Comment by jarjoura

5 hours ago

I always understood, going to China, as what the industry was already doing, and Apple was in the middle of coming out of bankruptcy, so pressured to get their costs down. Tim Cook, the process guy, would have been given the task to do just that in an industry that was already consolidating in China.

I don't remember the details, but I'm pretty sure Tony Fadell's startup was already in China building what would become the iPod.

Tim Cook should be remembered, not for moving production to China, but for restructuring Apple's production lines to be built-on-demand, while also shipping those from China. It wasn't always perfect, and I bet the other people in similar roles and positions would have taken the easy path.

Let's see if Aaron Sokrin can make this compelling.

Technically Apple was never bankrupt. It certainly came within a few months, but never reached that point.