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Comment by eddieroger | Hacker News Reader

Apple is a public company, and public companies are accountable to shareholders, not customers. Shareholders want it to be worth their while, so yes it's about the money. It is possible to do what's best for both, and Apple still does that plenty, but the customer of today isn't the customer of the Apple you're describing. I wish they focused more on the Mac line, and the M1 and M2 are returns to that, but Apple's making money off iPhones, not Macs.

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> Apple is a public company, and public companies are accountable to shareholders, not customers.

Tim Cook himself, a decade ago, might have had something to say about that¹.

> It is possible to do what's best for both, and Apple still does that plenty

My objection is the trend more than the current state. A decade ago it would have been unthinkable to me that Apple would ever have ads in any OS. Today, I’m dreading the moment they go “full Windows” and start shoving third-party ads in Spotlight, then Safari, then the Dock².

¹ https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...

² Yes, I am exaggerating to make a point. At least I hope it’s an exaggeration.

Sure I think there are senses in which Tim Cook is accountable to customers, or maybe his own moral compass (as might be the case here), but in a specific and direct sense the board that controls whether he keeps his job or not is legally bound to act for the shareholders.

However I don't think Tim Cook in that moment was necessarily saying that accessibility was non-negotiable, shareholders be damned, it's also possible he was taking a broad view of shareholder interest that is about more than immediate ROI.

> the board that controls whether he keeps his job or not

A job he doesn’t need¹ and which he’s aware he’ll leave in the not-too-distant future.² The only thing stopping Cook from making different decisions is himself.

¹ He’s filthy rich.

² https://wccftech.com/tim-cook-not-running-apple-in-10-years-...

Apple isn’t an advertising company. It’s a hardware company that also does software.

It’s analogous to HP of old, which is no great surprise given the founders.

> Apple isn’t an advertising company. It’s a hardware company that also does software.

They could be a noodle shop. The distinction isn’t relevant to the point: they are shoving ads in our faces, from their own apps from their own OSs. Always pushing you to the subscriptions. Everything Cook does indicates it will only get worse.

They're expanding into advertising as a revenue source. This undercuts google on their platform, but it does mean that advertising revenue will become something they want to protect. Google makes lots of money advertising and it's possible this could become a major (thinking around 30-40%) portion of Apple's revenue.

And when you own the platform like Apple, you get to call Facebook/Google ads "tracking" and Apple ads "enriched digital experience".

Link is interesting and a good response from Cook. I was hoping it would be more of a complete rejection of the terribly destructive Friedman doctrine of shareholder supremacy.

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