I'm rather shocked to see the EFF linking to the horribly wrong old Telegraph article about Steve Jobs purportedly confirming that there was a kill-switch that would remove apps from iPhones. At least as of the time that was written, that was not true. The referenced "line of secret code" (hyperlink is broken), IIRC, was actually referring to a CoreLocation blacklist, not an application blacklist, with the intended usage being to be able to disable GPS functionality in certain regions if local governments demanded it, and that blacklist never actually ended up being used and was removed entirely in a future OS update.
So wait, does Apple have or do they not have not the same kind of kill switch functionality (read: either remote uninstall, or cert revocation -> app no longer runs) that Google definitely has and has demonstrated on a few malware apps?
Apple has never demonstrated such a capability, and has never confirmed it either. Pretty much everyone claiming they have it (including the linked Business Insider article) sources back to the same thing in 2008 which was the CoreLocation blacklist I referenced. To the best of my knowledge, in 2008, Apple had no way to remotely delete an app from a device. And I'm not aware of them ever gaining that ability.
What Apple can do is remove an app from the store, preventing anyone from installing it. But as far as I'm aware no certificate revocation is checked after the app has been successfully installed.
So some further Googling. Steve Jobs himself, quoted in WSJ:
(Google SB121842341491928977 to avoid the wall)
Apple raised hackles in computer-privacy and security circles when an independent engineer (NB: the wrong one you were talking about) discovered code inside the iPhone that suggested iPhones routinely check an Apple Web site that could, in theory trigger the removal of the undesirable software from the devices.
Mr. Jobs confirmed such a capability exists, but argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program -- one that stole users' personal data, for example -- to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," he says.
You don't get too much more clear than a quote from the then-CEO.
I've seen his response a million times but I've never seen anyone quote the actual question he was responding to. And I have it on extremely good authority (sorry, anecdotal, but the best I can do) that the blacklist under discussion was the CoreLocation blacklist I described.
My best guess is Steve was asked about the blacklist, didn't have any direct knowledge of what he was being asked about, so simply assumed that it was in fact an app blacklist as everyone else did, and came up with what was probably the best response he could under the circumstances.
I'm rather shocked to see the EFF linking to the horribly wrong old Telegraph article about Steve Jobs purportedly confirming that there was a kill-switch that would remove apps from iPhones. At least as of the time that was written, that was not true. The referenced "line of secret code" (hyperlink is broken), IIRC, was actually referring to a CoreLocation blacklist, not an application blacklist, with the intended usage being to be able to disable GPS functionality in certain regions if local governments demanded it, and that blacklist never actually ended up being used and was removed entirely in a future OS update.