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Comment by latexr | Hacker News Reader

Because doing so would have generated goodwill, which would have lead to a stronger brand and more money in the long term. Instead, they shot themselves in the foot and put themselves in a situation where the launch of a new product (Vision Pro) was an embarrassing and utter failure with lacklustre support from third-parties.

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It is a shame that people want to believe that companies are or will be good. Or that they should even be given "human" expectations. Companies are not people and should not be afforded being treated as such. A companies function, especially if it is a publically-traded company is to continuously provide greater return for investors, so say the majority of prospectus. What we the people, regardless of country, need to start doing is holding the company heads to account, perhaps if the threat of execution (is China right here?) could "make" the company/people good? Something needs to be done before everything we have and "are" as a human will be, is a subscription to life.

> It is a shame that people want to believe that companies are or will be good. Or that they should even be given "human" expectations.

That’s not the argument at all. I don’t understand the point of your response, it has nothing to do with the points made in my comment. I’m not defending Apple, I’m doing the opposite.

Doubt they would have been considered “goodwill”. Investors would complain they are doing their fiscal responsibilities. Customers and companies would complain they didn’t do it soon enough and still didn’t do enough. And if people started having issues with their phones because of side loading they would not blame themselves they would blame Apple for allowing them to do so and potentially hurting the brand. Vision Pro as a test of hardware capabilities seems to be going as one would expect at the current price points. Once they release their first consumer focused glasses as an accessible price point, that will be the real test of the product category.

> Doubt they would have been considered “goodwill”.

Perhaps you haven’t been following Apple for long? There was definitely a period, not that long ago, where they had a lot of goodwill from third-party developers, especially indies, and that has steadily been eroded under Tim Cook.

They also took stances that were (or appeared to be) principled, which again placed them at a high degree of trust and goodwill (deserved or not isn’t the point, they had it) when compared to competitors.

> And if people started having issues with their phones because of side loading

I’m not talking about or suggesting side loading at all. That’s an entirely orthogonal matter.

> Vision Pro as a test of hardware capabilities seems to be going as one would expect at the current price points.

Vision Pro is not a “a test of hardware capabilities”. It’s not an SDK, it’s a product marketed and sold at regular people, it’s described by Apple as a product you can use for enterntainment and work, not an experiment. And it had essentially no adherence from companies and developers, there’s not even an official YouTube app, for a device where one of the major use cases is watching video.

You don't need goodwill when you have captured the market.

They haven’t captured every market (again, Vision Pro), and the ones they have they are losing power in.

Why would they want goodwill when they can run propaganda campaigns against this instead?

Tim Cook's most important customer is Wall St, granted that is every CEO these days.

The enshittification ceiling is pretty damn high but I get the intuitive sense the profit at all cost model's long term downsides are going to start showing up for dinner soon.

Goodwill and for-profit companies are inherently incompatible things.

Generating goodwill doesn’t mean that you’re a paragon of virtue, you don’t even have to be good, it just means people perceive you positively. It’s fine to think people shouldn’t view for-profit companies positively, but arguing that doesn’t happen or that the two are incompatible is detached from reality.

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