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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

> Why would anyone hold such an assumption.

Because that is what Tim Cook Apple's marketing and PR suggest Apple does. The force of good. Social Responsibility and Justice. Standing up against the government. ( They didn't explicitly say this but the message is something fairly similar )

Instead of creating "insanely" great product for our customers, friends and family. It is now about product that "enrich" people's lives.

Like you said, Apple has to act on its own interest. Most of these wouldn't be problem for many had Apple not paint itself as so righteous.

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I know a fair number of Americans who are over 50 years old, and appear fairly intelligent - but who, a while after each election, seem actually surprised and offended that the recently-elected politicians are not energetically living up to their campaign promises of squeaky-clean ethics, plentiful jobs, open & responsible government, etc.

Do corporations have so much better a record of living up to feel-good marketing & PR, that a experienced and competent adult would actually take them at their word?

WHAT?? I'm over 50, and after 30+ years of voting and paying attention, have realized that politicians are by and large the lowest, sleaziest, most power-hungry and amoral creatures that can still perhaps be called human. I don't believe a word they say, and think that legislatures should be in session 90 days a year to figure things out and generally get their shit done, and the rest of the time they should have to live with the results of their decisions like the rest of us have to do.

You are one our of many

> politicians are by and large the lowest, sleaziest, most power-hungry and amoral creatures that can still perhaps be called human

Just like you and me, then, and the rest of humanity. But we also have good in us, don't we?

And guess what they do when the job ends, turn into CEOs.

I find this hard to believe.

Standing up against the government is one of the messages of their anti-1984 ad.

No it isn’t. That was about standing up to IBM.

Now we need an ad about standing up to Apple.

Already done https://youtu.be/euiSHuaw6Q4

I thought the Big Brother figure on screen looked more like Bill Gates than IBM. The real enemy was Microsoft and Windows.

The first version of Microsoft Windows only appeared a year after that ad. In 1984 Microsoft was just a supplier for IBM.

Microsoft wasn’t the entrenched giant in 1983.

No, they never marketed themselves as a company that stands up against the government (to do so means that they don’t understand how power works). Their PR centered around ethical practices is still true where they conduct business in democratic countries.

People should note that just because someone is aiming for an ethical ideal doesn’t mean that the way there is bound to be perfect—those who are quick to point out other people’s hypocrisies always rest on this fallacy. Apple isn’t perfect, but it seems to be the only big tech company making great strides towards being zero-carbon and pushing for user privacy in democratic countries, and when they were called out about parts of their supply chain using oppressed Uighur Muslim labor, they corrected it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8

Your reading of that video couldn’t be more wrong. “1984 won’t be like 1984” easily means that they’re ahead of the competition (this was directed at IBM) because they were giving people the future then. It’s not a political or activist statement against the government.

“Ethical practices,” “the App Store,” and the case for “local scanning.”

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