Apple Inc.

Crunch.

Mind your own Business

"You're fired!"

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Apple Inc. is a U.S. manufacturer of consumer electronics founded in 1976, and also the most expensive world religion.^[1] It was innovative in the 1970s and early 1980s by borrowing some of Xerox's unused ideas, largely irrelevant in the 1990s, and returned to relevancy in the early 2000s by the development of modern macOS (originally Mac OS X) and later the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Whether these devices are truly as "revolutionary" as Apple claims is contentious, and even Apple fans will say that much of the hype is due to Apple's mastery of the media.^[2] They famously manage to keep customers loyal by means of their famous ecosystem. Their products famously have a proprietary aroma, somewhere between plastic and juniper, when first removed from the box,^[3] which some believe to be reminiscent of Bombay Sapphire.^{[citation NOT needed]} In 2016, they pulled the ultimate dick move of starting the trend of removing the headphone jack that other companies such as OnePlus, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, and Google followed suit, they removed Touch ID from their new   Apple iPhone  , although they replaced that with FaceID, a considerably more secure method, and even pioneered the trend of removing the charging brick and earphones bundled with phones when it introduced its iPhone 12 lineup of phones, being imitated by other companies (at least for their premium models). However, they had far worse dick moves via their litigation lawsuits, sweatshop working conditions, and tax offshoring to tax havens so they owe several million dollars to the Irish taxman.

Apple has also trendsetted the infamous notch,^[4] and non-replaceable batteries, making the mobile phone component with the shortest lifespan non-modular, as well as deliberately throttling the processing speed of earlier iPhones with the excuse of safety reasons in order not to put excessive strain on their batteries.^[5]

Apple is known for favouring design over functionality and robustness, which lead to the bendgate scandal in 2014 on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as the miserable “more than enough, compensated by software efficiency” 1715 mAh battery on the iPhone 6s.

Apple was famously headed by Saint Jobs the smelly (except from 1985 to 1997, as the board of directors were fed up with his BS). As of 2023, Apple’s CEO is Tim Cook, also famously named and referred to as Tim Apple by Donald Orange.^[6]

Brand image and the Mac(intosh)[edit]

Apple is known for their 1997 "Think Different" ad campaign, featuring a memorable monologue accompanied by famous people in history, including Amelia Earhart, MLK Jr., and Einstein. Clearly, if these people were alive today, they'd own Macs. ^{[citation NOT needed]} Before that, Apple parodied the book 1984 to announce, rather cryptically, a new product called "Macintosh," implying that their computers would be the ticket to 1984 not being "like 1984."

Apple has long relied on the image of selling Macs as the everyman's computer, not just a toy for nerds. The Mac was the system for beatniks, hippies, aspiring musicians, and college visionaries. It was "the computer for the rest of us," despite being overshadowed by offerings from Atari, Commodore, and eventually IBM-compatible models running Microsoft Windows. It had a special place in the hearts of those in publishing, because of its long history in the broader category of "desktop publishing" applications. Interestingly, Microsoft released Excel and PowerPoint for Mac before they ever did for Windows or DOS.

When the 2000s rolled around, Apple gradually replaced the older "Macintosh" name with the shorter nickname "Mac," and replaced the original OS with a new, Unix-based OS called "Mac OS X." "Macintosh" still shows up in a few places such as the "About" page on Finder or the default name for the system disk, "Macintosh HD." However, you never hear it used in advertisements or by company executives anymore.

Then came the famous ad campaign "Get a Mac," colloquially called "Mac vs PC." The Mac and Windows PC were personified as a casually-dressed Silicon Valley yuppie and a more formally-dressed businessman. The "Mac" would brag about having more equipment that works without drivers, supporting free creative software, coming in all-in-one options, being immune to PC viruses, and not suffering from the downsides of Vista. He'd also reassure customers that he ran Microsoft Office, or could even run Windows with Parallels. These ads are still parodied to this day on YouTube.

Around the same time, popular wisdom held that "Macs don't get viruses." Of course, this isn't true, and MacOS has had a number of malware incidents over the years. However, the security-heavy UNIX foundation does make it harder to write a virus, and the smaller market share means that people are less likely to write a virus for a Mac. Furthermore, Apple's "Gatekeeper", enabled by default, blocks software that isn't verified by Apple. Still, Macs are definitely not immune, especially if you turn Gatekeeper off. Apple also never advertised that its products are immune to viruses, only that they're immune to "PC viruses," or Windows viruses. This hasn't stopped people from believing that running Windows on Parallels or Bootcamp means the computer is immune to viruses, despite such computers literally being Windows PCs. Apple quietly stopped stating that Macs were PC Virus-proof and includes a page on protecting your Mac from malware.

Controversies and misconduct[edit]

Censorship[edit]

The first Apple computer; a device you could use as you wanted.

Buying a vastly overpriced $1200 Apple device means subjecting yourself to the corporate Apple morality police™ and also making yourself look like an asshole. Notice how people with Apple products refer to them as iPhones and iPads and normal people call their non-Apple products smartphones and tablets. Thanks to the proprietary clamp on the iPhone and iPad from software to hardware, you can install apps only from the app store,^{[note 1]} not to mention that you need accessories made specifically for them (so they're otherwise useless and they cause minor headaches for everyone involved when someone asks for a charger). Apple has some stringent rules on what apps can and can't be in the app store, and this leads to false positives. Examples of things that are not allowed:

• Disallowing software that utilizes the 3D touch touchscreen as weight scale^[7]
• Signing a Curtain declaration ("offensive").^[8]
• Game where you grow and sell weed (no reason given).^[9]
• Nintendo (NES) emulator (no clear reason given, beyond "it's an emulator", even though other emulators still remain in the store).^[10]
  • Emulators were banned from the App Store on the grounds that it facilitates piracy through the use of (illicitly downloaded) ROM images, unless if the emulator comes with pre-loaded games officially sanctioned by the original developers, hence why ports of popular console emulators such as PPSSPP and Dolphin are distributed as IPA files or Debian packages outside the App Store, with the expectation that the user owns a jailbroken device or has the know-how to self-sign a (limited) certificate for the app to be sideloaded. Perhaps hypocritically enough, Steve Jobs once gave his blessing to a Sony PlayStation emulator named Connectix Virtual Game Station in 1999 through a keynote in an effort to bolster the rather sparse Macintosh game library.^[11][12] They have since relented and allowed them on the store to some extent, provided that the target platform is old enough to be considered vintage and that (for some reason other than "security") just-in-time compilation is not allowed even in platforms that benefit the most from it such as the PlayStation Portable (PPSSPP).
• The game Papers, Please (bit of pixelated nudity). Apple then changed their minds, allowing the uncensored original game on the iPad store.^[13]
• 1920's comic version of James Joyce's Ulysses (mild nudity).^[14]
• Kama Sutra (can you guess why by now?)^[15]
• Many apps were pulled for displaying the Confederate flag, regardless of context ("offensive").^[16]
• Satirical cartoons ("defamatory").^[17]
• South Park app ("potentially offensive")^[18]
• The Sun (for the famous "page 3 boobies").^[19]
• Satirical game which explores child labor and factory-worker suicides and other ethical aspects of smartphone production ("objectionable or crude content"; conflict of interest much?)^[20]
• Learning app which included some lessons on Android (fuck the competition)^[21]
• Talks from the Chaos Computer Club, for including some talks about Apple security problems (they're criticizing Apple, we can't have that).^[22]
• Asking for charitable donations are removed because Apple can't be bothered to spend 2 minutes vetting the charity.^[23]
• Banning apps that facilitate VPN usage from the iOS store in China, as they violate Apple's policies^[24]
• Games which portray caricatures of Rodrigo Duterte and his lackeys mowing down (suspected) criminals through violent means.^[25][26][27]

• ...This list can go on for a lot longer...

Some of these apps were later approved anyway, usually following public outcry. If it takes public outcry to view an app depicting a boob or a satirical cartoon, you know something is wrong. It also makes you wonder how many apps were pulled without public outcry, and how much self-censorship is going on.

Right to repair[edit]

Apple has in recent years been criticised for making their devices less modular and increasingly difficult to service, earning the ire of right-to-repair and DIY movements who argued that such practices foster planned obsolescence and electronic waste. The iPhone 5S,^{[note 2]} for example, has a home button with a built-in fingerprint reader that is serialised to the logic board it came with; replacing it with an aftermarket home button or even an otherwise-identical part from a donor device will disable Touch ID functionality, unless if the fingerprint reader or the logic board is recalibrated with a special device only available to Apple.^[28]

This became increasingly prevalent as more and more key components such as cameras and displays have been serialised to work properly only on the hardware it was configured to, reaching a tipping point with the iPhone 13 where replacing the display disabled Face ID.^[29] After some backlash,^{[note 3]} Apple relented and promised a software update which allows display repairs to be performed without breaking Face ID.^[30] They also announced an "Independent Repair Provider Program" for qualified cellphone repair shops and ordinary users to be able to perform repairs themselves using genuine Apple parts and tools.^[31] This not only gave Apple some brownie points to paint a rosier picture of themselves as in support of the right-to-repair movement (case in point, Apple in its early years being forthcoming in disclosing schematics of their computing products through the efforts of co-founder Steve Wozniak, only for that to backfire when the Apple II was mercilessly cloned), it also allowed them to compete with less expensive parts providers from China and elsewhere whose components may be out of spec if not having the potential to damage an iPhone due to improper voltages, such as cheaper LCD units for iPhones which are designed to use lower-voltage LEDs.^[32] Not that it kept Apple from breaking functionality from the iPhone 14 when you swap certain parts such as the camera, though.

Treatment of its East Asian workforce[edit]

Apple uses Chinese and Taiwanese factories whose labor standards are significantly different than those in the West.^[33][34][35] In fact, at one point, Taiwanese workers petitioned Jobs personally about this.^[36]

Some workers in these sweatshops not only held strikes, but threatened suicide if their reasonable demands were not met. Jobs and his successors' response was that starving them made them more efficient workers than in the US.^[37] Being an insufferable asshole seems to be a job requirement both for the Apple CEO and its customers. (And don't complain when your dormitories are found stuffed with the collected works of Karl Marx.)

Jobs then lectured Barack Obama, in person, about how labour standards and unions allegedly stifle economic growth and are the reason Apple outsources manufacturing to China.^[38] He also explained, on the phone, that those jobs are never coming back.^[39]

Oh, and the iPhone has a profit margin of ... 69 percent^[40], and the iPad Air has a profit margin of 45 to 61 percent.^[41] And this figure doesn't even include the profits Apple makes from the app store, which are well over a billion USD^[42] So it's not like they can't afford to improve working conditions a bit.

Stealing shit through litigation[edit]

Apple is an avid litigator. It sues the ass of any company using "apple" in their name or a logo which resembles an apple^[44][45] or even using a lower-case "i" in a product name.^[46] This is rather ironic, as the name Apple itself is a trademark violation of Apple Corps, the Beatle-founded recording company. Apple initially settled in the 1970's by agreeing not to enter the music business. An agreement Apple broke without thinking twice by selling music with iTunes, leading to more work for lawyers and judges.

Apple's most infamous suits, however, are mostly over stupid non-innovate patents.

In 2006, Apple sued Creative for having a menu structure roughly similar to the iPod, even though the Creative device was on the market a full year before the iPod was.^[47]

In 2008, Apple sued HTC over a number of Android features, such as animations, minimizing windows, scrolling a page in a particular way, power-saving features (in a general non-specific way), turning the touchscreen off when holding the phone to your ear, and some more technical patents. Almost all of these patents cover techniques that existed well before the patent was filed, or are the sort of thing that any remotely competent developer will come up with on a daily basis while doing their job.^[48] Apple later sued Motorola and Samsung over more or less the same patents.

Eventually, Samsung paid a whopping US$1 billion to Apple over rounded corners (really) and an animation.^[49] Apple is still seeking US$2 billion more though, over... slide-to-unlock, autocorrection, the ability to tap on a telephone number to ring that number, and having a search box. All features any idiot would come up with and are about as innovative as stacking rocks.^[50]

Apple also doesn't shy away from some perjury to get their way. It was caught editing some images used as "evidence" that Samsung devices were exactly the same as Apple's on more than one occasion.^[51][52]

Ironically enough, a Chinese counterfeiting outfit going by the name Goophone threatened to file a (fraudulent) infringement case against Apple in 2012 on the grounds that their Goophone i5 – a counterfeit copy of Apple's own iPhone 5 – was released first, and therefore the genuine device infringed on the design of the counterfeit.^[53]

See also[edit]

• Chiquita, another fruit-related company that does bad stuff.

External links[edit]

• See the Wikipedia article on iSheep.
• See the Wikipedia article on Planned obsolescence § battery.
• See the Wikipedia article on Apple iFail MAGIC! MOUSE 2. – Notice the position of the charging port. At the bottom. Whoever designed this is likely brain-dead magically intellectually gifted.
• See the Wikipedia article on Patent troll.
• Video: “I want an iPhone 4” cartoon made in GoAnimate by TinyWatch (17.005.242 views as of 2019-10-07)
• Article: “What Android users think of iPhone users” (ComputerWorld.com article from 2019-10-07).
• Louis Rossman on YouTube.
• iSheep's thinking patterns exposed by Jimmy Kimmel.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]