2024-10-03

Apple, Capitalism and 13 years under Tim Cook

Long introductory preface and note: I feel the need to preface this post because at the end of the day Apple is a corporation that will always do capitalism which means it will always seek to increase its profits. Yes, it puts on a friendly progressive face. It projects certain ethics or social values which I appreciate. But capitalism is a fundamental problem for humanity and I do not believe it can be made compatible with long-term human health, long-term ecosystems health or with ethical democratic processes. There's so much more that could be said and has been said by many about the problems of capitalism. The sooner we end capitalism the better. So, this is not a defense of Apple in any way so much as an observation of Apple as a corporation functioning in capitalism.

This post started as a response to a thread at the Mac Power Users forum: Tim Cook executing poorly?. I've edited the original post so that it fits a bit better as a blog post and I've generalized it be a response to a current/ongoing meme of the tech sphere.

As of October 2024 Apple is the most valuable company in the world by market cap, $3.4+ trillion. So, if the measurement of Apple's performance is profit making over the past 13 years it seems clear the answer is that Cook has done very well managing the company.

But what about hardware and software releases? What about relations with developers and users? Much of the recent sentiment among tech enthusiasts that dwell on these sorts of things in podcasts, forums, blogs and social media is that Apple is making a lot of mistakes in regards to users and developers. This is especially prevalent in regards to developers and the App Store in the context of recent efforts by the EU to regulate primarily by forcing Apple to open up to third party app stores.

It's understandable and predictable that any company that builds the stockpile of wealth that Apple has is likely to face backlash. The perception is that the company is greedy, arrogant and even malicious. By definition and design corporations are greedy. I won't comment here on the other two. But let's explore a few specifics that were shared in the original MPU post I've referenced.

The original points which I've slightly edited:

A weird launch of the Vision Pro back in February
Cancellation of the car project after an investment of billions of dollars with "nothing to show for it".
A botched AI launch/iPhone 16 launch in which the company is advertising features that don’t exist yet.

Now, these are just three points brought up by one user in one forum and don't begin to represent the much larger sample of complaints shared across the internet the past few years. But I addressed these in my forum response so I'll include here:

No doubt Vision Pro was a unique launch for a new and unproven product category.
The car is non issue as it was never announced as a public product. We can't know anything other than what has been rumored. We don't know how much was invested nor what Apple may have learned or developed from the project that may still have use in the future.
Yes, the ads should have included text specifying "Apple Intelligence: Coming in October" or similar.

These three specific points were minor and poorly made so I'm not going to dwell on them. I think the more useful and interesting exercise is to simply highlight the accomplishments of Apple under Cook's leadership the past 13 years. It's just a sampling and I have, no doubt, forgotten a few, but I think I've remembered the most significant.

Hardware Releases

AirPods and AirPods Pro - Both have been a success with ongoing hardware releases and software improvements. Personally, I've had several pair and use them daily. They perform perfectly. I wish they had a replaceable battery.
Apple Watch had a slowish first 2-3 years but has become a huge success not just in terms of profit but also as Apple's entry into the health market. And not just a strong offering but an industry leading offering that has set the bar. I wear the Apple Watch 4 daily. This is the first year it did not get the WatchOS upgrade. The battery is wearing out but I hope to get another year. It's 6 years old. Ideally it would have a replaceable battery.
HomePods - not a huge success but still in the lineup. I have a stereo pair of the originals and use them everyday. I've had no problems and will use them until they stop working.
The Vision Pro may not be a success, it's too soon to say. But I would guess that whatever happens with the AVP they have learned and have new technology as a result. Whether the tech makes it's way into future generations of vision AR or into other products, I would guess that there is a stockpile of new technology innovation that has come from the development of the AVP.
The M series devices have changed the industry. We've just witnessed a monumental shift and other manufacturers are still trying to catch up. And along with the hardware was the release of macOS for ARM. It was a smooth transition.
Continued, slow but steady incremental improvements of the iPhone, Mac and iPad line-ups. The only big flop/mistep that comes to mind would be the butterfly keyboard.

Services

iCloud - Announced by Steve Jobs, launched after he passed. iCloud took a couple of years but is now the foundation of the cloud experience for most of Apple's customer base. Over time it's been built into a phenomenal service and experience for hundreds of millions of users. For those that like to say in a reference to some new bad thing "Steve would never had let this happen", remember MobileMe? Yeah, that was on his watch and it was a hot mess. One of several.
Apple Music - Another fairly successful service launched under Cook.
Apple Pay - Made mobile payments easy, accessible, and somewhat mainstream.
Apple TV+ Launched under a cloud of skepticism but they've built it out pretty well since it's launch.
MLS - So far so good. I've never been a big soccer fan but I've not heard any complaints. I'm not sure if this was percieved to be a problem or an improvement by MLS fans.
Apple News+ Slow and steady. Still going, still slowly growing. The perception seems to be that it's not amounted to much but this story at Semafor described it as a success. I know that in my own extended family many are using the Apple News app somewhat regularly though not the paid News+ service.
Apple Fitness+ As a companion to Apple Watch and Apple's health initiatives seems to be doing well. I've never used it.

Software
Too much to say here but a few highlights that came under Cook that I think people forget:

The transition to Apple File System. Yep, that lil' ol' thing happened in 2017. Apple moved millions of customers from a decades old file system to an entirely new one with narry a hiccup.
Swift, SwiftUI, Catalyst, various other app development technologies for the iPhone, iPad, Watch and Mac. I'm not a developer but have followed the news. It's my understanding that much of this was put in place to bring development of the various platforms closer together.
macOS transitioned to ARM
WatchOS and VisionOS, two new OS releases
The ongoing yearly release of new versions of this increasingly large OS/device ecosystem

Apple Park

Started by Jobs, finished by Ive and Cook. Not for public consumption but worth a mention as a fairly monumental project that took time and engineering resources.

Covid Pandemic

A pretty big deal to navigate through. They sorted out a remote WWDC which resulted in an entirely new format for both WWDC as well as product launches.
Stayed on track with transition to M series Macs during this time
Stayed on track with hardware and OS resleases

Social and Environmental commitments

A lot of changes and innovations in these areas under Cook. They're far from perfect, especially in terms of labor and unions. Huge miss there. Also, in general, they are a company that profits from perpetual consumption of goods made with rare earth elements and scarce resources. They've made progress in their accounting and in building out solar capacity. I'm not sure that any other tech company has done as well as they have. Still, there is a fundamental problem in the mission of capital to profit and grow perpetually.

A truly forward thinking Apple would run counter to the dictates of capitalism. Such a company would do more to increase repairability and shift from yearly releases of its flagship products. That Apple would not hold yearly iPhone events. That company would shift from an emphasis on recycling to one of long-term use of devices. Within the dictates of capitalism the lines become blurred. Related, there's a lot that could be said, will be said about Apple's relationship with and reliance on China and decades of assembly of it's products in Asia. It's the common practice in the industry but it's problematic.

I rarely see Apple enthusiasts criticize capitalism as a system. Not in any significant way. And to those folks I would simply say that you can't have it both ways. In the context of capitalism Apple is doing as it should. Any critique of the App Store and Apple's "greed" as it relates to it's cut of sales is hogwash. Apple takes 30%. Suck it up. If they want to take 40 or 50% that's their prerogative. This is the shit we get in capitalism. A company working in a system with profit at the center will always take what it can. Accept it or criticize it while also criticizing capitalism as a system. Any measures Apple takes to be "good" or "fair" or "ethical" will always be arbitrary.

Moving on from the larger discussion of the dictates of operating within capitalism, in terms of major boondoggles in the past 13 years, I can't think of any other than the now notorious and above mentioned butterfly keyboard. There was the CSAM controversy from a couple years ago but I don't think there has actually been any resolution to that problem or what to do about it.

Year to year there are complaints about changes developers or users don't like but it's usually a matter of opinion.

Example: The redesign of the Settings app on the Mac recieved a lot of criticism. Personally, I don't use my Mac much but I don't hang out in settings. Even when I used the Mac full time I didn't hang out in Settings. Lol. I think it's a perfect example of a small group of pundits making up a drama because the new thing was not the old thing.

Example: New feature, Stage Manager on iPad. Good golly, so much drama. I'm not going into it. It's fine. It's good. It was not a problem. It was a new feature and needed to be improved. It has been and will continue to be. Users that prefer to use the iPad without Stage Manager can continue to do so. Move along.

I could come up with other examples but my general take is that a small handful of independent YouTuber/podcaster/pundits have built careers on hot takes and clickbait. Over-hyping "problems" and creating drama serves them well so that's what they do. This year the drama began before Apple made any announcements at WWDC24. The drama was two-fold. 1, With the spring release of iPad Pro M4 some expected macOS on the iPad. 2, The ongoing meme that Apple was so far behind in AI that it needed to have huge Siri/AI announcements.

WWDC happened and the usual, predictable cycle followed. Most of the above group reacted with the usual and required clever snarky commentary which was mixed with overly excited enthusiasm. After a couple days of breathless enthusiasm reality set in as these folks used the betas and fell into deep disappointment.

Of course macOS was not announced for the iPad nor was iPadOS revolutionized. Both predictable. Beyond that, of course, it's all been about Apple Intelligence. The problems have ranged from Apple's use of data on the web, the slow release of the new features in beta status, or just a general feeling that there wasn't enough new shiny to keep the kids happy.

In terms of the actual quality and reliability of hardware Apple continues to do well across all of its product lines. The quality, stability and reliability of the various OS releases continues to be high. Step away from the non-drama of "the community" and ask normal humans about their experience using Apple hardware and you'll generally get a casual, non dramatic response of satisfaction. They love the new emojis.

I don't have comments but I love email or you can find me on Mastodon.

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