&gt; <i>or perhaps they were afraid some bug could end up having catastrophic consequences of locking a billion people out of their phones with no way to fix it?</i><p>That basically happened (at a smaller scale) just last week. When Apple apologized and fixed the &quot;can&#x27;t use iPhone if it&#x27;s been repaired by a 3rd party&quot; thing, the fix required updating phones which were otherwise bricked. It&#x27;s not an unreasonable scenario.