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Comment by dvfjsdhgfv | Hacker News Reader

> Hardware encryption isn't really something you can turn on or off though, right?

Why? This is something completely up to the manufacturer.

As for forcing HW encryption of hard drives, other companies already tried (WD My Book Duo) and it didn't land well with users.

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Luckily Apple has loads of experience with hardware encryption of iPhones and it seems like they land pretty damn well with users. Almost no one knew previous models had this recovery feature and almost no one will actually care that the new ones don't. Make a backup of data you want to keep in case of hardware failure, don't rely on any magic from a vendor.

> Almost no one knew previous models had this recovery feature and almost no one will actually care that the new ones don't.

Until their Macbook dies and they take it to Apple for servicing. At which point they'll care a lot.

I'd hate to be an Apple Genius. They don't half get thrown under the bus by corporate decisions sometimes.

> Until their Macbook dies and they take it to Apple for servicing. At which point they'll care a lot.

The iPhone outsells the MacBook by more than 10 to 1 and works exactly the same way. I think they'll be OK.

The iPhone is primarily a consumption device. People generally don't have their iPhones crash losing months of work due to the client in a few days.

Good luck telling that to the parent that just lost all the pics of their child... If you can lose months of work due to a client and haven't backed it up you do not deserve to have any clients.

Losing work product is a far more common occurence, and while it can be turned into a moral argument that people really should just backup their stuff - The truth is they don't and the stress of a looming deadline is exactly the scenario where accidents are most likely.

Is it though? I think it would be really rare for your logic board to die right as you are finishing up a project that you haven't saved anywhere else. But with enough time to schedule an appointment at the Apple Store, enough money to buy a new computer and the knowledge that they can open up the laptop, remove the logic board, hook up a cable that almost no one until this week knew existed and then transfer your data. I bet it almost never happened.

Oh that. I lost my 2TB of backups because shitty USB interface that was also encrypting the data. Drive was fine, but controller bricked and my data was gone.

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