[shreyansh_k]

Statements such as "Stating the simple fact that Apple has the ability to increase their resources is not somehow offensive." is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Plenty of people (and their companies) die trying to "increase their resources". Apple is no different or special from any of the other companies participating in the economy. I'm not an Apple fanboy but even I do see the point that statements such as "enough spare money" generally do not get anywhere simply because they patronise their targets and imply that somehow someone being rich makes it morally correct to grift them or break them.

It is agreeable that Apple doesn't care about any of us here. It's simply due to the fact that our relationship with any company is purely transactional. No one shouldn't be burdened with the responsibility of something they can't control, thus, no one should hold other in responsibility of something they have don't have authority over.

[smoldesu]

> Statements such as "Stating the simple fact [...]" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

That statement is just a fact. Normal people are not being offended by calls to regulate Apple, most of them don't even realize until they update their iPhone to Apple's conformant implementation and scare-ware modals.

You know what people want? They want all their messaging apps to go away so their carriers can finally figure out what "SMS" actually means. They want mobile sites to stop saying "This resource is not compatible with Safari", and they want developers to offer them better experiences at lower prices. Apple has the largest margins of any hardware manufacturer in their league, and software margins just as large as the industry leaders. It's not just that Apple has money; it's that they have no excuse to neglect the development of their platform. They are replete with capital, and spend those financial resources blocking out their competitors.

[afavour]

“Other companies have failed in the past so we shouldn’t assert anything about a public company’s finances” is just silly. I’m not making a legally binding statement in a court filing or something. We might as well just shut down Hacker News entirely if we aren’t able to talk freely.

> imply that somehow someone being rich makes it morally correct to grift them or break them.

I can’t help but feel like you’re injecting an unrelated personal view into the discussion here. Apple is not a person, personifying a company muddies the waters, not clear them.

[shreyansh_k]

> “Other companies have failed in the past so we shouldn’t assert anything about a public company’s finances”

Please don't put words in my mouth. My original statement was only to the effect of "people (who are not associated to a respective company) shouldn't take calls on how the respective company should spends their budgets" and not to discourage the discussion of the finances of a company.

I assure that it definitely is a personal view... and all of us are projecting our own personal view(s) in this discussion _because_ this discussion is largely about the many ways to interpret this.

Anyway, not to take anything away from your point, even in the eyes of American/European law, a corporation is sometimes actually treated as a person, depending on circumstances. So, I think it is useful to look from that perspective as well.