It's clear by reading the article that this is a purely one-sided legal assessment of the issue.
Putting on Apples shoes I think this decision was more guided by financial, risk and PR motivations.
Apple is a mass technology company focused on synergies. Dealing with red tape and custom data decryption is definitely outside that area. It adds additional cost, not just for the work performed, but also organisational overhead (they probably have to hire people for this, open new organisational units or divert existing resources from more useful work). I'm sure that can't be simply expressed in numbers and much less covered by the government, even if they pay for the services.
There is the risk which has a technical nature: if a black hat / leak (e.g. disgruntled employee) / someone outside the organisation ever acquires the means to unlock costumer phones outside the confines of Apple, all hell would break loose. And while I'm sure they make proper precautions, not having to deal with this as a risk is likely more desirable.
The PR side is the most obvious one: there are lot's of people that are not comfortable that Apple can simply unlock their data and will buy something else just because they are not so forthcoming with the court warrants. More importantly, businesses will have a very hand time to justify the risk of information leakage because they use a product that has outside access vectors.
So this decision seems to make perfect sense to me from a business perspective: less cost + operational overhead, less risk of something going horribly wrong and better PR light. What's not to love about it?
Note: IANAL, I don't own any Apple devices and I'm not a U.S. citizen nor do I live in the U.S.
Putting on Apples shoes I think this decision was more guided by financial, risk and PR motivations.
Apple is a mass technology company focused on synergies. Dealing with red tape and custom data decryption is definitely outside that area. It adds additional cost, not just for the work performed, but also organisational overhead (they probably have to hire people for this, open new organisational units or divert existing resources from more useful work). I'm sure that can't be simply expressed in numbers and much less covered by the government, even if they pay for the services.
There is the risk which has a technical nature: if a black hat / leak (e.g. disgruntled employee) / someone outside the organisation ever acquires the means to unlock costumer phones outside the confines of Apple, all hell would break loose. And while I'm sure they make proper precautions, not having to deal with this as a risk is likely more desirable.
The PR side is the most obvious one: there are lot's of people that are not comfortable that Apple can simply unlock their data and will buy something else just because they are not so forthcoming with the court warrants. More importantly, businesses will have a very hand time to justify the risk of information leakage because they use a product that has outside access vectors.
So this decision seems to make perfect sense to me from a business perspective: less cost + operational overhead, less risk of something going horribly wrong and better PR light. What's not to love about it?
Note: IANAL, I don't own any Apple devices and I'm not a U.S. citizen nor do I live in the U.S.