Comment by altairprime
15 days ago
The UK government can’t put Apple out of business; Apple can easily afford to simply exit all business in the UK. The UK is betting that Apple’s greed outweighs their principles. Long odds.
15 days ago
The UK government can’t put Apple out of business; Apple can easily afford to simply exit all business in the UK. The UK is betting that Apple’s greed outweighs their principles. Long odds.
It's betting that the size of Apple's UK market is larger than the impact Apple's privacy marketing has on its worldwide market. Those odds aren't obvious to me
Curious about what would happen if Apple withdrew from the UK and locked all devices with a message saying 'Your device has been disabled following the decision of the UK government to introduce new laws which mean service can no longer be offered in the UK', or something similar. They could base it on GPS or detected MCC codes.
I wonder if you would get anarchist riots until the law was removed. Many of the young with an expensive bricked iPhone (or parents whose kid's iPad was disabled) would probably side with Apple over already unpopular politicians...
The UK is betting that Apple’s greed outweighs their principles. Long odds.
Three weeks ago, I would have agreed with you.
Then Tim Cook wrote a check for $1,000,000.00 to help pay for Donald Trump's inauguration party.†
In spite of what they led us to believe over the last couple of decades, Tim Cook and Apple are no different than any of the other tech companies genuflecting before the new emperor, whose stated goals are the opposite of the "mission, vision and values" lies we were fed by the tech industry.
† In case you (or anyone else) missed it: https://variety.com/2025/biz/news/apple-ceo-tim-cook-donates...
As Apple isn’t based in the UK and owes no fealty to their government. I don’t agree that your citation is relevant here. Apple is a US company. Bribing local officials to overlook the gay founder is sensible corporate practices, however uncomfortable that is to consider. Revoking privacy guarantees globally, reversing years of public opinion gains overnight, is not. The UK cannot do anything to materially harm Apple in any way that Apple can’t afford short of sending a double-oh to Cupertino.
> Bribing local officials to overlook the gay founder is sensible corporate practices
What does that mean? Who is the gay founder? Of Apple?
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the UK could force a sale of apple assets to whatever degree theyre happy with for apple's new owner to keep operating in the UK
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> As Apple isn’t based in the UK and owes no fealty to their government
Apple isn't based in China, they owe nothing to them either. Apple's willingness to backdoor and modify their services for actual authoritarianism is well[0] documented[1], at no point did they ever threaten to leave the respective markets. Every single spectator knows that Apple leaving these markets would be an admission of guilt.
> Bribing local officials to overlook the gay founder is sensible corporate practices
That hasn't been "sensible corporate practice" since American civil rights were instated. If that is the real motivation for Apple to pen their donation, it would be even more pathetic than a global encryption backdoor. It's not "uncomfortable" to consider, it's illegally discriminatory to a nonsense extent.
What both of you are overlooking, and clearly what this entire thing is about, is antitrust enforcement. Tim Cook knows that Apple cannot survive if they are investigated by a fair commission, so he's trying to manipulate Trump into dropping the DOJ's cases, giving Apple unfair advantages vis-a-vis China and pressuring the EU into stopping their regulation. This is literally surface-level stuff if you even remotely understand Apple's commitment to shareholders and what drives their hardware and software margins in 2025. Everything else is advertisement and a chasing after wind.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/1/22361762/iphone-russia-sta...
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/111754
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4d75zl212o
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Of course Apple doesn't have principles, they're a for-profit company. What's in question here is whether they believe the UK is financially worth opening this can of worms. Following US government whims is good business for them in almost all cases, but that math isn't the same for the UK.
For $1 million, you’re promised intimate access to Trump and his inner circle. This isn’t just about tradition or unity-it’s about buying influence and maintaining power. In a world where we’re supposedly pushing for fairness, equality, and transparency, this feels incredibly hypocritical. It’s as if we’re endorsing a system where money talks louder than public interest or ethical considerations. It makes you wonder where the line is between modern capitalism and a system that operates more like an oligarchy.
> Apple can easily afford to simply exit all business in the UK.
Apple has shareholders, so no it can't (or more precisely, Tim Cook can't).
Google had shareholders in 2005 too or thereabouts when they publicly decided to abandon the Chinese search market for soft, fuzzy reasons (i.e., not because they were losing money on Chinese operations).
And as far as I know, they're still absent from the Chinese search market.