Video exposing Tim Cook's anti-consumer decisions

[theluggage]

Transitioning over to the thread title, more specifically, anti-consumerism. Removing niceties (i.e., pampering) is not anti-consumerism.

Depends on your definition of "anti-consumerism" here. This isn't about the sort of "anti-competitive practices" which are widely restricted by laws, it's about taking the consumer for granted by removing those nice-to-have extras for the sake of shaving a few cents per unit off the bill-of-materials. It might be a symptom of anti-competitiveness but it's not the cause (the cause being that once you've committed to a computer or phone platform, switching is a major hassle).

Dock and microfiber cloth should be obvious, of course, they’re just nice-to-haves (included).

The cloth is the typical nice-to-have thing that we don't have any more. The cost was negligible, and its something that wears out, gets soiled or lost so having more than one was never a problem. Unfortunately, apparently some people out there are daft enough to pay $20 for an Apple cloth - so blame them.

The Dock is more of a case of something that was included when Apple were keen to establish the iPod as a new product and dropped once it was successful. When I bought a dock for my iPod it came with a power supply and charge cable which made sense at the time because most people would want to leave the dock plugged in at home & carry the original brick and charge cable around on trips. Post-iPhone, the dock came on its own and you'd have to buy the dock and a brick and a cable for the same experience.

Another example - when MacBook Pros had DVI ports they came with a DVI to VGA adapter. Not relevant in 2025, maybe, but at least through to the mid-2010s more or less essential to anybody who ever had to give a Keynote/PowerPoint presentation - and accumulating more than one was never a problem (I was continually lending these out at meetings/conferences and not getting them back) - that ended ~2009 with the switch to MiniDP (but I was still repeatedly buying VGA adapters, which was still the defacto standard for meeting room projectors). The introduction of the all-USB-C 2016 MacBook might have gone a bit more smoothly if it had come with VGA, USB-A and HDMI dongles (well, the USB-C aspect at least - shame about the keyboard and thermal issues, that is).

Or, maybe, the failure to re-introduce Target Display Mode to the iMac once TB3 made it feasible again.

I'm not going to try and blame this on Tim Cook - the trend seems to be more correlated with the rise of the iPhone and Apple becoming such a huge company - which is unsurprising.

Are you really unaware/disregarding Apple product criticisms that led to short lifespans, discontinuations — yes, even if primarily due to price (i.e., value)?

Well, the stand-out example would be the aforementioned 2016 MacBook Pro with Butterfly Keyboard and Wonderful Touch Bar. Except that was launched after criticism of the USB-C only/Butterfly 12" MacBook - except that still survived a full 3-year product-design cycle (with various attempts to kludge the Butterfly keyboard and thermals in denial of the fundamental 'you tried to make it too thin' problem) until the 2019 16" MBP finally backpedalled on keyboard, thickness, MagSafe and HDMI...

Or the 2013 cylindrical Mac Pro, which was criticised from the get go, but the faults weren't acknowledged until 2017 and wasn't replaced until 2019.

Or (and I hope I don't Godwin this thread by mentioning it) the charging port on the Tragic Mouse. Still not fixed (If you haven't used a mouse that can be charged in-use, it's just better and doesn't stop you recharging overnight or doing a coffee-break top-up).

I don't think the examples you list are particularly good - they're more down to perfectly good products being cancelled because the market went away (or because Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy).

The #1 practical criticism of the HomePod is the lack of any sort of aux input to make it usable outside the Apple ecosystem. That hasn't been fixed with the re-launch. I'm pretty sure that the first one failed because of bad timing: it was perfectly credible as a high-end wireless speaker and was very competitively priced vs. the likes of Qube, Bose, Sonos etc. at the time. Unfortunately, its launch coincided with a boom in super-cheap (because they were subsidised cash-registers for Googlezon) AI home assistants - which is what HomePod got compared with (although its strong point was sound quality, not AI).

XServe had 2-3 reasons to exist at launch - (1) it didn't require per-seat licensing for users, unlike Windows Server, Netware, commercial Unixes etc. which were the main server OSs at the time. (2) It supported Mac-friendly protocols like AFP file servers and standard SMTP/POP/IMAP email etc. whereas Netware and Windows then used proprietary protocols with often-patchy Mac clients. (3) Debatably, at the time, PPC was a better platform than Intel. It was certainly a distinction from x86 server hardware.

When XServe was dropped, Linux had taken a huge share of the server market, and you can't beat free, everybody was shifting to Web-based tech which would run on any old server on the one hand, while Macs had got a lot better at interacting with other platforms and AFP had been replaced by SMB (plus there was perfectly good AFP/TimeMachine support on Linux). PPC was a busted flush, and the Intel XServe was nothing to write home about hardware wise when cheap, commodity x86 kit could handle "serious" server jobs, while even cheaper NAS "appliances" could dp the basics in point-and-drool mode. Apple no longer had anything distinctive to offer. The much-mourned Airport/TimeCapsule products are similar: when launched they were about the only WiFi that "just worked" & supported AFP, TimeMachine etc. Now there are 101 perfectly good alternatives and the Mac is better at dealing with 3rd-party products anyway.

iSight was important at the time when plug-in webcams - let alone Mac-compatible ones - were less common & needed FireWire or (on PCs) a PCI card. A few years later and USB 2, plug-and-play, no-driver webcams were 2-a-penny (plus, there was the continuing trend for laptops which tyoically had built-in cams). Again, not worth Apple having a product.

QuickTake - one of the first digital cameras and initailly successful - no fundamental problem with the product until the likes of Canon and Nikon belatedly join the party, at which point punters are obviously going to go for the "household name" associated with quality photography. Even Apple weren't the brand then that they are now. Plus, who knows whether Jobs would have needed to axe Quicktake, Newton etc. if Apple's finances hadn't been circling the drain when he took over? Had they had the cash, the smart solution would ave been to license a brand name (e.g. Sony were making cameras with Zeiss-branded lenses, Panasonic had licensed the Leica brand). Anyway, Apple had the last laugh when the iPhone and other smartphones all but wiped out the consumer photography market!

TLNR - these products weren't axed because customers complained. Turkeys with design flaws like the Mac Cube and Apple HiFi didn't hang around for long (unlike the 2016 MacBook Pro concepts). They were axed because the market went away or the market got over-crowded and it wasn't worth Apple fighting for a shrinking slice of the pie.

 

[eyoungren]

My OP was meant to inform.

Respectfully, you are informing people that water is wet.

Apple is a for-profit business. They do have a reputation and they do try to 'appear' like they care about the consumer, but ultimately they are beholden to the stockholder.

I find it difficult to believe that you are just now cluing in to this. Or, perhaps it is my natural inclination to not trust any company I deal with that has me just assuming that business will always screw me over. In any case, I regret to inform you that none of this is new information. At least, if anyone is paying any attention, it should not be.

 

[XboxEvolved]

If the video in the OP cannot convince people that Tim Cook makes anti-consumer decisions and is filled with corporate greed, then maybe nothing will.

Tim Cook could defecate in shoeboxes, slap an Apple logo on them and sell them, and if Apple was making astronomical amounts of money from their sales, many people would still defend Cook and that product.

Maybe he could make the Apple Straw since you go through so many grasping them.

 

[SalisburySam]

As I ponder the losses outlined by the OP and others, I’m reminded of another shrinkflation example, that of tuna fish. Raise your hand: how many remember the 7.5ounce can for $1.49? Today’s option is the 4.5ounce can for $1.99, obviously pricing varies across retailers and regions, but the “standard” size has lost 3 ounces or almost 43% net weight. Wallet effects are immediately obvious. What is less obvious is that no recipe using canned tuna has been updated to double the amount necessary for the same dish like, for example, a tuna casserole, vitello tonnato, others.

Oh the stressors in life.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I’ll add my gripe. I bought the new iPhone 16E. Didn’t need three cameras. The one it has is great. Biggest battery among all models. But not being able to use ProRes is a cheap tactic to make people buy a much more expensive product. It’s strictly a software issue to be able to take a video and have it go to an external SSD in real time. Apple has pushed me away. I will upgrade my 7 year old iPad this year, and keep my M2 mini going as long as possible, but this is beyond cheap greed. In 6-7 years I’ll get a flip phone if they are still available, or whatever can simply make and receive calls.

This kind of artificial segmentation is all Tim Cook and it's totally brand toxic.
I agree with you fully.

 

[SalisburySam]

…artificial segmentation…

Are we getting into animal husbandry here? Oh wait…

 

[I7guy]

I’ll add my gripe. I bought the new iPhone 16E. Didn’t need three cameras. The one it has is great. Biggest battery among all models. But not being able to use ProRes is a cheap tactic to make people buy a much more expensive product. It’s strictly a software issue to be able to take a video and have it go to an external SSD in real time. Apple has pushed me away. I will upgrade my 7 year old iPad this year, and keep my M2 mini going as long as possible, but this is beyond cheap greed. In 6-7 years I’ll get a flip phone if they are still available, or whatever can simply make and receive calls.

Apple has claimed they don’t artificially segment their lineups and I believe them. Different capabilities for different phones.

You of course can have whatever opinion you want and buy whatever hardware you are comfortable with.

 

[IJustWannaTalk]

The Apple Explain guy makes videos for people that are under 20 that don't know how to do 3 seconds of research. Getting less stuff in the box sucks I know. But this is every single company now. And also Apple did it long before Tim Cook become CEO. Just look at what an iPod originally came with, and what it came with in 2011. Far less accessories, pieced out and then sold by Apple. Seriously is everyone a goldfish now?

The lack of memory thing is sadly way too real.

 

[IJustWannaTalk]

Its true that it was a different time and you are also correct that no one is forced to by their products, but the only other option is Android or Windows... So for those of us that like a more secure, private, and locked down experience wrapped in a premium feel that all "just works" (in theory), Apple is our only choice. So it sucks they don't care about their customers more than they do. Before 2015 I feel Apple did care and now they just care about profits and nothing else.

I used to work at Apple Retail from 2006-2011 and I LOVED it! It was an amazing company, but my few remaining contacts there tell me that the Apple I worked for is LONG gone. Its a shell of what it once was and that is sad.

I was there 2003-05. I remember people would come in and try to stump us with questions.
And bring their Windows machines in because they didn't know how to work them when iTunes for Windows came out.
I know Apple is much bigger, but man, it was such a better buying experience back then talking with people who really knew the tech.

 

[IJustWannaTalk]

If the video in the OP cannot convince people that Tim Cook makes anti-consumer decisions and is filled with corporate greed, then maybe nothing will.

Tim Cook could defecate in shoeboxes, slap an Apple logo on them and sell them, and if Apple was making astronomical amounts of money from their sales, many people would still defend Cook and that product.

Not to defend Apple, but every single corporation is greedy as fvkc, because they work for their shareholders, not their customers.

The "real" bad guy here is poorly regulated capitalism.