There Are Some Things You Should Know About Apple

What follows is continued from this post: Getting to Know Apple.

I've watched Apple for a long time. I follow them closely in the news, am a voracious consumer of their technology, and even almost worked at the 5th Ave retail store in college. Apple does a number of things that a company worth a trillion dollars will do, with the prime interest of course being themselves and their shareholders (understandably). Some of these things are awesome for the end user. And some of them... don't seem like they are? Some assorted experiences and observations over the years:

User Experience

🟢 Their user experience has been a little shaky since Steve, but they are still the best in the business. There is no possible way you can use an Android device and then an iPhone and tell me the difference isn't night and day. A huge reason for this is their tight software/hardware integration.

🔴 Software quality right after Steve passed was in the absolute gutter, and it has gotten slightly better since, but has never fully recovered. Around this time, Apple was pushing its online services really hard, obviously because now Tim was in charge and one thing he is really good at is squeezing money from a rock. What better way to do this than recurring subscriptions via software-as-a-service? Anyway, we were at the transition of MobileMe to iCloud, and it was an absolute disaster for a while. A lot of its features, which were now starting to get baked into macOS just didn't work, which caused macOS to also not work. My theory is that because of the shift in focus to online services, QA of the operating systems suffered. You can expect more of the same when Jeff Williams takes over (most likely successor?).

🟢 Apple Silicon. Epic win. I remember my first experience with Apple Silicon, the M1. Being someone who has been using an Apple laptop since 2004, from PowerPC to Intel to ARM... let me tell you, it felt different. It felt better: faster, snappier. I could have tons of shit open and it wouldn't feel like it was bogging down the system. Very different feel to the Intel I just came off of. Probably one of the greatest things to happen under Cook. Of course it took years for stuff to start to make its way to run natively on Apple Silicon, and running Docker images became a god damn hell hole. Even some hardware, like the CalDigit T4 Raid, just flat out didn't work anymore, and never would. I recently trashed mine. Very sad. Ultimately, a small price to pay.

Corporate Practices

🔴 They used blood tantalum. I found out about this when researching a material for my wedding ring. Tantalum, known for its hardness and corrosion resistance, is used in your iPhone and was sold by refineries and smelters in the DR Congo to Apple to finance things Apple's customers wouldn't be too thrilled about. Yeah, and it's also what my wedding ring is made out of, whoops. Whether they still use precious metals from questionable sources? Who knows, but probably.

🟡 And their whole green thing? You wonder about it. "We no longer ship cables/adapters with our products to save the environment." Hmm... if it was cost cutting and bettering the Earth without making you drop the f-bomb when you have to buy three separate accessories to use the damn device you just bought... then it might be fine.

🔴 [Remember all those supplier riots?] I don't know if COVID alone was to blame. It's probable Apple's insanely aggressive deal negotiations with vendors put tremendous pressure on workers, formerly spearheaded by this guy before his regrettable comments. Apple is Apple for a reason, you know. Sometimes the little guy happens to be underneath their shoe.

🟢 Remember when they apologized for the trash can Mac Pro? Absolutely wild times. I believe an apology from Apple was unprecedented then, and it never happened since. I guess their enterprise/creative business was really putting a sizable dent in their earnings?

Support

🟡 Apple Support may have a file on your purchase history. I was on the phone with a "level 3" support tech (I don't know, it took me a while to get to him, and it seemed like he really knew something) to handle something with one of my iDevices when he said something to the effect of: "Don't worry Mr. Jafari, I see you're an important customer for us, we'll get this taken care of for you." Total speculation, but that's how it felt.

🔴 Their track record on "right to repair" is super fishy. The long and short of it is they've changed their tune, a little bit, but you can see right through it. It's kind of like a drug that is illegal until someone in government can find a way to get their cut off its sales. I used to live down the block from this guy's shop, who can fill you in a bit more.

Human Resources/Employee Relations

🔴 Remember Cher Scarlett, the Apple software engineer who turned down $200k in hush money from Apple? More than a dozen employees past and present say Apple’s HR team puts the company’s reputation ahead of worker welfare. And she was their champion; unbelievable guts. And let's be real here, you know the allegations were true.

🔴 They don't care about your finals. Around May 2006, during my time at NYU, I was in training to work at the then just-opening 5th Avenue flagship Apple retail store. They had this super intense orientation hosted at, I want to say, Radio City Music Hall, but that's not quite right... some other big theatre, I think in midtown. Anyway, it was all day, every day for a week, during my finals. I went to my supervisor and said, "Hey, can I get a day to study?" The answer was a short and firm "no," and I was let go on the spot. LOL. The enormous training manual they provided us was filled to the brim with interesting Apple stuff, like: if you want to say "unfortunately" to a customer, don't. Say "as it turns out" instead.

🔴 Working until 4 am is a badge of honor. At first, various random rumors I heard on the internet, then confirmed by a friend of a friend who works there. Apple isn't a place you stay for a long time, just to put a few years on the resume.

Even So...

All this, but for now they still get my money.

I'll try and keep this updated with some more thoughts as they come to me, but for now, I've got to run. I await my cease & desist letter.