What Apple Can Learn From BlackBerry Not To Do (informationweek.com)

dkatana writes: There is no shortage of news about the fight between Apple and the Justice Department to unlock the iPhone of a suspect in the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist case. Apple can take a page from the fight BlackBerry had back in 2010 with some governments in the Middle East and Asia. At that time -- afraid to lose a lucrative business -- RIM [gave] in and allowed those governments to access its secure BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) service. The rest is history. If Apple complies with the Justice Department request, according to Craig Federighi, senior VP of software engineering at Apple, "[This software -- which law enforcement has conceded it wants to apply to many iPhones --] would become a weakness that hackers and criminals could use to wreak havoc on the privacy and personal safety of us all."

Comments

What nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Blackberry went under has absolutely nothing to do with it opening up the platform to the government. It had everything to do with the instability of their server infrastructure.

I get the fact that you guys don't want Apple to open up its platform to the government, but this story is downright dishonest.

If you want to do away with the government then go live on an oil rig. Until then, the government will always have more power than you would like. That's life.

BB got done by its refusal to adapt

[Dorianny]

As a 600 pound gorilla it thought it could dictate where the market should got and got a painful lesson by customers that decided that touch-screen smartphones was what they wanted in their pockets