Apple’s manorial security

Works well, fails badly — think different?

While digital feudalism is practiced by many Big Tech companies, Apple pioneered it and is its standard-bearer. The company rightly points out that the world is full of bandits who will steal your data and money and ruin your life, and it holds itself out as your protector.

Apple is a warlord whose fortress has thick walls and battlements bristling with the most ferocious infosec mercs money can buy.

Surrender your autonomy by moving to Apple’s fortress — where they choose your which apps and where you get repairs — and they’ll defend you.

This arrangement (which should really be called “digital manorialism” because feudalism involved providing men-at-arms to the monarch) has the same problem as all benevolent dictatorships: it works well, but fails badly.

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

When Apple has the same interests as you — when they work against the bandits, rather than colluding with them — this is great. But when Apple sides with the bandits, the walls that once protected you now make you easy prey.

One place where Apple sides with the bandits is China. Access to Chinese sweatshop labor and the vast Chinese middle-class…