Sure they do. You’ve never accidentally broken something you owned?
Broken, as in "the software is broken"? Well, at least all my devices are repairable, if that happens. Even if it might require the nuclear option of reinstalling/reflashing. But at least there are no shenanigangs such as these and the ones OP described happening.
If I change the oil in my car but forget to put the plug back in and then start it and drive off and seize my engine, it’s basically broken. With enough effort, it could be rebuilt. Is it the responsibility of the manufacturer to expend the necessary effort to do so, though?
They didn’t give us much to go on about their situation. I’ve not heard of an iPad not being able to be turned on and unlocked with its passcode because of an iTunes account or server issue. If that is indeed what happened, I agree that is not cool. But I doubt that is what is going on. I’m curious to know more.
If there’s critical keys that have been lost etc it might indeed be unrecoverable, especially in this era of automatic bitlocker.
It absolutely is different. How do you propose even changing the software when there is an interlock preventing access?
Should Apple also be responsible for people who enable FileVault, set a 50 character password of random characters, and then not write it down? How would you fix that software problem without introducing glaring vulnerabilities?
Software is scalable in ways that hardware simply is not. It presents vastly different challenges than swapping out standardized pluggable components. It’s incredibly difficult to change a complicated software system without introducing side effects. Comparing an operating system to a bicycle is absurd.