Fatman

No user ‘owns’ an OS even though they pay a fee, they ‘license’ the OS with very specific terms, and these terms have been violated. I can’t imagine Apple not winning this case. The interesting thing here is that the infringing company is arguing that users are benefiting from the violation - bugs are being identified and fixed, new features are being developed (and allegedly adopted by Apple), and the OS is becoming more secure. We all want that (including Apple), but there are - or should be - legal ways to achieve these things with endorsement (and even compensation) from Apple. The reality is many companies (governments, bad actors) that use these virtual tools are not trying to help users, they are trying to either hurt them or profit off them by finding weakness in the OS to exploit the user’s data and/or illegally track them.

Apple is firing on all cylinders - winning back professionals, and taking market share from extremely high end specialty vendors.

Add WeChat and TikTok to the list of Trojan horse spy apps - still available to download and use.

All of the millions of Black Friday plastic hockey pucks that Amazon has sold and continues to sell will end up as ocean garbage since they will not have the hardware required to support the new secure protocol. Apple has had a slow HomeKit adoption rate - but not just due to initial poor software implementation, promotion, and proprietary tech - but also due to push back from vendors who take short cuts and don’t care enough about customer security to spend additional money in the required hardware and software development - thus currently sold devices will also become obsolete. The good news is that the titans of tech are joining forces to pool resources to eventually evolve these devices from the current toys and gadgets that they are now to real home products that consumers can ‘invest in’,  ‘trust’, and that hopefully will last. And of course the titans will all benefit financially from this good deed.

The scorpions strike again - it’s their nature. Stealing from the ‘enemy’ is commendable not illegal or immoral. Simple solution: don’t put Chinese employees in roles that involve access to information unless you want to give that information to the Chinese government. These employees will risk the consequences of stealing ... extended legal trials - likely covertly backed by pro Chinese government attorneys - to only result in a slap on the wrist or a few years in a US white collar prison ... in order to be national heroes ‘back home’.