A huge part of Apple’s marketing, whether you believe them or not, is that they try to protect your privacy.
replyThe smartphone is probably the most sensitive device most people own. It knows your location always. It has your banking apps. Your password manager. Your instant messages, and social media chats, it knows whether you’re walking, or driving, or talking on the phone, and to whom.
Once Apple allows any other vendor to vacuum all of that intensively private information out of an iPhone, Apple becomes indirectly responsible for potentially massive privacy breaches.
All of that happens only if the user chooses to do it though. Anybody is free to stay in the caged Apple garden. The EU just wants them to leave the door unlocked.
replyA door with a lock is different from a wall with no door. Same argument that gets made with government-keyed or government-breakable encryption schemes: it's better for everyone to not have the backdoor at all.
reply> They are not responsible for other companies' products.
replyLegally, maybe not, practically it becomes their problem.