More importantly, smartphones are expensive. My PC is 300 USD plus several HDDs, my Xperia is 650 USD. When I invest money like this into a device, I want to be sure that I would be able to receive my mail and such as long as the phone is in working order. Also I can pull some strings in my company so I can tell my system management to modify e-mail service if I cannot do what I want thru Outlook and/or one of mail servers I run as a hobby. I do not want to lose almost complete control on my data to a company, which (not if but when) went under would take my data and services with it. A company which is in financial trouble, with a CEO in denial. Also it is a company that is under investigation in several countries, as it denied lawful interception rights of legal authorities, a slow but sure way of suicide where nation states mean business.

Apple has every right to limit services they offer to both their customers, and their solution partners/providers. The interesting thing is that, Apple's business practices are still surprising some people after so many years. If the way they conduct their business is a problem, anybody/everybody is free to move away their own business from Apple platform.

I moved away from IOS to Android. I paid 50 bucks for a data recovery program by which I lifted all my SMS and similar data from my Iphone. The data I recovered includes the cache which keeps every location I went since the summer of 2010. Interestingly (for me at the least) 50 USD is more than I paid for programs in I-tunes during a period of four years. I paid something like 750 USD for a Sony Ericsson.

In short I am free from disturbing business practices by paying 800 bucks and have a better phone now. No one is forcing anybody to use Apple products, which has admitedly one of the best designs in market, but with lots of strings attached.

"Here goes your facebook ID, oops so bad, you had a bank account interconnected to it...."

I do not think it can be even sued properly, so many layers between you and the potential attacker... I am in the sector and so many (naive??) developers believe that the platform OS being Unix, mostly Linux, makes the device secure enough. This is due to the fact that most developers are from household appliance backgrounds, not from the jungle called Internet...

IANAL: Here (in Turkey) a private entity can neglect to follow required procedures to complete the ruling that grant some king of benefit to them, by not filing the ruling with proper authorities, if the case is a civil law case. For example after a divorce to keep track of alimony payments is the responsibility of receiving party. But this is applicable only to civil cases related to real people.

AFAIK USA is the only country that treats companies as real people. In Turkey and again AFAIK our regulations are compatible with EU rules, if a company neglects to follow up such a rule, responsible managers of said company will face charges of criminal misconduct due to, either neglecting duty for protecting shareholders, or even tax evasion, as such lack of activity would cause a loss to the company hence loss of taxes of government, depending on the mood of prosecutors at the day they were given the file...