Replies

I'm in agreement with Apple on this as well.

It's not for them to determine who should have access. That's a matter for a probate court.

I would point out to the author of the article that if Apple needs to "get better at dying" then the average person needs to get better at "dying with electronic data."

I'll tell you straight up...if I were running Apple, I would use strong encryption securing the login to a computer such that it is impossible to crack it. Then, as a company, I can't be publicly pressured into doing something that is not physically possible, but is legally precarious if it were possible.

I would point out to the author of the article that if Apple needs to "get better at dying" then the average person needs to get better at "dying with electronic data."

In the future, when you die maybe your computer will become aware of your death and wipe your data. Of course, because you enabled it to do so as your last wish.

In the meantime, it's not that hard to crack many computer hard drives. So that family didn't need to ask Apple. They can ask other 3rd party professionals. I have helped friends to recover data from their crashed computers. One neighbor asked me for help a couple months ago, after a professional wanted to charge them $2400 to recover data. I easily recovered the data. In that case, it included a lot of family photos of a grandfather who just died. Innocent data in that case. For others, they might want data to stay secret after their death. Apple rightly said no.