Why not? Facebook and Twitter have done exactly that in the past year. Why is it far fetched for Apple suddenly, given this amazing reverse-course on branding?

The only realistic alternative to Apple is Android... And Google is pretty darn transparent in their spying on users. Apple just did a 180 degree about-face on all the branding they've built over the last decade. Why should anyone trust Apple again?

Look, this whole neural-hash thing took what, 2 weeks for people to fabricate collisions? This just illustrated how poorly conceived and ill-thought the entire plan was from Apple. It's not beyond reason to assume any of these things given the evidence we currently have.