When Tim Cook tried to explain away its actions this week by saying protesters were using HKmap.live to “maliciously to target individual officers for violence” without providing evidence, even longtime Apple observer and blogger John Gruber, couldn’t stomach it.
“I can’t recall an Apple memo or statement that crumbles so quickly under scrutiny,” Gruber wrote. “For a company that usually measures umpteen times before cutting anything, it’s both sad and startling.”
I completely agree with Gruber and the general tenets of this piece. US companies — and Hollywood, in particular — have been appeasing China for a long time in exchange for access to its giant market. This has mostly flown under the radar because it didn’t affect customers elsewhere — but that has changed with the NBA’s PR stumbles this week.
Apple had no justifiable reason for removing the Hong Kong protester app, and the internal email to Apple staff explaining the removal is downright embarrassing. I’m a long-time Apple customer who has spent tens of thousands of dollars at Apple stores over the past decade, but CEO Tim Cook’s decision to side with a dangerous, authoritarian government and against people asking for the very same rights Cook enjoys makes me never want to spend another cent with Apple again.
Hopefully Cook reflects on his own conscience and shows some sign that he believes his own rhetoric on human rights. If he doesn’t, Apple is going down a dangerous path.
I’ve never been more disgusted with Apple than I am today.
I’m not the guy who likes to customize the look and feel of my iPhone. I usually don’t use cases, though I did when I had the jet black iPhone 7 because of its susceptibility to “micro-abrasions”, in Apple’s lingo. Usually the iPhone or iPad ship with wallpapers that are good enough for most people.
This year though, the options were a bit lacking. The OLED screen opens up a whole new universe of possibilities, so I did a quick web search with the intention of finding one, downloading it, installing it, and nothing thinking about it again for at least a year.
Fortunately, the first hit that came up was a story by BGR about a Japanese designer who had updated his creative collection of iPhone wallpapers to fit the 6.5” iPhone XS Max screen. I clicked through and was blown away.
The designer is Hideaki Nakatani, and he came to prominence a few years ago when he found some glitches in iOS that opened the door to some creative designs. BGR takes it from here:
The most popular one was a special black wallpaper that caused the iPhone’s dock and folder backgrounds to disappear. It looked so cool on the Jet Black iPhone 7, which was brand new at the time. Sadly, Apple fixed all of the little bugs in iOS that made those wallpapers possible, but that hasn’t stopped Nakatani from cooking up a bunch of new options for iPhone users.
I ended up downloading dozens of them to test out, and absolutely love them. There are probably thousands of websites out there offering free wallpaper downloads, but this was the most creative site I’d ever come across.
Even if you don’t have the iPhone XS, there are plenty of wallpapers for previous versions of the iPhone. Do yourself a favor and go check it out.