If kindness were what people want in their products or a company that builds products then it would be competitive. It's not, which is why it had to be imposed.
In truth though, that was not kindness, it's a set of policies that those who support them call kindness (either as marketing or belief). Most people don't agree, which is why things are changing. Actual kindness still exists and is widespread, and people want more of it.
I hate to belabour the point, but it does give me the opportunity to mangle a well known aphorism: one man's integrity is another man's poison. "Most people" disagree with you on the integrity point, as recent events show.
As to growth, I agree, it's often taken as too negative a signal, but if a tech company isn't growing then it's as sign that it's not innovating. Other companies will.
> I’m sure most people would be fine with Apple having flat revenue and not sacrificing their integrit
How about people who own stock in apple, for example in their 401k or taxpayer funded pension plans, which directly mean higher taxes if equities do not perform.
Honestly I don't think it has to do with sucking up; X is a massive platform, and I wouldn't be surprised if they saw their numbers take a hit. The people who are mad at X probably don't use it, and thus won't know if they start or stop advertising on the site.
They're also adding Starlink to iPhones. And they renamed the Gulf of Mexico in Apple Maps. Donated a million to Trump, and Cook attended his inauguration.
Twice is coincidence. But five examples of collaboration is a clear message.
I've used Apple devices my entire life, all the way back to when the Macintosh was made by Apple Computer. This is the first time I've ever felt like Apple doesn't want my money.
Is anyone maintaining a list of technology companies that aren't collaborating with the far-right?
> Cancelling DEI is "not far left" but there's quite a distance between "not far left" and "far right".
Honestly, I can't help but think that certain groups with "language setting power" (like the media) have gotten in the habit of using deliberate imprecision to tar ideas and people they oppose. For instance, build up a term like "extremist" or "far right" as a pejorative, then start applying it to mainstream opponents and fairly popular ideas.
It's probably part of the arrogant 50%+1 strategy that failed so badly it got us our second Trump term.
> It's probably part of the arrogant 50%+1 strategy that failed so badly it got us our second Trump term.
I find this perspective fascinating, considering how much of Trumps playbook is doing exactly this.
Just look back at all the culture war topics of the last years. All of Trumps enemies were smeared as radical far-left Marxist communist CRT DEI traitors to the country, but this doesn't seem to hurt his chances, only increase them.
Why does the right apparently eat this stuff up so much more readily than the left?
Honestly, it might be because Trump has basically zero credibility, so the attempts at this kind of manipulation don't grate as much. I read things like "far-left Marxist communist CRT DEI traitors to the country" as basically meaning "our hated enemy" and I expect no real descriptive content. However, if some New York Times editorial misleadingly uses "far right" to tar someone, I'm annoyed because I expect better of them.
Also, attempts to "go down to their level" when attacking, for things like this, seem to have the practical effect of actually legitimizing "them," because it cedes more valuable high ground.
I'm very disappointed, but not surprised. This points to the lack of choice we have with big tech and the only positive I can see is the hopeful seeds taking root of the next set of tech giants hopefully focusing on user value.
It's been half a decade of Tim Cook supporting Trump without any real consequence. You missed the boat to take a principled stance a loooooong time ago, Apple already used your loyalty for everything it was worth. It wouldn't shock me if Tim Cook retires in 4 years, having squeezed all the credibility out of himself he could get.
We all said this was going to happen, too. Apple's "we care about diversity!" and "privacy is a human right" shticks are blatant grandstanding. But maybe America needs another 4 years to simmer before we know how we feel about Mr. Tim Apple.
Those things don't feel at the same level as the latest ass-kissing. Having the President tour a new factory is not at all uncommon. And while Trump 1.0 was more of a bumbling egotistical fool, Trump 2.0 is going full-fascist; much worse.
I've been trying to think about the cognitive dissonance that I might fall victim to as well as what I think I see in online discourse. Cognitive dissonance, but also binary thinking.
For example, if one were to compress a lot of the recent narrative we see, an alternative take on this news would be something like: "Apple supports far-right billionaire who gave Nazi salute and is transphobic". An alternative (gaslighting version) could be "Gay billionaire gives money to richest man on the planet who pushes Nazi propaganda".
If one is principled or a social justice advocate, should one then not decry (boycott) Apple and Tim Cook's actions? What about the shareholders of Apple? What about Apple employees?
And if you don't, is it because you don't really believe those accusations against said billionaire OR is that you would rather have your devices or your salary or your AAPL stock?
> There's no other company to send satellites now, there's plenty of places to advertise.
There is only one company that can launch satellites? Even if that were true, your statement is a form my original comment is trying to dissect. The statement you made suggests that once a moral stand inconveniences even the most ardent moralist, they are likely to cave, or to put it more directly: "talk is cheap".
Nah, the government should definitely find other companies to do this job or invest in its own capacity to do it again, but comparing buying ads to deploying satellites makes no sense at all. One is a commodity and the other is a highly specialized business mostly propped up by government itself.
We can do a thought experiment: if the Democratic Party had won, would they have boycotted SpaceX? We can't know for sure what the answer to that would be, but I have a strong suspicion.
The Biden government didn't invite Tesla to an official EV summit where Biden declared GM's Mary Barra as the pioneer of EVs when GM sold 28 EVs that quarter and Tesla sold 200K+.
WSJ later revealed the snub was because of union pressure after donating a lot to the Biden campaign. That's one of the reasons that Musk went down this path after having voted for Biden.
> The Biden government didn't invite Tesla to an official EV summit where Biden declared GM's Mary Barra as the pioneer of EVs when GM sold 28 EVs that quarter and Tesla sold 200K+.
The problem with that is while it triggered Musk, I don't know that it actually accomplished anything useful. Did it affect Musk financially? Or his reputation? Unless there's an impact that I'm aware of, I would classify the act as toothless or, more euphemistically, "not as effective as it could be".
> I don't know that it actually accomplished anything useful
It was a form of kickback to their big donor, the UAW, for a long time they were planning to exclude Tesla from EV subsidies and gave up on that plan only at the last minute.
Then the govt came in with bags of money to try and neutralize the advantage of Tesla's supercharger network by building a bigger network with taxpayer funds. So that the supercharger network wouldn't be a competitive advantage over the UAW car companies who neglected building charging stations and EVs despite billions in profit every year.
Tesla got a lot of that money. Many wanted to only give the money to union facilities, but because the Biden government was functional they dropped the stupid parts of their plans.
Tesla didn't get that money, people who bought EVs got an paid directly by the govt on them and for some reason picked Tesla at a higher rate than other car companies.
It was an EV summit, not about converting ICE to EVs. Even Biden's press secretary made it no secret that it was coz of unions(see quote below), as did a WSJ story after a couple of years quoting insider sources. Also Biden praised GM's Mary Barra as the pioneer of EVs, it was so bizarre, there's video.
> White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Tesla’s absence at her briefing Thursday ahead of the event.
> “Well, we of course welcome the efforts of automakers who recognize the potential of an electric vehicle future and support efforts that will help reach the President’s goal, and certainly Tesla is one of those companies,” Psaki said. “I would not expect this is the last time we talk about clean cars and the move towards electric vehicles, and we look forward to having a range of partners in that effort.”
> Asked if Tesla being a nonunion company was the reason it wasn’t included Thursday, Psaki replied, “Well, these are the three largest employers of the United Auto Workers, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”
You'll find lots of Apple users/developers on Mastodon and Bluesky who are speaking out about this (and the "Gulf of America" capitulation as well). Exactly what form of decrying do you require?
> You'll find lots of Apple users/developers on Mastodon and Bluesky who are speaking out about this (and the "Gulf of America" capitulation as well). Exactly what form of decrying do you require?
Complaining on social media sites (that one could argue are niche if you think about user numbers or share of advertising dollars or countless other metrics) is cheap and can be reasonably interpreted as loud but shallow moral outrage.
I'm a bit surprised by the reactions here on Apple following the path of highest profitability since this is what they've always done and is what gave them the highest valuation on the stock market.
When the previous regime was pushing nonsensical things like 'men can get pregnant' Apple added emoji of pregnant men to their products. Now that a new government has landed which does not hold with such nonsense but which does include the owner of X in a significant advisory role Apple joins the fray. If the pregnant-men-lunacy ever raises its head again Apple will fairly quickly - but not as a first mover, that is not their thing - start adding more pregnant men again. They follow the money and have always done so which makes the often religiously tinted adherence to the Cult of Apple all the more ridiculous. If one thing is to come from this it will be the lessening of the zeal with which the cultists praise their Holy Corporation for which I will gladly say 'Thank you, Elon Musk, for making these people remove the blinds from their eyes even if unintended.'
1. The pregnant man emoji proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium in March 2019, during Trump's first presidency.
2. Even if this goofy example was true, how is that at all equivalent to donating $1M to a Presidential inauguration, attending that inauguration, and resuming business with a company owned by a man with extremely close ties to that presidency?
This is classic "both sides" brain. It's nonsense on stilts.
According to your reference, the original submission does not have pregnant man emoji (or Man with Swolen Bely). It's later updated in March 2020 and added in 2021.
And with with a lot of promotion activities for LGBT under Biden administration, many weird things related to LGBT happened and approved. So saying Biden had nothing to do with that is self-deception.
Sad to watch the era of relative democracy and freedom seeming to come to an end, let's hope it's just a near-death experience.
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