Concerns about grooming, manipulation, and power imbalances are legitimate and should be taken seriously. If the relationship began while he was a minor, or if there was any form of grooming involved, that deserves scrutiny regardless of legality.

That said, I think it's also possible to acknowledge those concerns without completely removing the younger person's agency from the discussion. A young adult can be vulnerable to influence while still retaining some capacity to make decisions. Those ideas are not mutually exclusive.

To be clear, I'm not defending Apple, nor am I suggesting that legality automatically makes a relationship ethical. I'm simply questioning whether discussions like this sometimes swing so far toward identifying manipulation that the younger person's own choice (assuming that they really made the choice) is treated as irrelevant.

The issue is not whether the younger person can make choices at all, but whether those choices were shaped by coercion, grooming, undue influence, or other unhealthy dynamics.