“…Declined to Comment.”
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I was never naïve enough to believe Apple was anything other than a money-making enterprise. For all its lofty self-aggrandizing statements, at the end of the day we all knew they were a business, like all businesses, with shareholders and bottom lines. Dollars and cents.
But Steve Jobs wasn’t just a businessman—he was a thinker. Love him or hate him, he did in fact believe in grander concepts and ideas that could change the way we exist…and ultimately did. It’s this exacerbated approach to life that first got him ousted from the company he had founded, when he hadn’t yet learned to temper his bluster and emotions; and it’s this same approach that propelled Apple to stratospheric heights when he returned as a wiser, more thoughtful and efficient leader.
His principles, his vision for the future, were always at the core of what Apple stood for. Sure, marketing was part of it...but words were always anchored in goals that rang true, despite the occasional stumble or obligatory hyperbole.
I’ve watched every Apple event since the beginning of internet streaming. I’m talking RealPlayer, 5fps thumbnail-sized video, for those who remember what that was. I was hardcore. When Tim Cook took over, I believed the culture Jobs had created would always survive him. But along the way those shows began to feel...empty. I’ve been at times impressed by the technology, at others underwhelmed—which is to be expected—but the grandiosity of the stated Mission, those pie-in-the-sky, scripted declarations served like clockwork at each of these occasions...I’ve cringed for several years now without really understanding exactly why.
Now I do.
I get it: Trump is a loaded gun ready to blow at every moment. He’s always one tweet away from another unhinged catastrophe. So you either tell him he’s the very bestest leader in all the world and get something out of it, or you fight and suffer reprisals. Cue Jeff Bezos. And I understand a company deciding NOT to fight. Because tariffs, because shareholders, because, because, because.
But if you stand next to Trump while he attacks the free press and say nothing, you are now complicit. If you stand next to Trump while he boasts of being solely responsible for a brand new Apple plant, when it is NOT EVEN an Apple-owned plant, and when it has in fact been making Mac Pros since 2013, you are now complicit. You are complicit in the destruction of truth, facts and reality. In the end, of decency and sanity.
And when Trump tweets about that very same “opening” and releases a video of it implying he made it all happen; when you provide him with the very words he immediately uses to lie again; when journalists reach out to you about this nonsense and you still decline to comment or to set the record straight...fuck me, but you’re now beyond complicit. Let’s not even start discussing China, Taiwan or Hong Kong.
I don’t want to play the What Steve Jobs Would’ve Done game. But every cell in my body tells me his belief system would’ve held, despite the folly of a mad king or any oppressive regime. That he would’ve recognized the moment and acted with the courage needed. He may have been many things but a coward wasn't one of them.
So yeah I get it: all those words truly are now utterly empty.
Heckuva legacy, Tim Apple.
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