No inheritance doesn't compel Apple to unlock that inherited property. Imagine it like a safe. You might inherit a safe but there is no obligation on the manufacturer to help you unlock it.
I think a more appropriate analogy is that this is like a safe deposit box. You lost the key. The bank is obligated to help you out, even if for a fee to drill the lock.
Where the analogy breaks down is the level of difficulty --- even the strongest safe in the world is crackable given enough resources, and we know how to do it very well. Good encryption is impossible to break within the lifetime of the known universe.
I say this as someone who has sadly had to explain to others a few times, that recovering encrypted files is nothing as easy as "busting it open" in the physical world.
This is incidentally why governments are scared of encryption, but IMHO users should be too --- it is very, very strong technology. Encrypting data with a suitably secure algorithm and losing the key means it is truly gone forever. You have to weigh that risk against the risk of someone else getting access to the data.
To push the analogy, if you need a code to open your safe, but forgot to put the code in your will, is the manufacturer required to provide you a master key?
The deceased is expecting to make the necessary preparations before dying. Facebook has a system to let a user allow trusted user to takeover access, or let a user allow a group of friends to agree to takeover access; which both seem good methods of handling inheritance of account data.
That's a bit of a harsh comparison. Stuff is the online format of all of Fairfax New Zealand's newspapers, some of which occasionally produce decent stories. Stuff is mostly just shitty poorly researched journalism rather than the Daily Mail's sensationalised tabloid bullshit.
Self proclaimed "Thought Leader" and "Digital Prophet" sounds rather egomaniacal.
I just assume anyone with titles like that is trying to sell synergy and snake oil.
There's some interesting technical history behind some of the emergency number choices:
999 in the UK (from 1937) was chosen because public payphone could be easily modified to make it a free call.
111 in New Zealand (from 1958) was chosen because the system was implemented using British Post Office equipment that already supported 999. But New Zealand phones pulsed in reverse so 111 on a New Zealand phone produced the same pulse as 999 on a British phone.
000 in Australia (from 1961) was chosen because 0 was already used for trunk access. On an automated rural exchange, 0 would connect you to a main centre. In remote communities it was 00. This meant that dialing 000 through an existing remote exchange would at least connect you to an operator in a main centre.
In the case of Australia/New Zealand the recommendation is to do 5 Back Blows then 5 Chest Thrusts. My understanding is that it's believed to be similarly effective but has less risk of causing internal injuries.
There are a couple other interesting variations from the default. Having a border (Republic of Congo, using a map rather than a coat of arms (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), and additional imagery that runs over the edge (Brazil, New Zealand, Portugal, and Sweden).
