Gregory's ServerApple leadership would rather bend the knee, kiss the ring, and ‘donate’ a million dollar bribe to a convicted criminal than follow the EU's competition law in good faith, which should tell you everything you need to know about values over there
 54 comments
@OldManJade @stroughtonsmith This is getting a bit too far into the "you hate capitalism so much, but you have an iphone, etc" argument. @dgodon @OldManJade @stroughtonsmith never come across that one in the wild, can you show some examples? @OldManJade you tell me, it's been a good four years since my most recent Apple products @stroughtonsmith You are still in the Apple ecosystem, still making money and helping Apple make money, but then even if you left on principle what platform isn't currying favor with Trump? As for Tim Apple's "donation" to the inauguration, the bet is it's cheaper getting Trump to bully the EU than complying with EU regs. We'll see how it plays out. @OldManJade @stroughtonsmith  @OldManJade @stroughtonsmith I think it says a lot more about the power that these megacorporations have. Vendor lock-in is one hell of a bitch. Not to mention that, in a profit-driven world, every company will eventually either turn evil, or be cut out of the market by a competitor who's willing to be evil. Individual responsibility is bullshit if the system is set up like that. @stroughtonsmith I think it's not just one bad apple (pun intended), but rather an indication of our broken economic and political system. Many companies are doing the same about-face of giving lip-service about social justice and DEI to now bending over to a fascist. I'm sure these companies are doing the same calculus they do when they decide to enshittify their products.  The industry leaders that aren’t all in on it for political covalence reasons are going to go along with it for expediency reasons. The rest of us are going to be left to avert the disaster without their help and their resources working against us. It’s infuriating.
 @stroughtonsmith Corporations aren’t legally allowed to have morals or standards. @stroughtonsmith Which is not to justify Apple being shit. Every tech company is shit.  @stroughtonsmith It really amazes me how people just don't get that Apple really is no different from their competitors in any meaningful way. They just put on a better face. Literally the equivalent of Google's old "do no evil" that obviously didn't exactly bind Google very hard in the end.  Apple's stock price depends on keeping investors happy, ....investors like a murderous petrostate dictator... Or a megalomaniac bent on global domination...  @Npars01 @stroughtonsmith Chinese slave laborers were so happy about Apple's stock price they literally cheered themselves to death. @stroughtonsmith Tim Cook used his own personal money for this -- in an effort to make things easier for him for the next 4 years. Apple, the company, is not donating (yet?) https://www.macrumors.com/2025/01/03/tim-cook-trump-inauguration-donation/ @jakeyounglol Why would they? Tim Cook remains the best person to navigate Apple through the next 4 years of a Trump presidency. If anything, Tim Cook likely just secured his tenure for another 4 years.    @stroughtonsmith I humbly suggest there's no causal relationship between Apple's EU regulatory disputes and Cook's donation. I mean it's like #2 on his list of issues which the Trump admin's support could help with (after tariff exemptions), but do you think anything related to this donation would have been different if, say, immediately after taking the competition chief reins, Ribera Rodriguez had declared the matter closed and that Apple was already in full DMA compliance?  @gruber @stroughtonsmith I too think Tim Cook is simply being pragmatic. It's the cost of doing business. @gruber @stroughtonsmith Without making a moral judgment, the million dollar donation and fighting the DMA are both consistent with a business acting in accordance with the interests of its shareholders. @bretcarmichael @stroughtonsmith I strongly concur, but I think in Apple's case, and in this century's rise of computer tech companies to the top of our economy, it's not about "pleasing shareholders” in the 1980s/90s sense. That's passé. The evolved thinking -- which is still decidedly capitalistic -- is simply to act in the company's own interests for the sake of what's best for the company's products and services, with shareholder benefit falling naturally out of that. @gruber @bretcarmichael @stroughtonsmith What if what’s best for the company’s products and services leaves the rest of us in dire straights? This “evolved” thinking applies across the industry now and we see the culture that results—demeaning oneself in deference to the authoritarian figure. It is in ways as short sighted as ignoring climate damaging aspects of their products. A healthy global free market and interdependence is a prerequisite for their success. Authoritarians undermine that. @Gte @gruber @stroughtonsmith There’s a misalignment between business and societal incentives. There has been forever, climate and healthcare being a couple of examples. Politicians have capitulated to business interests in exchange for career benefit at a cost to society. Here, it’s reversed. Businesses are capitulating to politicians (Trump), and the tradeoff is the same: cost to society. Companies may be thinking, “It’s only 4 years.” If not, it’s a collective action problem for them. @bretcarmichael @gruber @stroughtonsmith Agreed. And it’s not like companies don’t have government affairs to try to smooth their relationships with elected leaders.The difference here is that this is clearly the kind of thing Apple employee training videos tell you is corruption. As a company that has, as John points out, tried to look to the longer term, and plan and act accordingly, this is shortsighted. “Well, I guess a little corruption to get in the door is ok” is where things go south. @bretcarmichael @stroughtonsmith What you're describing is a way of thinking where shareholders place demands and CEOs aim to meet them. That turns out to be a terrible way to run a country for anything but the short term. The modern thinking is the company to run itself as best as it sees and the message to shareholders is “Get on board if you believe in our vision.” @bretcarmichael @stroughtonsmith With Apple this is quite literally epitomized by an oft-cited quote from Steve Jobs: “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” That applies to shareholders in the company's stock as much as customers of the company's products. @gruber @stroughtonsmith That makes a lot of sense. I agree; that short-term thinking is a terrible way to run the country. Relatedly, I do think Apple [and others] is looking at their Trump investment on a relatively short timeline. Trump can’t run again. His proposed China tariffs have the potential to do real harm. He’s transactional and impulsive. Apple and others are going to pay protection money. CEOs are courting Trump more than Biden, because they didn’t fear Biden being vindictive. @gruber @stroughtonsmith we all agree that it was unnecessary for Tim Cook to congratulate Trump in November though, so what makes a $1m donation different? https://daringfireball.net/2024/11/i_wonder @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith They’re on the same vector, but talk is cheap. A protection racket cares about the money, not the platitudes. So in that sense I think the CEO congratulatory tweets look worse, because they weren’t forced. @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith I think your disdain for exclamation marks may be colouring your judgment here. !! Donating $1,000,000USD to the Trump Inaugural fund isn’t forced by any law other than the extra-judicial reality ushered in by the electorate. If the point is that even the most principled CEOs of the most prestigious companies in the world *must* pay tribute to the President-elect in order to continue doing business that’s kinda concerning.™️ @Gte @gruber @rileytestut right, it's not like all these companies are contributing exactly a million dollars out of their own volition. Demands were made, and they acquiesced. What will the next demand be, and where will it end? And who exactly will be coming up with future demands? I know somebody who demanded to be CEO of Apple in their last round of negotiations 😛 @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith I was confident you did. The confusion I had was that the congratulatory messages were worse. That’s how I read that tweet at least. They’re maybe lip of the ski slope and can be seen as where the acceleration started. But this wasn’t forced so much as leaning into the slope. @Gte @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith Gotcha. Mistake: Congratulatory tweets: a bad look for the CEOs because they really weren’t under pressure to do it. $1 million inauguration donations: a dark situation, genuinely concerning, because they obviously are under pressure to do it. @gruber @Gte@mastodon.social @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith I feel I misread your earlier messages, similarly to @gte. @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith (Also, just to say so in public—your take on DF is good and I appreciate it) @Gte @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith See? This is why we can have nice things!  @Gte @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith  @Gte @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith Successful blackmailers always come back for more. @Gte @gruber @rileytestut @stroughtonsmith Can you trust him to make the right choices anymore, if they conflict with profits? He did once famously said he doesn’t care about “bloody ROI”. Maybe that has changed. @gruber @stroughtonsmith I personally still don’t think the donation was _necessary_, but I’ll admit that’s a fair distinction (even though Trump does certainly care about the platitudes) @gruber @stroughtonsmith the ignore EU law, while supporting a man that breaks it constantly. They are related. Apple is morally bankrupt it seems. I don’t care if Cook donated personally, he is the CEO.  @stroughtonsmith I want to live in a world where companies are punished for this sort of thing. We don't live in that world. Spotify pays Joe Rogan a dump truck full of gold for vaccine disinformation in the middle of a once-in-a-generation public health crisis? Continuous growth. Netflix cracks down on password sharing and introduces ads? Profits never higher. Tesla's CEO endorses antisemitism and alt-right politics? Certainly no *related* sales slowdown although they had a tough 4Q.  @stroughtonsmith Yeah. They know which way the wind is blowing. Why wouldn't they? Not like they see y'all putting up a fight. What are you doing? Just sitting on your ass bitching that someone's not coming along to step up in your place? There's only one way this gets solved, and that's if enough members of your wing can get the lard asses out of the seat and into the game. |
@stroughtonsmith Not to put too fine a point on it, but what does it say about the values of people who buy Apple products and/or develop software for the platform run by people with those values over there?