Meanwhile at Alphabet there’s not a soul who can speak

“Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a soul or an Alphabet when you are unable to speak?”

Did anybody ask AI what it thinks about the name change?

Lol wut? “My brain is not especially fucked enough right now so I’d like an extra special DOUBLE helping of corporate machine bullshit today, thank you!”

I think you should take that hit for the team, obviously. If you believe one is required.

I don’t think this new CEO is going to last more than a year. He has all the charisma of Gil Amelio.

At least he shelved the Apple Vision headset. Hopefully he also canned the Apple Glasses and AirPods with camera that were rumored.

Maybe. It’s inauspicious at best.

I mean, why would he care? Either way he gets obscene amounts of money for at the least a lazy years worth of work

I don’t think this new CEO is going to last more than a year. He has all the charisma of Gil Amelio.

…nothing like the old CEO…

Most prominent CEOs want a successor that fails because it makes them look better in retrospect.

I was thinking of Gil this morning, very much reminiscent.

But wearables are like 3/4 of Apple’s strategy for the future and optical is a huge part of that and the Vision Pro is just them getting started, not them bowing out. They just want others to enter the space and start making these expensive mistakes so Apple doesn’t have to, including overcoming the social barrier of filming literally everything. It’s coming. Just like folks didn’t really resist social media, we’re not going to really resist this.

It’s just Tim’s Newton. We’ll get something better in ten years, like we got the iPhone. But I don’t know that it will come from Apple unless we get someone more creative in the leadership role.

Lacking any sort of balls to stand up to their great leader.

“it’s not a dictatorship. We just do what he wants because we’re afraid what he’ll do if we don’t,.”

Meanwhile Microsoft - following Trump’s orders, kickstarted and/or rapidly accelerated European digital sovereignity.

Apple, Google and Microsoft are merely support lackeys for the orange pedophile.

Apple, Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, those are some of the pupeteers. The Orange Pedo, The Guardians Of the Pedophiles (GOP) party, and the corporate Fascism Lite Democratic Party (we promise to build one concentration camp fewer than the GOP, so vote for us Dems) are the lackeys.

We have to be careful, because The Democratic Party is not a monolith. Some of the Dems are actually economic populists, which is a good thing.

This doesn’t change the fact that most Dems are just the less angry, the slightly less brutal, and the smilier fascists who don’t literally rape people usually, unlike the GOP who are pro-rape in addition to being against democracy and against The Constitution outright.

Hakeem Jeffries recently met with Jared Kushner to, you know, talk about things and to plot together.

How I wish that everything I wrote above was just a giant hyperbole. But, everything I say here is factual. This timeline has me feeling like I am taking crazy pills every day.

Apple, Google/Alphabet, Microsoft, those are some of the pupeteers. The Orange Pedo, The Guardians Of the Pedophiles (GOP) party, and the corporate Fascism Lite Democratic Party (we promise to build one concentration camp fewer than the GOP, so vote for us Dems) are the lackeys.

Honestly I think the comparison with the 3rd Reich don’t go far enough. Like with the Nazi-Party the GoP is captured by corporate interests but also the people in power are running their own agenda. It’s a “dance on the volcano”-alliance which each side trying to control and use the other. Corporate interest put the Republicans in power and support them to accrue more money and power and dismantle the state that has regulated them. Meanwhile the MAGA-Movement is promoting corporate interests to enrich themselves, create the appearance of economic growth, ensure corporate backing especially in the media and dismantle the democracy that delegates power to the masses.

Both sides completely disregard how important the state, regulations and democracy are to create the freedom, stability and wealth they have build their power on and which they think they created themselves.

The problem both sides face is that their goals run contrary to each other in the end. The fascists want power over industry, the market and finance while corporate interests suffer under the isolationist politics of fascists. In the end only one side will come out on top and the other side will have been the ones furthering their own removal from power. Like big corporate in the third Reich was brought more and more under state control.

The real winners will be the people sitting at the junction of party politics and corporate power. The Trumps, the Musks, the Thiels and of course the military industrial complex.

the orange pedo still has 40% support among voters. He’s the symptom, there’s a MUCH wider problem here, something is rotten at the core of the US but it’s not just the US, UK, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Australia etal are all going that way

I feel strangely grateful to Microsoft for shooting itself in the foot like that

In the end of the day they‘re all part of the Epstein class.

Should have used The Treaty of Canandaigua as their argument to the administration as to why they couldn’t change the name.

What a bunch of loose, prolapsed assholes these execs are. How do they expect to usher forth a technocratic state if they can’t even separate themselves from the stupidest under the status quo?

!deapple@piefed.social

Ok, for what? Android is just as bad, if not worse. And yes, in including Gaphine and the forks because they’re still built on android.

This is not new

www.macrumors.com/2025/…/tim-cook-gift-to-trump/

The clip of that is one of the most grovelling and cringeworthy things I have ever seen.

I don’t know how Cook can ever look anyone in the eye again

You mean Tim Apple?

What? No one names their companies after their last name? /s

Cook is chairman of the board now. He hasn’t really gone anywhere.

I was going to say what’s changed from that day? Did those employees not see the news?

I actually think this is funny. And alarming, but not the way I hear people talk about this. I feel like Apple was really smart here, offering a fairly measly, cheap, pointless trinket to continue making money hand over fist in the US. Tim was smart here, ROI must have been MASSIVE for that with the tariffs and such.

However the real reason I think this is interesting is that it shows publicly and blatantly just how easily Trump can be paid off and placated and should have been be a huge wake up call for ANY of his supporters and peers. Between this and the FIFA trinket, no one in government should be so easily bought/paid off. I never got why people didn’t go after Trump legally and in the news for even thinking of accepting something like this.

Yeah, for me (who hates Apple), this didn’t reflect poorly on them really. It reflected poorly on our system, where open bribes are applauded instead of punished, and where our leader can be purchased so easily. Apple just made a smart play. It isn’t their fault this was the smart thing to do.

It isn’t their fault this was the smart thing to do.

Oh my, the shit Americans people say. Reminded me of this.

This shit happens everywhere, and that quote is a perfect example. The system is fucked. It’s a matter of fact that Trump is better off because he didn’t pay taxes. There were no penalties, because that’s the system they designed. There’s plenty to hate him for, and for being a part of creating that system and incentives, but you would be dumb to not abuse it.

This same thing happens literally everywhere. If there’s something to take advantage of, someone is doing it. Those holes just need to be patched. If you think there’s somewhere that doesn’t have these issues, I’d love to know where.

Just because a system is designed a certain (amoral) way, doesn’t mean you HAVE to use it in that way.

Trump and many others may think it’s smart to not pay taxes because of the immediate advantage of having more money. But I’d argue, it’s actually a stupid thing to do. Especially for wealthy people. They profit more from government services like a well equiped police force, good infrastructure, health services that keep their employees healthy, etc. They are just to stupid or shortsighted to factor all variables in.

Also I think societal norms and individual identity plays a big role in such decisions. I mean, why are you on lemmy and not on reddit? Isn’t it smarter to use reddit since there is more content, more users who read your comments? Maybe reddit just banned you and you have no viable alternative. But there is also the possibility that you are aware of the shortcomings of reddit and arrived at the decision that it’s actually smarter to use lemmy.

In the end, it’s your descision who you want to be. Do you want to be they guy who doesn’t pay taxes and brags about it? Or the guy who thinks it’s so smart to bribe the president? Do you want to be the guy who reads bot comments on reddit all day and gobbles up their rage bait? Even if society deems certain descisons as smart, they are very often not.

The thing is, they’re a mega corporation. There is zero chance of them being moral. My opinion of them is already that they aren’t moral. It isn’t harmed by this action because morality was never something I thought they’d have.

That’s true. I was more talking about regular people defending such behaviour.

I made a lot of money in Apple stock over this event. I bought in after the verbal assault, and sold after the gifting.

So it definitely worked.

What did you expect from a Trillion dollar corporation, that gifted Trump a 24k gold and glass statue, made a $100B commitment to US manufacturing, and being among the “donors” of the White House ballroom? But changing the name of a lake? Too far…

The “24k gold base” was likely a thin layer, but whatever, yeah they gave him ~10-100k in gold and implied unwarranted praise in exchange for points. They also committed $600 billion ($100 billion more than before trump won, thanks a lot everybody) to build manufacturing in the US, which, if someone’s mad about that - sorry.

The ballroom is worse, but this is even worse yet, yes. I don’t have to look at his participation trophy, i don’t ever expect to see the Epstein Ballroom and Bunker Boys Club built, but everyone in the world can see this idiotic “renaming”. That’s not strategic, that’s not hedging, that’s just pathetic.

I’m not saying it isn’t pathetic, but Apple has a track record of gobbling Trump’s marbles for business, so it should be expected they aren’t risking anything over the name of a lake in their mapping service.

made a $100B commitment to US manufacturing

Why is that bad though?

It’s Apple buying goodwill, for both itself and the Trump administration, while only marginally benefiting the average US citizen, if at all.

Getting on Trump’s bad side can mean an anti-trust lawsuit or an end to tariff exemptions. With billions of dollars at stake, the executives would be negligent to act otherwise.

Yes, we know how bullies work. Most of us were bullied here.

The question I guess becomes, if you’re the type of guy to become the CEO of Apple, are you also the type of guy to stand up to a bully if it means costing the company and shareholders billions?

Probably not.

And if they were…is Lake Ontario really where you’re gonna draw the line? Is that gonna be the last straw?

Not excusing him. Just not having high expectations.

I mean, this is how I justified tim apple’s participation in the techno bunghole club with the gold-based-corning glass sacrifice. Six months in, get in, throw some shit in the air, get out. Fine, i disagree, but whatever.

But this is nothing. This is just stupid. An EO is nothing. And frankly even the most pedestrian trump watcher knows he’d TACO before losing $1 over “lake fucking america”. So it looks really bad for The Fucking New Guy to pre-cave on nothing that’s this goddamn stupid.

This isn’t pre-caving, this is supporting. The government and corporations are working hand in hand to fuck everyone over except their share holders.

Wow, I guess we just have to accept their is a wanna be mob boss in the White House!?

Also, this is far more of a partnership than you think.

we just have to accept their is a wanna be mob boss in the White House

Yeah, that’s how democracy works in this case.

Truly arbitrary at this point.

Well you guys did vote him in.

We certainly convicted him, multiple times. Still unsure how a mass rapist and fraudster was able to get on the ticket, but then we we do have the Grand Old Pedophile party.

Missed chance to coin “John Turdus” OP

Ooh good, yes. I was playing on tim apple but maybe john doesn’t even get far enough to be corponamed by the demented rapist.

TBH I’m kind of glad the new CEO is a “Product” guy and not a “Numbers” guy (Tim was the COO for years under Steve, John was the SVP of HW engineering). If there’s any reason to be cool with this transition it’s that, Apple got real greedy under Tim.

This maps change was probably started under Tim; John just got the keys yesterday. I don’t not blame him for it as the new guy in charge but I’m still curious to see how he impacts Apple over the next few months to years (Apple generally has an ~18-ish month pipeline so it’s gonna take a little time to see the full scope).

If he fails us though, pls make John Turdus a thing 🤡

The maps change was actually started under Donald. If you’re a US-based user, the place names come from GNIS, which changed the official name for Lake Ontario for Americans.

They were fine when Tim Apple gave Trump a trophy. It’s just a distancing tactic.

Grousing is a revolt?

One of the marketing managers was flayed on a spit. Jeez rtfa!

/s yeah its lame but wygd, quit? In this context I read it as employee morale takes a kick in the ‘nards so go poach some applers or expect bad stuff to happen there next. Both being bad for apple and both the result of some internal chatter.

Poe’s law is killing me here. I can’t tell if your first sentence is the sarcastic one, or if it’s the second two.

But they were okay with the Gulf of Mexico being renamed?

The random employees?

Corporations do not stand up to the government. Remember this. Drop any expectation that the coporate world would save you from a bad government.

Okay

Corporations control the government in the US. The government is bad because of corporations and neither are going to save you from either.

Exactly right. Dare I say the very right for working people to vote was won by organized labour, so even popular democracy is downstream from labour power. That’s the only real power we have against corporations.

Except Costco. They did stand up against the DEI bullshit and recently have expressly said they won’t buy and distributed the imported beef. I assume there’s more between those two points in time, I’m just not aware. One of the few out there doing good stuff.

There’s exceptions for sure. I should have said it’s a tendency.

dailyiowan.com/…/workers-accuse-coralville-costco…

That was an unfortunate read.

how is this relevant to costco standing up to thr government, you can fight the government and the pathetic workers at the same time.

That’s incorrect. They stand up to government all the time

Mostly when they face any kind of regulation. Trump is not that kind of government.

Submit to reality, take no action and apply no pressure.

I dont rate this advice.

Expect nothing, demand it anyway.

They get pretty aggressive at any talk of regulation

Hey hey hey,

They stand up against unions

They stand up against cheap, green energy

They stand up against human rights

They stand up against good working conditions

They stand up against good and affordable medical care

They stand up against required paid sick leave and maternity leave

They stand up against regulations to not poison people or exploit people quite so much

They stand up against anything that might slightly hurt short term profits.

They pump tens or hundreds of billions at the government to “stand up to them”. Just always, without exception, to pommel the working class and long term into the ground and sacrifice the long term for short term superficial gains.

This is the sort of bullshit that companies intentionally put out to get back good PR. “It wasn’t us, it was the shadowy execs!”

It’s PR 101, blame nameless people that may or may not exist and you get the good will back on your side as the hatred is focused on people that either don’t care or don’t exist.

Gee what’s it called when corporations and the government are welded together in a power block that controls everything about the nation? Help me out here guys I forget.

Great Again?

‘How about Corporatism’ - Mussolini

This is the battle they are willing to fight? Your country picks an insane shit head for president and he wants to legally change the name of a lake and you throw a fit? What about fighting to allow ICE detection apps on the App store or standing up to assure your ai is honest and revealing about Trump administration atrocities?

It’s the lowest possible bar for them to tell him that he is being stupid and they won’t even do that. That’s why I am annoyed with them. What we really want is for all the guys in their lifted Dodge trucks with the “shoot your local pedophile” sticker to actually follow through. And then Nuremberg the rest of the fascist administration.

It’s this that shows well that he’s a quasi dictator akin to some laughable figures in the third world. Other examples don’t showcase his pettiness and childlike behavior as well. The pool was also an example for it.

It’s not their problem until it affects them.

Democracy is for the people, but the people vote intentional ignorance.

More than one thing can be objectionable.

well apparently they reached their care quota of the day and all of us must follow.

Sir, this is a Wendy’s

Whatever. They’ll still take the techbro paychecks and look the other way. Let me know when these nerds grow a spine.

They’re not tech bros, if that implies they know anything about tech. They’re members of the owning class who happen to have bought into tech.

Sorry, do you really mean to say that the normal employees at Apple are part of the owning class? Because that’s who the article and the comment you replied to are talking about.

This is how secure and private Apple is! One whisper from Trump and they comply, no critical thought, no thinking about users - THAT also apply to all data you trust Apple to guard! No privacy, no safety- Apple.

CoMaps is Apple/Google app store, open source, privacy centric Map app with turn by turn, lots of customization, and also has desktop clients for Linux and iOS.

I switched this when Apple announced ads were coming to maps and have been very happy, some places don’t exist but with an OSM account you can contribute to a better map which is nice

Is there a way to get it to route around current traffic?

Current state that I understand, and am certainly no expert, is that privacy and battery preservation focus have it not designed to constantly ping and check for updates as much as larger as and data-based for-profit systems. Looks like it’s been requested as a feature but who can say whether it gets implemented as it grows. One of its strengths is that it runs fully offline also.

To be sure, despite definite momentum and growth as apple and Google make product-destructive decisions to curry political favor with a fascist, open source programs will need more user growth to have the base where they could have the data points to even consider offering traffic routing as a layer.

The Motorola phone with graphene OS can’t come out soon enough.

Normies are locked in the apple ecosystem. Getting android, let alone with Graphene OS would sap their ability to use that said ecosystem.

People really are cooked with the whole blue text thing.

This is just the public things they’ve capitulated on. How many private requests have they received and acted upon?

Were these people working from a remote cave or island for the past year and half?

It’s not like Apple playing friend with Trump started yesterday! Apple has been openly pro-Trump since day 1!

iTrump

How to punish any megacorpo out there. Easy guide for dummies:

• Dont buy their shit

::: spoiler Hurray! You did it!

We all know that wont work cause society is made of sheeple

Ha ha, like people are going to switch en masse to google phones. You know, the company that changes the map first.

Don’t blame people for choices they cannot impact. If you tried to buy stuff only from ethical companies, you’d be broke or just not buy food/stuff.

Well, there’s fairphone. And farmers markets.

Honestly, most of the things people buy are things they don’t even need… housing, cars, and insurance excluded.

Bottled Water by Nestle? ❌

Learning to love the taste of your local tap water? ✅

I dunno a phone is basically mandatory (some government services are phone only now unless you can prove a disability) and I can’t afford a fairphone.

Every single employee that was tasked to change Lake Ontario to Lake America could just say no, and quit.

Or are we just following orders?

Well, that’s what Nazi Germany did…

And they managed to get Hitler to eat a bullet. Maybe we’re on to something.

Easy to say when it isn’t your job in this economy, plus a family.

Canadians, it’s time to vote with your wallets and push back against the arrogance of Trump and his camp

Been doing this for decades, and somehow the billionaires keep out-money-voting me.

Not that trying doesn’t help, but the world needs more than the few good people spending all of their energy and power in filling the gaps of a system designed to leave gaps, specifically to enrich the less generous people via a hoarding competition.

Almost as if having cultures built entirely around letting less good people amass power while punishing those who actually contribute to the world around them.

Some reason, changing our culture to something that rewards generosity is just never on the table. Those who care enough to affect anything larger scale have already given up their power out of basic decency in a world full of suffering, or had it taken from them by those who chose hoarding and extracting instead.

Or people could just tax the rich to the point they can’t spend their time and power rigging political objectives, rather than doing literally anything positive for society.

Etc.

let me know when a single one of them quits instead of just complaining and going along with it anyway. i won’t be holding my breath.

Making me want to sell my Apple products and move back to Google Pixel

It’s okay, Google maps capitulated faster than Apple

Yeah I would go to Pixel and slap GraphineOS on it.

I have been in the Apple ecosystem since Android bootloaders got locked down. It’s sucks but in the US there is no viable option that prioritizes privacy and not licking frumps boots.

Names carry history, identity, and meaning. A decision like this shouldn’t be treated as a simple branding change especially when it affects something shared by millions of people

Apple executives have been bending the knee to Trump for years now. If you’re still working for them and think this is the bridge too far, you’re an idiot.

Don’t underestimate the cult. Its users parrot corporate PR scripts verbatim. “Yes we love the walled garden and developer fees. It ensures Apple is doing everything it can to keep me safe.”

We’re talking about the employees here, though. You’d think they’d know better.