Originally published at: NYT: Jon Stewart to end show after Apple tells him not to criticize China or AI | Boing Boing
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ISWYDT 
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now’s a great time to move on from the “only company that respects me” stage to the “of course, it’s unreasonable to expect otherwise, you’re naive if you think different” stage.
Ever since Apple’s unofficial motto became apparent to me as “we know what’s best for you”, I couldn’t see it as a company that respects me as a user of general purpose computers. Control freaks by definition don’t show others respect. Their attempted micromanaging of Stewart is a case in point.
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expressed its need for the host and his team to be “aligned” with the company’s views on topics discussed.
They invested in a show with a famously outspoken political host and only later decided he had to be made to ‘align’ to the company?
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Rather than falling in line when Apple threatened to cancel the show, Stewart reportedly decided to walk
Pretty on brand for Jon.
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Probably a silly question, but does anyone over a certain age (say, 12) really think that any massive corporation cares about them, including massive corporations some of us are actually employed by? It’s entirely possible that the millions of thinkpieces that say that Millenials and/or Gen Zers are doing x, y, and z–including being suspicious of large corporations–are b.s.
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I still believe that Bob of Bob’s Red Mill starts his day with a bowl of his oatmeal and he cares about its fabulous oatiness, and I will be a little bit crestfallen if I learn otherwise.
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The King Arthur Flour owner-employees were definitely sitting around a Round Table in their shiniest armor when they developed the confetti pancake mix that made my daughter’s 6 year birthday breakfast. (Obv. Bedivere got the glitter-infused maple syrup from the lady of the lake)
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Dammit. Now I want pancakes! I wonder if my partners would be willing to get up early(ish) on Sunday? Think they’d convince me to do the same?
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On her birthday, my daughter eats pancakes for breakfast lunch, snack and dinner. It doesn’t necessarily have to be early (though she dragged us to the kitchen by 7am for the first round…there were also presents to get to afterall!)
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A child after my own heart! I applaud these choices.
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Likewise, but I’ll make waffles.
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Not the first time Apple went out of its way like this
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I’m a bit surprised that Apple has a sufficiently strong position on “AI” to make that part of the demand. Especially when they usually seem so satisfied with their “but we do somewhat more of it on-device, unlike Google, so fret not” line with regards to creepy tech trends generally.
On China, sure, Cook is probably 100% in favor of information purification directives, a garden of pure ideology, etc; but AI is slightly more surprising.
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The 1984 commercial is not aging so well.
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How can Apple enforce this? Can’t a director just do what they like?
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If they can enforce this, well didn’t they just make sure every character will have an Android and that no Apple phones ever get seen in movies with any baddies, ever again?
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SO want that ‘eyeroll’ emoji!
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It’s enforced by trading favors. Like the US Air Force (yup), Apple will provide devices that give them good publicity. If they don’t like what’s used, they can blacklist those involved: director, production company…
Then, group pressure is a hell of a thing, especially when going along with the pressure seems so easy and harmless…
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Right. So film budgets can’t run to a few phone purchases? And Apple is going to blacklist a studio because a director used an iPhone as a baddie’s phone?
If ‘trading favours’ is what this is, I suspect it is more than ‘favours’ and it is probably the large sums Apple may be paying for product placement - a revenue stream (with backhanders along the way) that studio commercial types will not want to relinquish. That’s probably how they ‘enforce’ it.
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