Nobody is talking about morals here. Its bad for business for Apple to capitulate to the UK. It's bad for business for them to not capitulate to China.
And iPhones ceasing to be sold in the UK would probably be all it takes for public backlash to neuter the law. I imagine that's not on the table in China.
> Its bad for business for Apple to capitulate to the UK. It's bad for business for them to not capitulate to China.
It's very difficult to square these two sentences together.
On one hand, if they break their privacy and security for the UK government, it's bad for business because they'll continue to sell iDevices and services?
On the other hand, if they break their privacy and security for the CCP, it's good for business because they'll continue to sell iDevices and services?
You're tacitly admitting my assertion - Apple's morals are for sale.
If the US threatened Apple, we can expect they'll sell out there too, no?
> You're tacitly admitting my assertion - Apple's morals are for sale.
Yes.
China is much further from the Western world than the UK. Capitulation there isn’t a step onto the slippery slope. Doing the same thing in the UK would lead very quickly to EU and US demands to do the same.
By exiting such a small market, Apple defends the much larger markets against creeping surveillance.
Remember how fierce the backlash was to their CSAM scanning proposal? They walked that back. Some people might think it was for moral reasons, but I’m pretty sure they realized it would harm their bottom line.
The way things work in China is not the same as the UK. They either play by CCP rules or they don’t play at all. Apple’s calculus here seems to be that not playing in the UK market is worth it, whereas missing out on the Chinese market is not worth it.
Nobody needs to operate in China. That's the thing that's being overlooked.
Apple made a choice to operate there - and would have still been the world's most valued company regardless.
So, Apple's choice was to sell-out their privacy and security credentials to make more money - counting on their other large markets (ie. the US) not paying close enough attention to see the blatant hypocrisy.
"Security and privacy are great - unless we can make more money selling off your security and privacy to oppressive government regimes!"
Somehow that just doesn't have a catchy marketing ring to it...
So now there's precedent that Apple will violate everything they stand for if a large enough market demands it. What happens when the US government decides to place Apple in the crosshairs for not "helping catch terrorists" or something? Will Apple sell out too? Why not?
While a good example, that was in 2015. There haven't been very many (or any?) public challenges since - which does make one wonder...
Apple could simultaneously backdoor their devices while also keep them secure from anyone but the government with a warrant. These things are not mutually exclusive.
The China precedent is troubling - to say the least.
I think it's more that not capitulating to China would potentially result in destroying Apples supply chain. China could potentially kill Apple, the UK can kill a portion of Apples user base.
They have huge illiquid manufacturing in China. The government has a lot of leverage over them. Its impossible for them to gamble on this. It's not even comparable to the UK situation at all.
Even if they pulled all manufacturing from China, they could still potentially be kneecapped if China blacklisted them from purchasing things like gallium.
A company has no morals… Its policies depend on the people within it, who do have all sorts of moral principles that are always more or less at odds with each other. Trying to go beyond that is a fool’s errand: a company is not a person. Everything makes sense once you’ve understood that.
When it happens, a company acting purely on someone’s moral code (usually a dictator CEO, though) sounds fine and reassuring. But on the contrary, this is unstable as you never know when that person will be sidelined, forced out, or realign their principles. At this point the company you trust can very well become an enemy. Just look at Twitter or Reddit.
On the long term, you need the company’s financial interests to be aligned with your (various) interests. This is the only thing that remains stable. Well, as long as nobody comes and make it private; then anything goes. It sucks, but that’s capitalism for you.
For the moment, Apple is mostly safe because basic privacy is their brand, and dropping it would be costly. This gives them leverage against some governments, but not so much against others. You can also count yourself lucky not to be born in China, but then there’s nothing Apple can do about that.
And iPhones ceasing to be sold in the UK would probably be all it takes for public backlash to neuter the law. I imagine that's not on the table in China.