Even if in the T&Cs say Apple can do this, which it probably does, now they would have to prove it in front of a judge.
If Apple doesn’t show up, they’ll lose and the filer will get a default judgement, for which they hopefully asked/made the case for $10k. I’m sure they can arrange to have it enforced against a local Apple Store to seize not product, but operational working assets, if they’re creative a bit. If Apple has anyone competent in Legal they won’t let it get that far, though.
Then again, if they do show up, they’ll pay a lawyer well more than an hour of time, probably by a lot, and still have to argue against a likely well-prepared person, with proof of purchase, etc., (legitimate) sob story of lost time, digital assets, and the like, and likely won’t endear themselves to the court.
And of course for a business, an actual court filing (or arbitration if it gets forced on them, with competent counsel) could be even worse.
I thought about filing a claim for enough to cover my time in small claims court, but decided not to. I didn't track my time super well because initially I though it was my fault, but, by far, the huge deterrent is the "what if".
What happens if I take Google to small claims court for damages to a domain I've been using for 20 years? I have that domain tied to a legacy Google Workspace account which was a huge mistake. It's been tied to my email for at least 15 years and, even worse, I've never owned an Android phone that hasn't been tied to that Workspace account.
I don't depend on cloud services for much, but if I want to prepare for retaliation I'd have to migrate my email somewhere else and be ready to deal with family members that have their phones connected to the Workspace account. Who's been duped into photo "backup"? Who's been duped into using Google Docs? How many Play purchases do they have? And, the big one, who's been duped into using sign-in with Google?
Google, Apple, Microsoft all make choosing what's best for the consumer very high friction compared to choices that trap users and give all the power to big tech. Even though I constantly help my family members try to understand why the don't want to get locked into those services they always get deceived into using them. The number of family members unwittingly duped into uploading all their data to OneDrive is in the range of 100%.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft need to be broken into 10 or 20 companies each. Excel should be it's own company. Phone OSes and app stores should be different companies. OneDrive should be it's own company and to compete with Dropbox with zero Windows integration. The web browsers should be separate companies. The AI divisions should be separate companies. Split them up with a wood chipper IMO.
The safe browsing scam is the biggest fraud ever because providers can't opt out of it when it "accidentally" detriments independent or self-hosted solutions.
That's a big ask.
Justice is dead when nearly everybody just makes backroom deals with no admissions of guilt and nondisclosure of terms if they even defend themselves at all.
A person who is capable of defending themselves owes it to those who aren't as able; if even the most resourced people won't defend themselves, what chance to the rest of us have?