Apple in China was a difficult book to read. Not because of the prose โ the words flow beautifully and the chronology is easy to follow โ but because after each chapter I was questioning my relationship with Apple products and second-guessing my decision from 2012 An interesting year, that one, as I had also decided to detach from Google; facebook account deletion came the following year. Two for three ain’t bad.to go all-in on their ecosystem.
The first issue is what they did: supporting, even enabling, of an autocratic regime that has no respect for personal freedom, privacy, or culture other than Xi’s. Whether they sleepwalked into it at first makes little difference. That Xi Jinping was a dictator-in-waiting was clear to some soon after he came to power in 2013, become even clearer in 2016 when he designated himself core leader and obvious even to the willfully blind in 2018 when he abolished term limits. That last step was seven years ago, and each year from 2013 to 2018 Apple was investing tens of billions of dollars into the economy.
The second is why they did it: to increase shareholder value. This is as far away from the 1984 athletes and the 1997 crazy ones as you can get. There was no reason why Apple products could not have been made around the world โ per the book, Samsung has only a token presence in China, and manufactures its chips in Korea in the US. But at what cost? And with what margins? Profits seduced the company right into a quicksand trap. McGee and his interviewees have a difficult time imagining it escape.
The third, and most painful to read, was the how: by being ruthless in negotiating and relentless in what they demanded of their employees. It is a company of sharks that destroy their partners and chew up their employees in pursuit of engineering excellence higher margins. You do net get to a trillion dollar valuation by being a minnow.
I first heard of the book in May 2025, on The Talk Show. I would like to think that John Gruber was under its influence back in March when he wrote that something was rotten in the state of Cupertino. That article was about the false advertising of Apple “Intelligence”, but the rot started much earlier and is infinitely deeper. Warren Buffet was smart to have been selling, and I should get smart about detaching.