[headShrinker]

A move like this fits with a more general ideology Apple has been advocating for the last three years. Privacy, security, and ultruism. Tim Cook has put is mark on the company. One of the first things he did was apologize, (for maps) something unheard of in Apple's culture. I haven't drank the cool-aid and Apple has a lot of issues. I do see they however are making attempts at differentiating from the general corporate behavior of the telecoms and Google. Cook is differentiating from Jobs as well.

[hackuser]

I don't know enough about their new ethical approach to say whether it's PR, whether it's just a few well-publicized decisions, or whether it's broad-based and substantial. I'm not saying either way; I just don't know. But it could make me a loyal customer much more than cool design and fashionable cache ever would.

[alsetmusic]

A couple days after Tim Cook stepped into the CEO position, he reversed a Jobs policy and announced that the company would begin matching employee donations to charities. I considered this a fairly classy and subtle way to signal that he wasn't going to lie down on the job (it had been requested many times on company mailing lists).

Source: I was on those lists.

[tajen]

As a French person without the culture of corporate donations, I'm both wondering why it was seen as negative that Apple didn't match? Shouldn't they redirect donations to people they prefer?

[athenot]

It's just another perk that's customary in large US corporations.

By comparison, it's like the ticket repas and chèques vacances in the French companies—getting subsidies for food and vacations would look quite odd to Americans.

Different cultures, different perks.

[thaumasiotes]

> getting subsidies for food and vacations would look quite odd to Americans

Silicon Valley companies frequently subsidize food for their employees.

[milge]

Because it's a tax writeoff and the more time workers are at the office, the more work is getting done. Or so the managerial thought process goes.

[alsetmusic]

Certain teams at Apple get free dinners to boost morale when working late. This included a pretty nice catered meal once a week in my department. No doubt, this is common at industry leaders.

[retox]

Seems incredibly self entitled to me. Why should your employer shell out money for whatever their employees decide? I don't understand it at all. What if you want to donate a controversial charity?

If you feel that strongly about a charity double your own donation.

[lukeschlather]

You seem to have this notion that employees are asking for handouts. They aren't. They're saying, "Hey, I would like a $5k raise. I know you're planning on giving it to me anyway, but I wanted to point out that if you do it in the form of charitable matching, the company will only have to reduce its income by $4700 to give me that $5k raise, since the matching is tax-deductible."

The company essentially gets to offer me more money at no cost to them if they structure their compensation this way. You could be very transparent with this and simply allow employees to direct the company to put money into charity (with the tax going to the charity instead of the government) but it's probably easier for the accountants to simply do matching with a cap, which is why you see companies do it this way.

[Cacti]

It's not everything. Usually there is a list of acceptable national charities for things like heart disease, diabetes, MS, education, poverty alleviation, etc. Chances are you'd recognize every one on the list. Sometimes employees vote on that list, sometimes it's mostly set by HR.

[mikestew]

"Usually"? My experience with companies large and small has been that if it's a 501(3)c, they're on the "list". For instance, unless you live in western WA, I guarantee the "chances" you'd "recognize" the animal shelter to which we divert our employer match is zero. Now if your chosen charity is "Whitey Uber Alles", meh, maybe it might be an issue. Don't know from experience, who's going to say "no" to an animal shelter?

It boils down to a tax write-off that allows the company to look charitable. But there's a lot of benefit along the way, so who cares of the motivation?

[retox]

I see, thanks for the insight.

[st3v3r]

Couldn't you say the same thing about any perk? "Oh, you want more vacation time? Seems incredibly self entitled to me." "Oh, you want free coffee? Seems incredibly self entitled to me."

[srtjstjsj]

It shows management sharing decision-making with employees.

[ewzimm]

They just didn't donate to anybody, which looks bad when the founder of your biggest competitor is also the world's biggest-spending philanthropist.

[protomyth]

Was there a list of what were acceptable charities for the match?

[vitd]

There are a number of companies set up specifically to help with matching grants. See Benevity, Double the Donation, etc.

https://www.benevity.com https://doublethedonation.com

EDIT: They generally keep lists of charities that most companies find acceptable to donate to.

[protomyth]

The first one has certificate problems and the second doesn't provide a customer list (probably a good thing). I was specifically asking if Apple had a list of charities that it found acceptable for matching donations.

[nostromo]

When they took on the FBI I decided that it was more than just vacuous PR.

A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist. It took real cojones for Apple to stand up for privacy at such a time.

[piyush_soni]

I supported Apple's stand against the FBI, but believing it's purely altruistic would be simplistic and optimistic thinking at best. When safety and security are your perceived selling point, it's the best PR you can have. I'm not entirely sure about the validity of this nytimes article [1], but if we believe it, Tim Cook had asked FBI to submit their request 'in private' - but FBI did it openly, so Tim Cook 'had to' become the privacy crusader.

[1] : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-be...

[coldtea]

>I supported Apple's stand against the FBI, but believing it's purely altruistic would be simplistic and optimistic thinking at best. When safety and security are your perceived selling point

Only safety and security weren't Apple's "perceived selling points".

They were mostly touted for user friendliness, it just works, being the first to bring some technologies to market in a well-thought way (e.g. as opposed to crude crap for early adopters), style, high-end ("luxury") items, etc.

[throwanem]

Safety and security are absolutely a selling point, although not one they lean hard on in their own marketing materials. But it comes up in any comparison between iOS and Android, and not without reason.

(Incidentally, why the past tense?)

[coldtea]

>Safety and security are absolutely a selling point, although not one they lean hard on in their own marketing materials. But it comes up in any comparison between iOS and Android, and not without reason.

I think security with regard to malware (of which Android has like 90+% of all mobile malware according to surveys) was a selling point, but not safety/security in the privacy/encryption/etc way that the FBI incident was about.

That wasn't, as you say, much on Apple's marketing materials, nor was it much of a factor for the majority of buyers.

>Incidentally, why the past tense?

Because safety and security have become something of a selling point for Apple as of late (I'd say post the FBI incident), but it's not long ago they weren't.

So the past tense was meant to convey that those other things were Apple's selling points "back then", but leave the door open for security being a selling point for them now.

[piyush_soni]

Most of the other things you're talking about, can now be seen with flagship products of other major companies.

User friendliness, style, high-end luxury - all major companies flagship - check.

It just works - Apple - uncheck. :) (It's largely a myth)

They were actually touting privacy as a differentiator from Android devices.

[IBM]

It's perfectly compatible to comply with the law and still be known for security and privacy and there's no reason Tim Cook "had to" oppose law enforcement. The only people who don't believe this is the HN crowd. This is a fraction of the people who believe Apple was in the wrong for opposing the FBI.

[piyush_soni]

Yes, it's "perfectly compatible", but that also means it's "perfectly normal". And normal is no good when it comes to advertising - that's no PR. How about a company which can fight even with the government for your privacy? Now that will make the users drool.

[snowwrestler]

In general I object to the line of thinking that good things are only good if done for purely altruistic motive. I'm not sure if that's exactly your line of thinking, but your comment seemed to me like it was in that direction.

One of the reasons capitalism works is that it converts customer wishes into tangible economic benefits for a company. If Tim Cook had PR as 50% of his reason for taking on the FBI--wouldn't that still great?

It was good that he took on the FBI. And it if he was responding to his customers' wishes, isn't that good too? So why would combining those be somehow bad?

Sure, Apple is undoubtedly aware of how privacy is a marketing advantage. But since we like privacy, let's not find convoluted ways to dislike Apple for trying to please us.

[dmichulke]

Not sure whether it has a name but I believe long-term thinking + egoism are undistinguishable from altruism, maybe they are even the same.

[jpttsn]

That's a sort of faith that doing nice things will eventually pay for itself. Isn't that a bit naive?

[Quinner]

Enlightened self-interest.

[andyjdavis]

>A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist

Not if they were any good at their job. Very publicly standing up against what many would see as heavy handed government and being seen to defend the rights of the little guy (who happen to be their customers and potential customers) got them an enormous amount of very positive press not just in the US but in many countries. It would have cost them a small fortune to pay for that kind of advertising.

I am not saying that it wasn't a good thing for them to do but I really doubt it was some sort of selfless act that happened over protests from PR.

[matt4077]

It's not easy to decide either way. I recently advised a women's rights organization in a similar matter: they were poised to publish a scathing (and somewhat stupid) indictment of islam with regards to women's rights. It's obviously a minefield, with popular opinion divided almost equally.

You have to judge the intensity of emotions it will cause in people, the propensity of people to act on those emotions and the base desirability of the different groups.

In this case, they rightly passed on the 'opportunity' because it seemed as if the people who would agree were unlikely to donate to women's rights in the first place (and vice-versa).

(And because their employees threatened to collectively quit)

[robbiep]

> 'with popular opinion divided almost equally.'

that's interesting. This is a factual statement, or is it opinion?

[matt4077]

I just tried to look up statistics and the results mostly depend on the wording. "Afraid of islamic radicalization": 53:47, "Islam part of Germany":37:60, "Muslims can be German": 70:30 etc.

[coldtea]

>Not if they were any good at their job.

That's close to the "No true scotchman" fallacy though.

Truth is, most PR persons in real life would not have gone this far against FBI in such a situation. Even if the "standing up" gave them some positive press, there would still be millions of conservative types giving them hell for not helping catch the bad guys.

In fact even progressives is not a given that they'd have applauded. Imagine if the FBI next asks Apple to help them with the phone of a rape/murder suspect, or the guy at Orlando.

[aaronbrethorst]

Good PR is sort of like a Turing Test of being a decent human being; it cannot be differentiated from being a reasonable person.

[smnscu]

Wow, how gullible you are. It's obviously Apple and FBI are actually best buddies and this was just a PR move to sell more iPhones. Wake up, sheeple. /s

Seriously, the cynicism in this thread is deplorable even for HN standards.

[piyush_soni]

Language aside, the cynicism might not be entirely invalid too. It might be naive to believe any one side of the two (i.e., entirely PR, or entirely for 'the greater public good')

[LoSboccacc]

Eh you know right that TC was more thaneager to comply if FBI had issued the request privately?

All the thing was a PR show from both sides.

[nicky0]

Your source for this allegation?

[LoSboccacc]

all trace back to this

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/technology/how-tim-cook-be...

"Apple had asked the F.B.I. to issue its application for the tool under seal. But the government made it public, prompting Mr. Cook to go into bunker mode to draft a response, according to people privy to the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity."

[st3v3r]

No.

[Kristine1975]

>A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist.

Why exactly? If Apple wants to make privacy and security its unique selling point, it has to deny an FBI request to unlock one of their phones. Anything else would be a PR debacle.

[ff10]

Does it really matter if it is PR or not? It doesn't change the result, regardless if it is a good result for you personally or anyone else. I understand that people are looking for reasons to like or dislike a brand because, I believe, most of us see a brand choice as a reflection of (a part) of our personalities – that includes company politics. But in the end we have to assume that Apple does what's best for Apple and that includes advocating for civil rights _as in_ defending one of their main selling points. However, Apple is not your buddy, it might pretend to be here and there, but after all corporations are not people.

[k-mcgrady]

Does it really matter if it's just PR? They're still doing it at the end of the day. Their reasoning doesn't really impact the user.

[nl]

fashionable cache

Not a fan of Memcache? Personally I find it has a certain cachet about it. /jk

[Kristine1975]

>altruism

Then why does Apple avoid paying taxes?

Let's not kid ourselves: Apple is a company, and companies are only "altruistic" if they expect that it will help their bottom line.

[adrianN]

Billings Learned Hand once said:

> Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.

If we want companies to pay more taxes (which I think we do want) we should change the laws. You can't blame anybody for only paying the legally required amount of taxes.

[Aker89]

I do agree that the only worthwhile effort is to change the laws. It's fundamentally wrong to have a system which favor those who can afford and have the resources to do such cynical tax planning. Just really fd up regardless of any political position. But hey, as long as all that corporate money is put into the political system, nothing will change.

[Kristine1975]

>You can't blame anybody for only paying the legally required amount of taxes.

Of course I can (and I do). Apple and various other companies go to great lengths to pay the least amount of taxes they can get away with.

[lowtolerance]

Why would anyone - individual or corporation - pay more taxes than they are legally obligated to pay?

Don't get me wrong: I believe that corporations should be obligated to pay much more in taxes than most currently do, but I'm going to assume that you don't knowingly pay more in taxes than you owe. If I'm wrong about that, then I'm interested in hearing your reasoning as to why you feel like the government is entitled to money to which they have explicitly stated that you aren't required to pay if you meet certain conditions.

[ScaryRacoon]

> Why would anyone - individual or corporation - pay more taxes than they are legally obligated to pay?

Because they can't afford the accountants and lawyers required to pull of the funneling of funds through various bodies and countries to get said reduction in tax burden?

[amazingman]

This is dogmatism. The FBI situation clearly demonstrates that Apple does not only act in the interest of the bottom line.

[jshevek]

It would have cost apple time and money to do what the FBI requested. This wasn't simply 'send us a file', they asked them to make a custom version of the software.

And if they did it, the FBI would have made more future requests for apple to spend time and money.

And if the custom software somehow got out into the wild, that would threaten apple's bottom line as well.

The FBI situation was just another example of apple taking care of themselves.

[Kristine1975]

>The FBI situation clearly demonstrates that Apple does not only act in the interest of the bottom line.

I don't think it does as I've explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11959074

[nickpsecurity]

I agree with you. They're not altruistic at all and the FBI thing was likely a PR campaign. They already have a number of behaviors that hurt users, app developers, and people in the supply chain. Far as security, the hardware engineers know there were attacks all the way through the stack that can be mitigated with certain tech that would probably cost them a few million or tens of million one-time development. They used a weak, 3rd-party approach instead. They never brought up these weaknesses, which all commercial smartphones have, during the debate. They still don't.

So, let's recap. Tim Cook, already hit due to privacy issue, might have a personal stake in improving privacy in tech. They knew their products weren't secure. I knew third parties that could've cracked it as they cracked IC's designed for security w/ obfuscation & tamper-resistance. As I predicted, the FBI ended up finding a group that cracked it for a low, six digits. That means the attack was easy with much of that probably profit.

That Apple knowingly leaves their devices insecure despite having money and incentive to knock out low-hanging fruit means all this talk is mostly branding. They're just differentiating themselves with appearance of greater security/privacy. Like they did when they said Mac's were immune to malware back in the day. Except this time, they actually deliver a good chunk of what they claim at least. I'll give them that. :)

[amazingman]

This completely ignores the potential financial downsides of multiple vectors of consequences in the FBI case. For example:

- non-technical (i.e. most) people interpreting the situation as "Apple protects terrorists"

- provoking the creation of legislation that would impose backdoor requirements on their software

- potentially extreme financial consequences if the court were to take a hard-line pro-FBI stance (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-laws...)

Again, the refusal to admit that it is possible for a company to behave altruistically in the face of clear evidence is simply dogmatism.

[nickpsecurity]

I'm not rejecting that the act itself might have been altruistic. It may have been. I've merely suggested it might not be, that there's no proof it is except incidentally, and certainly doesn't support them being altruistic as a company. The evidence I offer is all the selfish or abusive practices they do at various levels for maximizing their bottom line. That's for them not being altruistic. Far as acts appearing altruistic, image management and public relations are huge, money-making fields. The reason is that big companies often do something altruistic (or seemingly so) to get people to buy their stuff. Apple has a history of doing that, including with fake security ("Macs can't get viruses!"), to get people to buy their stuff. Given that history & insecurity of their phones, it's right to question whether them championing secure, private phones is a move to create or continue demand for their products given main competition is backed by a surveillance-oriented company. Clear differentiator available that might make them billions.

So, your claim is that a company with many selfish, damaging behaviors fought a legal battle over a case whose consequences might cost or make their shareholders billions depending on outcome and press. That... is consistent with rational, corporate self-interest. Their position also had social value to many & maybe the CEO even paused to do the greater good. That's dogma or speculation at this point given they usually don't focus on public benefit plus are still misleading people about their security & privacy for profit that continues to be hoarded also with few or no investments benefiting the public.

Apple's not altruistic: they're a company that schemed and sued their way into billions in profits. Taking a privacy stance might make them billions more. Or maybe they're just a good citizen on one topic on a few occasions. I'm leaning toward the former but still glad their self-interest and the publics' aligned with them following through on it. All I'm saying on this topic.

[hochchristoph]

Let's not forget that in the US your shareholders can sue you, if they think you are not acting in their best interest.

[matt4077]

Let's also remember that this is basically a myth, judges give wide latitude to management, and every company ever has (often consciously) acted against their self-interest.

[NEDM64]

Because there's no reason to do that.

They need and are investing in other countries besides USA. Their mapping sucks completely in Europe.

[malka]

Apple does not do anything. Apple is not a person. Person do things. In this case, Tim Cook deciding "hey let's start paying a lot more taxes" will probably not be received very well by the shareholders.

[LeoPanthera]

> Then why does Apple avoid paying taxes?

Because they're a publicly traded company who act in the best financial interests of their shareholders. They're not breaking any laws. They're playing the game by following the rules as best they can while maximizing their profits. Any for-profit company that does not do so is suicidal.

If you think what they do is wrong - campaign to fix the laws they are following.

[Kristine1975]

So they are not altruistic. That was all I was saying with my rhetorical question.

[jpttsn]

Your unstated assumption is deeply troubling.

[LeoPanthera]

Being profit-seeking and altruistic to their users are not mutually exclusive.

[mei0Iesh]

How does not encrypting the kernel translate into a narrative worthy of such admiration? I feel like Apple has spent a lot of money and research into how to do brand marketing so that you would write this comment. I don't see how technically this move means any such thing, and instead people are primed to fall into such a belief because they want that feel-good story about Apple being their privacy hero in scary times when big brother is prying more than ever. It's just an unencrypted kernel, which was decrypted in memory anyways. It isn't even source code.

[jshevek]

Yes, exactly. Remember how everyone jumped on those "apple recycles all the metal" stories, which proved to be almost entirely false? People just love feeling good about apple, even when those good feelings are based on falsehoods.

[anonbanker]

Cook apologizing for Maps was a subtle way of sticking it to Scott Forestall even further.

Tim Cook is an excellent CEO, but Forestall was Steve Jobs 2.0. The company isn't the same without him.

[skc]

"Privacy, security, and altruism"

Hmm, the cynic in me thinks that they will play up those aspects of their offerings that make hurt their competitors. They sell hardware after all. Google sells "people".