Now, they’re coming for Apple CEO Tim Cook

It was only a matter of time before they came for America’s only openly gay CEO, and it’s got nothing to do with performance. How can it? Apple’s valuation has soared under his watch, while the company’s positions on privacy and environmental responsibility lead almost every industry — and should be an example to all.

I imagine that’s precisely what reactionaries dislike about the Cook-led company. It would be so much simpler to introduce various kinds of surveillance (state, services, advertising, etc.) if Apple would just get out the way.

No one likes a goody two shoes

The last thing they need is a company that successfully shows us it is possible to transition to climate neutrality across its business. If it succeeds, it would prove that not only is this possible, but it benefits the business and its customers. Believe it or not, there are powerful forces who will fight to the death to prevent such high-profile successes.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, those with the power and the money (and there’s only a few that have both) know how much easier it would be to train our future MechaHitler overlords if everybody’s digital identities could be turned into open books. In their ghastly vision of tomorrow, privacy becomes something only the very wealthiest among us can afford. 

The rest of us exist solely to feed the machine.

But all of these visions keep hitting the same snags: Apple gets in the way. The company, built on so-called liberal values such as peace, internationalism, diversity, and LGBTQ+ rights, is a conceptual anathema to some of those riding high on the zeitgeist today. Negative energies always focus inward in the end, and they are focusing inward today.

Knives out

In truth, they’ve been after Cook for a while. They didn’t mind Steve Jobs so much; they accepted his ability and genius. Indeed, the kind of people Jobs probably had little use for now use his quotes to sell “business wisdom’”books.

That’s how it rolls.

But Cook’s a different story. The knives have been out for him since he took the CEO throne. And even while the company moves from strength to strength, nothing he does is ever seen as quite good enough; I’ve lost track of the number of people I once respected who seem to take great delight in berating him.

The man who seemingly led development of the Vision Pro, a product so advanced it isn’t expected to become a mass market item until the next decade, is apparently not a “product guy.” The guy who spent a billion on Beats as a flagship to lead a suite of services that now generate almost as much revenue as the iPhone doesn’t get it. Tim Cook’s Apple, which has restored the Mac to glory on the back of Apple Silicon, has lost its way.

I’m sick of reading these kinds of things. They seem to state the news, but miss the reality — that in the current environment, nothing Apple does will be good enough, no matter who leads it. 

The company is beset. 

On the one hand, it faces reactionary forces. On the other it has the current crop of ghastly brain dead neo-liberals (I’m looking at you Europe and the UK), who, by incompetence or design, continue to erode the very values they claim to champion. “Security” means people in the UK don’t even know and aren’t even told the extent to which the dreadful authoritarians in the current government spy on their digital lives, meaning no security at all. While “trade” means Apple products are going to cost more in the US because of the “Trump Tax.” Meanwhile Europe continues to damage Apple’s business and ecosystem so some games developers can make a few dollars at the cost of platform security, using state- sponsored savagery to force an ideological vision of “free market” competition on the business of only one company.

What is there about using state power to undermine the business of one company while leaving competitors untouched that can be defined as ‘free market’?

Climate change

Apple does have its own problems, of course. It’s arguable that its top team has needed refreshment in the form of new talent for a while; hopefully, the company has a wealth of second-line talent to fill the gaps as senior leadership inevitably retires.

It is also interesting that there must be one or two high-placed Apple top 100 leaders who are taking delight in leaking Apple’s secrets, to the detriment of senior leadership’s credibility. Perhaps that is why they do it, reflecting their own ambition?

But for many Apple critics, the biggest problem isn’t Apple, its leadership, its many business challenges, or even Cook. No. The reason they want to force regime change is because Apple, since its inception, has always strived to mean something, to push for positive change. It’s the hopeful antidote to others’ hopeless empty rhetoric. Because at its heart, it has values, values Cook tries to push for, values we must maintain if there is to be any hope at all of surviving this spiritually bereft, morally absent, economically hopeless, nihilistic age.

That’s why I feel the company, despite its own structural imperfections (who else recalls Siri snooping or pressure against in-store unionization?), continues to be worth our time. 

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