Apple Security Research Device (2022)

support.apple.com

38 points·colinprince··10 comments

To answer the question of how does one legitimately get their hands on one: https://security.apple.com/research-device/

I wonder which model of iPhone it is

Erseli20

Why won't Apple sell one of these to anyone who wants it? Why do they make you jump through hoops and beg to borrow one of a very limited number per year?

I would imagine they don’t want anyone making some sort of secondary market out of the devices

If they sold them to anyone that wanted one, what possible secondary market could there be?

Anyone that doesn’t want to be identified by Apple?

I mean, phones sold by third parties for uses other that security research. They don’t want these just floating around secondhand confusing people who are looking for a regular phone. Or people buying them because some YouTube video told them “one cool trick” they could do with them.

And now that I think of it, there’s probably some specific bad actors they don’t want to give one to.

The price (likely many many, many thousands of dollars) would turn off nearly everyone. In addition they could package the electronics into a chassis which makes the device entirely impractical as an everyday carry phone.

Because they want to make sure that only the good guys get them. They don't want these to get into the hands of the NSO Group, as a nameable example.

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