Apple is not and should not be a political actor.
More and more the United States has included corporate activities into the fold of law enforcement and legislation.
A host of institutions called FDRCs exist in a public-private limbo - representing the interests of the state but inside the private world.
NGOs - non-governmental organizations - are in fact very governmental. They are enumerated by the United States, many times funded nearly exclusively by them, and are often fronts for the CIA and other parts of the government.
The government will make causal reference to Civil Society in speeches. Civil Society is not you and I - Civil Society are organizations (many times funded again by those elements that flirt inside and outside of government boundary). For example George Soros funds huge numbers of Civil Society Organizations for US-aligned political purposes around the world.
The United States has discusses standards of corporate governance and responsibility under the expectation that its partnerships with international corporations overseas act as 'proxies' for US government inspired cultivation.
US corporations are allowed and encouraged to participate in the creation of legislature. Given the inevitable pass of TPA it's timely to mention US corporate input into the one of the largest and most important pieces of modern US foreign policy. Wall Street wrote a bill draft for the House to remove limitations on derivative trading (put in after the housing crisis) and the House passed their bill without altering it.
Private corporations draft and/or research most of our legislation. Washington think tanks are critical pieces in the legislative process.
Private corporations own the fourth estate of our government - there's a looong long history here to write about how this has been used for private profit.
The majority of NSA work (it was discovered) is outsourced to private corporations and much of our intelligence work is done by private intelligence corporations (Palantir, HB Gary Federal, Stratfor).
Our military uses Blackwater (now rebranded because of their human rights violations) a benefit being that if a private corporations commits war crimes - it isn't technically the US governments fault.
Issues like modern surveillance (revealed by Snowden) and propaganda are not performed by placing laws on corporations that they must follow, but by partnerships. Corporations are allowed to do things that government can not and vice versa. Both benefit when an exchange can be made.
But probably the easiest place to see the blur and partnership between the state and the corporate world is the Republic and Democratic parties and their Commission - which also runs the presidential debates. This institution (our political parties) themselves are, legally, in practice and by definition, a corporation.
I do not want Apple to be law enforcement or national security enforcement. I do not care if it is more efficient to have private citizens perform the function of public institutions.
Public institutions have limitations that private bodies do not.
This is on purpose. The limitations on governance were placed to ensure liberty.