iPhone, iPad ethics

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My friends who are Apple fans scoff when I suggest that the company is "evil." Everyone knows it is basically benign, they say, and on balance its forward-thinking plans for the next generation of computing outweigh whatever aggressive business tactics it might have to employ on the way up.

As for Steve Jobs using a private police force to break down doors of people who leak his trade secrets--well, that might seem evil in the short run, they say, but whatever it takes to get computing out of cumbersome desktops and into devices we can carry around. That's what's important.

We've had some pretty heated debates about Jobs' plans to use the private cops to kill people and take their organs. He's not going to live forever, the Apple fans say, and since we need his magic to carry us to the next level of computing, fresh body parts for the next 40 years or so are not such a tall order.

What's a few lives against a system of file distribution and sales that even Grandma can understand?