Apple CEO Tim Cook seems to be taking some heat from his employees following his attendance at a meeting between the family of President-elect Donald Trump and a number of leaders in the technology sector. An unidentified employee posted a question to Cook on the company’s internal message board addressing the meeting directly, according to a report.
“Last week you joined other tech leaders to meet President-elect Donald Trump. How important is it for Apple to engage with governments?” the employee asked, according to TechCrunch. Trump has been unpopular with Silicon Valley, both for the criticism he leveled at the industry during the campaign and for policies he has championed such as the creation of a government registry of individuals by religion and the deportation of millions of immigrants, which are viewed as detrimental to the tech industry.
Desktops Are ‘Strategic’ for Apple
Cook (pictured above) also responded to an employee’s question about whether Mac desktops were strategic for Apple, according to TechCrunch.
“The desktop is very strategic for us. It’s unique compared to the notebook because you can pack a lot more performance in a desktop — the largest screens, the most memory and storage, a greater variety of I/O, and fastest performance,” Cook said, according to TechCrunch. “So there are many different reasons why desktops are really important, and in some cases critical, to people.”
The current generation iMac is the “best desktop” the company has ever made, he said, adding that its Rrtina 5K display is the “best desktop display in the world.”
“Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed to desktops. If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap,” Cook said, although he didn’t get into specifics. “Nobody should worry about that.”
Governments Affect Our Business
Cook defended his decision to attend on the basis that Trump will influence a number of issues such as immigration, government surveillance and censorship laws that are crucial to the tech sector. “Governments can affect our ability to do what we do. They can affect it in positive ways and they can affect in not so positive ways,” Cook wrote in response.
Trump has also proved willing to punish companies that cross him. He recently attacked Boeing and Lockheed Martin on Twitter, driving the stock prices of both businesses down. Lockheed lost as much as $4 billion in stock value following the president-elect’s attack.
During the presidential campaign, Trump also threatened to take unspecified action against Amazon, saying that the company “is going to have such problems” once he was elected. Trump has been critical of Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos because of the Washington Post’s coverage of a number of scandals related to him. Bezos owns the Post.
But despite the threats, Bezos was one of the tech leaders in attendance at the meeting, along with Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, Facebook’s COO Sharon Sandberg, and Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) CEO Larry Page and Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The meeting included Trump and three of his children.
Not Much Choice?
Although Cook himself has been clear about his concerns regarding a Trump presidency, he likely had little choice in attending. Apple recently experienced a 17 percent decline in year-on-year revenues, driven party by weakness in its once-core desktop business. The latest update of the MacBook Pro was met with disappointment from consumers who were hoping to see more significant upgrades and even some new desktop models.
Apple is also feeling increased competition for creative professionals, a market it once dominated. Microsoft has made major headway in developing tools for artists and other professionals, causing some core Mac users to switch systems. Others have complained that traditional desktop and laptop products are being deprioritized by Apple in favor of devices like the iPhone and iPad.
Cook has promised to wow the public with major new product launches in 2017, but the company is nevertheless facing increased scrutiny. Given Trump’s willingness to respond to even the mildest of perceived slights, Cook likely felt he had no choice but to agree to the meeting.
