Apple Responds to NSA Allegations, Mac Pro Teardown

Apple is behind some of the most popular devices on the market right now. That’s why it was disturbing to hear allegations about the company perhaps working with the NSA to snoop on people. Not surprisingly, Apple has denied the allegation:

Apple has never worked with the NSA to create a backdoor in any of our products, including iPhone. Additionally, we have been unaware of this alleged NSA program targeting our products. We care deeply about our customers’ privacy and security. Our team is continuously working to make our products even more secure, and we make it easy for customers to keep their software up to date with the latest advancements. Whenever we hear about attempts to undermine Apple’s industry-leading security, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate steps to protect our customers. We will continue to use our resources to stay ahead of malicious hackers and defend our customers from security attacks, regardless of who’s behind them.

Skeptics will point out that Apple is not the only company to deny working with the NSA. Whether these companies are working with the NSA is one thing. But consumers need to assume that people may be watching them regardless. It’s not as if Google and other top players in the smartphone industry were not accused of working with the NSA in the past.

On a more positive note, the new Mac Pro has gotten a teardown report from iFixit. These machines are not cheap, so it is nice to see that they are fairly easy to repair. In fact, iFixit gives it a Repairability Score of 8 out of 10. You can upgrade your RAM, replace the fan, and even change your CPU. This is still a very compact machine, so there will be some limitations.