Loving a corporation happens, but most of what I see on HN is people understanding the tradeoffs that go into what Apple does and agreeing with Apple on those tradeoffs, even if the tradeoff is somewhat focused on making Apple money. If someone just defends Apple and doesn't elaborate it won't get any engagement/upvotes anyways.
Many people don't agree with those tradeoffs, and that's fine as well.
What I don't quite get is why only Apple is getting this treatment here. By that logic, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter/X etc are engaging in exactly the same kind of "tradeoffs", yet the dominant comments on here are usually (rightfully IMO) condemning those decisions while unconditionally defending them for Apple.
The only company I know of that is "doing it right" is Valve. Keeping themselves private really has paid off for them and has started to better the overall gaming community with their services, I think their cut might be a little high, but you do get a ton of value add as a dev.
Valve aren't so innocent themselves, they introduced the world of gambling to literal children through the marketplace of skins and Valve's tacit approval of 3rd party gambling sites.
I'm honestly surprised they never got raked over the coals by some up and coming State Attorney General, would be an easy win and easy political points.
Apple makes a pretty distinct set of tradeoffs relative to the others you mention. Yes there’s growing overlap as they focus more on services, but they do make generally principled decisions around quality and consistency of industrial design, user privacy, device and account security, and strong interoperability within their ecosystem.
I generally align with those tradeoffs and am happy to pay the premium for good design and to rebuff primarily surveillance- or ad-based business models.
Because Apple is primarily a fashion statement/display of wealth. It’s a luxury good first and foremost, and that means a lot a certain part of our brain, and so we unconditionally (sometimes even unconsciously) defend it. Especially amongst those who enjoy tech in California, as in that situation it also becomes a pride point, which is probably a large subset of active HN users.
You also see plenty of the opposite. For example one of the latest Apple stories is the patent lawsuit for pulse oximeters. HN is notoriously anti-patent so if the target was any company other than Apple, Microsoft, Google or one of the other "big baddies" they would be defended vigorously here. Instead you see lots of comments celebrating the shakedown.
Let's not forget that it's already not commercially viable to distribute consumer-targeted software on their desktop/laptop systems outside of their store. It won't be too much longer, and the ability to install non-AppStore software on will be removed from all of their products. For your protection, of course.
It's so unfortunate that zero other companies have managed to build a laptop computer that isn't complete garbage in comparison.
I left Apple products almost 7 years ago for Ubuntu (+ whatever hardware I can find), and after multiple abject failures, I found a Lenovo X1 Carbon.
This device is thrilling in that it actually works and continues to work through software updates. Unfortunately, it's an ugly bastard compared to the latest Mac Pro lineup.
Don't get me started on Pixel phones. I'm still stuck on the eternal question, "Are these just bad phones? Or are they the worst phones?"
The gravity well that surrounds Apple products is made of an outrageously large collection of extremely high quality user experiences and there are zero other companies who have figured out how to accomplish this absolute feat of human endeavor.
* Walks off tables (and dry hands) thanks to the atomically smooth surfaces
* Fails to detect rotation events
* Randomly detects false rotation events
* Turning off auto-rotate requires a rotate-dance to force a rotation to get detected, still completely fails sometimes.
* Which Google app does what, changes constantly for no reason (e.g. Nest vs Home, Hangouts vs Duo vs Gmail vs ???, Google Podcasts is going EOL, many more.)
* Camera adds AI artifacts to photos
* Google apps move their UI controls (my cheese) constantly for no reason
* Device search sucks. Exact matches for apps that are installed show the app result ~50% of the time, and web results the other 50%
* That gigantic camera slab on the back. WTAF?!
* Received SMS images from IOS users are potato quality
* Received SMS videos are useless
* Google deprecated security patches for my last Pixel after only 3 years. WTAF?!
* Bluetooth is still hot garbage when trying to use various headphones and cars
That's what I recall in a quick 5 minutes.
There are many more gripes, complaints and even some actual defects.
I recognize that i-devices have problems too. I recognize that some of these problems are caused by i-devices. I recognize that the utopia has not arrived for anyone.
Unlike i-devices, the entire device (and the software on it) do not feel like they were designed by a group of people who care about how it feels to use it.
It's obvious that caring people were involved in the creation of these devices, but they were always overruled and limited in their ability to accomplish their goals by dipshits with too much power and no values.
Ahhh, I understand, I don't use most of these features and have a QuadLock case on mine so I don't notice most of them. Yeah, that really sucks.
I have noticed it hates to detect my fingerprints and fails too fast. It's nowhere near the quality of my old Motorola. I think they sacrificed something to do that "Through the Screen" trick. Also the screen rotation thing is a pain.
I mostly bought mine because my previous Motorola lost security updates less than a year after I bought it. I need them for my work apps so it pretty much made that phone worthless. One thing I hate is that companies provide security updates for the time period after the phone is released, not last purchased.
Apple is definitely blowing away Android phones in almost every aspect. I just can't live with them after my experiences with their iPad and MacBook Pro. Butterfly keyboard, broken touch strip, power cord not working, one drop of water away from disaster. Gah!
Also, I'd suggest ditching SMS and encouraging family and friends to use an encrypted chat app instead.
> * Bluetooth is still hot garbage when trying to use various headphones and cars
This is usually the car's fault, especially if the car was made over a decade ago. Hell, back when I got my first car with Bluetooth built in, almost no contemporary Bluetooth devices would function with it.
> Let's not forget that it's already not commercially viable to distribute consumer-targeted software on their desktop/laptop systems outside of their store.
Please. macOS isn't iOS, and the App Store there is a guy shining shoes on a corner compared to the iOS App Store's megamall. Most macOS software sales don't happen there, and you can't even buy many flagship macOS apps (like Adobe's Creative Cloud suite) there.
Adobe has enough brand pull to convince consumers to check the scary little box warning them about installing software from outside the App Store.
This is not as easy for small companies with smaller brand footprints.
I am also making a prediction (that obviously could be wrong), that this scary little checkbox will eventually be deprecated in favor of a blanket ban.
> This is not as easy for small companies with smaller brand footprints.
Yes, distribution and discoverability is the value of the iOS App Store, and well worth small companies paying 15% for. On Mac, it's just another way to buy software, and developers can easily avoid it if they don't think the ROI is high enough.
It seems to me there is a contradiction there between "Apple’s positive effect on my life should not be underestimated [...] and I should love apple for that" and "Apple is not a real person and not worthy of your love".
People, including those you love, can also do things you don't like.
I'm not sure if I have a point here but the line of reasoning there doesn't quite make sense to me.
Apple tries to convince people it isn't a brand, but a lifestyle or an identity. So if you identify as part of this lifestyle, you must love Apple, or you don't love yourself. Some take it a step further and hate Apple's competitors. Perhaps this is related...
Part of that story of course is their execution, thoughtfulness and great taste to pick “just the right” technical ideas.
MacOS X Panther with Aqua’s basically artifact-less and butter smooth postscript based rendering capabilities, the beloved (!) BSD shell I could drop into at any point. All of that in 2003 … a true OS from the future and for the masses!
Battery runtime of PPC 7xx also was stellar at the time. AFAIR nothing could compete in relative comparison.
Humanistic and design oriented engineering at an excellent level and consistently so. Of course I aspired to be exactly like that as a professional!
Too bad they have strayed from that in many ways over the years. They IMO mostly still, but only barely hold the functional high ground these days.
There are things you can love. It might sound silly unless you've climbed mountains in the winter, but I love my ice axe. It's let me go places I'd never be able to go otherwise.
That said, it is different from the love I have for people. When my son was young and would treat people poorly over things, I told him there are three kinds of things we can love: people, places, and things. When there's any conflict, the priority should almost always be in that order.
I think what is meant by "should love" is that it would be natural to, or for our emotions to prompt for affection towards, Apple for its good deeds. but the point is to resist that because Apple is just an emotionless business entity.
It's rather clearly worded and I see no contradiction.
People tend to anthropomorphize everything that exhibits anything more complicated behavior than a rigid object. Even a doorhandle can be "cranky" and computers definitely get "moody". It's even hard to describe these without ascribing them some agency.
Corporations use this mercilessly in their PR and explicitly try to build "personal relationships" etc with customers. And it seems to work extremely well to the corporations' favor. Of course at the cost of the consumer via information asymmetries. [Note me resorting to agency here too.]
Corporations don't care. They can't care. They don't have feefees and don't operate like human individuals.
Corporations are literally legal entities that usually just maximize return on capital. Nothing more, nothing less.
I understand the usual argument against this. I used to make them too. “Corporations are many people following processes - they’re not a person!” - I used to say.
Here is another philosophical argument - it neither supports or refutes the title of this post but it’s worth exploring.
People, are multi-cellular organisms. Each cell, is a living thing in its own right. Billions of them working together form this illusion of one cohesive human being. What keeps all the cells working together are some “processes” codified in their shared DNA.
Though every now and then, some of them choose to rebel against the existing rules and detract. These are the cancer cells - which only follow the processes within their mutated DNA.
I think I could go on for quite a bit. It just boggles my mind to think these strategies are so universal.
So forming a corporation to organize a large group of people is a tried and tested strategy.
I think the problem is that humans (and other animals) exhibit very different patterns of behavior than e.g. corporations. For example when a human is consistently nice to you, you start to assume that they are a "nice person" which entails things like they're likely to help you if you're in need (and hopefully vice versa). You model their behavior after how you behave yourself, e.g. that because I'd be worried if she is in trouble, she's probably worried if I'm in trouble.
There are no such "nice companies". They operate on a totally different logic and "DGAF" if they can get away with it. Apple's not gonna bring food to you if you're bedridden no matter how much you've spent on them.
I don't think it's anything philosophical. Just how you model and predict behavior of different kinds of entities. What's a thing of its own right is just a matter of conceptualization.
It's interesting to think that if a corporation is humans, in the sense that they are made of humans, and human behaviour drives the behaviour of the corporation, then which human behaviours end up dominating the corporation's behaviour, and which human behaviours are absent? I would think that corporation behavior is a subset of human behaviour, and I can't imagine that it's our most noble behaviours in that subset. There's a doco called The Corporation which profiles corps as psychopaths. Worth a watch.
I can definitely relate to this chap. I have dedicated my entire career to supporting Apple software, but I am an Apple Developer, and have been, for over 35 years.
That means that, at times, I have been incandescent with rage at Apple. Other long-term Apple developers can relate, I'm sure.
May be different for customers; but developing for Apple platforms can be ... challenging.
But I still like doing it, and have no plans to change. My last app submission was in -24 hours or so.
Is it a fair point to say that the meaning of love here could be interpreted in so many ways, depending on whose vantage point you are viewing it from.
One could certainly love (or like) a corporation if that company provides some meaningful semblance to one's life.
For example, if you are that company's employee and you have been well-provided with means to live a comfortable life while also being aligned with your values, I can't even think how you will have an ounce of contempt for that organization.
If the company provides you with products or services that enhances your way of living, then definitely there would be room for adoring them due to the positive impact that they have.
In the case of the OPs example, the company will be enforcing actions that have different repercussions depending on where you are on the side of the fence.
If you are from the outside where you publish products or services that needs to live within the company's digital ecosystem, then surely that additional tax is an impact that will hurt your finances overall. Anything that hurt your finances will a chain effect that can hurt your business, your decision making, and to some degree, your well being.
Its different when you are within the walls of that company. That additional margin would likely translate to increase compensation (if you are an employee) or better profit (if you are an investor).
The thing here is that, loving or liking or adoring a company hinges on how it impacts your personal bottom line. At the end of the day, the rationality of the decision is based on what each entity perceives as what is best for them. What's best for someone may not be the best for everyone. And that's reality.
> For example, if you are that company's employee and you have been well-provided with means to live a comfortable life while also being aligned with your values, I can't even think how you will have an ounce of contempt for that organization.
The company does not return your feelings, and you'll be shocked when the layoffs come out of nowhere.
I was just reading about business in the 1700s. Incorporation was granted very rarely, and only when the corporation was deemed to operate in the public interest.
The result was that new corporation were objects of civic pride.
It also meant lots of business was done by unincorporated networks of merchants.
It was pretty amazing how massive networks of individual merchants could operate without corporations. Kind of blew my mind.
No. Corporations are government-granted engines of economic production that use people as one of their economic inputs. Corporations are not simply analogous to network of people.
There is no such thing as an "engine of economic production" that has any concrete existence per se. You are reifying abstractions. These analytical models might be useful, but they are just that -- conceptual models -- all layered on top of the same underlying reality. Everything in society reduces to people and their relations with each other.
Corporations have no factual, objective existence as anything other that networks of individuals coordinating their activities according to certain methods.
You can take this further (aside). Famous people are people but there is no point in loving them. They won’t love you back. I don’t understand people who are fascinated by people like the king of Denmark. Or Churchill.
I have people I admire (that don’t know me). But I hope I don’t love them.
The corporations that are most often really loved a sports teams.
They are often profit (or often loss!) making corporations, and they are something people really love. Yes, the owners sometimes love them too, or are in it for the prestige rather than the profit, but they are still legally corporations and many are, or have been, either listed or owned by listed companies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Publicly_traded_sport... for some of those that are publicly traded.
Corporate personhood is a legal construct to allow the legal system to continue functioning when corporations exist. It doesn't mean that corporations are actually people.
Corporations are also groups of people. There are owners, managers, employees, and contractors. We can take "corporations aren't people" too far, and forget that the individuals are all still humans, with feelings, motivations, and rights.
Americans have the freedom of speech, and they don't lose that every time they join up with a few mates and e.g. walk down the street (and perhaps protest together), or run a business (and perhaps donate money to political candidates together).
The people who own Apple, who work at Apple, etc. They do have feelings and desires, etc. The thing is, we're talking about a huge number of people. Very few - if any - actually know you personally. Some are nice people. Some are not.
It's just a to make a parallel as some attributes are similar or identical, but not all, so they don't quality as the real. Mere similarities only.
An artificial dog represented by a picture of a dog (visually looks quite like a dog), does not move, no life, no smell, no neurons, blood, muscles and bones. Hence not a dog.
You are right of course, I am not claiming they are actual people. The "corporations are people too" slogan is ironic.
But they are people in a sense that they may own property, be sued, etc. What interests me is why they are called an "artificial person" in the first place. Why are they not just called a "business" by law or a similar term. Calling something a person, even if it's artificial carries with itself great implications.
They are (somewhat) people in regards of the law. Business entities are granted certain rights that are also granted to (real) individuals.
Labelling businesses as (artificial) persons is probably to put the emphasis that (with regards to the law) they will be treated the same as persons. With regards to certain rights given they granted them the same.
Imagine when the concept was introduced, some may have been against it but for sure many did not even comprehend what it meant. "How can a business be the same as a person" asked the layman, "not the same as, an artificial person" said the legislator.
Only speculating, and trying to find reasons for not seeing more than some weirdness that put into historical perspective may not be so suspicious.
As an example of things not changing, we are now calling those prompts spitting back highly probable statistical predictions of correctness in the output "artificial intelligence".
There isn't any intelligence in LLMs. Just adoption of how neurons are connected in our brain. Nodes aren't neurons in those algorthms, they are artificial neurons, connections between nodes are nothing like the actual links between neurons. Not even close. They are like what a rough map is to a territory, to make a parallel with what's on the wikipedia page the cousin post mentions.
Artificial neural network mimicing binary graphs would be a more appropriate naming. People would not have a clue what that means. Here, layman, it's artificial intelligence, see, it writes, talks and even answer questions better than most university teachers.
I think one of the major advantages of corporations is allowing the people running it to avoid personal responsibility for the company. This allows owners to act without a conscious, because they cannot be directly held responsible. This leads to "it's just business."
It looks at what sort of 'people' Corporations are:
The documentary attempts to compare the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with what it claims are the DSM-IV's symptoms of psychopathy, e.g., the callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, the reckless disregard for the safety of others, the deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect the law.
It’s ok to love a corp but it would be naive if you think they will come and save you if you got kidnapped by the cartel or something. I love Apple products, and I love the way they design things, but loving a corp, what does that mean really? They not gonna give you 10 million dollars they gonna tell you to get the f outta here like Eminem said
I get a bit the article because you can easily start thinking wrong if you're aren't careful, most obviously by committing the exact mistake of thinking the corporation loves you back. Or by being unduly favourable to an institution that just had its interests aligned with yours in some specific situations and won't act like you want it to in some other situation. Unlike a real loving relationship where you can expect the other person to take your interests into account.
And are other institutions not be loved either? Can you love the Red Cross, the Catholic Church or the US federal government?
And ham radio and fresh air are more things than institutions. Loving a nation is commonplace too.
Unlike some other things that don't love you back, corporations are actively abusive relationship partners. Whether an employee of or customer of a corporation, you are being misled and taken advantage of. There are benefits, of course, but you must be a willing participant to being misled. My feeling is that this is an unhealthy consequence of the relationship.
Sidenote, I can say with some authority that you are admired for your love of ham radio and fresh air, even though they don't love you back.
I'm not at all condoning the behavior of corporations, but the corporation itself is no more capable of having malice for you than a tornado or meteor. A corporation's appearance of hostility is a byproduct of its primary function to acquire things-that-store-value.
That doesn't preclude the people within the corporation from having malice for you, though.
Not necessarily store value, but being able to acquire or hire things and people that allow more value to flow through the company. Which are things other people want so much they'll pay for them.
Many people don't agree with those tradeoffs, and that's fine as well.