Wow: for me, this was as entertaining as Bad Blood: high-quality geopolitical business investigation.
I grew up with Apple - my dad's photo studio always had both relics and some flashy new hardware. We went to the Jacob Javits center for the Macworld expo in 1999, and I brought home a poster for the iBook. So, I loved the classic Apple content in Apple in China for its lovely nostalgia factor. I remember some of that stuff, and it was fun to look up some of the wacky computers that I have never encountered, like the eMate.
But that's not the main topic.
This is about how Apple made a huge bet on China, in which it got an enormous consumer market and unbelievable supply chain, but then became utterly dependent on China to the degree that it will take years to tool up any other country to produce the iPhone. It's also about how Tim Cook is a brilliant businessman but has obeyed China's orders at nearly every turn, whether that means staying quiet about human rights abuses, removing applications from the app store, or censoring content.
When in 2019 the company rolled out Apple TV+... Eddie Cue issued just two directives to Apple's content partners: no hardcore nudity and "avoid portraying China in a poor light"
Apple's second-best option is India, where it's trying to produce larger devices that are easier to manufacture. They've had some success there but most of the parts are still from China. It's pretty shocking to realize that the three main players - America, China, and India, are under the rule of Trump, Xi, and Modi, all what you could deem illiberal strongmen leaders. Apple diversifying from China into India would likely mean the same kind of dynamic, but catering to India's growing nationalism instead of China's.
Tim Cook has gotten a bit of heat for donating to Trump and giving him golden trinkets like a little prince, but this book makes it clear that this is the posture toward China too. You could view this as Apple having to make compromises to stay in business, or the company and its leadership never standing up to governments and rarely testing the limits of its power. Either way, the reality of Apple today is that it relies on a lot of overworked humans and is playing a dangerous game with government relationships.