If Apple did not stay in the Chinese market they will very quickly have a competitor appear in that market that will then threaten other markets. Arguably, there are already Apple competitors in it and Apple's position keeps them from occupying a space that quickly leads to competing with Apple globally.
China is generally viewed as a unique market and capitulating to the Chinese government may lead to capitulation to the US, but not to any other nation as they are incomparable.
The UK market will neither create an Apple competitor nor will it provide enough scope to allow existing competitors to meaningfully grow.
Capitulating to the UK government will lead to many other countries requiring similar capitulations.
So from the selfish Apple perspective, it made perfect sense and Apple did the right thing (for them). From a rights/freedom perspective (for their users), they did the wrong thing, but that's not a battle that they they alone can win.
Out of the 197 countries in the world, how many have governments that respect the privacy rights of their citizens enough to prevent mass surveillance of them? Answer: Zero. Bring on the arguments about the various laws that prevent this, and I'll point you to the "national security and law enforcement exceptions" they they all have, sometimes in the form of "classified" contracts or court orders, and sometimes in the form of "executive orders" or other similar instruments. There are also agreements between the intelligence services of allied countries that facilitate information sharing, so each counterpart can do the collection and analysis of the partner nation and share the results, without technically violating any of their laws.
Sort of like Google designing a censorship friendly search engine for the Chinese market to try to get back into China's good graces?
> The Dragonfly search engine was reportedly designed to link users' phone numbers to their search queries and censor websites such as Wikipedia and those that publish information about freedom of speech, human rights, democracy, religion, and other issues considered sensitive by the Chinese government. It is not designed to notify searchers when the information they want has been censored.
Yes, exactly like that. If the CCP demands a morally base monopolist like Google do that for zero tangible gain, they must be holding Apple over a barrel with backdoors for market access. After all, Apple's competitors in China all acquiesce to Chinese control. Tim's really gotta give the ring lip service if he wants to keep his reputation for supply chain magic.
AOSP at least lets users disable a nosy baseband firmware and uninstall Play Services spyware. Apple customers are fish in a barrel if your rogue government orders an OTA update that compromises your security. Would be pretty nightmarish if you lived in a country like the United States where both companies have already been coerced into shipping backdoors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
> they must be holding Apple over a barrel with backdoors
Nope.
Apple is subject to the same restriction that every other company in China is.
Or Google in the US, for that matter.
If you store customer data on your server, when the government shows up with a warrant, you have no choice but to hand a copy over.
Handing over a copy of push notifications stored on your server isn't a "backdoor". It's how the law works in the United States when any agency shows up with a warrant.
That's what makes Google's business model of spying on customers as much as possible and hording customer data on their servers so dangerous.
If your state prosecutes women seeking an abortion, for instance, Google handing over data showing you were in an abortion clinic in response to a warrant is harmful.
Contrast with Apple, which operates it's own map service without keeping a log of everywhere you've been on their servers.
> Avondale Man Sues After Google Data Leads to Wrongful Arrest for Murder
Police had arrested the wrong man based on location data obtained from Google and the fact that a white Honda was spotted at the crime scene. The case against Molina quickly fell apart, and he was released from jail six days later. Prosecutors never pursued charges against Molina, yet the highly publicized arrest cost him his job, his car, and his reputation.
Google spying on people as much as possible and storing everything they glean on their servers (where they have no choice but to hand it over to any government agency with a warrant) is dangerous.
That doesn't sound super profitable. Apple made money by the truckload bending over to accommodate surveillance in China.