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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

#371

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 chin…

A cynic would wonder if China allows iMessage to be encrypted because they can break it. A real cynic would wonder if China allows iMessage because Apple deliberately made it so that China could break it.

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

#372

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…

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.

I somewhat agree, I’m not saying it would be the right or intelligent thing to do, but if we as a country collectively feel that we should not do business with China in certain fields, the only answer with teeth is an embargo. Even then the risk of Apple sales to China doesn’t go to zero, everyone remembers IBM selling typewriters to the Nazis. Do we think companies today are less greedy than IBM?

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

#373

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 chin…

you absolutely can and should change your government. Otherwise your children or grandchildren will have to and it will be even harder for them.

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

#374
post #373

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 chin…

you absolutely can and should change your government. Otherwise your children or grandchildren will have to and it will be even harder for them.

That’s awful easy to armchair in from afar. On the ground that is a hell of an expectation.

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

#375

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…

I seriously disagree with this. I expect a whole hell of a lot more out of American management. Money is not the measurement of all things. Apple could have:

- pointed out China is confusing its politics with business

- thrown this out to a shareholder vote

- tried to see what customers outside of China thought

- threatened to pull all manufacturing out of China

- required China concede control elsewhere: Apple can operate in China without CP mucking around and could own 51% of more of everything it runs

Goodness gracious serious companies understand there's more going on in international business that top-line numbers.

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

#376

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 chin…

It's not about protecting human rights and no apple didn't do that. It's money they protected. This seems like whitewashing comment.

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

#377
An absolute zero on the patriotic scale. And when I say patriotic, I don't mean the "we're the best in the world" type of patriotic meaning, but more like "tiktok is a sign of things to come, let's try to slow down the inevitable ass-kicking of our economy that's upon us."

Having said all that, he never had a choice to begin with. When Google decided to stand up to China, they didn't bet the farm but "only" a lower double digit percentage of their revenue (my hat's off to Google for that). Apple cannot produce their hardware anywhere else in the world at the scale and quality level that they are currently getting from China. I am saying this as someone who has a good amount of insight into how the Chinese production capability compares to other parts of the world.

His fiduciary responsibility was to do what's best for the company. If he stepped down, it would have taken no time to find the next guy who would have happily done what's best for the company (except less well). So really, it's entirely inevitable.

If you buy into the last sentence, you might want to ask yourself what the long-term future of a capitalist society looks like when it's economically attacked by a very capable totalitarian regime that can think strategically rather than being beholden to the capital markets.

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

#378
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you absolutely can and should change your government. Otherwise your children or grandchildren will have to and it will be even harder for them.

That’s awful easy to armchair in from afar. On the ground that is a hell of an expectation.

yeah, tell me more. I was one of the students in Kiev, Ukraine during “Orange revolution” in 2004. Yeah, it is scary but not fighting for your future is scarier.

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

#379

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 chin…

Here we get to vote but nothing changes, don't worry about it.

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

#380

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 chin…

A cynic would wonder if China allows iMessage to be encrypted because they can break it. A real cynic would wonder if China allows iMessage because Apple deliberately made it so that China could break it.

If iMessage isn't revealed in the future to be accessible by the CCP, I'll eat my hat. It's not even protected for users in the USA [0]. Do people really think the CCP would allow encrypted messaging it can't access? If so, I've got a bridge to sell you.

[0] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what...

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