Tim Cook’s twitter bio[1] has the following:
> “Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'” - MLK
Considering this and the HKmap.live[2] situations, I’d say that in his case the answer to that question is “not much”.
That's unfair to Tim. He's a great help to the world's authoritarian regimes. He's doing plenty for them.
Its his fiduciary duty, the obligation to maximize profits for the shareholders.
Yep, and that completly frees him from a human decency and we can't criticize his actions of putting money in front of ethics.
No it's not. He has a duty (not a fiduciary duty) to protect their investments, not to maximize profits.
Odd how the markets optimize for colluding with dictators and human-rights violating regimes. Such prosperity they bring the world.
Odd how every non market alternative is normally one of those human right violating machines and actively collaborates with them -- far more than those in markets do.
Who is the largest trading partner of the US? China. Also the market is global these days, it is very hard to isolate oneself, without strong policies and market regulation. The market alone is not ushering in new eras of freedom, it's feeding the beasts, and no one really puts their money where their mouth is.
That is evil. Consumer companies (aka Apple) must work for their customers (citizens). If consumer companies are working to be betray citizens, their customers, then corporations are evil. Customers pay the bill and Apple choses to betray the very people who pay the bill.
You are creating a false dichotomy.
He does not have a fiduciary duty to kowtow to Belarus.
Maybe Tim Cook uses that quote to signal virtue and gain popularity for his own and the company brand. Haven't Apple ads used MLK before?
I think that's exactly what latexr is pointing out.
... and he's not the only one! Luckily he makes his deception so painfully obvious.
Using MLK is particularly Machiavellian since it gives the impression that the leader of one of the largest corporations in the world primarily selling luxury goods, is meekly fighting for the little guy and the underserved.
Well, “others” is vague. Tim’s doing plenty for others. Belarus’ politicians are others. Xi and friends are others.
ok
It was sarcasm.
Ah... I think you misspelled NSA and the American Empire*
No worries, easy mistake
Sure that country can force Apple to comply with local laws. That’s how it works now.
Apple can also choose to challenge it, if not legally there then at least in the court of public opinion as they have done for US government requests. The reason they haven't is either fear of speaking out or that they don't disagree much with the requests. Either way, their silence is a deafening description of their principles.
They US government requests they have challenged are not credible legal requirements, and there is reliable due process to challenge them.
Belarus’s legal system doesn’t afford them this luxury.
In this case it is telegram which the government ought to need to compel. Or they could make Apple remove the telegram app. But that hasn’t happened
> Or they could make Apple remove the telegram app.
Which is effective primarily because there’s no (practical) way to sideload on iOS!
This is why I’ve always seen the locked-down nature of the iPhone as a threat to free expression first and foremost. Apple is responsible for setting the system up this way.
I don't fully buy this idea, because I've never seen an app become successfully widespread through side loading. The technical friction is just too high for non technical users.
I agree that we need a solution to monopolistic app stores though.
This is somewhat circular reasoning though. Apple and Google have deliberately made it impossible or difficult to sideload to maximize profits.
There's nothing particularly difficult about side loading on Google. It's off by default because it's an excellent vector for malicious actors to compromise a user's phone. Users, in the average case, haven't gotten smarter since the days of trojans and malware running rampant under the Windows architecture.
> I've never seen an app become successfully widespread through side loading
Isn't Fortnite on Android an example of this? It was in the Play store for a pariod, but IIRC it was not when it was first released and isn't there again after their spat with Google.
> I don't fully buy this idea
Apple is currently literally being a threat to free expression in a situation where it really matters.
You don't need to buy the idea, but they're doing it.
I don't fully buy the idea _that sideloading solves this potential abuse_, not that the abuse exists, I thought that was clear.
I'd hate it if the big players got to take decisions against human rights under the excuse that an alternative technically exists.
Why does a single app have to be widespread to matter? This is exactly the case where a small group would want a particular app because their life and freedom depend on it. They're not looking to put Facebook out of business or be the next big world fad.
I agree in principle.
In practice, this can be achieved today for a handful of apps with AltStore.io.
AltStore is great, but it requires you to run a server on a computer on the same wifi network as your phone, at least once week. I don't consider this a particularly practical way to side-load, even if it is better than the alternatives. Protestors in Belarus shouldn't need to also be IT administrators.
Sideloading does have risks, and so it doesn't need to be too easy. As a point of comparison, I really like how disabling SIP works on the Mac—the user needs to reboot the computer into recovery mode and run a short Terminal command. This process feels dangerous, but it's really quite easy, and it only needs to be done once per machine. I could guide even a very technology-illiterate person through the process, if I absolutely needed to.
Can’t telegram be accessed through a website?
No push notifications, among other limitations.
So if an app shows an image of two men kissing, Apple should order the app makers to take it down worldwide because it's illegal in Uganda?
You state an excellent point and I would love to see the Apple fanboys argue your point.
I love how people say Apple fanboys like it’s an insult. Is there a legitimate, better option to apple? No because the smartphone market is dominated by google and apple. At least apple pretends to care about privacy. Yes, apple are obviously hypocrites. Still better than google. If there was another viable choice I would happily go with that.
Sorry but what's Google done that is worse than this?
These are people trying to save their country, from rigged elections and an oppressive regime. That's what they use communication for, and Apple shutting this down, choosing the side of the party that stole the election through cheating and force.
I'm not a big fan of Google (nor Apple), but I'm having a hard time thinking of something Google did that is so straight up egregious. But maybe there is, and I forgot about it.
And even if Google did do the same kind of shit with Android, it has an open source base, and there are distributions ( LineageOS to name one) over which Google has no control whatsoever.
There was webOS. There were other OS in the past, as well. Is Tizen stilla thing for mobile? Having used webOS on the HP touchpad, I still think it had a lot going for it. Either way, Android and iOS are all that stuck, and I think we're far worse off for it.
There is a segment of the Apple consumer-base that appear to think that Apple can do no wrong. It's a cult of personality just like any other, and pointing out the hypocrisy is satisfying for some, if ultimately futile.
yes. because unlike Apple, Google is allowing third-party stores.
And yes, Google has been tightening the noose as well, which many people rightfully criticise, but as of now, you still have options on Android.
Apple fanboy is not the same as an Apple user. As an example a fanboy is emotional y invested, Apple is part of his identity. When reports of broken keyboards surfaced the fanboys attacked the affected users and defended Apple.
Other fanboy examples, Apple does bad thing X, fanboys defends Apple, class action lawsuit forces Apple to stop doing bad thing X , Apple announces that they kindly stopped doing X and fanboys praise Apple for their goodness.
Other example, Apple removes you the choice for alternative payment methods, removes the choice for you to get informed of alternatives and from this articles seems they refuse to inform people where censorship was applied and for some reason fanboys will defend the fact that all users are deprived of mere choices.,
Some other examples is when the fanboys complain about ads, lootboxes and other shitty in app payments but ignroe the fact that Apple gets a cut of the money instead of just banning ads,tracking,lootboxes etc.
Even people here on HN that should be more competent try to push a narrative that a side loaded app is insecure when in fact the same sandbox will protect the user and web notifications seem to be also some extremely hard concept to implement right by Apple engineers, you would think they have competent developers and designers that could find a good UX.
Conclusion, Most Apple users are not fanboys, I seen them on the Apple reddit criticising when Apple does some shit, so when somone uses the word fanboy he means a person that has Apple as part of his identity, criticizing Apple is the same as an attack on him or his mother.
You're implying that owning a smartphone is a necessity.
You could simply own neither an Apple nor a Google product and sidestep this whole decision.
In this context it kind of is. It helps protesters organize and protect themselves.
That was bait. Don't take the bait. Only you can prevent flamewars.
edit: oh god look at all these sibling comments, abort, abort!
This is a REALLY good argument
FAANG etc have been kowtowing to oppressive regimes for well over a decade, did you not get the memo? Profit decides, not ethics.
Profitability is not absolute: what profits the best to mankind happiness maximization might widely differs from what might optimize profit for a few individuals
Uganda has no money and probably few iphones so probably not
Not worldwide, but for the country in which it is illegal. That is how law tends to work.
Yes, if it breaks the laws of Uganda
It does. Homosexual activities like kissing will land you in prison for life. Between late-2013 and mid-2014 people could even be sentenced to death. LGBTQ+ would be censored worldwide because of a single country.
This illustrates why having large portions of the population using hyper-centralized platforms is a problem[0]. A system based around a single point of failure is inherently brittle. While I don't blame Apple for obeying local laws, or even for having a strict moderation policy for chat apps in its store, I do blame Apple for banning sideloading from a platform that's a general-purpose computing and communication tool for a large fraction of the human population.
[0] There is an assumption built in to this that governments censoring their political opponents is bad; I choose not to question it here.
Any such excerpt/quote from a CEO figure is just meaningless cant.
I love when hypocrisy like this is exposed, and I would love it even more for Tim Apple to answer that question. Can we start a GoFundMe to have Tim answer it?
>Can we start a GoFundMe to have Tim answer it?
Who do you want to fund? Tim or the Question? Or do you think he should just answer questions if he's paid for it, because Apple has zero responsibility at all...oh right they don't.
I think the idea is to fund a collaborative effort to nag Mr. Cook until he answers the question
>nag Mr. Cook
Not possible. Exception, don't buy apple products.
You want to pay Tim Cook for explaining why he’s a hypocrite?
Well for one, I would love to hear him explain how does commiting perjury benefit the good of others?
I am point to the fact that he lied under oath when he said that no one receives special treatment in the App Store, yet it came out Amazon got special treatment in a "quid pro quo" deal.
Not sure he needs the money.