I too have played the disappointed and befuddled architecture evangelist. The counter-argument that inevitably ended these conversations was: “This is a business. We make money by getting stuff out the door. Demonstrate how the time it would take to rework this code base would correspond to an increase in profits, then we can talk about how your time and people budget is impossible to justify.”

“Pretty behind the scenes” doesn’t make any difference when you’re focused on getting people to build you a moneymaking machine as fast and cheap as possible.

I think the headline is framing this wrong. Apple is not threatening to kill these services.

Apple is refusing to break their services just to accommodate broken, stupid laws written by a broken, stupid parliament.