There has not been any change in how big tech companies deal with hard decisions. It's just people who ate PR, brand management and empty corporate speak about values getting getting deserved reality check.
Without a doubt Tim Cook is very strongly socially liberal and anti Trump as long as it's does not hurt business opportunities or the future of Apple.
>Without a doubt Tim Cook is very strongly socially liberal and anti Trump as long as it's does not hurt business opportunities or the future of Apple.
Disappointing. Even beyond the question of malfeasance, there should be at least three policy areas I can think of off the top of my head that Cook should be opposed to:
* Constant disruption of international manufacturing and trade relations with a chaotic assembly of policies (as Paul Krugman has pointed out, each individual policy you can, in principle, adjust to. But policies changing on a weekly level are impossible to plan for: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/opinion/trump-economy.htm...)
* Anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric making it harder to hire from abroad (one can debate whether this benefits US workers—I would argue not—but it's certainly not in Apple's self interest).
* Anti-LGBT policies and rhetoric. It's admirable that Cook consistently avoid making things about himself, but I think you ought to draw the line at collaborating with politicians who question one's very right to exist.
> It's admirable that Cook consistently avoid making things about himself, but I think you ought to draw the line at collaborating with politicians who question one's very right to exist.
Does Trump really question the right of gay men like Cook to exist?
I guess my question was around gay Americans (like Cook) and not transgender Americans. I couldn’t recall too much that had changed for gay people under Trump and it seems like most of the impact in the articles you linked is on transgender people. Thanks for the links.
As far as I can tell, only bathroom discrimination among the policies I listed affects solely transgender people.
And there are good reasons for mutual solidarity among LGBT people: At the moment, the transgendered are singled out because they are the least numerous among these populations, and often one of the more visible ones. But those who would discriminate against them are unlikely to stop with them.
The main alternative seems to be Warren who openly proposes policies to dismantle Apple, among other companies. So it makes sense that he'd go all in to prevent her from being elected, it's his fiduciary duty after all.
"Apple, you’ve got to break it apart from their App Store. It’s got to be one or the other. Either they run the platform or they play in the store. They don’t get to do both at the same time. So it’s the same notion. "
I wouldn't say that goes so far as to "dismantle" Apple, but it is definitely a proposition to affect perceived anti-competitive practices. I am not sure where I come down on such question, can you describe the benefits and drawbacks of Apple controlling the App Store?
I don't get it. They created the app store. Developers are choosing to be part of Apple's ecosystem. The ecosystem for Android is absolutely terrible in comparison. Even free apps don't compare to Apple's free apps. That's the dumbest thing I've heard.
This sounds like a push to allow a third-party App Store on the iPhone, or at least to allow iPhone users to install binaries not directly approved by Apple. That's not the same thing as dismantling Apple.
From the guidelines on what to submit to HN:
"If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Don't you think it's insulting to tell a crowd of people that they are not intellectually stimulated by something? I don't find it intellectually stimulating either, but I wouldn't declare something so personal and subjective as factual ("it's not" vs "I don't think it is" or "it isn't for me"). It's antagonistic for no reason.
This is a blog post about a twitter post about a picture. The whole article can be reduced to "tim cook good, trump bad, why in picture together?". HN cannot become reddit, we have to hold our bar higher than blogspam about politics.
It seems a legitimate debate to me to what extent a company should acquiesce to governments of all sorts.
And it's a question that Apple, in particular, has to debate over and over again. iPhone unlocks for the govt? If so, what governments? Allow apps that facilitate protests in Hong Kong? Tolerate or even facilitate oppressive manufacturing or mining conditions?
These are not easy questions for a company that has so many world wide dependencies. And, for some of these questions (unlocks, manufacturing, mining), Apple has decided to take a stand on ethical principles rather than convenience.
Intellectual curiosity is not constrained to geeky stuff.
Corporations, politics, and corporations' political stances and alliances are very interesting, and could be much more "disrupting" and life changing than some new technique or gadget.
So this is the new fact checking, after the outrage machine is in full swing?
I think everyone has seen how this works with alt-right social news blogging, and we've already seen this blogger feed the flames with false accusations retracted later.
I don't agree with the likes of Zuckerberg (though I think even he is backtracking) that fake news can be algorithmically detected precisely due to this example blog. There is no proof of work in fact checking, so outraged "left"/"right" bloggers is worse than no information.
If there's something to feed to the media do so, if there's something to feed to special prosecutors or the SEC even better.
Shouldn't the CEO of a major corporation try to appear politically neutral?
It's especially strange because Cook is gay, and Trump and Republicans are trying to create a right for businesses to refuse service to gay people solely because they're gay.
Your link made your earlier statement appear disingenuous. One person's beliefs against the concept of same-sex marriage doesn't necessarily mean said person is anti-gay. Those are two different issues really. One represents a social construct (and legal arrangement) and the other involves a personal preference or choice of lifestyle. Many who are against same-sex marriage still believe in the freedoms people should have in choosing their sexual partners.
I never said anyone is anti-gay. I said exactly what I meant: Trump/GOP are trying to create and enforce the right of businesses to discriminate against gay people.
That's not just "beliefs". It is discriminatory action.
People have a right to believe what they want, but they shouldn't have the state's sanction to discriminate based on those beliefs.
Yes. You already don't have the right to choose your customers based on race, religion, or sex. Homosexuality is as unchangeable as any of those things, and it's actually possible to change religion.
This is the exact same argument that was made during segregation and slavery in the US[1]. You shouldn't be allowed to be racist, sexist, or any other type of bigot just because you think a man in the sky wants you to be.
But we all know Tim Cook didn’t like a second of it. He’s balancing his personal feelings with his duties of loyalty and care (he owes to Apple Inc).
Tim Cook is doing the best he can in a garbage situation. He’s not rolling over for Trump, but he’s also not antagonizing Trump (which I know a lot of people want to see).
Cook’s being savvy. Cook is crushing it. Gruber got this take wrong. Gruber is letting political feelings infect his job as a journalist.
"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did."
People constantly act so surprised when liberals in the business community are tolerant of fascists, but this is naive and just shows how unfamiliar someone like Gruber is with historical events.
The New Yorker just published a great piece about exactly this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.#Criticism_and_contr...
I think Apple has done a lot worse in its "proud history" and is still doing it.