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Cory Doctorow

This prompts you to buy another gadget from them, and they get to offer you a trade-in. That means that your old gadget gets "recycled" by Apple, who - uniquely among electronics manufacturers - drops all its "recycled" gadgets in giant shredders, ensuring that parts from old phones don't find their way into the secondary market for use by independent repair:

pluralistic.net/2022/05/22/app

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12 January at 17:18 | Open on mamot.fr
20 comments
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Apple isn't coy about all this! #TimApple's 2019 shareholders letter spelled it out explicitly: Apple's revenues are falling because its customers are fixing their phones rather than replacing them:

apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/let

Apple led the coalition that killed dozens of state #RightToRepair bills for *years*.

21/

12 January at 17:18 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

When repair advocates pointed out that this was creating mountains of immortal #ewaste that included tons of #ConflictMinerals, Apple's religious adherents stepped into insist that Apple customers *preferred* to get their iPhone fixed by Apple and its approved depots.

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12 January at 17:18 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Again, this is obvious nonsense. If it were the case that No True Apple Customer would patronize a third-party repair depot, then Apple could simply step out of the way of Right to Repair campaigns and those independent phone fixit places would sink without a trace. People who own *Android* devices don't get their phones fixed with unauthorized *iPhone* parts.

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12 January at 17:18 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The chorus of credulous, faithful shouters gives Apple enormous cover to get up to the worst behavior. Apple keeps making announcements about its commitment to repair that get trumpeted to the heavens, even though these announcements barely bother to cover up how Apple will continue to block repair in practice:

pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin

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12 January at 17:18 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This #RealityDistortionField is remarkably durable. It remains intact even when rivals take the exact opposite position and demonstrate exactly what a *real*, non-pretextual pro-repair policy looks like:

404media.co/google-formally-en

A key tenet of the Cult of Mac is that Apple's sins are actually virtues, because all its monopolistic conduct is in service to its users' privacy and security.

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12 January at 17:19 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

After all, this is the company that faced down the FBI when the US government tried to force it to weaken its encryption:

eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-

And it's true, they did! They also added anti-tracking features that shut down Facebook's ability to spy on iOS users, a move that Facebook claims cost it $10b in the first year alone (you *love* to see it):

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/0

26/

After all, this is the company that faced down the FBI when the US government tried to force it to weaken its encryption:

eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/fbi-

And it's true, they did! They also added anti-tracking features that shut down Facebook's ability to spy on iOS users, a move that Facebook claims cost it $10b in the first year alone (you *love* to see it):

12 January at 17:19 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

But Apple's commitment to your privacy and security is always contingent, and when its own profits are on the line, the company will swiftly stuff you and your safety out the airlock. Apple refused to weaken its security for the FBI, but when China threatened its access to cheap manufacturing and hundreds of millions of customers, Apple eviscerated its products:

pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/for

27/

12 January at 17:19 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Apple blocked Facebook from spying on you, but when it wanted to build its own surveillance advertising empire, it switched iOS spying back on, gathering exactly the same data as Facebook had, but for its own sole use, and then lied about it:

pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/lux

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12 January at 17:19 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Then there's #iMessage, Apple's default messaging tool - "default" in the sense that there's no way to use other apps without taking additional steps. IMessage has #EndToEndEncryption - but only when you're communicating with other Apple customers. The instant an Android user is added to a chat or group chat, the entire conversation flips to SMS, an insecure, trivially hacked privacy nightmare that debuted 38 years ago - the year *Wayne's World* had its first cinematic run.

29/

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

About 41% of American mobile phone users have an Android phone, which means that any time an Apple customer tries to have a conversation with a colleague, a merchant, a loved one, a friend or a family member, there's a 4 in 10 chance it's going out "in the clear," with *zero* privacy protections.

30/

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This is *not* good for Apple customers. It exposes them to continuous, serious privacy risks. Our mobile devices are keepers of our most intimate secrets, and when mobile security fails, the consequences are grave, as Apple discovered in the hardest way possible, ten years ago:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_cel

Apple's answer to this is grimly hilarious. The company's position is that if you want to have real security in your communications, you should buy your friends iPhones.

31/

This is *not* good for Apple customers. It exposes them to continuous, serious privacy risks. Our mobile devices are keepers of our most intimate secrets, and when mobile security fails, the consequences are grave, as Apple discovered in the hardest way possible, ten years ago:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_cel

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Presumably, if those friends - or merchants, or colleagues - don't want to change operating systems and throw away their device and all their apps, you should just stop talking to them:

finance.yahoo.com/news/tim-coo

One of the clinical signs that someone is in a cult is that they are encouraged to isolate themselves from people who aren't also in that cult:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolatio

32/

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

But there are billions of Apple customers and only a small (but vocal and obnoxious!) minority of those customers are actual cult members, which means that there are billions of people who'd prefer to have private, secure communications with everyone in their lives, not just their fellow Apple customers.

33/

12 January at 17:20 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

That's where #BeeperMini comes in: it's a third-party Android version of iMessage that builds on the work of a teenager who reverse-engineered iMessage and found a way to let Android users receive secure messages sent by Apple customers:

pluralistic.net/2023/12/07/blu

34/

12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This was an immense service to Apple customers, correcting a gaping security vulnerability in Apple's flagship product, that had been deliberately introduced, putting the company's profits ahead of its customers' safety and privacy.

Apple immediately rolled out a series of countermeasures to block Beeper Mini. When The @verge's @davidpierce asked them why, Apple said they did it *to protect their customers' security* (!!):

theverge.com/2023/12/9/2399515

35/

This was an immense service to Apple customers, correcting a gaping security vulnerability in Apple's flagship product, that had been deliberately introduced, putting the company's profits ahead of its customers' safety and privacy.

Apple immediately rolled out a series of countermeasures to block Beeper Mini. When The @verge's @davidpierce asked them why, Apple said they did it *to protect their customers' security* (!!):

12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

The company claimed that there was some nonspecific way in which Beeper Mini weakened the security of Apple customers, though they offered no evidence in support of that claim. Remember, the gold standard for security claims is #ProofOfConcept code, not hand-waving:

nostarch.com/gtfo

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12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

For its part, #Beeper engaged in a brief but intense cat-and-mouse game with Apple, taking countermeasures and countercountermeasures to preserve Apple customers' access to secure communications with Android users:

eff.org/deeplinks/2023/12/with

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12 January at 17:21 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

Apple used its $3 trillion megaphone to condemn Beeper Mini even after Beeper published source code for Beeper Mini so anyone could verify that nothing nefarious was going on:

blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-movin

Meanwhile, Apple's cultists rallied behind the company. Not only would No True Apple Customer ever want to have secure communications with an Android user, but it was unfair for Beeper to profit by accessing Apple's messaging infrastructure, which Apple has to pay to maintain.

38/

Apple used its $3 trillion megaphone to condemn Beeper Mini even after Beeper published source code for Beeper Mini so anyone could verify that nothing nefarious was going on:

blog.beeper.com/p/beeper-movin

Meanwhile, Apple's cultists rallied behind the company. Not only would No True Apple Customer ever want to have secure communications with an Android user, but it was unfair for Beeper to profit by accessing Apple's messaging infrastructure, which Apple has to pay to maintain.

12 January at 17:22 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

This is some serious upside-down cult logic. *Beeper* isn't accessing Apple's infrastructure: Apple's *customers* are accessing Apple's infrastructure. If there were no Apple customers trying to talk to Android users, there would be no load on Apple's servers.

But those customers don't count. They aren't real Apple customers, because they want to do things that benefit *them*, not Apple's shareholders. In other words: they're holding it wrong.

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12 January at 17:22 | Open on mamot.fr
Cory Doctorow replied to Cory

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for *The Bezzle*, sequel to *Red Team Blues*, narrated by #WilWheaton! Pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover. There's also bundles with *Red Team Blues* in ebook, audio or paperback:

thebezzle.org

eof/
12 January at 17:23 | Open on mamot.fr
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