

Apple CEO Cook Gets Deposition Order in Antitrust Case - skipper86
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-18/apple-ceo-cook-ordered-to-give-deposition-in-antitrust-case-1-.html

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JoeCortopassi
Looking at forests, I always thought it was curious that the top of the trees
always fell at the same height. Asked a ranger one day (before smartphones)
about this, and he mentioned how the tree that rises above the rest is more
prone to get struck by lightning and die. Now I'm sure that there is a variety
of biological reasons why that ranger was wrong, but I believe what he said is
analogous to what you often see in certain industries. There tends to be a
herd of companies closely competing, and every once in awhile one of them
leaps ahead with some new product or innovation. But once they are ahead, they
become the lightning rod. No longer are the headlines "Car pollution causes
asthma in kids", they are now "Toyota cars give inner city kids asthma", or
instead of "Movie violence causes kids to be more irritable" it becomes
"Billion dollar Batman movie causes man to shoot brother". At a certain point,
people are just looking for an excuse to get mad.

All that being said, due to innovation[1] and marketing, Apple became a
dominant industry leader. But because of that, they now get attached to
anything and everything, because the link bait of a title sells ads for news
and magazines. Would this article be more aptly named "CEO's of Adobe, Apple,
Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm and Pixar being deposed in antitrust case"?
Absolutely. Would it sell papers? Nope. Instead, the tallest tree in the
forest gets the lightning.

[1] The iPod and iPhone launched _industries_ due to the amount of polish and
refinement went into them. That was innovation. I know that they didn't invent
the things from scratch with individual atoms made of stardust. Every new
product would not be possible without thousands of previous inventions.

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kumarm
Apple being Apple gets credit when they don't deserve because press want to
hype everything about Apple. The side effect of that is sometimes it does get
bad press when it isn't sole party at fault.

And comments like these divert the entire thread from the real serious topic.

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wklauss
I don't think that's true, especially in the last years. Quite the opposite.
Every product launch is surrounded by a "Why this will fail" article and every
single problem with a product gets magnified to extreme lengths. Apple doesn't
get hype anymore or at least it doesn't get the positive hype people tend to
associate with the company.

Regarding the topic. Hey, feel free to to comment what you you want about the
article, thats what comments are for. This is a side topic on this case. I
think it's a good observation. Of course this is not what the case is about
but its a related item and therefore it seems logical to bring it up.

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CoolGuySteve
I was a software engineer at Apple during this time and I'm sort of pissed
about this. It always bothered me that the richest company in the world could
be so stingy.

Anyone know if there's a class action coming up or anything?

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michael_miller
The reason Apple is stingy is not because of this antitrust case. Apple pays
(relatively) poorly because they don't want people to work there for the
money. As I'm sure you know, Apple employees are fanatics about the company's
products. Apple wants those people, not the "WTF? You're only giving me $100K
and no free food? What is this shit?" people, even it it means losing a couple
good engineers. Many other Silicon Valley companies are content giving their
employees ridiculous salaries and perks, and don't really care whether
engineers are evangelical about their products. For mostly cultural reasons,
Apple hires people who wouldn't turn around for a slight raise. In fact, back
when Palm was still a company developing WebOS, the standing offer for iOS
engineers was to DOUBLE Apple's salary. Think about that - not enough
employees were leaving for anything less than a 100% raise. Even at Apple's
low salary levels, I think that says something about employee loyalty.

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CoolGuySteve
Have you ever worked for Apple or are you just speculating? Your observations
are incongruent with my time there. You definitely do not need to be a fanboy
to work there.

At an all hands, someone asked SJ why the pay was low and he gave some wise
ass remark followed by 'you own stock, don't you?'

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michael_miller
Yes, I have worked for Apple. Anecdotally, almost everyone I met was a fanboy.

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Tycho
I doing find the alleged agreements particularly outrageous, personally. I
find the common 'confidentiality' clause about disclosing your salary more
offensive.

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lifeisstillgood
I am a little confused - did they agree not to pouch each others employees, or
just agree not to cold call and so distract everyone?

I can imagine that individuals and even whole teams upped from one company to
another in 2006 - so they did take employees - presumably via informal
networks, conferences and so on - you know the approaches we are supposed to
be polishing ourselves

