> It's interesting to me that Mr. Cook is downplaying this, but it makes some sense, since the price of the stock (and therefore the valuation) is only loosely tied to the success of the company.
Aren't these types of messages mostly meaningless? I mean, what is he going to say?
"Our stock price reflect our ability to continue to charge substantially more for our products than they cost to make. So I would like to thank our lawyers for making sure we aren't the ones who have to pay more taxes. The executive team at the other tech companies for helping us collude against our own employees so we don't have to pay them more. And our friends in China who keep a steady stream of low payed dormitory bound workers available so we don't have to spend our money in the US, or even much at all. Thank you all for helping us continuing these practices as the world burns."
There are currently huge opportunities in applied computing for people who can break out of the status quo. There has never been such a big gap between what technology can do and what technology culture can't. Of course it isn't easy. As there also never been easier to waste time in technology.
Have you read Vice? We can all argue who, if anyone, is right, but it certainly isn't unexpected that the twenty-something freelancers writing a puff piece about her weren't the shining example of professionalism. If they were she would probably have been a footnote, or uncomfortable in an entirely different way, as the article explores Chinese society.
I think that is an underappreciated point. What makes a lot of open source software productive only exists in proprietary code, infrastructure and knowledge guarded as a competitive advantage at large companies. I have never really understood why companies like that gets so much open source credit while someone independently trying to make a living shipping a proprietary product for an open source system, making that system more attractive, gets a lot of hate.
The problem with intellectual property is that it favors the sum, rather than the rate, of innovation. Companies have a natural incentive not to innovate. Since you make profit by not spending the revenue of your previous innovation on new innovation. If you want to have continuous innovation the profit should instead be based on your rate of innovation. Meaning that you don't get a monopoly on past achievements. That is how you don't have to wait decades for new cars or rockets while people with spreadsheets calculate their most opportune moment to start innovating again.
I do think you have a good point. What I have been telling people who wants to learn things for a few years now is to make sure they have a pipeline to test their ideas. To many people are perpetually learning, tinkering and building fantasies in their head without having the opportunity to make something out of it. I would say "to each their own" if it wasn't for the fact that it usually becomes sort of destructive. So while I do support more generous access to information it is also important that it doesn't just become "window shopping".
Aren't these types of messages mostly meaningless? I mean, what is he going to say?
"Our stock price reflect our ability to continue to charge substantially more for our products than they cost to make. So I would like to thank our lawyers for making sure we aren't the ones who have to pay more taxes. The executive team at the other tech companies for helping us collude against our own employees so we don't have to pay them more. And our friends in China who keep a steady stream of low payed dormitory bound workers available so we don't have to spend our money in the US, or even much at all. Thank you all for helping us continuing these practices as the world burns."