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> Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Lu
by xuki 1y ago
> Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.
The bean counters won. I guess Tim Cook does care about the bloody ROI after all.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim-cook-doesnt-care-about-the-bloody-roi/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2014/03/07/why-tim...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI’m liking Phil more than I expected to.
- syndeo 1y agoIronically, not really the shill as many would think.
- pornel 1y agoThis worries me beyond anti-competitive stuff. If Tim Cook is willing to lie and cheat for extra revenue, I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments. Services revenue line must keep going up, and their ad business is a growth opportunity.
- Mindwipe 1y agoI mean, if Apple were ever serious there would be a way to have applications installed on iOS without having to tell Apple. They were never serious.
- 20after4 1y agoSimilar to how Google merged with DoubleClick and threw out the whole "don't be evil" policy. My luke-warm take is that the advertising industry is inherently evil.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoGraft versus host.
- Wobbles42 1y agoThe "don't be evil" thing has always surprised me. Why would a company that has decided to embrace evil want to admit that publically?
- jobs_throwaway 1y ago> My luke-warm take is that the advertising industry is inherently evil. Why? I like using ad-supported services, and have found some life-changing products/services via targeted ads.
- braebo 1y agoIf evil is the absence of empathy, it’s capitalism in general that systematically cultivates this absence.
- pi-err 1y agoPretty sure this is not about revenue but profit margins, since the Services line was under heavy surveillance by markets back then. Though that's the core issue, margins on services are just too addictive for big tech. Not sure Apple can keep its recipe for success with both services and hardware.
- satvikpendem 1y ago> I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments This is a funny comment for me to read. Did anyone honestly think that Apple was touting privacy as anything other than a competitive advantage for revenue maximization? They've had things like iAd, their services revenue has grown massively as hardware sales plateau, and they are nowhere near as "private" in certain countries either.
- xpe 1y agoI agree, but I might phrase it a little bit differently. I recommend thinking about corporate stances as actions and interests, not moral intentions. Don’t expect a corporation to do things for moral reasons. Trust them only to the extent that their actions are in their self interest. To be fair, some organizations do have charters and interests that make them more palatable than others. One takeaway to startups that hope to stand for something even after tremendous growth and leadership changes: you have to build governance and accountability structures into your organizational DNA if you truly want specific values to persist over the long run.
- Tarq0n 1y agoSadly the openAI debacle has undermined faith in those kinds of structures as well.
- Wobbles42 1y agoThis is probably a good thing -- faith in such structures was never justified. Any relationship with a corporate entity is transactional in nature. A great deal of effort is often expended to manipulate us into feeling otherwise, but that is all it is. Companies don't have feelings. They aren't conscious entities with a capacity for guilt or morality. They are, in essence, software applications designed to execute on systems composed of human employees. In a sense they are the original AI agents.
- syndeo 1y ago
- drooopy 1y agoApple is a for-profit business, and like most such entities, its primary concern is its bottom line. If promoting privacy aligns with that objective, so be it. However, the company does not have an inherent inclination toward acting ethically beyond what serves its business interests.
- joshkel 1y agoThat's not universally true, at least. From https://www.macobserver.com/news/tim-cook-rejects-ncppr-politics/ https://www.macobserver.com/news/tim-cook-rejects-ncppr-poli...: > “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,” he said, “I don't consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader. > As evidenced by the use of “bloody” in his response—the closest thing to public profanity I've ever seen from Mr. Cook–it was clear that he was quite angry. His body language changed, his face contracted, and he spoke in rapid fire sentences compared to the usual metered and controlled way he speaks. More broadly, I know that for-profit businesses are concerned with their bottom line, and I know businesses regularly throw other values under the bus in pursuit of profit. But I'm not sure it's possible to build a successful business (in terms of maintaining consumer trust, attracting and motivating decent employees, etc.) without some values beyond what's immediately quantifiable on the bottom line.
- whatnow37373 1y agoThe point is not they lack values at any point in time, the point is they can switch them faster than you can say “capitalism”.
- poincaredisk 1y ago>“I don't consider the bloody ROI.” He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader. ...and you believed him? I'm sorry, I'm trying to be less cynical in life, but he said exactly what people - apple fans - want to hear. Is he above lying? We were just discussing how one of the apple executives straight up lied in court.
- someNameIG 1y agoTheir privacy commitments align with their business, not their morals. They don't want an open internet primarily funded by advertising, so they make harder for advertising companies to track their users. What they want is an internet silod into apps you get from their app store, that are funded buy subscriptions and IAPs that they get a 30% cut from.
- piyuv 1y agoI like this comment because of its brutal honesty. “They don’t want <bad thing> so they choose <equally bad thing good for their revenue>”
- kergonath 1y agoWe can have both, because they cannot kill the web. We can enjoy better privacy in the OS, the open Web, and better controls for the applications that should not be a website (which is still quite a lot of them).
- whatnow37373 1y ago> I can't trust that Apple is honest about their privacy commitments Oh, no! Who would have thought? What could we possibly do other than keep shoving money into their faces?
- buyucu 1y agoEverybody knows that Apple's privacy commitments are a joke. Closed source software can't commit to privacy.
- sneak 1y agoNow Tim Apple has gotta call up Trump and remind him he donated to the inauguration fund and is getting fucked by the tariffs (and furthermore has to spend many billions to hedge against what the USA is going to need to do in Taiwan) and get him to threaten the appellate judge.
- naruhodo 1y agoIt will be interesting to see if Mr Apple has more spine than Mr Amazon, who acceded to Trump's demand not to show customers how much the tariffs were costing them. My feeling is that these guys who showed up to the inauguration of a self-professed "dictator on day one" might be a little light on backbone, if not moral fortitude.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago"It's our best moral position ever, with 110% more wealth extraction over our previous models. We know you're gonna love it."
- sneak 1y agoI don’t think it has anything to do with backbone or fortitude. You can’t fight city hall. Neither Bezos nor Cook has an army (or a CIA). Trump does. They are not playing the same game. All private wealth, and businesses, and cash flows exist only at the pleasure of the state.
- xbmcuser 1y agoThey already are why do you think Zuckerberg etc were sucking up to Trump and complaining about trade restrictions and barriers in Europe.
- zitsarethecure 1y agoI don't know if you are joking and I think it says a lot that I can't tell.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago[flagged]
- m463 1y agoWhatever your opinion of Steve Jobs, he was a leader and would never have let things get this far. Now leadership is just mediocre and apple products look nice but are shallow nerfed computing experiences.
- caffinatedkitti 1y agoThe one who blocked Adobe Flash and Google Voice? Steve jobs was the one to bring app store gatekeping and developer restrictions to IOS.
- m463 1y agoyes, but it didn't get so far that the government intervened.
- manoDev 1y agoThe "bean counters" always win in the current state of affairs. The pressure of the financial capitalism on the industrial capitalism is too high. Any company that produces anything is eventually forced into rent-seeking to keep delivering what has come to be expected YoY growth. C-level that won't let that happen will see the way out.