Apple had internet services since around year 2000. Apple had mac.com emails for a very long time, as well as

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe

.Mac: July 17, 2002 – July 9, 2008

MobileMe: July 9, 2008 – June 30, 2012

iCloud was launched on October 12, 2011, one year before Apple entering Prism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud

The main difference before iCloud was that you had to pay for it. I can however remember that I've had free .me account before iCloud, so even .me must have had enough users.

Well, in the NSA's eyes, that main difference is important. Free (and highly pushed by the very popular iPhone and iPad) meant people actually starting using iCloud. The cost-benefit analysis shifted tremendously from .mac/MobileMe.

It is fun to think of Steve Jobs as the lone person saying "fuck you" to the NSA. But it isn't realistic. It isn't like the other companies are run by meek people who love bending over to authorities.

I can remember that I've had a free .me account before iCloud, so I believe even .me must have had enough users: it was freely available to every iDevice user. There were millions of them fast.

How does that follow? It is not just about the cost, but the amount of utility for the NSA. There are plenty of free services that are not on the PRISM list and I am sure even Apple employees would freely admit their pre-iCloud user numbers were disappointing. They would not have bothered to rebrand the service in the first place if they had a significant userbase.

Looking at the PRISM company list, we are talking data service companies with users in the tens of millions (minus the oddball Paltalk). Apple just wasn't in that group until recently.

You must not have read the part where he said "recently had some success"

One of those most successful devices is a phone. One that has been selling pretty well for 6 years.

That's incitement enough to try to get them on board.

Until iCloud/iMessage, all the actual information was transmitted through third party services (i.e. network providers, email services, etc.)

Why go after the myriad of handset manufacturers when you could just get the network providers on board?

There are things network providers can't do: activate mic remotely, capture local-only data, keylog apps that use encryption, etc.

The list was about joining PRISM, it doesn't say anything about backdoors in mobile phones. They may very well be present in all iPhone generations.

Curious as to why Amazon isn't on that list then? Perhaps it's true that Bezos has more in common with Jobs.