> For Apple, ownership of the "trust problem" is an intrinsic part of "making good products".
Yes, this might be true. And the majority of elected officials in EU fundamentally disagrees with that statement.
Yes, this might be true. And the majority of elected officials in EU fundamentally disagrees with that statement.
Politicians aren't expected to be experts due to the immense breadth of subjects they need to consider - they're expected to consult experts. Whether an individual politician is an expert[1] is pretty irrelevant.
All of these statements are about our general expectations of politicians - whether you think politicians adhere to that point or have comments on specific politicians is beside the scope of my comment. As a less controversial example it might be good to instead consider how judges operate who are expected to provide well reasoned judgements on subjects they know nothing about.
1. Sometimes those former expert politicians are the worst of all since they _think_ they know the way things are and won't listen to actual experts but they've been out of the industry so long that they've lost their familiarity with the subject.
That didn't go hilariously wrong, though - the internet is a series of tubes. Not physically (copper cables aren't tubes) but he obviously wasn't talking about specific stuff but broad-strokes analogy (his exact line was "It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes."), and his description was basically accurate.
Well, EU can and will force, fine, or ban US companies as they see fit but there is not some fundamental correctness to their viewpoint
Indeed, who apple is or isn't able to sell to, doesn't affect what people think is moral or immoral.
As for Apple's CEO representing Apple's customers: Are you sure? We didn't elect him. We just bought stuff made by an organization he currently runs.
I'm saying that customers decide whether or not to buy from Apple based on whether they resonate with them from a moral standpoint, at least as part of their decision to purchase their products. And I said Apple's CEO is accountable to their customers, not that they represent them. Yes, they're also accountable to shareholders, as your sibling comment points out. But if the company screws up enough to elicit a popular boycott, you can bet the reason shareholders will be exercising that accountability is due to the actions of the customer base.
> I'm saying that customers decide whether or not to buy from Apple based on whether they resonate with them from a moral standpoint
I fully believe that you might do that yourself. There's no evidence everyone else does, or even that a majority do. Especially since most people aren't informed of working conditions involved in manufacturing Apple products (or indeed, many others' products).
It's just not believable that everyone thinks that buying a product = agreeing with every single moral stance made by the person currently running the company. And what if he changed his mind tomorrow? Would he offer a full refund to everybody who asked for one?
> And I said Apple's CEO is accountable to their customers, not that they represent them.
He's not accountable to them, only to the board*, but we're discussing representation - that is, speaking on behalf of a people, according to those people, not you or I or the speaker individually. If you mentioned accountability while we were on the topic of representation, and I returned us to the topic of representation, you're welcome :)
[*]: Your example illustrates this: a complex chain of accountability from CEO to Corporation and BoD to Corporation and Corporation to shareholders is required for any action to happen. Being accountable to customers means customers can decide to fire him _directly_.
Because they are interrelated concepts. Without accountability you can’t be trusted to faithfully represent someone. “Representation” without accountability is autocracy.
Also, chill with the condescension.
In this case, though, the CEO is not accountable to customers, and the CEO does not represent customers, so not too confusing. He is accountable to the BoD (nobody else can fire him) and represents the corporation. The interests of other parties, including customers, are secondary to, and when opposed lose to, the interests of the corporation.
It has control over the people living in China, true, but I do not think controlling a person, being able to put them in jail if they don't obey you, is the same thing as representing them.
People don’t think of it that way, they tell themselves all the reasons why that’s a good thing, but that’s ultimately what it is - a legislative solution to end the “android vs iOS” debate for all time.
The argument is walled gardens shouldn’t exist, so the solution is to either legislate requirements that apple destroy the walls, or that they exit the market. That is a statement that most android advocates would agree with.
And the EU will largely just keep ratcheting up the legislation until that happens. Driving apple out is the point - walled gardens are (in the EU sense) unacceptable and the option for a walled-garden business model needs to be removed from the market.
Apple is (correctly) perceiving this and pulling out of the market, first by dropping the affected features, and I’m sure there will be a “next compliance requirement” before many years too.
if someone wants to sell systems where the only supported configuration is SELinux, why should that be illegal?
1. Still hoping to see something amazing RIM!
This actively reduces freedom, the freedom of running your business. You just don't care about it.
If you don't like walled gardens you can just not use them (I certainly never bought anything Apple for this very reason), there's no need to infringe on the freedom of everyone else who wants to use walled gardens.
The EU is in general becoming increasingly less free, thanks to barely elected bureaucrats who line up their pockets with sponsors money.
1. I'd point to a great example from one of our current justices in this regard: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/mar/23/neil-gorsuch-sup...
That's not just an EU problem though. It seems to be well established (and perhaps worse?) in many places.
No-one's forcing Apple customers to go outside the walled garden. They can still source their apps from only the Apple App Store.
Companies are designed and allowed, by characters, to operate within the scope of whats good for society. If it harms the public good then it needs to be reigned in. I have no illusions that companies have the same standing and rights as living beings do. They are lifeless entities meant to be subject to the will of people.
In the same way Right to Repair, Minimum Wage, and Disciminatory hiring affects the freedom of running a business, sure. Unfortunately, rules are written in blood and this is happening because other businesses at this point abused the point of labor or customer satisfaction and needed to get dinged for it.
In this case, Blame Microsoft, I guess. Heck, even Google. we already know the result of a closed system abusing its platform and large share to make its product worse. I'm glad we're actually jumping into this before it's too late (like we usually do).
That'd be "corporate freedom" rather than "end user freedom" yeah?
That's my impression of what the NA model of freedom seems to mean these days.