The High Labor Cost if Apple is to Comply with the US FBI Hacking Request

It would cost Apple about $101,000 in labor costs to help the FBI hack an iPhone -- although the company would likely spend millions more to prevent this hack from dangerously leaking into the open. In court documents filed on Thursday, Apple revealed what it would take to create a back door into one of its iPhones. A federal magistrate-judge has ordered the company to create code that will help the FBI break into the iPhone 5C of a San Bernardino shooter. Apple is fighting the order, but it has estimated the effort it would take to build a new version of its operating system, which an Apple employee has dubbed "GovtOS." "All told, I would estimate that the process of designing, creating, validating, deploying GovtOS would take two to four weeks," Apple's manager of user privacy, Erik Neuenschwander, declared in a court papers. The effort would take "six to ten Apple engineers and employees dedicating a very substantial portion of their time," Apple said in a court filing. That would include the rock star engineers from Apple's core operating system group, one quality assurance engineer, a project manager, and a document writer, according to Apple's filing. Here's the potential cost, using salaries from salary-tracking website Glassdoor. Should Apple accept the US FBI's edict to hack into the iPhone? Send your comments to the Smartphone and Tablet Zone. http://smartphoneandtabletzone.blogspot.com/