Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls for Unity in Memo to Staff Following Trump Victory | Hacker News Reader

Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls for Unity in Memo to Staff Following Trump Victory

macrumors.com

16 points_cv7i30 comments

Protesting the results of the election when you lose right after months of badgering the other side about accepting the result, and then accusing them underming democracy, is making Clinton supporters look really bad.

People are gonna do what people do. Your comment is like trying to make a statement about all of Hacker News or all of Reddit (or some specific subreddit). It's unnuanced and meaningless to compare a handful of protestors to the group of Clinton supporters as a whole.

So free speech and protesting are anti-democratic now? Also, you seem to assume everyone signed up for what some people said on social media or the news. It doesn't work like that.

This is a pretty terrible argument, to be completely honest.

Everyone engaging in political hypocrisy is using their freedom of speech.

Colbert in Oct

>"Oh, suspense," Colbert said. "Democracy is going to end with a cliffhanger. I guess we're all going to have to wait until November 9 to find out if we still have a country — if Donald Trump is in the mood for a peaceful transfer of power, or if he's going to wipe his fat ass with the Constitution."

http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-colbert-rips-donald-t...

Today he supports the result protests.

>This is a pretty terrible argument, to be completely honest.

No it's a good argument. You're just too sensitive to accept the harsh fact that protesting is protected under the 1st Amendment.

>Everyone engaging in political hypocrisy is using their freedom of speech.

Protests come under speech, better learn to read case law.

Your comment really shows how weak this argument is.

No on is arguing that protests are not speech. No one.

If you are reducing to arguing that hypocrisy can't exist because freedom of speech is a thing, you need to pick a different battle.

Donald Trump himself has asserted on his own Twitter account that these protests are illegal.

And as for hypocrisy, you're making a generalization that everyone co-signed your claimed statement from the start. Show me where every protester in question agreed to the claim you've made. If you're not psychic I'm going to assume you can also do a poll. I'll bet you'll see none of them agreed to your claim. So how about you admit you grossly generalized as a means to silence others and then maybe we can talk legitimate concerns.

>Donald Trump himself has asserted on his own Twitter account that these protests are illegal.

I'm going to need to see that before I take your word for it.

How wonderful it would be if Hillary Clinton would read this memo to those throwing tantrums in the streets right now. We hold fair elections for the purpose of not rioting. How wonderful it would be if Katy Perry would read this memo to her twitter followers instead of calling for a revolution and fighting.

Wake up people, you have been lied to by the media for so long, it must be an absolute shock right now to hear a vocal, majority, yet welcoming, and healing opinion from someone else. Mathematically, the majority does rule. Thankfully, we are the nicest, kindest majority anywhere else in the world.

Good job Tim Cook for calling for logical thinking.

> We hold fair elections for the purpose of not rioting.

Given the weakening of the Voting Rights Act and the consequent actions of some Republican states to remove/prevent/inconvenience black voters (who lean strongly Democratic), I wouldn't classify the US as having "fair elections".

Really? You're going to compare someone having to show an id to elections in North Korea?

No, because that would be a ridiculous appeal to the extreme.

you do know most other countries require ids including india, a third world nation with a billion people.

> Mathematically, the majority does rule. Thankfully, we are the nicest, kindest majority anywhere else in the world.

What? Trump lost the popular vote. And your "mathematical majority" is anything but kind.

I'm sorry you feel this way. I weep for our nation and pray for it's kindness and fairness to all people.

I was studying the popularity of both candidates during the lead up to the election. On one particular day, 70,000 people were watching Trump (online YouTube) and 3,000 were watching Hillary. Lies and deception are coming to an end.

We hold fair elections for the purpose of not rioting.

More specifically, the legitimately of republics (which is what the US is, not a "democracy" in the political science sense) is part and parcel of their solving the succession problem, in monarchies, "The king is dead, long live the king" frequently didn't hold.

Attacking the legitimacy of an election like this is one of the gravest attacks you can make on the nation. It should be thoroughly discouraged.

The top rated comment by Negritude (on the original site) says it all :

"This is an example of the kind of empty neoliberal rhetoric that led to Trump getting elected.

A company that touts diversity, yet from an economic standpoint, shuts so many people out.

Dr. King was about racial AND economic justice, a Civil Rights Movement AND a Poor People's Campaign, but Tim Cook and his mealy-mouthed subordinates wouldn't understand that."

Well, that's a relief. I was worried about the possibility that a fraction of Apple's workforce would not accept the results of the election.

OK, sorry for the sarcasm; please allow me to restate my point without sarcasm:

this memo reflects badly on Cook, IMHO: CEOs should be focused and more importantly should keep their workforce focused on the corporation's mission.

This is what he does. He tells them to move forward and focus on the company's mission.

That's fair. I now wish I had resisted the temptation to post something sarcastic.

Is the following comment any better than my previous one?

The greatest cultural strength of the US IMHO is the belief, which used to be widespread, that the best way for most people to improve their lives and to improve the world is private enterprise -- action other than political action, in other words. And I consider Apple, Inc, a shining example over the decades of the use of other-than-political action to improve the world.

Cook's memo is a sign that the US is becoming more like France, where almost every important action requires national political influence, and the majority of college students want to be civil servants.

Since, at least according to Peter Theil, information technology is the least regulated part of the US economy, it makes me sad to see one of the leaders of the information-technology sector wrapped up in national politics. Unlike for example the heavily-regulated health-care sector, Apple does not need to be concerned with politics to do good work. At least that is what I always thought.

Considering that the IT field, and Apple in particular, has been called on to create backdoors (violating users privacy, weakening their security) by public officials, they definitely do need to be concerned with politics.

You posted this once (I didn't record the username), deleted it, and came back with (I assume) your throwaway account to say almost the exact same thing? At least own it, man.

I don't blame him or her given that people around here worship Apple.

Referring to my other post, that's ascribing a viewpoint to all people on this forum that's only held by a portion (and possibly a minority portion). For evidence that many people here don't "worship" Apple, just review the response to the MBP announcement.

PS: I said "man" because I did see the user's original name, assuming this isn't a copycat. He's a man if it's actually the same person.

> ...that's ascribing a viewpoint to all people...

Let's read my comment again, shall we?

> I don't blame him or her given that people around here worship Apple.

Where did I say "all people"? Where did I even say "the majority"?

I did not say either one of those. That's because I personally feel that any amount of Apple fans is too many.

Furthermore, your evidence is backwards. The fact that people complained about the new MBP is proof that they wanted to buy one in the first place.

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