361–370 of 389 posts
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>The best part of all this was learning that inauguration bribes have been happening for decades, generally to little fanfare. Where can I read more about this?
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/companies-should-f...
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Execs will continue to default to obfuscating and misleading in testimony as well as minimally complying with court orders until a high-profile exec spends time in jail for criminal contempt. I fear this particular guy isn't senior enough to be the example we really need. While I'm sure he lied and obfuscated, I doubt a VP Finance was really the top decision-maker on "Despite the clear court order, we're going to kee…
> I fear this particular guy isn't senior enough to be the example we really need. >> Tim Cook ignored Schiller >> Cook chose poorly. >> Cook, Schiller, and Maestri were the ultimate decision makers “about what they felt was [an] acceptable” level of risk to cabin the Injunction’s effect in terms of link placement and design. It really seems like the judge is saying Tim Cook was acting in willful violation of the cou…
Yes, I chose not to focus on Cook because of the reason you mention, "unable to gather evidence." While I'm certain an EVP-level exec had to sign off on the aggressive non-compliance posture, I'm also almost certain that EVP ran it by Tim Cook. The problem is that very likely happened in a one-on-one, in-person conversation. No notes, witnesses or recording.
It's the same age-old problem of convicting the mafia boss for ordering or approving the hit when it was a private conversation and he spoke euphemistically or even just nodded. So, I decided the EVP who communicated the strategy with the team in a wider meeting was probably the best we could do.
Link to the court doc: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.36... > The testimony of Mr. Roman, Vice President of Finance, was replete with misdirection and outright lies. He even went so far as to testify that Apple did not look at comparables to estimate the costs of alternative payment solutions that developers would need to procure to facilitate linked-out purchases. (May 2024 Tr. 266:22–267:…
Por qué no los dos?
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I agree with disincentivizing white collar crime with more severe punitive measures, but if you throw capital punishment into the mix you’re just trading one ethical dilemma for another.
Capital punishment is capital punishment, but let's be real here: if there is a group of people who should fear it, it's the people making decisions that affect people in the thousands, millions or billions. Hypothetical: how many people should get cancer or other serious illnesses and defects from chemicals a company produces, until the company management who knew about it were in the "war criminal" crime bracket?
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Apple always has been like that, see The Cult of Mac book. However, it appears being at the edge of bankruptcy, and having turned the ship around has made them paranoid of losing a single cent. When Apple Store came out it was great. I was a Nokia employee at the time, and 30% was a dream compared with what you would have to pay to phone operators, app listenings in magazines with SMS download codes, for Blackberry,…
"In 2013 i met a very close friend of Steve Jobs and i remember saying "there's one thing i absolutely have to know, it's really important to me" he responds "okay what is it?" I ask "what was all the money for?!" puzzled "what do you mean?" "Steve Jobs saved up like 200 billion dollars in cash at Apple, but what was it all for? what was the plan? was he going to buy AT&T? was he going to build his own telecom or mak…
Apple now has more money than they know what to do with it. They have spend close to $800 billion stock buy back in total by the end of this year.
They could have lowered the the margin of Mac and gained Market Shares. Which is something Steve said during NeXT era that Apple got greedy. Focusing too much on margin.
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Only 100 days on and we celebrate open crony capitalism as a smart business decision.
It is a smart business decision. Don’t blame Apple for operating within the environment that the US voters voted for. The US knew exactly what it was getting - said as American citizen.
I do think a zeitgeist where it being openly done is applauded as smart is a sad state of the country.
Where’s the coercive remedy? Judges always mess this up. They act like their words have power. They issue one injunction, the party violates it in a flagrant manner, then the judge issues a new injunction. You have to impose a coercive doubling fine, or something like that. Say $10 Million on day 1, $20 Million on day two, until compliance is secured.
Or jail time for those responsible.
Who do you jail? The CEO? What if he’s directed his subordinates to comply and they simply know he doesn’t really want them to? It’s hard to jail those lower down the food chain, because does Apple even care? I don’t know that would be effective. They might get indignant and use it as a rallying cry, because it doesn’t really cost the business anything.
A more comparable analogy would be to enjoin Apple from selling the relevant products, e.g. they cannot collect any commissions until they comply.
Jail is a good punishment, but not a very effective form of coercion when the wrongdoer is a business.
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> I fear this particular guy isn't senior enough to be the example we really need. >> Tim Cook ignored Schiller >> Cook chose poorly. >> Cook, Schiller, and Maestri were the ultimate decision makers “about what they felt was [an] acceptable” level of risk to cabin the Injunction’s effect in terms of link placement and design. It really seems like the judge is saying Tim Cook was acting in willful violation of the cou…
> the judge is saying Tim Cook was acting in willful violation of the court orders Yes, I chose not to focus on Cook because of the reason you mention, "unable to gather evidence." While I'm certain an EVP-level exec had to sign off on the aggressive non-compliance posture, I'm also almost certain that EVP ran it by Tim Cook. The problem is that very likely happened in a one-on-one, in-person conversation. No notes,…
> I chose not to focus on Cook because of the reason you mention, "unable to gather evidence."
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Or jail time for those responsible.
Incarcerating someone until they comply is a tried and true approach, but it’s complicated with a company. Who do you jail? The CEO? What if he’s directed his subordinates to comply and they simply know he doesn’t really want them to? It’s hard to jail those lower down the food chain, because does Apple even care? I don’t know that would be effective. They might get indignant and use it as a rallying cry, because it…
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No, I think it's an appropriate "slippery slope" comparison. Hacker News has insisted, for years, vehemently, that Apple is not abusing monopoly power. You can search every single DMA/DOJ threads comment history and end up with the same conclusion. They were "the good guys" even when they were explaining away the Butterfly keyboard, CPU throttling, on-device scanning or arbitrarily blocking competition. In the face o…
Absolutely no one gave Apple a pass for the butterfly keyboard. You can look back at Jason Snell’s “Apple report card” where he sends surveys to 40+ people in the Apple punditry ecosystem during those years and Apple was derided by everyone. No one gave Apple a pass for on device scanning or the piss poor Johnny Ive inspired thin laptops that removed ports and that over heated during the latter x86 days. Everyone was…
Tim Cook is not a stupid man. He knows why the world wants his head on a platter, but he exhibits the willpower to exploit injustice anyways. Not because it makes the world a better place, but because it's immensely lucrative. Your supposed logic - that anyone "voted" for this - is pants-on-head moronic, verging on gallows humor. The "vote" justified Reichswerke Hermann Göring, up until the founder was sentenced to execution a decade later. Corruption isn't a democratic process, period. I don't care how apathetic you are as an American, ignorance of the law is a famously invalid defense.