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khalic

… so… you’re talking about OpenAI or Apple?

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Ha ha. Worked at Apple for over two decades—would not have stayed at a company I thought was evil for that long.

A bully at times? I wouldn't argue with that.

A quick search:

APP STORE, COMPETITION, AND MARKET CONTROL

  - U.S. Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit Accuses Apple of monopolizing
    smartphone markets and anticompetitive behavior.
    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple-monopolizing-smartphone-markets

  - EU Commission DMA breach The European Commission found Apple in breach of
    the Digital Markets Act regarding steering rules.
    https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-finds-apple-and-meta-breach-digital-markets-act

  - Epic Games injunction sanctions Court rules Apple defied App Store order
    regarding external payment links.
    https://apnews.com/article/69b16572d2b2c990f6b69d4bbad9b57b

  - EU €1.8B App Store fine Fined for abusive music-streaming rules and
    preventing cheaper alternative information.
    https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_1161

IPHONE PERFORMANCE AND "BATTERYGATE"

  - Apple Will Finally Pay for Throttling iPhones (WIRED) Apple settled the
    throttling lawsuit for up to $500 million (without admitting guilt).
    https://www.wired.com/story/apple-batterygate-settlement-payments-finally-coming/

RIGHT TO REPAIR AND PARTS PAIRING

  - The End of Parts Pairing? Almost (iFixit) On how software component linking
    forces warnings and loses functionality.
    https://www.ifixit.com/News/100266/the-end-of-parts-pairing-almost

  - Self-Repair Programme Critique (Right to Repair Europe) Critiques
    serialization, remote authorization, and part restrictions.
    https://repair.eu/news/apples-self-repair-programme-is-not-the-right-to-repair-we-need/

  - France is Fighting to Save Your iPhone from an Early Death (WIRED) Regarding
    France's probe into planned obsolescence and parts pairing.
    https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-apple-france/

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE

  - Apple to pay $95 million to settle Siri privacy lawsuit (Reuters) Lawsuit
    alleging accidental Siri recordings and sharing with third parties.
    https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-siri-privacy-lawsuit-2025-01-02/

  - Apple's CSAM On-Device Scanning Critiques (EFF) The Electronic Frontier
    Foundation's critique of Apple's plan to scan photos on-device (later
    dropped).
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/apples-plan-think-different-about-encryption-opens-backdoor-your-private-life

LABOR CONDITIONS IN SUPPLY CHAINS

  - Apple Reveals Supply Chain, Details Conditions (Reuters) Early reporting on
    audit findings of child labor and work violations.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/apple-reveals-supply-chain-details-conditions-idUSTRE80C1KV/

  - Rights Group Says Apple Suppliers in China Broke Labor Laws (Reuters)
    Reports of excessive overtime and labor violations in Chinese factories.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/business/rights-group-says-apple-suppliers-in-china-breaking-labour-laws-idUSBRE85R0EF/

TAX PRACTICES

  - State aid: Ireland gave illegal tax benefits to Apple worth up to €13
    billion (European Commission) The EC ruling that Ireland gave illegal tax
    benefits to Apple, later upheld.
    https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_16_2923

Well, just enough evil to increase profit margins.

None of this seems like it could reasonably be described as evil.

How about these?

Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties (yahoo.com)

52 points by notRobot on Jan 1, 2021 | un‑favorite | 5 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607386

Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments (jessesquires.com)

468 points by ig0r0 on March 31, 2021 | un‑favorite | 291 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26644216

Apple removes nearly 100 VPNs used by Russians to bypass censorship (elpais.com)

31 points by speckx on Oct 1, 2024 | un‑favorite | 3 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41712728

Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA (open-web-advocacy.org)

514 points by yashghelani on July 14, 2025 | un‑favorite | 383 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44557348

Apple defined ICE as a "protected class" in blocking anti-ICE apps (boingboing.net)

146 points by baobun 9 months ago 69 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45520407

https://9to5mac.com/2020/12/29/iphone-workers-forced-labor/

Let’s try:

> Apple knew a supplier was using child labor but took 3 years to fully cut ties (yahoo.com)

Apple routinely terminates relationships with suppliers when they identify abusive practices, sometimes they’re slow about it.

> Apple's Cooperation with Authoritarian Governments (jessesquires.com)

> Apple removes nearly 100 VPNs used by Russians to bypass censorship (elpais.com)

Apple obeys local laws

> Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA (open-web-advocacy.org)

Apple chooses to maintain control over a specific implementation detail of their platform that a handful of nerds object to.

> Apple defined ICE as a "protected class" in blocking anti-ICE apps (boingboing.net)

The claim made in this headline is just straight up false.

I don’t know, I don’t think their less-than-ideal behaviour is anywhere bad enough to reasonably be described as “evil”. Otherwise, we’re probably all evil.

A list of very normal capitalistic practices. Borderline, sometimes ruthless, sometimes opportunistic. Evil is enabling genocide in Myanmar, which Meta provenly did. Evil is voluntarily steal millions of artworks for your own benefit, which OpenAI has provenly done. Etc…

Isn't polluting the environment evil? http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-airpods-repair-recycling-imposs...

That would describe mankind as a whole…

The cars that I’ve driven since 18, My contribution to the plastic problem over the years, etc.

The difference is Apple intentionally chose unrepairable design, despite much smaller companies offer repairable earplugs (See: PineBuds Pro).

Approximately no one ever breaks their AirPods, so the amount of waste eliminated through better repairability would almost certainly be non-existent.

"it's okay to be evil if being good wasn't that good anyway"

I can play the same game:

“Not virtue signalling is evil”

“Doing performative things that don’t actually improve anything but make nerds feel happy is good”

Repairability comes with tradeoffs, I like the fact that I can wear my AirPods in the shower.

There are many waterproof repairable products.

From who should I order the repairable wireless earbuds which are also better than the AirPods Pro 3 in every way?

It just doesn’t seem in any way reasonable to assume that “evil” is the simplest explanation here, especially since nobody is repairing the repairable wireless earbuds anyway.

If approximately nobody wants to repair their earbuds, why accept any design tradeoffs in the name of repairability? I can’t see it.

if nobody wants to run anything besides Candy Crush and Snapchat on their phones then why should Apple be forced to allow installing other apps?

It’s extremely telling that you couldn’t come up with an example based on reality.

But yeah, in that scenario it would be utterly nonsensical to force Apple to enable something which nobody wants.

It is reality today. You cannot install any app that Apple has not approved of.

You are clearly being dishonest here, I can install many apps besides the two you named.

Things obviously aren’t as bad as you want to communicate, otherwise you would not have to rely on strawmen like this.

Can you install Firefox with Ublock Origin?

So things are really bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48975841

Extremely good chance this particular issue is resolved by merely wiping clean the contacts on the AirPods and the charging case.

Those are also normal capitalistic practices.

I’ll defend batterygate. If you know anything about batteries (especially the tendencies of those in that era), the actions taken by Apple were reasonable, though they should have considered the light in which throttling would be taken. The claim against them was valid but I don’t think the actions were ever malicious.

What about the kids they intentionally get driven to suicide by keeping the blue bubbles for no other reason than child indoctrination due to bullying from other kids.

wat

Sounds like a societal and parenting problem that Apple has nothing to do with.

My first reaction was that it was ridiculous, or at least hysterically framed. But the claim is that the whole point of the bubble colour thing, from Apple's perspective, is to take advantage of status games among (largely) kids. If that's true, then it's probably fair to hold Apple partially responsible for the predictable negative consequences. I'd be surprised if something so silly was actually decisive in the worst cases, but I guess if this is playing out among millions of kids, it may be having outsized effects occasionally.

Sure, so now because kids are dicks, I shouldn't be able to tell what's a iMessage and what is an SMS?

I suppose companies like Nike are to blame for putting their logo on things as well.

People are raised by their environment.

You ok bro?

These are quite heavy accusations. Do you have a source for your claim that this was the intention?

> Ha ha. Worked at Apple for over two decades—would not have stayed at a company I thought was evil for that long.

Maybe, just maybe, you are also evil?

From what we know this far it’s quite easy to be on Apples side in this particular question, right?

Especially since Apple has no history of doing this—suggests this is on another level of theft.

(I worked at Apple and am aware of little "theft" incidents that came and went. Obviously those little incidents never made the news cycle.)

How could you have worked at Apple during the entire Samsung lawsuit and say Apple has no history of suing competitors over IP theft?

Because Apple didn't sue Samsung over IP theft. They sued them over copyright infringement.

It was actually patent infringement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Samsung_Electron....

Copyright infringement is a sub-category of IP theft. Other types of IP theft include trademark infringement, and patent infringement.

Sure, I guess. But I think people reading this thread are drawing a line between "Copying the publicly-visible IP" and "Inducing employees to walk out with trade secrets in hand." No one at Samsung was facing prison time. People at OpenAI very well could.

You're right—I didn't mean to suggest they've never sued competitors. Some companies are just known to be litigious—I've never put Apple in that bucket. (And maybe I have blinders on. It's certainly fair to blame me for being biased.)

Yes it was more of a jest than a critique, the comment didn't explicitly say which one it was. In this case, it seems quite clear that Apple has a case.

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