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Comment by whstl | Hacker News Reader

While I agree that it's Tim Cook's responsibility to set the course and influence the culture, I doubt a new CEO will be able to so.

I'm not saying nobody can be like Steve Jobs, but Steve Jobs was an anomaly when it comes to C-Levels, and even when it comes to management in general, at least from reading things like www.folkore.org and interviews with people who worked with him.

And I'm not even talking about talent or vision or whatever, it's just about saying no to pointless features that are there for someone's ego or so that someone can get a promotion.

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Tim Cook overrides the advice of high-ranking employees in the name of greed and profit, even when warned such decisions will sour long term relationships.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/26/testimony-on-external-pur...

I’m not saying anyone will be better than Tim Cook, I’m saying he’s actively bad. Will his successor be actively bad too? Maybe, but the sooner we find out, the better.

Why is this stuff not reported in the mainstream media?

The general publics opinion of Apple is that they are golden and untouchable, the best tech company out there. The reality is much different.

> Why is this stuff not reported in the mainstream media?

- Because a lot of journalists are Apple fanbois

- The press publishers don't want to sour relationships with Apple (because of advertising deals)

- Publishing bad things about Apple would infuriate the many Apple fanbois among the readers, causing a shitstorm against the medium

By your logic, Apple would never get bad press. And neither would any other brand, since all of them have fans. Both of which are obviously and provably false.

Can you show some examples where Apple have got bad press in the mainstream media?

There’s a whole Wikipedia page just for criticism of Apple. Which itself links to other pages of more criticism. Take your pick, plenty of mainstream media articles listed there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc.

Bad press that never affects them somehow.

Of course it does. They changed course several times specifically because of bad press. Like killing the CSAM device scanning, or reinstating Epic’s developer account, or not killing web apps in the EU, or apologising for the crushing ad, or, or, or.

There is even a joke amongst Apple developers who all know that Apple’s claim of “don’t go to the press, it never helps” is a blatant lie as it’s the one thing that works.

> By your logic, Apple would never get bad press.

Not "never", but it is indeed my observation that the press is much "nicer" in their reporting and much more "forgiving" to Apple than to other similar companies.

In some circles, this observation already has become a running gag when the pen pusher is again too impressed of some Apple marketing.

My understanding is that negative press of apple gets you blacklisted from media events and early review devices.

The advertising deals with apple are not that lucrative, iirc.

So bad reviews are avoided to ensure the media gets the early review clicks.

Good point.

The owners of the stock are embedded everywhere in high, medium and low places. It's in the top ten of nearly every major index and mutual fund. No one is going to complain about Apple until the stock tanks.

So a good trader or shortseller (like the now defunct Hindenburg Research) would make such news public to attempt to make a profit off it.

So why isn't that happening?

That link alone has references to Associated Press and Bloomberg. It’s not hard to do a basic web search and find more, the trial has been covered by many outlets.

Tim Cook strikes me as a bean counter.

That's exactly what he is. He's an industrial engineer who rose up in logistics inside Apple.

Steve Jobs wasn't an anomaly because he was Steve Jobs; he was the anomaly because he was the founder and CEO. Founder C-suites can foundationally get away with actual innovation in a way that the board refuses to permit for their successors.

Back in the 90s, Apple seemed to have a lot of these same problems. Software quality was declining and they had real trouble executing on anything strategic. They aren't there yet, but they certainly seem to be headed down a similar path.

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