Apple CEO Tim Cook has once again made TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People List today after appearances last year and back in 2012 when he first took over the CEO job.
In an interview with TIME, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described Tim Cook’s comments on ad-supported businesses as “ridiculous,” and suggested that Apple’s products are over-priced.
Zuckerberg was referring to comments Cook made back in September about Apple’s approach to security and privacy, when Cook said:
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.
While Cook was taking a shot at Google without specifically naming the company, the comment could apply equally well to Facebook, which has the same need to monetize its subscribers …
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Just as TIME is putting Apple CEO Tim Cook on the shortlist for Person of the Year, Apple is meeting a milestone that Cook helped accomplish: increasing the number of employees it tracks working hours for from 900,000 to 1 million. MacRumors noticed the change in Apple’s supplier responsibility report:
Going deep into our supply chain, we now follow weekly supplier data for over 1,000,000 workers. In November 88 percent of workweeks were less than the 60-hour maximum specified in Apple’s code of conduct. In limited peak periods, we allow work beyond the 60 hour limit for those employees that volunteer to do so.
As you can see from the image above, TIME magazine’s cover story that hits newsstands tomorrow for both the U.S. and international editions is titled, “Made in China: Why Apple’s future depends on the world’s biggest market”. While noting increasing iPhone sales in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong greatly contributed to Apple’s record earnings of $39.2 billion and ($7.9 billion for Greater China) reported in April, TIME’s Hannah Beech questions, “How much longer will an increasingly nationalistic government allow foreign companies like Apple to profit so handsomely on its shores?” The full story titled “The Cult of Apple in China” is available to TIME subscribers here. An excerpt is below:
The vast majority of Chinese aren’t up in arms about labor conditions at Apple’s supplier factories. A cluster of suicides by Foxconn workers a couple of years ago elicited much more coverage in the West than in China…. Yet Foxconn keeps signing on new workers, even though many other companies complain of labor shortages as Chinese youth increasingly eschew factory work. (Apple runs educational programs for workers in supplier factories.)… Even after all the criticism of Foxconn—the suicides, the industrial accidents, the punishing hours—young Chinese still want a job making Apple devices…
…Apple’s relationship with the People’s Republic embodies some of the global economy’s brightest opportunities but also its thorniest dilemmas. An American tech giant must decide how much to adapt its practices in a faraway land. Should Apple represent the best of the West in the Middle Kingdom, or must it conform to the less salubrious way China Inc. operates? From China’s side, how much longer will an increasingly nationalistic government allow foreign companies like Apple to profit so handsomely on its shores? Caught in the middle are 1.3 billion Chinese whose toil in factories and taste for luxury products will dictate the future of the world’s marketplace.
Time Magazine just released its list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2012, and Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook—following in the footsteps of Steve Jobs— made the list alongside Hilary Clinton, Tim Tebow, Rihanna, and Salman Khan. Also featured on the list this year, after stemming from the incredible success of his “Steve Jobs“ biography, is author Walter Isaacson.
Each entry on the list includes a description written by someone close to the influential person. In the case of Cook, former U.S. Vice President and Apple board member Al Gore did the honors. Gore said Cook has already “led the world’s most valuable and innovative company to new heights while implementing major policy changes smoothly and brilliantly.” Gore’s full entry on Cook is below:
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