All hail the cult of Apple, again, and its #hypocrisy, again

Photograph by Ashley Gilbertson for Bloomberg Businessweek

I've worked professionally on Macs for 20 years. And yes, back in the Stone Age, they made computing so much easier.

That said, Steve Jobs was not a genius. Nor is Tim Cook after him. And neither of them were or are civil libertarians.

Nor is Tim Cook that concerned about privacy. Let's remember that, at one time, the iPhone and iPad were designed to spy on their users. As CEO of the Eye-company, he's concerned about corporate branding and profits from a company that has become a caricature of its own 1984 ad:



So, in the current hullaballoo about how brave Cook is for resisting the FBI's request that Apple write a jailbreak program to open the iPhone of alleged terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, remember this:

Apple is selling a phone, not civil liberties, as Lawfare Blog notes.

Actually, I'd go beyond that. Apple is selling you an Eye-cult.

I agree that the Eff Bee Eye is overstepping. However, Tim Cook is turd-polishing at the same time.

At the same time, Lawfare Blog is from Brookings. Brookings by its own admission is NOT a "liberal" think tank, whatever that word even means today. And, it's staking out the "left-neoliberal" version of support for the Deep State.

Between snark and skepticism, I've blogged plenty about the Cult of Apple.

That includes

• Snarking on faux apps for the iWatch;
• Thinking Cook came out as gay in part for marketing reasons;
• Noting that Mac computers (ironic timing is everything) may be less secure than Windoze, as further discussed here and also here, all of which the Cult of Jobs tried to ignore;
• Noting that Apple was SO customer-friendly when it engaged in price-fixing of e-books;
• Showing it's a cult by how much its followers are gullible suckers for anything Eye — that would include Steve Jobs lying about iPhone 4 antenna problems, preceded by Jobs lying about iPhone 3G data speed;
• How it got hypocritical with data control on e-book authors;
• Noting that, per the iPhone/iPad spying above, the only way to stop that was (more irony and hypocrisy) jailbreak the iPhone, and then to face Steve Jobs being Orwellian about the spying;
• And, the iCloud, which Apple pushes people to use, is totally open to the feds (and maybe hackers?)

Of course, the cult of Apple is ultimately the cult of Steve Jobs. Jobs got lucky that he listened to an underling about the iPod, which kicked off Apple's whole Eye-line. Jobs himself originally planned to make it Mac-only, like iTunes software before, like everything else before that.

But, many are so unskeptical about him.

Which is why I love that my Steve Jobs jokes blog post, fortuitously spun off a blog post written on the day he died, is still my most viewed one.

More skepticism about Jobs includes:

• Taking a real look at his personality;
• Behing honest about his exploitive overseas labor (yes, he was later than PC makers, but he went there).

The Silicon Valley world is all backing Apple now. This is again, where Persian philosopher Idries Shah is right — there's never just two sides to an issue, and clearly here. The FBI is wrong, AND Apple is hypocritical.

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Update on the actual situation, which makes both Apple and San Bernardino County look worse.

The county has access to, but failed to install, software that would have unlocked the phone. Or, if Farook had thumbprint technology recognition installed, the Eff Bee Eye could have done it. The former makes the county look bad. The former, and somewhat the latter, belies Apple's "protect your data" claims.