Not surprising. I don’t respect or trust them, so I’m not one of their customers.
It's clear that Apple uses the feelings of trust and respect in their marketing campaigns, but this is just a calculated strategy that works for them. As a company, they are like most companies - they desire to create and maximize revenue streams. To the extent that they value trust and respect they actually value customer perceived trust and respect as it relates to their marketing strategies.
Tl;Dr if they think they can get away with things that are customer hostile without tarnishing their marketing image they'll do it. They will take calculated risks here as well.
Examples:
Apple will hold a monopoly on iOS for books and this is fine: https://www.techemails.com/p/ibooks-is-going-to-be-the-only-...
Apple forces a 30% fees on subscriptions, negotiates with Uber (and presumably others) to pass this cost directly onto the user in cases where the margin is so low the 3rd party cannot economically eat the fee: https://www.techemails.com/p/lets-take-a-cut-of-membership-p...
iMessage is exclusive to iPhone because they fear that parents may buy Android for their children over iPhones if the app was available on both - which obviously indicates that the dark UX treatment of non iMessage sms (green bubbles) is an intentional segmentation of the messaging ecosystem designed to bring users to the iphone thru social effects. Any platitudes to security are purely marketing. https://www.techemails.com/p/imessage-for-android
Apple is a company, their users are revenue streams, trust and respect matter in terms perspective not in terms of meaningful action. They will do things that put their trust/respect at calculated risks to maximize revenue.
Folks thinking otherwise are pleasantly naive - it is totally reasonable to question Apple's actions and motivations.
Apple
End Users
Distribution partners
Other companies
Once you realize that then their decisions make sense. And for me these priorities aren't the worst thing ever. Yes, Apple putting Apple first means I pay a premium.(And BTW, to clarify: Apple has a book store monopoly on iOS, not "a monopoly on iOS for books". I can read my Kindle books perfectly fine)
Apple conspired with publishing houses to shut Amazon out of the market through leveraging it's huge device platform. Steve Jobs literally said: "The price will be the same... Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon because they are not happy."
If Apple had won their case it is a serious question if you would have Kindle books to read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.
All that said - this is reasonable rational behavior for a company. Which is why we also have antitrust laws. ;)
If Apple said, "no, you can't force users onto Wi-Fi networks without their consent," T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon would just say, "ok, it was worth a try," and carry on as if nothing happened. People will still want Apple products in sufficient numbers, and carriers will still want money from those people. But Apple isn't interested in what people want, Apple is interested in what they can convince people they want.
AT&T got my business by supporting the iPhone first. I assume if one major carrier drops the iPhone the other would recognize the opportunity and court users asap.
How can Apple be well-respected after wanting to scan your photos for CSAM is well beyond me, but I guess everyone is different.
But I've had this same argument a thousand times and it's like shouting at the tide and trying to stop it...
What you are suggesting doesn't necessarily make zero sense to desire, but practically speaking I don't think it makes sense based on the transactions that have occurred in this scenario. They may have a right to do that stuff on the cloud, but they don't have a right to do it on your device. It has nothing to do with which is better.
Disable cloud upload -> no local scanning.
People were stumbling over each other in one of the biggest competitive misunderstanding contests of the 2020's and Apple backed down to shut people up just because nobody bothered to RTFM and just got angry based on random internet hot-takes that were based on incorrect assumptions.
Their plan was to scan stuff that would be sent to their hardware on your hardware so that they could encrypt it on their hardware without having the key themselves. And law enforcement wouldn't have had the "what about child pornography" -angle to force access to data, since everything would've been pre-scanned.
If no data would've been sent to their hardware, no scanning would've happened.
It wasn't a complex idea, but The Internet decided collectively to misunderstand it.
I'm thinking Apple didn't expect the carrier to do this.
Not really related but hypothesizing it's the following makes me chuckle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ