To play devil's advocate.. While you may trust them more, you can't deny they have had many significant software security issues of late. How could consumers trust the security of their chips?
A bug is bad. A business model based on selling your personal information to third parties without your explicit knowledge -- far worse. A bug is a mistake -- not excusable, but the _intent_ is much different.
The admin access without a password bug -- fixed in 24 hours, and it still required physical access to a machine.
That's not to diminish the seriousness of the flaw, but that's far different that Facebook's (and many others') nefarious, continual and one-might-argue, malicious exploitation of personal data.
I feel like Apple actually cares deeply about privacy. Look at Tim Cook's personal life for example -- extremely private person -- someone, given his life story, who probably appreciates privacy more than most.
No company is perfect and no company should get a free pass for negligence, but I think Apple has earned the benefit of the doubt.
Given the amount of evidence you presented, how could anyone refute your opinion?
OP raised a valid argument - Apple's QC has been crap lately and trending downwards. There's a lot of feedback out on the net to support that line of thinking.
There's been Apple-bashing "feedback out on the net" since Apple was founded.
Most of it has been laughable. The stuff you're talking about is firmly within that laughable camp.
If Apple's QC were "crap" you'd see that in customer satisfaction ratings for their #1 product: the iPhone. But guess what? You don't see that. And there is no downward trend.
I do not deny that those were both terrible, awful mistakes (and I'm upvoting you for correctly including them in this thread). I would note that they were both relating to what is (perhaps unfortunately, but them's the facts) a very minor product for Apple. And that they're both fixed. And that Apple's security overall is still unquestionably far superior to that of its competition. Ask anyone who has to administrate both Macs and PCs for a living (like me).
It's all one company. The reputation, stellar or tarnished, affects the entire brand. Their software QC has been bad lately, it's makes me question their hardware QC too. Those bugs/issues are often harder to find though - if they exist - they might not. But I think it's fair for me to question.
For a company that makes a large volume of a very narrow range of products they have a pretty good track record when it comes to physical hardware, and so far their chip work hasn't hit any major snags.
When Apple's custom CPU has its first F00F-type bug then we'll see how they handle a real issue.
