don't care about your security, privacy or peace-of-mind.
There's no escape really, your only option is to embrace the paranoia and learn to love the cat-and-mouse game, or (what most people choose) give up. Remember, this is the future you voted for when you signed up for Google Drive and bought your iPhone. This is the future you willingly supported with each ad that YouTube showed you on movie night, and the one you opted-into when you noticed you were low on popcorn and got 2-day delivery on kernels from Amazon.