Apple Workers Are Livid That Tim Cook Saw “Melania” Movie Hours After CBP Killed Pretti
Cook has openly embraced Trump, particularly in his second term, attending the president’s inauguration, presenting him with an engraved golden trophy, and giving money to the White House to help construct the president’s $300 million pet project ballroom.
The relative workplace calm may be over. “I hope we never find out, but I seriously started wondering what our leadership would do if an Apple employee was summarily executed by our government,” wondered one employee.
Many workers claimed hypocrisy between Apple’s longtime professed commitment to progressive values and causes and the extent to which its CEO has cozied up to the Trump administration. “But but but…. we changed the Apple website to MLK last Monday, so that cancels out.” Another pointed sarcastically to the company’s recent announcement of Black History Month Apple Watch bands. “Went to hang out with the guy who didn’t even acknowledge MLK Day and took away park access on the day,” commented one worker.
For some, the affront was personal. “As a lifelong Minnesotan and an Apple badged employee for over half my life I feel pretty abandoned by the company that has told me it stands for humanity more times than I can count,” wrote another worker. “Silence on ICE violence speaks volumes.” Another pointed out the “Three retail locations in the Twin Cities and not a peep” from Cook. “This isn’t leadership. This is an absence of leadership.” To which a colleague quickly countered: “I disagree, this IS leadership. This is intentional, nobody travels to the white house by mistake.”
An Apple employee who has spent decades at the company said they had noticed a marked cultural and political shift within Apple under Cook’s tenure. “A lot of people are talking about how Steve Jobs would have never given a gold bar to a politician,” referring to the 24-karat gold trophy Cook presented Trump at the White House in August.
https://theintercept.com/2026/01/27/apple-tim-cook-trump-alex-pretti/Open linkView original on lemmy.ml
Oh wow a rich white gay man hid behind his sexuality to present faux-progressive values when he was actually pretty conservative? Funny how that keeps happening.
It's almost like class identity often matters more than social identity in respect to politics.
He's the perfect example of "Well they aren't breaking down my door, it's their door a few houses away."
If there was only something Apple workers could do to send a message to Tim Cook that he can't ignore. If only there was a card they could sign, and together do an action, a .. collective action of some sort...
maybe one where they join together in a kind of organized... group? collective? I don't know what the word would be for that, but it's right on the tip of my tongue...
In mathematics it's called a union, but idk if that's related
I think this is how you pronounce it, if that's of any help to anyone
https://youtu.be/Lt1u6N7lueM
I'm shocked people are shocked Apple is supporting Trump. Apple's been contracting slave labor from CCP concentration camps. They sell expensive gadgets that are hardwired to not let people repair them, and harass those who offer fair market repairs. Again, though, slave labor. Apple has not been on the side of human rights in decades.
Amazon, Dell, Google, Huawei, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Xiaomi have all used Foxconn. By 2012 it was producing 40% of all consumer electronics. That blood is on everyone's hands.
Likewise Amazon, Samsung, Google, Tesla, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Cisco, Sony, and Microsoft all have supply chains tied to CCP forced labor. Hell Volkswagen has been tied to it. Over 100 global brands were found to be connected in a 2025 investigation.
So let's not act like Apple's out there alone in this. You've most certainly got electronics in your house that have components produced in such a way. You'll buy more.
However, you're very much right in that Apple is not the company it used to be. Lots of us who have used Macs since the 80s or 90s have an emotional connection to the platform and the brand, which has taken a lot to dissolve.
When Apple was the underdog, churning out failures and oddities, it was easy to love them, even as we despised a lot of the decisions they made. They were the crazy alternative to giant corporate bullshit. Jobs would walk into recruitment interviews with IBM employees, barefoot, sit on the conference table, and ask if they had ever done acid. Was he an asshole of epic proportions? Yes. Was he fascinating and unlike anyone in the industry? Yes.
Now people are waking up to the real Apple of today, the one that's become a massive corporate juggernaut, the one that openly supports fascism, and we need to keep encouraging that, giving people offramps and alternatives, like I am looking for myself. We gotta cheer that on.
The labor abuses aren't tied to ccp forced labor either. All factory workers in china are abused for starters, and a lot of the other countries are even worse. Vietnam, cambodia, bangladesh, excepting south korea and japan basically all of them.
They force them to work 6-12s generally, 6 days a week 12 hours a day, for starvation wages, under brutally repressive governments. In China a good share of the population doesn't have citizenship in the cities they work in, the government forced them en masse from smallholdings in their great leap forward, and shuttled them as basically illegal laborers in the cities. They can be beat up, imprisoned, and thrown out of town on a word from their employer. No protections, no safety net, pollution is dumped in the ditch.
Fuck Apple. They are no better than all other fascism supporting US corporations.
I used Apple products for 20+ years. Switched to Linux 10 months ago and replaced my iPhone with a used Graphene OS phone.
No more US cloud services, no more US subscriptions. Fuck these fascists.
I’ve always been using Linux on the side for the past 15 years, a little bit of selfhosting stuff here, raspberry pis for projects there, proxmox for pi-hole and home assistant, etc.
So it was more of a natural progression than a switch into the blue. I’m pretty familiar with Linux on the backend, so this is just my first deep dive into all day productivity on Linux. I am a fan of KDE plasma currently, and I use a lot of vim keybindings wherever possible - there’s a great plugin for librewolf too.
TL;DR: Overall, it’s going great.
This is the only answer
How much does an OS graphene phone cost?
I got a Pixel 6 for free from a friend. It’s completely sufficient for me right now. Older phones are incredibly fast without bloatware and tracking.
I've been using my Pixel 6 since it was new and I don't see myself upgrading unless it no longer gets security updates.
It's a pixel device right now https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Depends on which Google Pixel phone you need. (GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel phones due to their hardware security features and closeness to stock android with minimal additional necessary modifications, though they are working with an unnamed OEM to make a non-Google Pixel phone sometime this year, supposedly.)
A Pixel 9a will run you about 400 bucks, and works perfectly fine. A more expensive and newer Pixel 10 will run you about $800 if you really want the newer hardware, but imo it's just not worth the jump in price. Phone hardware has kind of stagnated so unless you really care, the $400 extra isn't worth the slightly better camera and processor and whatnot.
Of course, you can always get one used/refurbished, too, but more recent models aren't much cheaper than brand new. Always buy unlocked as carrier locked ones can't be flashed with a custom OS unless you unlock them later through the carrier (if they even allow it in the first place)
The install process is easy and of course since it's open source, it's free, so there's no additional cost there.
The mental gymnastics Apple cult members have to do each day must be exhausting.
And I, as a linux user, thought our community was bad sometimes. it's no where near what the Apple Community has been like since...well...since forever.
I'm old enough to remember what it was like in the 80s and 90s, especially the 90s when Apple was on deaths door. To Apple users the company, even then, could do no wrong. I remember reading old Macworld magazines and it felt like reading a cults bible or manifesto. And the amusing thing is it was never a Jobs thing regardless of what anyone says. They followed and praised that company even when Scully, Spindler, and Amelio were in charge. They bought the Newton and loved it. When Jobs came back and killed the newton saying how he hated the stylus because he had five of them on his hand they were like "yeah, the newton sucks! we don't need a stylus!" then well after his death when Apple released the Apple Pencil those same people were all "YAY A STYLUS!"
As long as it has an apple logo on it and they can whip it out at their local starbucks to show people that "they have money" that's all they care about. Apple has and will always be a social status symbol. that's it. And heaven forbid you call their products shoddy because then you'll get flooded with replies saying their not and quite the opposite. "My Macbook lasted me 5 whole years!" yeah Chris, that's not good. how are all your cables holding up?
I think you’re always going to look smart if you cherry pick the things said by different members of a large group. I can go back over that same timeline and find Apple users criticizing everything the company has done, all the way back to and including the Mac.
People criticized the original Mac for having a paltry 128K of non-upgradable ram and being basically obsolete within 6 months, after Apple released the 512K “fat Mac” and developers wrote software that used more than 128K of ram. People also criticized the Mac for not having colour (unlike the Apple II), and for breaking backwards compatibility.
That last point became a recurring theme throughout Apple’s history. People have been endlessly critical of Apple for it and Apple in turn has maintained a consistent contempt for backwards compatibility.
People criticized the lack of focus and the bewildering array of model numbers during the 90s. People criticize Apple every time they discontinue their favourite model.
People have criticized their butterfly keyboards and their stupid touchbar and the damn PowerBook 5300 battery fires. They criticized the cracks in the G4 cube’s case corners and the ducking iOS keyboard autocorrect! They criticize Apple’s forced software updates and their skeuomorphic designs and their use of colour and their taking away of colour and their damn one button mice!
On and on and on it goes! The point is that large groups of people don’t have consistent opinions. Heck, even individuals don’t have consistent opinions over time!
I have been ostracized by a peer group, unmatched and blocked on dating sites, and I'm sure lost professional advancement all because I refuse to ever get an iPhone.
They are past cult at this point. They are technological magas.
They are right up there on level with maga. It’s amazing.
Feel like people are giving Jobs a lot more credit than he deserves. We have to remember that there's a very good possibility that Jobs would still be here IF HE HAD LISTENED TO HIS DOCTORS about treatment for his rare type of cancer that actually have him better odds of survival. He thought he knew better and died because of that foolishness. Kinda sounds like an ego that would serve him well with the republican side of politics, now doesn't it?
First of all, Steve was a prick who would have sold his daughter to a whorehouse if it guarenteed him fortune and fame. He had that level of issues, often screaming his points at people. I met him twice at the great mall in san jose pre-ipod days while working for CEO Scott Mcnealy at Sun Microsystems.
I will say this though: Steve definitely would NOT have paid off politicians though. He hated politicians enough.
Second, my Dad died of the exact same mother fucking pancreatic cancer and the BEST Steve would have gotten with perfect care would have been an extra year at most. That pancreatic cancer outright destroys you in a very horrible way.
Sorry for your loss. I've watched family die and it's horrible to witness (stroke for my mom. MULTIPLE strokes). I feel you for. BUT I have to say that Steven Jobs had a type of pancreatic cancer that actually gave him an EXCELLENT chance.... if he had listened to his doctors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_neuroendocrine_tumor NOW I'm not going to act like I'm a doctor and know if he actually had a real shot but it's absolutely true that he DID IGNORE EXPERTS in his treatment. AND, Jobs died in 2011. That leaves us a gap of 5 years before Trump got elected the first time and 13 year gap for the second election. There is a lot of time of people stroke Jobs' ego if he were still around. A lot of time for the power and the wealth to seep into him and corrode any semblance of morality he had left. Jobs was already a NIGHTMARE to work for and if he had lived that would have probably only had gotten WORSE if Apple's fortune continued going in the direction it has in reality. He already wasn't a good person, how much of a stretch would it have been for him to bend the knee and kiss the nazi's ring? Given how much other major tech CEOs have done so already, I don't think Jobs would have contradicted that trend. BUT this is speculation from me at best, the man is dead. MY POINT is that Jobs was still a piece of work and was already on the fringes of "can't trust established experts cause they don't know better than me." He would have felt right at home with the anti-vax movement, would have rallied AGAINST mask mandates, etc etc etc. He was already so aligned with the Right, I just don't see him taking a stand against Trump who could have promised him and Apple company a free "do whatever the fuck you want" pass, as long as he played nice with Trump. IDK, I don't trust the popular interpretation of what "Steve Jobs would have done if he were he were still around" in this political climate.
Sorry for the late reply, went to bed after posting.
My father was diagnosed in 2011 with a stage 2 c25 pancreatic neuro tumor at ucsf medical center in San Francisco, CA. My father then had a whipple done at Stanford Medical in 2012. It's there we learned he had what doctors called the 'Apple Cancer' as it was given noteriaty by Jobs.
My Dad had kidney failure in 2015, Chemo in 2017 and passed in 2018. It's a damned slow and painful death.
It's my understanding from the doctors a decade ago that survivability simply depends on the individual and while diet can help, it's neither a silver bullet nor a guarenteed life extender.
I'm not a doctor either, I sincerely don't know what's changed in 10+ years, but what I will agree with is this: If he, Jobs or even my Dad were diagnosed sooner there MAY have been more time for them both, but even after everything they learned with Jobs, medicine isn't any closer (or wasn't when I was going through it) at understanding how these neurocrine cell cancers advance.
Btw, the chemo my Dad got was absolutely worthless. It may have given us more time with him, but it shortened his quality of life so much we regret letting him get it.
Regarding Jobs himself. He was somewhat of an anarchist and I'll give you two examples:
I knew one of his secretaries... Blonde gal, energetic, super cute with freckles whose name escapes me 27 years later. Anyway, she handled several of Jobs personal affairs with one being his cars. Jobs would buy a new Lexus coupe every 5-6 months so he could drive without a license plate. Why? So he could neither be tracked individually nor be cited easily by traffic cameras. Once, he supposedly got a speeding ticket and I recall this secretary going to court saying it wasn't him to get it thrown out. Jobs sincerely didn't like authority.
At the great mall in Milpitas circa y2k era, all the companies off McCarthy would converge there for lunch. Long tables filled with people and CEOs like Jobs would head these tables to give lectures or argue the direction of the industry with others. Jobs on one of those two occasions I met him there was told by the Mall security to be more quiet and he abruptly screamed at the guy to arrest him for it and if he couldn't arrest him to just fuck off.
Jobs was a piece of work and at least from my experiences shows he probably wouldn't bend the knee so readily. Not saying he wouldn't, but the dude had a problem being told what to do, zero doubts. No one will know though, Jobs is dead.
edit: Typos from writing this on a phone while in a meeting lol.
I thought jobs had prostate? Pancreatic has the lowest survival rate I think.
he had a rare type PNET, which actually more survivable, but he decided to go on a full fruit diet instead and waited too long and the cancer killed him. he also selfishly paid to have expedited liver transplant only to die from the disease.
the more common pancreatic cancer is adenocarcinoma, which is more aggressive. usually with regular pancreatic cancer, by the time symptoms show up its already a very advanced stage.
If you're supporting Apple at this point, that's kind of on you.
Lot of Apple iseres that have drink the kool aid; iphone, macbooks etal
They've got a bunch of genuinely good content, which is a bit ironic given their dismal subscription numbers.
Apple TV runs circles around Netflix, HBO, and Hulu. But they've got a meager 3% of the streaming market share. It's infuriating.
Pirate it. All of it. None of them care about you. Support independent media.
Sure. How do you think I've been watching it to begin with?
But ffs, why is it so hard for Apple to figure out how to get those numbers up? Every other company knows how to bundle their shitty products. You'd think they would know how to bundle something halfway decent.
It's simple. They don't have to. Apple is sitting on more actual cash than any company in history.
My man! 🤜🤛
I'd join in but I'm feeding me parrot.
And here I am saving money with FMHY
Apple TV is BET for white people. Rich-White-Trash-TV
I like this take on the situation.
Agreed.
Capital always yields to fascism
Never trust a corporation.
Even the "good ones" eventually turn evil.
Except, maybe, the employee-owned ones. Glory to Winco.
Newman's Own seems good.
Apple has never been one of the good companies. Anyone really in technology knows this.
Like everybody collectively decided to forget what happened to Wozniak.
There's a better timeline where they also brought back Woz and OS X had Linux underneath. All the 3rd party media software would inherently be cross compatible with linux and the windows userbase would have started eroding much sooner.
Now I'm sad I'm in the worst timeline. I expect Jeff to lose an eye any moment.
I mean shit they were all part of the group stealing technology clear back when they first started also. Whatever it took to make that money and get their product out there. And then they were the ones that also started dabbling into the luxury PC market.
I'm rather amazed with comments like these Did any of you really actually believe that the Apple CEO's (any of them) actually gave a single fuck about these "charitable" subjects? Did you really actually believe that time cook could give a single shit about black History month or LGBT rights?
Fuck, he won't even give a single shit about the trump administration or fascism for that matter. It's all a means to an end, and the goal justifies the means.
There is one single thing that Tim cook, other apple CEO's, and just any CEO in general cares about:
Money. Lots and lots of money
So far, pretending to be a progressive company got Apple loads of addicts that for some unexplained reason can't seem to go without the company.
Now the trump admin came in and they saw where the wind was blowing. More moneys now requires Apple to cost up to the fascist government? Then we do that! The goal justifies the means.
I fucking guarantee you that if Apple can make more money by throwing their users under a figurative or even a litteral bus, Apple will do so. Apple will do whatever the fuck tum cook wants and Tim cook wants money
And if it wasn't clear: This isn't exclusive to Apple, this applies to prettyuch every big company out there. Even if you find that unicorn CEO that actually wants to make the world better, at some point he will quit (or get fired) and move on and you'll have a different CEO who I fucking guarantee you, will not feel the same about peaky things like Richard and privacy.
So with all that in mind, how could you be so fucking stupid as to believe that apple was one of the good guys, are you still so fucking stupid to believe this of any other company, and have you now finally learned your lesson?
This is beside the point but PLEASE stop calling it a ballroom. It's a bunker, data center, situation room, and whatever the fuck else they decide to pack in there
The Führerbunker
Hopefully where Trump resets his brain
I mean, those are more sensible. IMO, ballroom sounds worse than that though because it seems frivolous.
So we've confirmed exactly one person has seen the movie.
Linus Torvalds didn't.
Not trying to protect Apple or Tim Cook, but can I just say that the headline is kinda silly.
This
should be a much bigger problem than watching a random movie at some random that was probably planned weeks in advance.
But I guess they need something news-worthy to pin it on.
Are they angry enough to stop working for a fascist?
January 30th is right around the corner.
Cook, and Apple, can fuck right off.
Cook donated $1 Million to trump's campaign, contributed money to the unlawful destruction of the historic East Wing of the WH for a vanity project, and directly bribed trump with a $20 Million payout for the unwanted, obvious corruption of whatever the hell that Melania project is. Yet people still support their capitalist masters.
All of that and also apple sells itself as a company that cares deeply about your data security and privacy which is all a transparent lie.
Billionaires stick together. Doesn’t matter the company, rich people will support their fellow rich people.
No War but the Class War.
Apple was started by a smart nerd and a guy who thought that he could cure body odor by eating exclusively fruit. The latter guy, 30 years later, thought he could cure pancreatic cancer by eating exclusively fruit.
I do think those guys would have resisted the temptation to woo Trump, though Jobs was a wildcard.
Tim Cook, on the other hand, is a businessman through and through. At all costs, line must go up. By all accounts, this has been an obvious focus at Apple well before Jobs died. I’m not sure what kind of rock you’d be living under to think that Apple is the same company that built the Macintosh while working at Apple.
This person is warped if they think Apple's "leadership" will give a shit. Everything is acceptable as long as profits continue to increase.
Remember when police killed the UPS driver who had been taken hostage? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Miramar_shootout
The response from UPS was disgusting: “We appreciate law enforcement’s service and will cooperate with the authorities as they continue the investigation.” They later deleted the Tweet (or w/e platform it was on), but people grabbed screen captures of it.
Tone deaf.....as always
Lol.
Tim Apple, noooo.
Are you surprised? He was always an evil piece of shit.
As if Tim Cook cares what Apple employees think ...
Never had an apple product, mainly because of their lock down eco system. I used to recommend apple products for those that are not tech savvy (boomers). I know Google and Microsoft are similar, but I usually think of apple as a socialist OS in the sense of what boomers think socialism is.
Is this even true? Beyond publicity stunts, if even that?
IDK why, but Apple is completely outside my circle of everyday perception wrt advertisment.
Cancelled apple music, moved over to Deezer, found thatvitbis actually much better service anyway.
MAGAs love to join cults - MAGA, Tesla, Apple, whatever silly religion they live by, etc. Anything to not have to make a choice with your own poorly-trained brain.
I'm Linux only, and as soon as this 10 year old iPhone is dead I'll be Linux there too. Not Google, Linux.
Then, I'm dropping my carrier, no cell provider at all, and only using wifi and only using encrypted communications.
For shit you must have a phone number for I will have a burner esim or device.
I hate that Procreate is so good otherwise I'd never use Apple
Hello Fairphone. I read Finland will streamline their immigration policies to attract US AI and tech specialists.
Not livid enough to do anything. So, ignore this faux-lib propaganda. Billionaires are gonna billion, Trump is gonna Trump, and no one is gonna stop them. The “liberal” media is trying to placate you into think change is happening. It is not. Do not fall for it
Leave Tim Apple alone. The man just needed a big room where he wouldn't be disturbed by anyone else.
Tim Apple is all in for being a remora fish to trumps shark.
Casting this in terms of what movie he watched when is asinine.
Never was a nm Apple fan
people need to hate computer programmers a LOT more
Where were you in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s? People have historically hated programmers. They've been picked on for so long that they made a documentary about it called Revenge of the Nerds.
Then something shifted in the 2010s and suddenly it's now cool to be into technology. I used to be picked on for being on the computer all the time, now everyone is addicted to their pocket computer, even the ones who made fun of me for it! It's so bad that we have an entire generation of children who can't function without being glued to a screen 24/7. I don't get what happened. Engagement algorithms?
Out of all the atrocities billionaires commit hourly, I don’t think “watching a movie to carry favor with the authoritarian regime” even ranks
Solidarity with evil is evil.
I don’t disagree with you, I just said that out of all the atrocities billionaires commit hourly, I don’t think “watching a movie to carry favor with the authoritarian regime” even ranks. People are getting overly emotional about the smallest act of self preservation