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Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

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Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens with satellite view? What happens in Google Earth?

Google Earth isn't available to the chinese.

Not what I asked...

What does it look like in google earth when you look at the islands?

from OUTSIDE china... Are these same islands 'cencored' in these apps outside china as well in the same manner? (specifically in SATELLITE view)

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#362
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair." As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense. What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on so…

> Why would anyone hold such an assumption. Because that is what Tim Cook Apple's marketing and PR suggest Apple does. The force of good. Social Responsibility and Justice. Standing up against the government. ( They didn't explicitly say this but the message is something fairly similar ) Instead of creating "insanely" great product for our customers, friends and family. It is now about product that "enrich" people's…

Standing up against the government is one of the messages of their anti-1984 ad.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#363
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair." As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense. What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on so…

> Why would anyone hold such an assumption. Because that is what Tim Cook Apple's marketing and PR suggest Apple does. The force of good. Social Responsibility and Justice. Standing up against the government. ( They didn't explicitly say this but the message is something fairly similar ) Instead of creating "insanely" great product for our customers, friends and family. It is now about product that "enrich" people's…

I know a fair number of Americans who are over 50 years old, and appear fairly intelligent - but who, a while after each election, seem actually surprised and offended that the recently-elected politicians are not energetically living up to their campaign promises of squeaky-clean ethics, plentiful jobs, open & responsible government, etc.

Do corporations have so much better a record of living up to feel-good marketing & PR, that a experienced and competent adult would actually take them at their word?

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#364

When businesses become so large, they no longer are a $countryOfOrigin company (A US company in the case of Apple). They become multinational entities that have no loyalty to a nation, just loyalty to pocket books.

From news stories of the past decade or few - I was not aware that even mid-sized companies, operating near-exclusively within $countryOfOrigin, showed much actual loyalty to said country.

That's a fair point. However, that doesn't change the situation, that merely highlights the severity of the problem, IMHO.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenStreetMap has a page[1] on this. TLDR: Private individuals surveying is illegal in China, which seems to outlaw the entire OSM project and any participation or contribution. I am not a lawyer or expert on Chinese law so who knows. 1: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/China

That is rather chilling, is it not? That a nation would prevent its citizens from looking around and measuring what they see? I can't help but wonder how the chickens will come home to roost.

They're preventing citizens from publishing that info, not looking around and measuring from what I found.

Imagine a country that prevents its citizens from recording a song they hear and sharing it with their friends. Oh, wait, US more or less does that and forces other countries to implement policies that prevent it or they will ban trade with those countries.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung is the largest smartphone-maker in the world (and has been for much of past 10+ years). They ceased all their phone-making operation in China and left for Vietnam a couple of years ago (also most recently closed their last display, shipbuilding operation) -- along with 200+ suppliers, plus 20+ new domestic suppliers created there along the way. Now, most of Samsung phones are made in Vietnam and their output…

Samsung likely has fewer suppliers compared to Apple. And it's much easier to coordinate its supply chain with other Samsung subsidiaries, even across borders. China can as the electronics supply-chain can absolutely be replaced - at a cost.

I intentionally emphasized the fact that Samsung is the largest smartphone maker and that more than 200 suppliers moved along with the company to make that transition (and 20+ new domestic suppliers). While Apple surpassed Samsung's revenue in recent years, the depth and scale of Samsung's manufacturing are much greater -- not only b/c they make so many different and high volume products, but they also compete with many suppliers in their supply-chain.

I always cringed at Tim Apple's deceptive rambling on the industry's dependence and necessity of supply-chain in China and feared that he was cooking up something more sinister behind the curtain. I recall as far back as 2012 when Tim defended their oversea outsourcing practices on CBS by claiming that "Apple iPhone engines were made in America," even as they were working to offshore that to TSMC in Taiwan shortly afterward.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#367
I’m a Chinese. I’m glad that apple did this.

While I want apple to keep its dignity as much as you do, I cannot change our government (we don’t get to vote, so we literally cannot). Given this situation, if apple don’t do these kind of things, worse case scenario, it get banned in china just like google and many others. As a user, apple products are still the most privacy protecting products I can buy and use in china. (For example, do you know that Chinese government forbids end to end encryption? But iMessage is an exception). Business aside, I think apple protected the human rights in china the best way it could.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple has, and will, fold to government pressure faster than a lawn chair." As a publicly-traded, trillion dollar company, where profits are at stake, this would seem to make sense. What does not seem to make sense is why anyone would believe Apple might ignore its own financial interests and those of its shareholders and deliberately sacrifice a major opportunity^1 in order to resist government pressure based on so…

I worked on the buy-side. I would make this assumption 100% of the time, 100%. Every single time I have seen a company ignore stuff like this, it has bitten them in the end. To flip this on it's head, I have also never seen a management team under pressure for failing to do something like this. The weird thing about your viewpoint is that it gives the perception of capitalism without actually understanding anything a…

I agree with most of what you wrote, but regarding Tim Cook working for a wage, most of his wealth has in fact come from Apple stock. He just received 5 million shares. His $15M non stock compensation is a lot of money for most but I wouldn’t classify him as being purely out for his own wealth.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/26/apples-tim-cook-gets-750m-payo...

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... And yet there's a net brain drain to the US.

1 in 3 people resident in Australia is an immigrant. I don't think Australia is losing the immigration game, all things considered.

The problem is, it's not a numbers game: quality matters a lot.

Importing massive amounts of unskilled labor only depresses wages and, combined with NIMBY, creates a massive housing bubble thanks to artificial shortages.

In Australia's case, it also suffers from a disproportionate brain drain of highly educated professionals since local firms simply won't compete for talent.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. And via survival bias, companies that act purely morally simply cease to exist as they are out competed by companies that focus on profit instead. Such entities simply can't survive via capitalism without, perhaps, government regulation that ensures everyone is playing with the same set of rules.

> Apple has an actual fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. That fiduciary responsibility meme needs to die already. The flimsiest business justification is enough to cover company leadership's ass. Instead of "We refuse to do business with China because it's immoral" they need merely say "because we believe it's in the long term strategic interests of the company."

Furthermore, this has already come up in the past for Apple:

When pressed about the financial prudence of prioritizing environmental outcomes Tim Cook snapped: "When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don't consider the bloody ROI." It was also not limited to accessibility, but applicable to many areas Apple desires to lead.

The conclusion is that Apple is explicitly not interested in prioritizing individual liberty.

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