Cook has openly embraced Trump, particularly in his second term, attending the president’s inauguration, presenting him with an engraved golden trophy, and giving money to the White House to help construct the president’s $300 million pet project ballroom.
The relative workplace calm may be over. “I hope we never find out, but I seriously started wondering what our leadership would do if an Apple employee was summarily executed by our government,” wondered one employee.
Many workers claimed hypocrisy between Apple’s longtime professed commitment to progressive values and causes and the extent to which its CEO has cozied up to the Trump administration. “But but but…. we changed the Apple website to MLK last Monday, so that cancels out.” Another pointed sarcastically to the company’s recent announcement of Black History Month Apple Watch bands. “Went to hang out with the guy who didn’t even acknowledge MLK Day and took away park access on the day,” commented one worker.
For some, the affront was personal. “As a lifelong Minnesotan and an Apple badged employee for over half my life I feel pretty abandoned by the company that has told me it stands for humanity more times than I can count,” wrote another worker. “Silence on ICE violence speaks volumes.” Another pointed out the “Three retail locations in the Twin Cities and not a peep” from Cook. “This isn’t leadership. This is an absence of leadership.” To which a colleague quickly countered: “I disagree, this IS leadership. This is intentional, nobody travels to the white house by mistake.”
An Apple employee who has spent decades at the company said they had noticed a marked cultural and political shift within Apple under Cook’s tenure. “A lot of people are talking about how Steve Jobs would have never given a gold bar to a politician,” referring to the 24-karat gold trophy Cook presented Trump at the White House in August.
I think you’re always going to look smart if you cherry pick the things said by different members of a large group. I can go back over that same timeline and find Apple users criticizing everything the company has done, all the way back to and including the Mac.
People criticized the original Mac for having a paltry 128K of non-upgradable ram and being basically obsolete within 6 months, after Apple released the 512K “fat Mac” and developers wrote software that used more than 128K of ram. People also criticized the Mac for not having colour (unlike the Apple II), and for breaking backwards compatibility.
That last point became a recurring theme throughout Apple’s history. People have been endlessly critical of Apple for it and Apple in turn has maintained a consistent contempt for backwards compatibility.
People criticized the lack of focus and the bewildering array of model numbers during the 90s. People criticize Apple every time they discontinue their favourite model.
People have criticized their butterfly keyboards and their stupid touchbar and the damn PowerBook 5300 battery fires. They criticized the cracks in the G4 cube’s case corners and the ducking iOS keyboard autocorrect! They criticize Apple’s forced software updates and their skeuomorphic designs and their use of colour and their taking away of colour and their damn one button mice!
On and on and on it goes! The point is that large groups of people don’t have consistent opinions. Heck, even individuals don’t have consistent opinions over time!
I have been ostracized by a peer group, unmatched and blocked on dating sites, and I’m sure lost professional advancement all because I refuse to ever get an iPhone.
They are past cult at this point. They are technological magas.