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Maybe. I don't know Tim Cook personally, so I'm in no position to judge his character. I'd like to believe his case for privacy is a moral one, grounded in his

Maybe. I don't know Tim Cook personally, so I'm in no position to judge his character. I'd like to believe his case for privacy is a moral one, grounded in his own challenging personal experiences. That would certainly be refreshing. What I do know for a fact is that he is the CEO of a public company, and as such he has a duty to maximize shareholder value. This isn't a judgement of his character, it's simply a description of his job. I believe he is very capable of performing his job.

taurath 10y ago
You can maximize shareholder value by aligning your company to make money while doing the right thing. There's plenty of salable arguments that a CEO can make about the benefits of not acting like a cutthroat psychopath business - just because CEOs like Trump loudly and proudly flout their ability and willingness to fuck over anyone they can in the pursuit of more wealth doesn't mean he will actually succeed. Building loyalty with both customers and employees is not something that shows up on the balance sheet every quarter, but when you have the loyalty you can do a lot more things than someone who doesn't. I'm planning to buy a macbook pro this thursday at well over $1000 over the price for similar hardware by ASUS/Acer/Lenovo etc because of the perception that Apple has the consumer in mind.
drumdance 10y ago
There are many, many ways to maximize shareholder value. Or at least try to. No path is without risk. He could focus on privacy and discover that for most people it's not a big deal. Or some kind of WikiLeaks/NSA scandal could happen and people decide it's a very big deal. (Oftentime timing is everything. DoubleClick lost a third of its value because of controversies about cookies, but 10 years later Facebook went far, far, far beyond DoubleClick and their market value went up.) He could decide that price is the most important thing and move all their operations offshore. A recession might come and it turns out low cost is the way to go. Or the economy might boom and people spend money like it's 1999. Apple has had a pretty golden touch over the last 15-20 years, and it's hard to argue with success. But past performance is no guarantee of future results. Microsoft stomped Apple and everyone else for 20 years, then went sideways for 10+ (as measured by stock market performance). But it's not like they decided to stop trying to maximize shareholder value. They just had difficulties figuring out how.

taurath 10y ago

You can maximize shareholder value by aligning your company to make money while doing the right thing. There's plenty of salable arguments that a CEO can make about the benefits of not acting like a cutthroat psychopath business - just because CEOs like Trump loudly and proudly flout their ability and willingness to fuck over anyone they can in the pursuit of more wealth doesn't mean he will actually succeed. Building loyalty with both customers and employees is not something that shows up on the balance sheet every quarter, but when you have the loyalty you can do a lot more things than someone who doesn't. I'm planning to buy a macbook pro this thursday at well over $1000 over the price for similar hardware by ASUS/Acer/Lenovo etc because of the perception that Apple has the consumer in mind.

drumdance 10y ago

There are many, many ways to maximize shareholder value. Or at least try to. No path is without risk. He could focus on privacy and discover that for most people it's not a big deal. Or some kind of WikiLeaks/NSA scandal could happen and people decide it's a very big deal. (Oftentime timing is everything. DoubleClick lost a third of its value because of controversies about cookies, but 10 years later Facebook went far, far, far beyond DoubleClick and their market value went up.) He could decide that price is the most important thing and move all their operations offshore. A recession might come and it turns out low cost is the way to go. Or the economy might boom and people spend money like it's 1999. Apple has had a pretty golden touch over the last 15-20 years, and it's hard to argue with success. But past performance is no guarantee of future results. Microsoft stomped Apple and everyone else for 20 years, then went sideways for 10+ (as measured by stock market performance). But it's not like they decided to stop trying to maximize shareholder value. They just had difficulties figuring out how.