ANN CROTTY: The price we pay for Apple’s greed
So Apple is now a $1 trillion company. At what cost to the rest of us?
There’s a large sticker across my Apple laptop that screams "€13bn tax dodge". It’s a rather childish attempt to remind myself of how easily I compromise on principles. Most people who notice it think it refers to the Guptas. It does in fact refer to Apple. And it helps to remind me of the grim fact that the single largest influence on the structure of my daily life is the late Steve Jobs. It is a grim fact because I really disliked Jobs and I detest the company he created. Yet the only computers I have are idiot-proof Apple ones, including an iPad mini, and an iPhone. Jobs was the stereotypical obnoxious individual who pushes the boundaries of whatever field he occupies. It is in large part thanks to him that we are all now able to interact with the power of computers, a power that until the early 1990s lay mainly in the hands of a few nerdy specialists. And though he didn’t invent the mobile phone, his version of it became the must-have accessory of 21st-century living. It was not...
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