Alternatives to this would include asking customers to back up their devices to Apple’s cloud servers (which are accessible to fewer, better-vetted technicians) and wipe them – even better would be to use end-to-end encryption in cloud backups, so that customers’ data would be private except in the case of bad passwords, malware, or defects in the software.
This ignores the exceptionally common case of people going to a Genius Bar for basic tech support - everything from transferring data from their old phone onto their new one to how to use mail.
Never mind that answering the question of “this app crashes” with “let’s backup your phone, wipe it, reinstall and restore” is a horrible customer experience, may not actually fix anything, wipes any logs which would help diagnose the actual problem and still requires them to unlock their phone anyway.
I’d argue that the same problem could be solved by Apple better monitoring their employees.
