photography guy

We’ve entered William Gibson’s world...

I’m as SJW as they come, but when “activists” like this target Apple and only Apple for their protests, while ignoring other companies that do far worse, then I know that these activists aren’t so much concerned with social justice as they are with brand recognition. If they can tie their protest to a famous brand (e.g. Apple), that elevates their own profile far more than if they protest a lesser brand that has far less ethical qualms in their corporate behavior and culture.
Greenpeace has done this, Consumer Reports has done this, This American Life has done this. The problem is, that by targeting only Apple with their headline-grabbing protests, they’re undermining their own social justice agenda, because they’re letting far less ethical companies fly under the radar, and continue doing what they do.
Apple has admitted to problems in their supply chain, and has taken steps to fix those problems. They publish an annual “Supplier Responsiblity Report” for anyone to read. This report includes problems they’ve identified, and what they are doing to fix those problems. But the headlines will only report the problems, not whether they’ve actually been acknowledged or addressed, or even fixed. In the meantime, competitors will simply deny that there are any problems at all; they will silence any complaints, and suppress evidence.
It’s kind of a no-win for Apple.

This is only tangentially related to the Education Event, but... I hope that Apple is working on a new Pencil with a built-in eraser. It's much more intuitive to flip the stylus around if you want to erase something, than to select the 'erase' tool. That's what I loved about Wacom's styli. Apple could eliminate the lightning connector and have the Pencil be charged via the Smart Connector, or via wireless charging. Or come up with some clever engineering where the Pencil doesn't require any power at all, like Wacom does.

Once again, Apple is in a no-win situation here. For Apple to comply, they'd have to drastically change their manufacturing process and design of their parts, which will have a huge impact on their quality control. Also, this will allow for a market for third-party parts, which will inevitably be of lesser, if not questionable, quality and reliability. And if a lesser quality part breaks other components or the product's usability, it won't be the third-party that will be blamed, it will be Apple.
But, even more importantly, opening up iPhones and iPads to third-party repair shops and parts will have a huge negative impact on security. Apple has security and privacy at their core of their product design philosophy; third-parties will be less concerned about that. Or worse, some may (and likely will) try to take advantage of their physical access to your iPhone or iPad to either plant spyware, or glean information about you, which they can use to their advantage, or sell to someone else.
Of course, whenever Apple makes these arguments, they are portrayed as demagogues who are just trying to control every aspect of their ecosystem. *SMH*

Police and law enforcement agencies were never perfect, but we used to respect them because we acknowledged that their job was difficult and dangerous. Now, it seems that they’re so risk-averse that they’ll shoot first, get acquitted later, and they want access to every aspect of our lives, just in case we might have committed a crime. Remember during the Bush Administration when law enforcement wanted librarians to hand over all their patrons’ check-out history, just in case they might be a terrorist trying to check out a book on how to make a bomb? The librarians fought back and destroyed their patrons’ check-out histories (bad-ass librarians FTW!).

A back door will not only allow law enforcement to snoop on our private lives without a warrant or probable cause (beyond, “hey, I’m just checking to make sure you’re not a criminal!”), but—and this is more important—a back door will allow clever and nefarious hackers to get access to our devices and do all kinds of damage.

I’m glad that Apple is taking the initiative to train law enforcement, and I hope they never back down on the back door issue.