By John Moltz
May 2, 2025 2:00 PM PT
This Week in Apple: Contemptuous behavior
Tim Cook wants bionic arms, Apple is wanted by the law, and this week brings a reminder to hug your services revenue.
Made in America by real American robots
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explains why you can’t get that sweet gig making iPhones that you’ve dreamed of since childhood. Yet.
“Apple wants to make iPhones in US, says Trump official, but they’re waiting for ‘the robotic arms’”
Sure they are. By the way, “Waiting for the Robotic Arms” is my favorite Rage Against The Machine album.
According to Lutnick, Tim Cook told him:
“I need to have the robotic arms to do it at a scale and a precision that I can bring it here.”
Clearly Cook’s point here is he needs to become an unstoppable cyborg before Apple can make iPhones in the U.S. I don’t know if that’s just a tactic to put off the administration since that kind of cyborg technology is still years away or if Cook just really does want to be a cyborg. Given some of the other Apple news this week, it could be the latter.
Lutnick continues to jam words into Cook’s mouth.
“And the day that I see that available, it’s coming here because I don’t like to employ all these people, foreign. That’s my biggest risk.”
Cook might have said something like that, probably just without the tinge of xenophobia this administration likes to drench everything in.
Lutnick says:
…we’re going to go back to the society we knew.
How many people alive right now really remember when the U.S. was a manufacturing superpower? Presumably he’s talking about the society of the 1950s which, of course, had no problems whatsoever, ha-ha, uhnnnnnnn…
Lutnick implies that machines will do the work and American workers will… I dunno, stand around and watch the machines while drinking coffee? This is in sharp contrast to his comments early in April which he says people are taking out of context. See, he didn’t say people were going to be screwing iPhones together. He said:
…the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little- little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America.
Totally different.
Look, I know things don’t mean anything anymore, it’s just… I dunno. Whatever.
The cup of a carpenter
Now we get to the meat of Apple’s not-so-great week.
“Apple May Face Criminal Charges for Allegedly Lying to a Federal Judge”
OK, I’m not a legal expert so maybe someone can tell me… is this good?
Apple “willfully chose not to comply” with a court order to loosen its app store restrictions—and one of its executives lied under oath about the company’s plans, a federal judge wrote on Wednesday.
Is it good when one of your executives lies under oath? Because it doesn’t seem good.
The executive in question, VP of finance Alex Roman, has seemingly since thought better of opening his inveterate lie-hole.
Roman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Yeah, that’s what people who have been referred for criminal contempt tend to do, sure. What was all the lying about?
While [ U.S. District Court judge Yvonne] Gonzalez Rogers ultimately ruled in favor of Apple on most counts, she ordered the company to begin allowing developers to market ways to make in-app purchases outside of the App Store ecosystem.
Oh! That! Wow! Gosh, if only someone could have warned Apple executives or told them these games end in tears or just asked them repeatedly to stop being such jerks about it just to make a few more bucks at the expense of developers and users. Someone like basically the entire Apple community for years. And, as it turns out, some guy named “Phil Schiller”? Not familiar with his work.
…Gonzalez Rogers said Apple’s App Store chief Phillip Schiller “had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction” but that CEO Tim Cook “ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise.”
Look, Tim Cook is an operations genius, he’s not a stay-out-of-trouble-with-judges genius.
This prompted Gonzalez Rogers to coin the phrase that’s been on everyone’s virtual lips this week:
Cook chose poorly.
The Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade reference may seem trite but he did choose the gold over the more simple and honest choice so… if the pop culture reference fits… you must not acquit, I guess.
Despite all this, Apple’s not quite ready to give up on that sweet 27% it demands for basically doing absolutely nothing.
“We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.”
Oh, honey, don’t.
And just like that…
But it might be hard for Apple to put this genie back in the bottle.
“Spotify, Patreon among major apps already working to bypass Apple fees”
Why wouldn’t they?
Proton’s CEO similarly posted on X that the company would be able to lower prices for users “by up to 30%.”
It’s like an anti-tariff!
We all know how much Cook loves his services revenue, but you know that old saying about how “When you love something”. I think it goes: “When you love something, you should not appeal decisions that set it free.”
Something like that anyway.
[John Moltz is a Six Colors contributor. You can find him on Mastodon at Mastodon.social/@moltz and he sells items with references you might get on Cotton Bureau.]