this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Apple’s choices here were:
Do what they did, and remove the feature for the UK only
Create a backdoor into their OS that can potentially be used by not just governments, but bad actors too, effectively crippling security for every single device they sell worldwide and bypassing the usefulness of on-device encryption entirely.
Exit the UK market, which is not realistic and would leave millions of UK customers without any further recourse than to replace their Apple devices, which is incredibly wasteful and expensive (not to mention inconvenient).
Apple chose the lesser evil. What more could you possibly expect in this situation? If you want to protest, protest the government demanding that level of surveillance on their citizens.
Option 4 is similar to option 3 by telling the government to shove it, but with the very important benefit of still allowing the residents to use their products. It's (almost) a win win.
Also not realistic. Even if the UK government didn’t perceive that as fraud, Apple accounts (and most other businesses’ accounts) are region-locked and cannot be transferred elsewhere to prevent going around laws in this way.
This means that every user would also need to make new Apple accounts in their new country of choice and give up any purchases/subscriptions/data in their UK accounts. And possibly need new out of country phone numbers and service as well.