Apple’s Covid-19 Response • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#21

Post by jonknee » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Apple’s committed donations to the global COVID-19 response — both to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic — today reached $15 million worldwide. Not that it's Apple's job to fix COVID-19, but this is the equivalent of an average US houshold income family crowing about donating $1.80 of their yearly $63k income. Using Apple's annual profit, not revenue. […

And then the next part:

> We’re also announcing that we are matching our employee donations two-to-one to support COVID-19 response efforts locally, nationally and internationally.

Plus everyone is still getting paid:

> All of our hourly workers will continue to receive pay in alignment with business as usual operations. We have expanded our leave policies to accommodate personal or family health circumstances created by COVID-19 — including recovering from an illness, caring for a sick loved one, mandatory quarantining, or childcare challenges due to school closures.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#22

Post by Austin_Conlon » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:36 AM UTC

antonzabirko wrote: post #16

stickfigure wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is an underrated comment. In the last 24 hours I've received more than a dozen emails from random businesses that have my email address - many of which I have not interacted with in years - letting me know that my health and safety is their top priority . It's like someone in the marketing department realized "hey, here's an opportunity to send some spam without looking sleazy". It's opportunistic and gro…

Thank you for your support here. I want you to know that I deeply care about everyone who responds to my post. You'll be glad to know that you can keep writing responses from home for the next week. After that the coast should be clear, so I expect you to come in. -sent from nuclear bunker

The nuclear bunker is their industrial design lab in Cupertino.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#23

Post by Too » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:36 AM UTC

dteiml wrote: post #8

jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Apple’s committed donations to the global COVID-19 response — both to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic — today reached $15 million worldwide. Not that it's Apple's job to fix COVID-19, but this is the equivalent of an average US houshold income family crowing about donating $1.80 of their yearly $63k income. Using Apple's annual profit, not revenue. […

Wouldn't it be more like $15? Apple's operating income in 2019 was 63k M, so if you remove the M's you get $15.

I wonder how many average people that have donated $15 for this cause, or even $1.80... (disclaimer: not myself either)

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#24

Post by jodrellblank » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:38 AM UTC

dteiml wrote: post #8

jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Apple’s committed donations to the global COVID-19 response — both to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic — today reached $15 million worldwide. Not that it's Apple's job to fix COVID-19, but this is the equivalent of an average US houshold income family crowing about donating $1.80 of their yearly $63k income. Using Apple's annual profit, not revenue. […

Wouldn't it be more like $15? Apple's operating income in 2019 was 63k M, so if you remove the M's you get $15.

You're right, that's ten times more generous than I accused them of being. I understand the downvotes now.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#25

Post by jodrellblank » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:42 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #21

jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Apple’s committed donations to the global COVID-19 response — both to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic — today reached $15 million worldwide. Not that it's Apple's job to fix COVID-19, but this is the equivalent of an average US houshold income family crowing about donating $1.80 of their yearly $63k income. Using Apple's annual profit, not revenue. […

And then the next part: > We’re also announcing that we are matching our employee donations two-to-one to support COVID-19 response efforts locally, nationally and internationally. Plus everyone is still getting paid: > All of our hourly workers will continue to receive pay in alignment with business as usual operations. We have expanded our leave policies to accommodate personal or family health circumstances create…

I don't know whether to be happy that a major American company has publically said such things, or carry on being disgusted that such a thing is not normal and is worth a PR announcement.

Seriously, Apple's leave policy didn't include "recovering from an illness"??

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#26

Post by grumple » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:46 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #10

I wonder which companies will benefit from this pandemic, long-term. If there’s a surge in remote working, for example, seems like that could be good for FAANG, bad for transport companies, commercial real estate, public events. Is there any analysis out there about this?

Good for Cloud services. In the short term, streaming services are probably more popular than ever. Gaming will probably do quite well with all the students off. Good for video chat apps, slack, Atlassian and other work management systems.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#27

Post by exclusiv » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:47 AM UTC

klohto wrote: post #18

caymanjim wrote: post #14

Bragging about unrelated topics in the first paragraph, and touting a $15M donation while sitting on $200B in cash. So magnanimous. By the way, get back to work.

Is there a guide on how much are you supposed to give? Would $200B be good enough? Why criticize how much is one giving

We have tipping guidelines so yes someone should create one. They probably got 15m in earned media from the PR alone.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#28

Post by jodrellblank » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:48 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #17

debaserab2 wrote: post #7

For a company that literally owns a significant chunk of all the money available in the world, this response seems tepid at best.

More money doesn't always make something happen faster or better. Governments are likely spending hundreds of millions to billions. Even if Apple had committed a billion dollars, would that result in better training, more personnel, more useful medication, medication where it needs to be, better tests, or more testing in the short term? I suspect the answer is no, because I think those are likely all constrained on t…

> More money doesn't always make something happen faster or better.

Elon Musk tweeted "Coronavirus panic is dumb"[1]. When there were school kids stuck in a cave, he sent a team of engineers halfway round the world to try and build a submarine rescue effort. Instead of tweeting that, he could have tried to build cheap CPAP/respirators in bulk, on short notice and deliver them to hospitals.

I'm not saying he should have, but SpaceX dropped the price of rocketry a lot by trying and using off the shelf components; manufacturing is something which effort and money could plausibly move the needle on quickly, where research into speculative medication might not have any results, and that is something we can imagine him doing where we can't imagine a large company with big manufacturing experience pivoting to doing unexpectedly.

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1236029449042198528?ref_...

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#29

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

exclusiv wrote: post #27

klohto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a guide on how much are you supposed to give? Would $200B be good enough? Why criticize how much is one giving

We have tipping guidelines so yes someone should create one. They probably got 15m in earned media from the PR alone.

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#30

Post by unlinked_dll » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:53 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #10

I wonder which companies will benefit from this pandemic, long-term. If there’s a surge in remote working, for example, seems like that could be good for FAANG, bad for transport companies, commercial real estate, public events. Is there any analysis out there about this?

It seems to be quite bad for the AA in FAANG. Or at least one of them

I don't think any analysis is valid right now since we don't know what long term even means at this point.

I think the companies that will benefit will be entirely unpredictable, because we're about to fall into a steep descent in our gradient and the optimization of companies business models and products is about to get crazy. Just like '08 and '01.