Cook has openly embraced Trump, particularly in his second term, attending the president’s inauguration, presenting him with an engraved golden trophy, and giving money to the White House to help construct the president’s $300 million pet project ballroom.
The relative workplace calm may be over. “I hope we never find out, but I seriously started wondering what our leadership would do if an Apple employee was summarily executed by our government,” wondered one employee.
Many workers claimed hypocrisy between Apple’s longtime professed commitment to progressive values and causes and the extent to which its CEO has cozied up to the Trump administration. “But but but…. we changed the Apple website to MLK last Monday, so that cancels out.” Another pointed sarcastically to the company’s recent announcement of Black History Month Apple Watch bands. “Went to hang out with the guy who didn’t even acknowledge MLK Day and took away park access on the day,” commented one worker.
For some, the affront was personal. “As a lifelong Minnesotan and an Apple badged employee for over half my life I feel pretty abandoned by the company that has told me it stands for humanity more times than I can count,” wrote another worker. “Silence on ICE violence speaks volumes.” Another pointed out the “Three retail locations in the Twin Cities and not a peep” from Cook. “This isn’t leadership. This is an absence of leadership.” To which a colleague quickly countered: “I disagree, this IS leadership. This is intentional, nobody travels to the white house by mistake.”
An Apple employee who has spent decades at the company said they had noticed a marked cultural and political shift within Apple under Cook’s tenure. “A lot of people are talking about how Steve Jobs would have never given a gold bar to a politician,” referring to the 24-karat gold trophy Cook presented Trump at the White House in August.
Oh wow a rich white gay man hid behind his sexuality to present faux-progressive values when he was actually pretty conservative? Funny how that keeps happening.
It’s almost like class identity often matters more than social identity in respect to politics.
He’s the perfect example of “Well they aren’t breaking down my door, it’s their door a few houses away.”
If there was only something Apple workers could do to send a message to Tim Cook that he can’t ignore. If only there was a card they could sign, and together do an action, a … collective action of some sort…
maybe one where they join together in a kind of organized… group? collective? I don’t know what the word would be for that, but it’s right on the tip of my tongue…
In mathematics it’s called a union, but idk if that’s related
I think this is how you pronounce it, if that’s of any help to anyone
We could call it a iNion. And we think you’re going to love it.
I’m shocked people are shocked Apple is supporting Trump. Apple’s been contracting slave labor from CCP concentration camps. They sell expensive gadgets that are hardwired to not let people repair them, and harass those who offer fair market repairs. Again, though, slave labor. Apple has not been on the side of human rights in decades.
Amazon, Dell, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Xiaomi have all used Foxconn. By 2012 it was producing 40% of all consumer electronics. That blood is on everyone’s hands.
Likewise Amazon, Samsung, Google, Tesla, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Cisco, Sony, and Microsoft all have supply chains tied to CCP forced labor. Hell Volkswagen has been tied to it. Over 100 global brands were found to be connected in a 2025 investigation.
So let’s not act like Apple’s out there alone in this. You’ve most certainly got electronics in your house that have components produced in such a way. You’ll buy more.
However, you’re very much right in that Apple is not the company it used to be. Lots of us who have used Macs since the 80s or 90s have an emotional connection to the platform and the brand, which has taken a lot to dissolve.
When Apple was the underdog, churning out failures and oddities, it was easy to love them, even as we despised a lot of the decisions they made. They were the crazy alternative to giant corporate bullshit. Jobs would walk into recruitment interviews with IBM employees, barefoot, sit on the conference table, and ask if they had ever done acid. Was he an asshole of epic proportions? Yes. Was he fascinating and unlike anyone in the industry? Yes.
Now people are waking up to the real Apple of today, the one that’s become a massive corporate juggernaut, the one that openly supports fascism, and we need to keep encouraging that, giving people offramps and alternatives, like I am looking for myself. We gotta cheer that on.
Fuck Apple. They are no better than all other fascism supporting US corporations.
I used Apple products for 20+ years. Switched to Linux 10 months ago and replaced my iPhone with a used Graphene OS phone.
No more US cloud services, no more US subscriptions. Fuck these fascists.
Same, completely big-tech-free now and it feels great. I moved to Linux roughly around the same time, I’m curious how your Linux journey is going?
I’ve always been using Linux on the side for the past 15 years, a little bit of selfhosting stuff here, raspberry pis for projects there, proxmox for pi-hole and home assistant, etc.
So it was more of a natural progression than a switch into the blue. I’m pretty familiar with Linux on the backend, so this is just my first deep dive into all day productivity on Linux. I am a fan of KDE plasma currently, and I use a lot of vim keybindings wherever possible - there’s a great plugin for librewolf too.
TL;DR: Overall, it’s going great.
This is the only answer
The mental gymnastics Apple cult members have to do each day must be exhausting.
And I, as a linux user, thought our community was bad sometimes. it’s no where near what the Apple Community has been like since…well…since forever.
I’m old enough to remember what it was like in the 80s and 90s, especially the 90s when Apple was on deaths door. To Apple users the company, even then, could do no wrong. I remember reading old Macworld magazines and it felt like reading a cults bible or manifesto. And the amusing thing is it was never a Jobs thing regardless of what anyone says. They followed and praised that company even when Scully, Spindler, and Amelio were in charge. They bought the Newton and loved it. When Jobs came back and killed the newton saying how he hated the stylus because he had five of them on his hand they were like “yeah, the newton sucks! we don’t need a stylus!” then well after his death when Apple released the Apple Pencil those same people were all “YAY A STYLUS!”
As long as it has an apple logo on it and they can whip it out at their local starbucks to show people that “they have money” that’s all they care about. Apple has and will always be a social status symbol. that’s it. And heaven forbid you call their products shoddy because then you’ll get flooded with replies saying their not and quite the opposite. “My Macbook lasted me 5 whole years!” yeah Chris, that’s not good. how are all your cables holding up?
I think you’re always going to look smart if you cherry pick the things said by different members of a large group. I can go back over that same timeline and find Apple users criticizing everything the company has done, all the way back to and including the Mac.
People criticized the original Mac for having a paltry 128K of non-upgradable ram and being basically obsolete within 6 months, after Apple released the 512K “fat Mac” and developers wrote software that used more than 128K of ram. People also criticized the Mac for not having colour (unlike the Apple II), and for breaking backwards compatibility.
That last point became a recurring theme throughout Apple’s history. People have been endlessly critical of Apple for it and Apple in turn has maintained a consistent contempt for backwards compatibility.
People criticized the lack of focus and the bewildering array of model numbers during the 90s. People criticize Apple every time they discontinue their favourite model.
People have criticized their butterfly keyboards and their stupid touchbar and the damn PowerBook 5300 battery fires. They criticized the cracks in the G4 cube’s case corners and the ducking iOS keyboard autocorrect! They criticize Apple’s forced software updates and their skeuomorphic designs and their use of colour and their taking away of colour and their damn one button mice!
On and on and on it goes! The point is that large groups of people don’t have consistent opinions. Heck, even individuals don’t have consistent opinions over time!
If you’re supporting Apple at this point, that’s kind of on you.
They’ve got a bunch of genuinely good content, which is a bit ironic given their dismal subscription numbers.
Apple TV runs circles around Netflix, HBO, and Hulu. But they’ve got a meager 3% of the streaming market share. It’s infuriating.
Pirate it. All of it. None of them care about you. Support independent media.
Sure. How do you think I’ve been watching it to begin with?
But ffs, why is it so hard for Apple to figure out how to get those numbers up? Every other company knows how to bundle their shitty products. You’d think they would know how to bundle something halfway decent.
It’s simple. They don’t have to. Apple is sitting on more actual cash than any company in history.
My man! 🤜🤛
Apple TV is BET for white people. Rich-White-Trash-TV
I like this take on the situation.
Agreed.
And here I am saving money with FMHY
Lot of Apple iseres that have drink the kool aid; iphone, macbooks etal
Many workers claimed hypocrisy between Apple’s longtime professed commitment to progressive values and causes and the extent to which its CEO has cozied up to the Trump administration.
I’m rather amazed with comments like these Did any of you really actually believe that the Apple CEO’s (any of them) actually gave a single fuck about these “charitable” subjects? Did you really actually believe that time cook could give a single shit about black History month or LGBT rights?
Fuck, he won’t even give a single shit about the trump administration or fascism for that matter. It’s all a means to an end, and the goal justifies the means.
There is one single thing that Tim cook, other apple CEO’s, and just any CEO in general cares about:
Money. Lots and lots of money
So far, pretending to be a progressive company got Apple loads of addicts that for some unexplained reason can’t seem to go without the company.
Now the trump admin came in and they saw where the wind was blowing. More moneys now requires Apple to cost up to the fascist government? Then we do that! The goal justifies the means.
I fucking guarantee you that if Apple can make more money by throwing their users under a figurative or even a litteral bus, Apple will do so. Apple will do whatever the fuck tum cook wants and Tim cook wants money
And if it wasn’t clear: This isn’t exclusive to Apple, this applies to prettyuch every big company out there. Even if you find that unicorn CEO that actually wants to make the world better, at some point he will quit (or get fired) and move on and you’ll have a different CEO who I fucking guarantee you, will not feel the same about peaky things like Richard and privacy.
So with all that in mind, how could you be so fucking stupid as to believe that apple was one of the good guys, are you still so fucking stupid to believe this of any other company, and have you now finally learned your lesson?
Not trying to protect Apple or Tim Cook, but can I just say that the headline is kinda silly.
This
Cook has openly embraced Trump, particularly in his second term, attending the president’s inauguration, presenting him with an engraved golden trophy, and giving money to the White House to help construct the president’s $300 million pet project ballroom.
should be a much bigger problem than watching a random movie at some random that was probably planned weeks in advance.
But I guess they need something news-worthy to pin it on.
The headline is telling what it took for the Apple employees to start speaking out. The headline is correct. Apple employees are the assholes for not speaking out earlier.
Are they angry enough to stop working for a fascist?
January 30th is right around the corner.
This is beside the point but PLEASE stop calling it a ballroom. It’s a bunker, data center, situation room, and whatever the fuck else they decide to pack in there
The Führerbunker
Hopefully where Trump resets his brain
Linus Torvalds didn’t.
So we’ve confirmed exactly one person has seen the movie.
Billionaires stick together. Doesn’t matter the company, rich people will support their fellow rich people.
No War but the Class War.
Cook, and Apple, can fuck right off.
Tone deaf…as always
