I think you got it backwards. The main reason is to exclude 3rd party repairs and extra security is a side effect that can be used as justification. Follow the money.
IMO there is way more money, like orders of magnitude more, to be made from successfully branding the iPhone as the most secure and private smartphone, compared to the repairs market.
They can already do that without harming repairs. As if replacing the hardware with physical access and giving the phone back to you to tap you is an attack people are actually afraid of... (and if they were, e.g. targeted by state actors or whatever, they could just get a specialized phone, not a mass market one).
They already have non-E2E-encrypted iCloud backups where they give access to the Feds and others.
The same argument could be made for any security hardening. Why bother with MFA, biometrics etc when the chances of being compromised are statistically very low. The reason is that it does happen and on a scale that's hard to quantify.
We have examples in Australia of ordinary citizens being targeted by China for promoting Hong Kong or showing support for Uyghur Muslims. And evidence has come to light that their phones and cloud accounts were hacked and friends/families targeted.
So for me personally I will take security hardening any day over saving a few bucks to go to a cheap screen repairer.
>The same argument could be made for any security hardening. Why bother with MFA, biometrics etc when the chances of being compromised are statistically very low.
No, the chances there are statistically very big. Because a thief might get your phone, and then can exploit access to it without MFA, biometrics, etc, and stole your bank account, data, etc.
But the chances of people (a) getting your phone, (b) replacing the camera module and compromising the OS, (c) giving your phone back without you noticing, to get your data, are statistically tiny.
And we've somehow managed for 15 years of smartphones without those mitigations...
>And evidence has come to light that their phones and cloud accounts were hacked and friends/families targeted.
Where they hacked in the way we're talking about here? If not, how is this relevant?
Give me a break. A screen swap in a modern smartphone is not something you can do in a bar in the time it takes somebody to go the bathroom. You need tools like a heat gun to even get the things open which greatly greatly limits the scenarios where and when something like this could occur.
As far as I know they didn't trash their reputation among normal end-users, as long as they don't know or care apple can pull shit like that all day while still raking in money from the "security-conscious" crowd.
Also as far as the NSA is concerned, surely it'd be easier if they have a single supply chain where they are guaranteed to be able to compromise every single iPhone?
Seems a lot easier than compromising some random repair shop.