> I don’t ever want to hear again how Apple is some champion of privacy and ethics.
Counterpoint:
They could have just rolled out the feature change globally. Instead Apple makes it clear with singling out China, that this change was demanded by the CCP.
They've had years to pull manufacturing out of China to avoid having to make these compromises, but they chose not to. They could forgo the Chinese market, as many other companies have, in order to avoid needing to make unsavory choices, but they chose not to. And don't blame the shareholders for pushing Apple to stay in China. By that logic, no company is guilty of anything.
It's very hard to pull manufacturing out of China.
No other nation has the combination of infrastructure, production networks, human capital, affordable energy, investment financing. I've long been fascinated by productive eco-systems -- how do they arise, what can destroy them, but suffice it to say that they are magical things. They often spring up out of nowhere, as a result of historical accidents, and then many try to duplicate them, usually without success. Lots of municipalities think they can create a new silicon valley in their dilapidated downtown areas if they throw in a few bike lanes, smoothie bars, and lofts -- and what happens is similar to Polynesian cargo cults, where you have bamboo air traffic control towers erected hoping that planes would arrive. Apple's failed attempts to move production to India should be an object lesson in how irreplaceable Chinese manufacturing is. Many Americans, which prize IP and design, yet are confused about manufacturing and insist it's just grunt work anyone can do, can't really fathom how uniquely productive Chinese manufacturing is compared to the rest of the world, and how difficult it is to matching even a fraction of that productivity.
New productive ecosystems will need to arise to replace it -- and it will eventually happen somewhere, but it's not going to happen on a corporate schedule and in locations you control. Similarly, attempts to "reshore" production to the U.S. are also doomed to failure. We do not have those manufacturing ecosystems anymore.
The productive ecosystems that sprung up in China are truly unique and stand along side the Ruhr valley, Silicon Valley, Detroit in its heyday, as world class ecosystems. You can't just move to another place and hope to get anywhere near the same productivity.
I get that it's a monumental problem. But Apple is the largest company on earth, with a mind blowing amount of cash on hand, so if anyone could afford to build a plant somewhere else, it would be them. It's not the same tier as recreating silicon valley - they would be building their own factory, not an entire tech ecosystem in a particular region. It's a difficult but solveable problem.
Counterpoint:
They could have just rolled out the feature change globally. Instead Apple makes it clear with singling out China, that this change was demanded by the CCP.