1984?

From Ed Driscoll at Instapundit:

Apple Caves, Removes Multiple Apps, Including News App Covering Hong Kong Protests, After China Objects.

As Cam Edwards tweeted yesterday, “Guess we can officially retire this commercial:”

Winning

Last night President Trump had dinner with Apple's Tim Cook. Meanwhile, in China Foxconn has a $9 billion factory sitting empty. Plans were to assemble Mac computers there. Read more here.

Amazon moves to number two most valuable company

Amazon has now passed Alphabet to become the second-most valuable company in the US. Apple remains number one. Details here.

Apple joins the parade of corporations investing in America

Have you been noticing all the companies announcing bonuses and new hires? Today Apple joined the pack. CNBC has the story.

Apple on Wednesday made a slew of announcements about its investment in and contribution to the U.S. economy in part because of the new tax law.

The headline from Apple is that it will make a $350 billion “contribution” to the U.S. economy over the next five years, although it’s unclear exactly how the company came to that number.The company also promised to create 20,000 new jobs and open a new campus.

It said it expects to pay about $38 billion in taxes for the horde of cash it plans to bring back to the United States. This implies it will repatriate virtually all of its $250 billion in overseas cash.

Apple also said it will spend over $30 billion in capital expenditures over the next five years. About $10 billion in capital expenditures will be investments in U.S. data centers, the company said.

Apple added that it will spend $5 billion as part of an innovation fund, up from the $1 billion CEO Tim Cook announced last year on CNBC’s “Mad Money.”

The job creation will include direct employment and also suppliers and its app business, which it had already planned to grow substantially (app developers earned $26.5 billion in 2017.) The new campus will focus on customer support.

Apple, China, and the FBI

David Pierson reports in the L.A. Times,

Apple Inc. has come out swinging in its pitched battle with the government on its home turf.

But when it comes to its second-largest market, China, the Cupertino, Calif., company has been far more accommodating.

Since the iPhone was officially introduced in China seven years ago, Apple has overcome a national security backlash there and has censored apps that wouldn't pass muster with Chinese authorities. It has moved local user data onto servers operated by the state-owned China Telecom and submits to security audits by Chinese authorities.

The approach contrasts with Apple's defiant stance against the FBI, which is heaping pressure on the company to decrypt an iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook.

The years-long strategy in China is paying off at a crucial time. While sales of Apple products have flatlined or declined in the U.S., Europe and Japan, business in the company's greater China region continues to soar — to a record $59 billion last year. The Asian giant surpassed the U.S. last year as the No. 1 buyer of iPhones and could one day be the largest market for Apple Pay, the mobile payment platform that was rolled out for Chinese consumers last week.

But there's no guarantee the good times will continue rolling for Apple. Beijing is increasingly tightening the screws on foreign technology companies, having introduced strict laws aimed at policing the Internet and digital hardware.

The environment will get even tougher, Apple says, if the FBI prevails in seeking a so-called backdoor to Farook's phone. That could set a precedent for China's authoritarian leaders to demand the same in a country where Apple has never publicly defied orders.

"What's driving this is Apple's desire to persuade the global market, and particularly the China market, that the FBI can't just stroll in and ask for data," said James Lewis, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "I can't imagine the Chinese would tolerate end-to-end encryption or a refusal to cooperate with their police, particularly in a terrorism case."

Read more here.

San Bernardino terror, the FBI, Apple, and John McAffee

John McAfee is an antivirus software founder running for president in the US as a member of the Libertarian Party. He wrote an op-ed and gave permission to Business Insider to reprint it. Here are some of his most points.

Using an obscure law, written in 1789 — the All Writs Act — the US government has ordered Apple to place a back door into its iOS software so the FBI can decrypt information on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.

It has finally come to this. After years of arguments by virtually every industry specialist that back doors will be a bigger boon to hackers and to our nation's enemies than publishing our nuclear codes and giving the keys to all of our military weapons to the Russians and the Chinese, our government has chosen, once again, not to listen to the minds that have created the glue that holds this world together.

This is a black day and the beginning of the end of the US as a world power. The government has ordered a disarmament of our already ancient cybersecurity and cyberdefense systems, and it is asking us to take a walk into that near horizon where cyberwar is unquestionably waiting, with nothing more than harsh words as a weapon and the hope that our enemies will take pity at our unarmed condition and treat us fairly.

...The FBI, in a laughable and bizarre twist of logic, said the back door would be used only once and only in the San Bernardino case.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, replied:

The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that's simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.

...The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

...And why do the best hackers on the planet not work for the FBI? Because the FBI will not hire anyone with a 24-inch purple mohawk, 10-gauge ear piercings, and a tattooed face who demands to smoke weed while working and won't work for less than a half-million dollars a year. But you bet your ass that the Chinese and Russians are hiring similar people with similar demands and have been for many years. It's why we are decades behind in the cyber race.

So here is my offer to the FBI. I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team. We will primarily use social engineering, and it will take us three weeks. If you accept my offer, then you will not need to ask Apple to place a back door in its product, which will be the beginning of the end of America.

Read more here.

Calling out hypocrites

Joel Kotkin documents how the Silicon Valley tech companies

On a host of issues—from the right to privacy to ethnic and feminine empowerment and social justice — the effects of the tech industry are increasingly regressive.

...The share of women in the tech industry is barely half of their 47 percent share in the total workforce.

...the valley’s own African-Americans and Hispanics (who make up roughly one-third of the population) now occupy barely 5 percent of jobs in the top Silicon Valley firms. They have not done well in the current tech “boom”: Between 2009 and 2011, earnings dropped 18 percent for blacks and 5 percent for Latinos, according to a 2013 Joint Venture Silicon Valley report.

...Nor can we expect tech firms to go out of their way to train or develop too many American-born workers, of whatever race, for their jobs. Instead the industry’s elites seek to get their employees through H-1B immigrants, largely from Asia. These workers are likely to be more docile, and more limited in their job options than native born or naturalized citizens. Given that there is a surplus of American IT workers, this brings to mind not global consciousness but instead the importation of the original coolie labor force brought to California to build the railroads.

And what about the sensible liberal idea that the rich and corporations should pay their “fair share” of taxes? ...Facebook paid no taxes in 2012, despite profits in excess of $1 billion. Apple, which even the New York Times described as “a pioneer in tactics to avoid taxes,” has kept much of its cash hoard abroad to keep away from Uncle Sam.

...If these actions were taken by oil companies or suburban developers, the mainstream media would be up in arms. Yet by embracing “progressive” values on issues like gay rights, the tech oligarchs are trying to secure a politically correct “get out of jail free” card. Monopolistic behavior, tax avoidance, misogyny, and privacy violations are OK, as long as you mouth the right words about gay rights and climate change — and have the money and the channels to broadcast your message.

...None of this is to say that the tech elites need to be broken up like Standard Oil or stigmatized like the tobacco industry. But it’s certainly well past the time for people both left and right to understand that this oligarchy’s rise similarly poses a danger to our society’s future. By their very financial power, plutocratic elites -- whether their names are Rockefeller, Carnegie, Page, Bezos or Zuckerberg -- need to be closely watched for potential abuses instead of being the subjects of mindless celebration from both ends of the political spectrum.

Read more here.

Comparing Walmart and Apple

Mark J. Perry asks,

Why do progressives hate Walmart for low prices and its 3% profit margin but love high-priced Apple and its 24% profit margin?

Apple's workforce is 30% women, Walmart's is 61% women. 18% of Walmart's workforce is black, while 7% of Apple's is black.
Read more here.

The success of Apple

The Wall Street Journal writes today about the most profitable company in history. With its 710 billion dollar valuation, Apple is now twice the size of Google, 2.5 times the size of Walmart, 4 times the size of Bank of America, 8 times the size of McDonalds, and 12 times the size of GM in market capitalization. Probably the most important reason for its success is that the Chinese are buying the iPhone.

Who will miss the future?

Who will win the war for the tech ecosystem, the "platform?" Will it be Facebook, Google, Apple, or Amazon? Reed Albergotti and Rolfe Winkler report in today's Wall Street Journal on what these companies are doing to try to compete for the future.

On Facebook's campus in Menlo Park, Calif., the front of a sign shows its signature "like" button, a thumbs-up signal. But the back of the sign, obscured by trees, still displays the name of Sun Microsystems Inc., which used to occupy the campus, and was swallowed by Oracle Corp in 2009. Facebook left Sun's name on the sign to remind it of what happens to companies that fail to innovate.

Apple loves China

Where is Apple looking for hiring new engineers? You guessed it: China!