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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

#591

Post by systemvoltage »

tablespoon wrote: post #570
systemvoltage wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise.

> I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise. Explain those "political reasons," please.

NYT is extremely predictable - both in its choice of what to inform its viewers as well as what will fit their political stance (globalists). If you need this to be spelled out, either you’re being rhetorical or you’re uninformed - I suspect the former.

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

#592

Post by necovek »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #250
ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #50

Daring Fireball [1] has another passage from the article which is illuminating with regards to any promises Apple makes about how it will resist governmental pressure to compromise its products, vis-à-vis Apple's CSAM scanning tool. "Sometime in 2014 or early 2015, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told members of the Apple Maps team to make the Diaoyu Islands, the objects of a long-running territorial di…

"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…

Because once it gets sufficiently well known, it may back-fire in the long run in their "home market" (which is still their most lucrative, even if the potential for growth is not that big).

This is why it's important for the public in stronger democracies to know about these deals and terms.

Compare the NBA reaction to Daryl Morey tweet about HK protests, and the WTA reaction to Peng Shui situation. Tides are shifting.

But, the appeal of such a large consumerist market (funny, since it's supposedly "communist") like China is not going to become any easier to ignore going forward.

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

#594

Post by Hoasi »

anovikov wrote: post #526
quitit wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People outside of China are served a different set of maps. Each country is served maps that conform to their territorial claims. E.g. If you view the map of India while in India, it'll appear different than if you viewed it in China.

One thing about claims (say display Crimea as part of Russia within Russia and as Ukraine elsewhere), but distorting SIZES of the places on maps according to someone's political preference is well... plain out ridiculous, laughable. It displays how messed up China is more than anything else. It's seriously hard to expect the place that does things like that, as a next superpower. You can't build a superpower on silly…

> You can't build a superpower on silly, 4-year-old level lies like that one.

You absolutely can and must. That is, in fact, one of the prerogatives of a superpower.

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

#595

Post by einpoklum »

poutine wrote: post #36
einpoklum wrote: post #34

Well, I happen to know that Apple management signed many deals with the US, which is just as problematic of a world state as China, if not more so. That is to say - unless you have a planet-wide blind spot, this title evokes the same emotional response as, say, "JD.com signed RMB 275B deal with US corporations in 2016".

There is no moral equivalency between the US and China. Stop this right away.

Look, I am well enough aware of the depth of the crimes and misdeeds of US imperialism. I'm not blind. But the current Chinese regime has many repressive aspects, different and often more grave than those we find in the US. Also, if one examines its history, the number of internal deaths arguably caused by government malfeasance is much greater in China than in the US. So while I may agree with your bottom line, a person weighing the failings of the US and China may argue that "China is worse", and that would not be a preposterous claim even if we disagree with it.

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

#596

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

bamboozled wrote: post #478
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they never marketed themselves as a company that stands up against the government (to do so means that they don’t understand how power works). Their PR centered around ethical practices is still true where they conduct business in democratic countries. People should note that just because someone is aiming for an ethical ideal doesn’t mean that the way there is bound to be perfect—those who are quick to point out…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Your reading of that video couldn’t be more wrong. “1984 won’t be like 1984” easily means that they’re ahead of the competition (this was directed at IBM) because they were giving people the future then. It’s not a political or activist statement against the government.

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

#597

Post by necovek »

wolverine876 wrote: post #497
jay_kyburz wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not reasonable for us "we the people" to expect a profit seeking company to turn its back on profit. If we want it to behave a particular way we need to make rules for it to follow. Companies are no people with feeling and morals. They are machines for making money.

> Companies are no people with feeling and morals. They are machines for making money. Companies do moral things all the time, being run by people and being, like people, tied to a community that they care about (often, to a degree) and which greatly affects the company. Without enlightened self-interest, and some broader self-interest, the society that provides customers, investors, employees, roads, security, marke…

It's funny that people quickly forget the meaning of the word "company": it's a "group of people" (companions).

There are some additional rules for public companies, but in general, businesses can have whatever purpose "members of the company" (it's actually a legal term in many jurisdictions) agree on.

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

#598

Post by necovek »

pjmlp wrote: post #539
kelnos wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this would never happen, but I wish companies would just default to not doing business in China, unless they are able to sell their product, uncompromised. I wouldn't mind legislation to that effect, though I'm sure that would come with a ton of unintended consequences. If China (and similar repressive regimes) wants these sorts of products with onerous restrictions built in, they should have to build them the…

I know this would never happen, but I wish people would just default to not buying products made in China....

Sure it will happen: once their products are not that much less expensive, and it's going to come quickly.

The only worry is if that's also the point where their products will also be more advanced and thus more appealing regardless of the price.

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

#599

Post by mperdemata »

pembrook wrote: post #456
brutal_chaos_ wrote: post #302

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.

Small companies don’t have loyalty to any specific nation either. Nor should they. Companies should serve customer needs and wants (profits are a measure of this), not become soldiers in political battles. I’m confused as to why people think this is an $insightfulComment. Would you rather have countries wall off their economic activity from each other so governments have to bomb each other to acquire resources by for…

> Historically, the only thing that prevents tribes of human animals from blowing each other up is mutually beneficial economic cooperation.

That's correct, until someone thinks that he is being screwed and does not see mutual benefit. Mostly what Lenin explained in "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"

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

#600

Post by bildung »

cable2600 wrote: post #550
zepto wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn’t. That was about standing up to IBM.

I thought the Big Brother figure on screen looked more like Bill Gates than IBM. The real enemy was Microsoft and Windows.

The first version of Microsoft Windows only appeared a year after that ad. In 1984 Microsoft was just a supplier for IBM.
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