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Apple's authoritarian-pleasing antics have alienated me [1]

['Séamus Bellamy']

Date: 2025-09-09

Today, one of the most important tech events of the year took place: the announcement of Apple's latest mobile hardware. It's such a big deal that the media wranglers for other companies stay the hell away from posting about their new products. The noise created by an Apple launch would drown out anything short of a cure for cancer. When I worked as a senior tech editor, this was a day when I'd be sure to eat my Wheaties. As the announcement of new iPhones, new wearables, and overhauled operating systems made the scene, I'd be burning my fingers right down to the nub, trying to get the news out the door to our readers as soon as possible. As I'm largely no longer involved in this nonsense, I thought I'd watch today's Apple in my underwear, drinking a smoothie while I listened to Stiff Little Fingers.

You know, as one does.

I'm not often driven to upgrade my personal phone. For the longest time, Apple sent me the latest hardware to review. So, I always knew what the latest hardware felt like to use. As I prefer taking photos with my Leica or Sony camera, camera specs in a handset don't matter to me. I'm happy with my older iPhone's display; it still does what I need it to in short order, and its battery is fine. Unless Apple released a surprise foldable, I was certain that the chances of me throwing money at any hardware were minimal.

But as I watched the event, slick as it was and as impressive as the company's new hardware appears to be, I found that my lack of enthusiasm for something new had turned to tension and more than a bit of disappointment. It took me a while to pinpoint what was wrong with me. My PTSD wasn't being triggered. I'd gotten enough sleep (a miracle), and I hadn't been stupid enough to check in on the news yet.

Oh, right: Tim Cook gifted Donald Trump a 24-karat gold plaque to placate the chubby, murderous bastard.

Buying ethical hardware isn't easy. In fact, I'd argue that it's damn near impossible: Framework makes an upgradeable, repairable laptop. And, if you can get to Europe, you might be able to get your hands on a Fairphone handset. Breaking the constant upgrade cycle helps: you can use the hardware you've invested in for more than a year, and make payments on it. A handset you'll end up owning, rather than leasing from your carrier. Some of the phones we love to carry have been given OK ratings by iFixit. Please put in the work to replace your smartphone's display when it breaks. It's less expensive and better for the environment than kicking it to the curb. And, it's possible to plop a free, open source OS like Ubuntu onto an older computer to extend its viability. But greenwashing and the failures of local governments to follow through on responsible electronics recycling stand to get you more often than not.

So what's left but the reputation—the integrity—of the companies we buy our hardware from.

We all have a right to privacy. It shouldn't be a big ask to keep backdoors out of our hardware. We should be able to opt out of intrusive, personalized advertising and digital tracking. Our photos, messaging, journals, video calls, and all the rest of the things we rely on our hardware for should be ours to access alone. Until recently, I more or less trusted Apple to provide us with this. I think it is fair to say that they have largely provided North Americans and Europeans with this kind of digital security.

I say largely, because it's impossible to know what goes on behind the scenes. No one's found an NSA or DIA backdoor planted in the guts of an iPhone 16e, but it's not outside the realm of imagination. Such security loopholes have been identified in a lot of Chinese hardware, used in everything from our power grids to Android phones. It's the sort of scary stuff that you'd assume an adversarial nation would use in asymmetric warfare against their enemies: turn off an area's power grid to create chaos before a conventional attack takes place. But this sort of greasy dealing can be directed at folks like you and me as well.

Back in 2017, China told Apple that if the company wanted to continue doing business in their nation, it'd have to bend to their demands. First, those accessing the iTunes App Store from the communist nation were disallowed from downloading VPN clients to their iPhones. They also demanded that CallKit—a developer framework used to include VoIP capabilities into apps, not be included in any application in the Chinese app portal.

Then they removed Skype, which, at the time, was a big frigging deal—anything to keep doing business in a populous, authoritarian nation. Around the same time, Apple was asked by the United States government, an institution that you can yell at, because democracy, to allow a software backdoor into the iCloud and Messenger data that millions of Americans had come to trust was secure. Back then, Tim Cook said, "…at stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone's civil liberties."

Just over seven years after making that statement to The Guardian, Cook gave Trump, a fledgling authoritarian, that fucking golden gift. Apple is looking to bring more of its operations stateside, to make Trump happy; a move that was announced before his idiot-stick tariffs were more than an air bubble under his weave. Cook's gone to dinners and made nice with the current administration at every possible turn. It's his job to do this: The responsibility for the company's overall fortunes, and for keeping Apple's shareholders happy, falls on his shoulders.

I can't imagine the pressure of a gig like that. I also can't imagine the pressure that an intelligent, thoughtful individual like Cook would feel as the gaze of the lunatic at the helm of the most powerful nation in the world came to bear on his company. How tempting would it be to show your soft underbelly and compliance to a man who is willing to endanger children, imprison American citizens with no charge, and aim the nation's military at the people it was built to protect from external threats?

As we move further down the road into fascist country, we may find out. I'm hoping that should the time come when Trump and DHS, the FBI, or whoever, decide they want access to iPhones, iPads, and Macs again, whoever is running Apple at the time will answer as Tim Cook did, back in 2018.

But that 24-karat gold plaque makes me 50 kinds of anxious.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/09/apples-authoritarian-pleasing-antics-have-alienated-me.html

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