Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

macrumors.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 755 posts

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

#261

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

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…

Apple shouldn't have to.

There should be laws that US companies can only cowtoe to the US government WRT free speech.

In this case - it appears to only be happening in China - which I guess is fair game.

But the line should be drawn at China being able to use its market to force US companies to censor people outside of China.

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

hereforphone wrote: post #203
gonehome wrote: post #14

Apple’s approach to China remains the most disappointing (and hypocritical) thing about the company. When privacy really matters for the users that need it most, Apple sells them out for continued access to the Chinese market. https://stratechery.com/2021/the-information-on-apple-in-chi...

I have a secret to share. Apple and others may virtual signal but at the end of the day it's all about profits. If you believed otherwise you were mislead. "Think Different" is just a commercial slogan.

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by AnthonyMouse »

CountSessine wrote: post #244
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pointing out someone else's hypocrisy isn't an inconsistency. If someone says doing business with a military is unacceptable and then proceeds to do business with a military, they're a hypocrite. That's still true even if the person telling you this does business with a military.

Is it hypocritical to work with the US military, and not the Chinese military?

Is your justification for not working with the Chinese military that working with a military is unacceptable?

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

#264

Post by vineyardmike »

tooltalk wrote: post #79
arcticbull wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and it's likely that China is the only place they could actually manufacture their products. China isn't the cheapest place to make things anymore, and it hasn't been in a long time - that's been supplanted by Bangladesh, Vietnam, etc. It's even within spitting distance to manufacture in the US. Companies manufacture complex electronics products in China because everyone manufactures there. The skills are there,…

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…

+1

I assume part of the massive china/apple deal was a promise to stay in china (and act as a passive marketing prop for chinese manufacturing).

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

#265

Post by sangnoir »

stevehawk wrote: post #168
drno123 wrote: post #28

Interestingly, Apple could also cause problems to TSMC. Because of Apple-first policy, at least two major chip manufacturers* are moving away from TSMC. One is even completely obsoleting a line of products that was previously being manufactured at TSMC. At the same time, while Apple can get processors from TSMC, their iPhone production is lagging behind due to shortage of power supply ICs. * - not sure if this info i…

and if TSMC ends up doing nothing but supplying Apple.. then it likely means they'll end up being a wholly owned Apple subsidiary

Why would Apple by the cow, when they can squeeze more concessions and profits from a captive "partner" who can't easily transition away?

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

#266

Post by upwardbound »

martythemaniak wrote: post #190
tene wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have any insight into the motivation behind making the islands appear larger? I haven't been able to come up with any plausible guesses about what "make the islands look big" would be helpful in achieving.

It's pretty simple, China claims large parts of the south China sea, parts that extend far, far out of their maritime bounds and go into other countries' territories. They have a variety of justifications, one of which is they they dredge some reefs and make them into islands which they then claim. This particular instance is not in the south China sea, but it's all the same.

It might also be to get Chinese citizens to care more about having sovereignty over those islands. Laypeople in China might care more about the issue if the islands look big rather than looking like "oh who cares about that mound of dirt anyways".

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

#267

Post by Eelongate »

bostonsre wrote: post #45
cdot2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The agricultural revolution and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race?

Which agricultural revolution? If the earliest, sure more food is good, but having to fear being wiped off the earth from random raiders or armies kind of sucks.

> Which agricultural revolution?

Don't take it too literally, his comment is a modified quote from the unabomber's manifesto, which opens with, "The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." It's something of a meme to swap out "industrial" with something else, usually with a tongue-in-cheek intent.

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

#268

Post by sneak »

onepointsixC wrote: post #108
sneak wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are forgetting about manufacturing. While China is indeed an important and huge market for sales... approximately 100% of Apple's products are manufactured in China (save some tiny fraction that are assembled in India or Texas). Every iPhone sold everywhere worldwide (except the few assembled in India) comes from China. Apple cannot exist without China. Full stop.

That's completely wrong. How is it that one of their largest global competitors, Samsung, exists despite having no factories in China for years now? Apple could leave China just fine as far as manufacturing is concerned. The question is would it be able to still sell to the Chinese market if it does.

Foxconn has an iPhone City of hundreds of thousands of people (something like 350k).

They make something like 200 million iPhones per year.

If you think that can be moved "just fine" then we will have to agree to disagree.

Producing something of the iPhone's quality, at the scale of a half million per day, every single day (that's 23,000 per hour, every hour, 24/7, for an entire year) is not something one can just pick up and move, even with Apple's resources.

It would take several years, if indeed it is possible at all. There are dozens or hundreds of managing workers at Foxconn who have been designing and producing iPhone manufacturing lines for a decade+, and I doubt China would give them and their families all exit visas to move to some other country to assist Foxconn and Apple in divesting themselves of the CCP's prerogatives.

This ain't Factorio.

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

#269

Post by seanmcdirmid »

burntoutfire wrote: post #155
qeternity wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally get that people want companies to act with dignity, but the idea that a company, even one as large as Apple, is going to make any sort of difference with respect to China's oddities is wishful thinking. Apple has a business to run. They abide by all sorts of requests in various countries in which they operate. Of course there has to be a line somewhere, I'm just not sure this is it.

> Apple has a business to run. "Apple" is not some abstract entity. There are people behind Apple (the shareholders, the managers, the employees). Real people, with real morals and values. I don't think that the only thing all of them care about is "running a business" and that all of them feel it absolves them from acting humanly. It's more complicated than that. (having said that, of course, greed is always strong)…

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.

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

#270

Post by vineyardmike »

dublin wrote: post #193
acomjean wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their cpus are manufactured in Taiwan, which is kinda China. Those bleeding edge components are important to excellent performance of their products.

I'm sure China knows that if they do ever actually invade Taiwan, then there will be hundreds of agents, if not outright military actions, to destroy or sabotage the critical parts of Taiwanese industry rather than let them fall into the hands of the CCP. (For instance, I can't imagine any of the key ASML machines would survive without being quite thoroughly destroyed by thermite to keep their secrets from falling in…

I heard rumors that the latest TSMC factories have a government-controlled self-destruct feature for this reason.
Post reply on HN