Apple - Between a Tough Spot and a Tough Spot

I recently posted Anil Dash’s article, How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs ↗. I think it’s an interesting article, and I completely understand all of the sentiment of it. In many regards I feel the same way. The golden statue stunt really grosses me out. The weird dystopian dinner at the White House with tech leaders being forced to compliment the President makes me sick to my stomach. Extorting people for inauguration donations feels blatantly illegal. If it’s not it should be. All of this is not only disturbing, terrifying, gross, etc. but also just feels like this is a bad mafia movie, one with such a bad plot line that would feel way too on the nose to be any good. And I completely agree, this is not how Steve Jobs would have handled this situation, and I miss his presence and leadership at Apple.

But Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs, no one is. This is an awful time in our history, and I think it’s naive to think that Apple, and Tim Cook personally, is necessarily just “wrong” and he should have done the “right” thing. Life is not that simple. There was and is no “right” solution to this mess of a situation.

What would be different if Tim had dug in based on principal? It’s hard to know for sure, but it doesn’t seem to me like things would be any better. It seems reasonable that punitive tariffs would be impacting the price of all Apple products, which would either raise the price of all of them or Apple would have to eat billions of dollars of margin, which surely would impact the stock price significantly. It’s easy to feel like the stock price shouldn’t matter, and I agree it shouldn’t be the only thing, but it does matter. A lot of people’s investments both within Apple and outside of Apple are tied up in there and it’s not just a simple decision to tank that due to moral reasons.

It’s also possible that Apple would be punished in to removing their diversity efforts to one degree or another. I’m not sure how but the administration has been far more effective than they should be able to be at destroying significant progress in those regards across the country. I may be wrong, but it doesn’t seem like Apple has capitulated on that aspect of their internal culture.

I don’t mean any of this as an excuse. This all feels gross. Apple has never been a perfect company, and Steve Jobs was never a perfect person, yet for much of my life it has been a company that I’ve really admired. I’ve worked for Apple or Apple Partners for nearly all of my professional life, and I feel passionate about the products, company, and culture of Apple. This has soured that to some degree. At the same time, I’m not sure that there is any way it could have been handled better to date. I can’t see any good choices, they’re all bad. I also have a pretty strong feeling that Tim hates this too.

One thing is for sure, I am really glad I’m not in charge of Apple right now.