Hacker News Reader

Comment by girkyturkey | Hacker News Reader

I find this to be really inspiring that despite how much Apple is rivals with other tech giants, they can still band together and back up their competition. Microsoft and others could have turned the other cheek and talked about how selfish Apple was, but then didn't. They banded together and stood behind Apple's decision. Really powerful message.

View on HN

This is less an issue of banding together behind Apple's decision, and more about retaining moral and intellectual control of their software.

If the government can get a warrant to force you to ship a patch, regardless of the scope, you are giving the government control over every aspect of how you write code, and the next logical step is a CALEA style requirements that ensures that your build process has lawful code injection capabilities.

I can't even begin to say how awful that would be for the entire industry.

How would that even work? What if I use a raspberry pi that I've added GSM and put in a phone like case, but am running Debian? I'm guessing only a very tiny number of people would be happy with this once the ramifications became clear.

I think there is something to say to how the media is portraying bloody rivalry between tech companies. I'm sure most of them don't have the same tension we have in media, and they are all hang out with each other.

As an anecdote, I know that Steve Jobs used to hang out a lot with Bill Gates and Eric Schmidt, and I also know a few Microsoft employees who are really good friends with Apple and Google employees.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com