This is all caused a by a small number of malcontents and picked up by tech blogs to stir the pot.

Headline:

"Apple employees threaten to quit”

Last sentence in the article:

"About 10 people plan to resign or know others who will resign due to the hybrid policy, the report said. 

See what I mean. Squeaky wheels getting all the attention. And I’ll bet these employees are low level types, of little importance to the operation of the company, and easily replaced by those who want to work. 

Zuckerberg talking about user security makes me think of an old novel by George Orwell but I can’t remember what it was... /s

How generous of this asshole. Everybody stoops to mocking Apple to no avail. From Samsung, to Microsoft, to Google, to Michael Dell. It’s the main reason I’ve stuck with Apple all these years. Apple has to be doing something right to get under these asshole’s skin. 

DAalseth said:

So he wants this done, and reports are he’s going to fire most of the staff, and this isn’t the only nearly impossible task he wants the programmers to do, and he’s fired the CEO and the board and is running the place single handedly. 

Oh this is going to end badly LMAO

Well, there was no ‘board’ to fire once he took over. Twitter is no longer a publicly traded company. It’s privately owned by Musk now. We’ll never know its financial status, how money it is making or losing, no quarterly reports to investors, no analysts jawboning about its future, just Musk haters hating.

The Apple discussion forums are full of users who downloaded a sketchy app on their Mac only to be hosed by it, screaming for help and blaming Apple. Yet they still bitch and moan about macOS’s SIP and “signed” requirements. Triple that when developers can avoid the App Store and trick iOS users into installing all manner of scam software that compromises their device and/or privacy. Of course Apple always gets the blame when that happens. It’s like death and taxes.

It’s probably coming and it will hard to have sympathy for iOS users who get hosed by a bad app on their iPhone or iPad.

Maybe people are finally waking up to the dangers of social media. CBS Sixty Minutes aired a segment about the differences between the TikTok app in China and the West. In China children under a certain age are shown videos of science, culture, history, art, etc. Adults are given more freedom but have limits on politics, social issues, etc. In the West, of course, it’s no holds barred. A survey was conducted of young people who were asked what they wanted to be, In China the number one response was astronaut. In the U.S. the number one response was social media influencer. The expert in the segment said the viewer could imagine what the future holds for the next two generations.

Facebook, I hope, is just the tip of the iceberg for social media. Hopefully Twitter, TikTok, Instagram and all the rest are soon to follow.

darkvader said:

Hopefully they keep the internal power supply.  An external brick is a step backward.

Also, how do you open this one?  Back to the putty knife?  Annoying.  (And yes, I will be opening whatever Apple releases, it's part of what I do.)

Why? An internal power supply takes up space and by far generates the most heat of any component. External power supply means additional hardware can be added. I respectfully disagree with your take on this.

As for opening it up, that’s a non-issue. With the advent of the M1 SOC you can’t add RAM, you can’t install a bigger SSD, it’s all on the M1,so why would you need to open it up? You do know that RAM and Storage are fixed and not upgradeable, period, right?

Out of all the desktop/laptop OEMs out there Apple was the only one with the balls to strike out on its own. As the article points, with tremendous risk and challenges. The rest remain locked down to whatever Intel or AMD does or does not have to offer. But since the debut of the M1 suddenly other OEMs are investigating producing their own SOCs.

One thing is certain for those of us who keep riding the Apple log flume, it’s a thrilling ride and you never know what’s around the corner, just like an Indiana Jones movie.

China’s continuing aggression and warnings of conflict if the U.S. doesn’t “change course”, along with the possibility of sending lethal arms aid to the Russians in Ukraine is spooking the world. It’s amazing that Xi is willing to risk China’s economic future. Europe played footsies with Russia for decades thinking being nice and playing ball would keep the Russian Bear satisfied. Then Putin showed up. Now Xi has designs on the East. You have two cultures that have never experienced democracy and have always been ruled by emperors or dictators. What did you expect?

After WWII the world had Pax Americana for close to eighty years. Is that gone today?

JP234 said:

"Apple's diversity efforts are 'selfish & practical' says head of developer relations…"

On the face of it, sounds like something you'd hear on right-wing talk shows. Poor choice of words, when you read the article and realize that enacting policies of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion will benefit Apple Inc. in the long term through hiring and promotion based solely on merit, not race, class or religion. And that's practical, enlightened benchmark for sustainable growth.

History trivia: Enlightened self-interest was a concept that Alexis de Tocqueville discussed in his work Democracy in America, back in 1835 and 1840. The notion he held was that Americans voluntarily join together in associations to further the interests of the group and, thereby, to serve their own interests. Since the SCOTUS "Citizens United" ruling in 2010 that corporations are people, Apple's efforts are of benefit to humanity as well as the corporation! And since the ruling also concluded that money is free speech, Apple has the biggest megaphone (and Disney should be allowed to disagree without fear of retaliation from an opportunistic neofascist with big ambitions).

Explain to me the difference between Fascism and Communism/Socialism as they are actually practiced in the world, not how they differ on some academic white paper. You say Disney should be allowed to disagree but does not the left do exactly the same thing when they shout down a speaker whose ideology is not their cup of tea. Or label people who disagree with them as homophobes, xenophobes, transphobic, bigoted, misogynists, and any other slur they can apply to shut down speech.

Bottom line for me is that labeling someone a fascist is getting old and useless because of the history it conjures up, no different than  labeling someone as a Naziif you don;t like what they are saying. To me the right and left of are of the same ilk, both seeking to control the individual’s thoughts, behavior, speech, to become slaves to their respective ideologies. 

So bottom line, you have no business calling De Santis a fascist when your own ideology does the same damn thing to individual ideals they don’t like.