[stouset]

Absolutely every aspect of it?

What’s so hard about adding a feature that effectively makes a single-user device multi-user? Which needs the ability to have plausible deniability for the existence of those other users? Which means that significant amounts of otherwise usable space needs to be inaccessibly set aside for those others users on every device—to retain plausible deniability—despite an insignificant fraction of customers using such a feature?

What could be hard about that?

[gabeio]

> despite an insignificant fraction of customers using such a feature?

Isn't that the exact same argument against Lockdown mode? The point isn't that the number of users is small it's that it can significantly help that small set of users, something that Apple clearly does care about.

[achierius]

Lockdown mode costs ~nothing for devices that don't have it enabled. GP is pointing out that the straightforward way to implement this feature would not have that same property.

[stouset]

Lockdown mode doesn’t require everyone else to lose large amounts of usable space on their own devices in order for you to have plausible deniability.

[PunchyHamster]

now I want to know what dirty laundry are their upper management hiding on their devices...

[billfor]

Android phones are multi-user, so if they can do it then Apple should be able to.

[Gud]

And how do you explain your 1TB phone that has 2GB of data, but only 700GB free?

[stouset]

That is about one fiftieth of the work that needs to go into the feature the OP casually “why can’t they just”-ed.

[jb1991]

This is called whataboutism. This particular feature aside, sometimes there are very good reasons not to throw the kitchen sink of features at users.

[NitpickLawyer]

Truecrypt had that a decade+ ago.

[ratg13]

Not sure if you know the history behind it, but look up Paul Le Roux

Also would recommend the book called The Mastermind by Evan Ratliff

[hackerfoo]

Maybe one PIN could cause the device to crash. Devices crash all the time. Maybe the storage is corrupted. It might have even been damaged when it was taken.

This could even be a developer feature accidentally left enabled.

[izzydata]

It doesn't seem fundamentally different from a PC having multiple logins that are accessed from different passwords. Hasn't this been a solved problem for decades?

[paulryanrogers]

Apple's hardware business model incentivizes only supporting one user per device.

Android has supported multiple users per device for years now.

[bsharper]

You can have a multiuser system but that doesn't solve this particular issue. If they log in to what you claim to be your primary account and see browser history that shows you went to msn.com 3 months ago, they aren't going to believe it's the primary account.

[compiler-guy]

Multi-user has been solved for decades.

Multi-user that plausibly looks like single-user to three letter agencies?

Not even close.

[greesil]

Android has work profiles, so that could be done in Android. iPhone still does not.

[reaperducer]

Android has work profiles

Never ever use your personal phone for work things, and vice versa. It's bad for you and bad for the company you work for in dozens of ways.

Even when I owned my own company, I had separate phones. There's just too much legal liability and chances for things to go wrong when you do that. I'm surprised any company with more than five employees would even allow it.

[skeptic_ai]

Police ask: give me pass for work profile. If you don’t: prison.

[vlovich123]

iPhone and macOS are basically the same product technically. The reason iPhone is a single user product is UX decisions and business/product philosophy, not technical reasons.

While plausible deniability may be hard to develop, it’s not some particularly arcane thing. The primary reasons against it are the political balancing act Apple has to balance (remember San Bernardino and the trouble the US government tried to create for Apple?). Secondary reasons are cost to develop vs addressable market, but they did introduce Lockdown mode so it’s not unprecedented to improve the security for those particularly sensitive to such issues.

[achierius]

> iPhone and macOS are basically the same product technically

This seems hard to justify. They share a lot of code yes, but many many things are different (meaningfully so, from the perspective of both app developers and users)

[ashdksnndck]

You think iPhones aren’t multi-user for technical reasons? You sure it’s not to sell more phones and iPads? Should we ask Tim “buy your mom an iPhone” Cook?