Pew surveyed the U.S. public on the issue and found it mostly split.
However, there was a huge skew between cohorts. In sum, young
Democrats were on Apple’s side, and old Republicans, government.^3
That wasn’t what you might expect from either side, the former being
for expanding the power of big government, and the latter for
protecting the prerogatives of big business. But Apple, and the other
horsemen, play by a different set of rules.
Put another way, anybody who matters in the consumer world is
for Apple. Young Democrats (millennials with college degrees) didn’t
just inherit the Earth, they conquered it, led by engineering grads from
MIT and Harvard dropouts. They are growing their income, spending
it irrationally, as young people do, and have a facility with technology
that makes them influential and important to business.^4 They sided
with Apple, as the firm embodies their own maverick,
antiestablishment, progressive ideals—and conveniently ignored the
fact that Steve Jobs gave nothing to charity, almost exclusively hired
middle-aged white guys, and was an awful person.
It didn’t matter, because Apple is cool. Even more, Apple is an
innovator. And so, when the federal government decides to force
Apple to change its behavior, the Apple Macolytes leap to its defense.
I’m not one of them.
Double Standard
I’ve always tried to give the impression that I just don’t care what
others think. But when coworkers, many of whom are millennials with
Ivy League degrees, sent me polite hate mail (which hurts more than
just plain hateful, “hope you die,” hate mail), it rattled me.
The source of their disappointment was my views on the Apple
privacy issue. More specifically, that I wasn’t on the correct side of the
Apple privacy issue. They felt I wasn’t protecting personal privacy.
What they failed to see, I believe, is they were not so much on the side
of privacy as on the side of Apple. Their, and Apple’s, arguments: