From reddit: -Remember when GE attempted this and it ended them? "Yeah they started off just financing their steam turbines and made sense, then one thing led to another and they somehow ended up liable for billions in nursing home insurance. I bet the Apple executives are all snorting cocaine and thinking 'hey, if a nuclear steam turbine company can sell health insurance why not us? Write it on the brainstorming board!'" "Oddly enough, chunks of GE Capital were actually sold to GS to help build their retail banking business, so in a way, the shadow of GE capital is making these apple cards. What people seem to be glossing over is that GE Capital did not end GE, it was by far their most profitable division. Post 2008 though, it wasn’t great being valued as a risk-addled bank anymore, and their management of numerous industrial divisions went to absolute shit."
Apple has passed its innovation peak, so much is sure. The entire event to show off its new services was just one disaster after another. Game streaming service? Biggest garbage in town. Credit card? Nothing is special about this credit card. They tell everyone how special it is, but nothing is different really than any other payment card. You pay with your card and the card settles with whatever bank/provider you hook up with. The little bit of added security (which is actually not a major security issue) of not showing numbers on the card is laughable. For a company of this size what they revealed was a total downer. Conclusion: You can feed imbeciles and retarded people anything you want and they happily eat shit off your spoon. The only explanation on Apple's end I have is that probably the entire upper management is taking it up the arse from their pink CEO and during the remainder of their time they work hard at supporting social justice warriors.
Anyone remember the AT&T Universal card? Triggered an exodus of financial customers out to other telcom service providers. For those of you too young to remember when the Bell system was broken up, AT&T used to be on par with the IRS, and perhaps Jesus Himself.
What you gotta ask yourself is why in the world one would be so hung up on gay people that you'd have to work that last sentence in? Good grief, who cares who Tim Cook fucks and what the fuck does it have to do with Apple's product pipeline? (I hate Apple and it's sheeple, by the way, just couldn't care less what you, they, or anyone else does in their bedroom)
I can provide you with a simple explanation why it matters a lot actually. It does matter because despite probably less than 5 percent of the workforce being gay the large tech companies waste an aweful lot of time in supporting gay pride parades, gay celebration days, measures how to accommodate their workplace for gays. My wife works as manager for one of those companies and she was countless times strongly "encouraged" (aka forced) to wear pink t-shirts and show her support for gay pride. My wife is straight and Christian and while she treats everyone equally without regard to sexual orientation she does not appreciate that she is forced to deny her Christian belief system in supporting something she does not believe in. Her work responsibilities are to enhance stakeholder value, nowhere in her contract is it stated that her job responsibilities encompass creating the perfect workplace for gay people. Equly she is not tasked to create the perfect workplace for Christians, Hindus, Jews, or any other minority. But gay support is the favorite theme of HR departments these days. Guess where that comes from with gay CEOs. Can we focus again on actual work and being better than the competition? Do we really have to waste more time on satisfying all the feelings that every single gay person may have? A similar crazy development is equal pay regardless of gender. Should anyone dare to question equal pay for women despite the fact that most women don't apply the same long term loyalty to companies and the fact that company responsibilities suddenly slide down the scale as soon as any of their kids start coughing or sneezing. Equal pay for equal responsibility. If a female firefighter equally leaves the burning house last and equally carries out kids and elderly out of burning houses then equal pay is 100% justified. However that is not the case these days. Women want equal pay even though they on average leave the workplace prematurely (arrival of kids and prolonged maternity leave among many other issues). Same with gays, they could not care less whether other minorities are equally well served, such as full wheelchair access or the like, as long as their demands are met to the dot. How about we first focus again on core work and again deliver top performance before we are all forced on becoming social justice warriors. Edit: remember the guy at Google who got fired because he simply cited the fact that women are not equally disposed to find joy in applied sciences? OMG, do you remember the outrage? Google employees for about one week could not focus on anything else but wasting hours over hours over hours on internal chat forums debating this case. Since when have companies turned into discussion societies and places where feelings outweigh the importance of facts?
First off, as soon as you and your wife start to care as much Mathew 19:9 where Jesus actually says "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery." as you do about Paul and the Old Testament's oblique references to homosexuality you can start complaining about "denying your Christian belief system". Until then, you're using your religion as a thinly veiled transparent cover for bigotry, full stop. And by the way, if you make a statement like "The only explanation on Apple's end I have is that probably the entire upper management is taking it up the arse from their pink CEO" you most certainly can't claim you "treat everyone equally without regard to sexual orientation", that's just wholly implausible. And yes, that was a bigoted statement if I've ever heard one, completely indefensible. As for the rest of the crap, it's pretty damn ironic that you spend the first half of your screed complaining about how we shouldn't make any effort to ensure things are fair, then spend the second half complaining about how unfair it is that women receive equal pay as men. The bigotry and sexism aside, what you are advocating is simply horrible business advice. If I as an employer make an effort to treat women and Hindus and gay folks well then I have access to that talent pool that makes up more than half the workforce. If you espouse your views you've largely made yourself an inferior choice compared to me for over half the workforce, and you'll need to pay more or offer more benefits or do something else to attract them that is significantly more costly than any of the oh so burdensome things you're whining about. Oh, and among fields like tech, where you seem to have the most problem with this, the vast majority of white males also find your view abhorrent and would rather not work for someone like you. I know you may not have had the experience of struggling with attracting and retaining a workforce, especially in tech, but I can tell you for sure that making yourself less desirable to more than half your potential employees isn't the way to increasing shareholder value! Do we end up doing things that aren't "fair" in the communist sense you seem to seek? Sure. Does the CEO wear pink one day (That's associated with breast cancer awareness, not gay pride, just so you know) and do women get time off to have kids and do you poor wittle white guy not get your own day to celebrate? Yep...deal with it. The folks running these companies care about shareholder value, not the poor downtrodden white male with the persecution complex. You and I are doing just fine, at least I am. On the flip side, people like you have allowed me to hire talent way above what a startup would normally be able to get. For example, I hire women with young kids and...gasp... give them time off whenever they need it to run their lives. And in return get incredibly talented devs who will stay up for 6 hours after putting the kids to bed when there's something they know is important to finish without me even asking, with incredible loyalty that has literally translated in at least one case to one of my employees turning down a 50% pay raise to go work for someone like you. So for purely selfish reasons, folks like you actually make it far easier for folks like me to be successful, so I suppose I should just let you self immolate in peace!
I think you are committing the fallacy of false equivalence. Your biblical reference would make sense if my wife compared different "sins" She does not, I clearly stated she treats all people around and under her with the same respect and dignity. What she rejects to do is wear pink shirts, play games and celebrate gay days. So far there was nothing HR could do against it because she could coherently make her case. I think you should leave it up to each person how they live out their morality. And it should be each person's personal freedom whether they want to participate in a gay day at work or not. Then there are no special days for countless other minorities, why for gays? You sound very agitated and pretty gay at that for someone who just a post ago argued so vehemently that he is not invested in this issue. Bigoted? No, I am just at a stage where I smirk at people who want to dictate everyones' lives in the name of hurt feelings. I never mistreated gays and neither has my wife. But we damn well reserve our personal freedoms to participate or not in events that contradict our religious beliefs. Is that problematic for you? Haha, now I am not just a bigot but sexist because you don't like my stance on those issues? I thought the law number one for gays is tolerance to others opinions and ways of life? Could it be that you are just slightly freaked out because grindr is on the selling block and it's database may get exposed to prying eyes? And from 5% we are suddenly at 50% or more of the workforce? You just posted the most incoherent, freaked out rant of this year at ET. Congratulations. You seem to exactly be that person who gets baited each time his feelings are slightly hurt and go on a rampage. First you went off by a single cynical sentence and now you turned into a total social justice warrior clown.
No, it's not up to you how you "live out your morality" if you make statements like "The only explanation on Apple's end I have is that probably the entire upper management is taking it up the arse from their pink CEO" and claim that's because of your religious beliefs, but no, you're not bigoted and you treat everyone equally? Right. While you would never say anything even remotely like that about remarried divorcees, despite Jesus literally directly condemning it? If you say that attending a gay pride event is forcing you to go "against your religion" but you have no problem say, going the wedding of a divorcee you're an up and up hypocrite, as defined again by Jesus in your Bible. That's not "comparing sins", that's deciding you're going to be a bigot to one group because of their "sin" but ignore the rest you find inconvenient. If that's your personal believe system, then your personal belief system is seriously fucked up and pardon the rest of us if we tell you to cut the sanctimonious shit about being forced to go against your religion. That aside, by your silence on the matter it sounds like you get the reason why it makes sense to not be a bigot toward over half your potential workforce, so baby steps I guess.
You wanna quote the bible? Then do it correctly. First the instruction about divorcing applies to Christians, not believers of nothing or other faiths. Secondly a Christian whose non believing spouse seeks a divorce can remarry. Third, why are you even talking about this? Everyone is a sinner in God's eyes. I nor my wife judge anyone for any sins, it is not our business to judge others. But we reserve our freedom of choice to not participate in anything that goes against our convictions. Now you insist I must be white and attend divorcee weddings... What else? You seem to be highly confused and so agitated at this stage that I highly recommend you to sleep it over and relax for a few hours. You are mixing up all points, made so far.
That's interesting, so gayness is some kind of universal sin? The kind that allows you to say "The only explanation on Apple's end I have is that probably the entire upper management is taking it up the arse from their pink CEO" and then tell me that I'm the one agitated when I point out how bigoted that is? But adultery, that's only a problem if it's a Christian, plus you get to make up some shit about "a Christian whose non believing spouse seeks a divorce can remarry". Perhaps you should actually read that book you purport to believe in instead of just using it as a screen for your bigotry. Then you might have seen the part where it says " "If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her. And if a woman has a husband who is not a believer and he is willing to live with her, she must not divorce him." in First Corinthians 7:12? See unlike you I've actually read your entire bible a couple times, highly recommend it if you're going to purport to live by it. Oh, well ignore all that ignorance, right? You don't "judge" you just "reserve our freedom of choice to not participate in anything that goes against our convictions." You absolutely have that choice. And the rest of the world has the choice to tell you that you're clearly a bigot if you can make statements like "The only explanation on Apple's end I have is that probably the entire upper management is taking it up the arse from their pink CEO", somehow claim that's not "judging" (seriously?), and then ignore much more direct missives from your same holy book directly from your Jesus simply because they're inconvenient for you. And we can set up our organizations to push people like you and your wife out because your "belief system" is incompatible with both basic civility and shareholder value, not to mention common sense and concepts like the ability to have internally consistent thought processes!