this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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Apple's revenue: $400 Billion.

Meet Alex Roman. He is part of the 6 most powerful men running the Apple Corporate Empire.

Vice-President of Finance. One of the very few people with access to Tim Cook's personal office. Roman's job is squeezing App developers and ensuring iOS users can never escape the Apple store.

He testified in front of a California court to defend Apple fees.

The judge said he lied under oath. She says he is taking her for a fool.

From the Court decision:

In stark contrast to Apple’s initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option.*

To hide the truth, Apple's Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, outright lied under oath.

Internally, Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the Injunction, but Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise*

Cook chose poorly. The real evidence, detailed herein, more than meets the clear and convincing standard to find a violation. The Court refers the matter to the United States Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25924283/epic-v-apple-contempt-order.pdf

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 192 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Jail his ass

If I do that, I go to jail, if he does it, he should get the same punishment

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 79 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Absolutely. Honestly fines should generally be abolished. Because it's fine is nothing but the cost of doing business for the wealthy. However if they had to go to prison or actually start sacrificing some of their own time then shit gets real.

[–] Reyali@lemm.ee 62 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Unless fines become a % of a person’s wealth. Make everyone feel it equally.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 51 points 5 days ago (2 children)

In principle, yes, but hiding wealth is also like Rich Bastard 101 stuff.

[–] BrightCandle@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago

Wealth based fines would be extremely based. Most people would pay nothing and the wealthy would be paying a heck of a lot more. Which is why it will never happen its all about punishing the workers.

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If we're doing percentage based fines, that would pay for forensic accounting.

[–] EvilBit@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

True enough, but you’d still be playing legal whack-a-mole because by the letter of the law, you could still be legally relatively poor but have access to an insane amount of money in lots of ways.

[–] errer@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago

Rich people should be fined a higher percentage because they can afford it. A $10 million dollar fine for someone with $100 million doesn’t hit as hard as someone with a million getting fined $100k.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

I was gonna suggest this. Norway or Denmark do this for speeding tickets and it's very effective.

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago

When the punishment to a law is a fine it's only a law to poor people.

[–] kingofras@lemmy.world 76 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I don’t think it can be overstated how far Apple and Tim are straying from their core values with this and the intelligence failures.

It’s bad enough Tim really only made the Watch in his nearly 15y as CEO. His recent capitulation to the Regime and now this, it’s time to go buddy.

You’re good at feeding shareholders and doing the stock buyback thing, but that’s not really what apple is. All of what apple is and you tried to mimic failed: the car, the ski goggles, the power mat and most recently “intelligence”.

These are the signs a company has peaked and is just trying to ride the past successes.

Thanks to Musk and Trump he of course looks like a half decent business leader, but when all the veils of secrecy are lifted and the privacy promises turn out to be empty, there isn’t much left.

!deapple@lemm.ee

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 39 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Values mean nothing, principles are rational ideals, values are aspirational. They aren't “straying from their core values”. This is who they have always been. Everything else was public relations. When faced with moral decisions, they will lie for money. Period.

[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 19 points 5 days ago (2 children)

It’s literally not possible for a billionaire to have any “core values”. It’s an oxymoron.

[–] FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

That's not true at all. Notch valued having a candy wall, and he made good on it.

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee -3 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I mean, bill Gates has done a ton of really good things with his wealth.

[–] BrightCandle@lemmy.world 26 points 5 days ago (1 children)

After he acquired it all and spent decades doing illegal stuff for which Microsoft received extensive anti trust fines. Lets not kid ourselves here is trying to redeem himself for his prior billionaire behaviour and it often comes off more as "greenwashing" than actually helping people.

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee -2 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Right, fuck people for trying to do good if they've ever done bad things in their past.

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 7 points 4 days ago

They can atone, but it doesn't make the effects of their past mistakes go away.

[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 7 points 4 days ago

There’s also the massive tax breaks rich folks receive for donations.

[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 19 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Nah man, that wealth is stolen from tax payers.

I hear you, and I do like that billionaires like bill gates and buffet have pledged to donate or what not…

But my point still stands… they had no core values when they accumulated the wealth. Now gates is retired and bored and controls more wealth than a small country.

Sure, Carnegie hall is great, but the dude was still a cunt. Same with gates and buffet…

Buffet and Gates might be cunts of lesser evil though, I’ll give you that… but that’s like genocide or genocide light…

I hate using words like cunts and dick in a negative light, they are such great body parts, but whatevs

[–] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

Nah man, that wealth is stolen from tax payers.

And customers, and (probably most of all) employees.

[–] noxypaws@pawb.social 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Bill Gates deserves the guillotine exactly as much as the rest of them.

[–] kingofras@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Oh come on. He said he barely remembered who Epstein was!

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

bill Gates has done a ton of ~~really~~ supposedly good things, trying to ameliorate his lifelong ruthless profiteering, with his ~~wealth~~ stolen money

[–] entwine413@lemm.ee 0 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Right, supposedly good things like making all research they perform freely available, providing billions in grants for healthcare and agricultural development, providing billions in funding to organizations like the WHO, etc.

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah, he used just a fraction of all he stole to do all that. He's still a morally bankrupt man IMO.

[–] ms_lane@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Phil should have been CEO.

Tim was a mistake.

[–] kingofras@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Can’t innovate anymore my ass

[–] FourWaveforms@lemm.ee 5 points 3 days ago

Inescapable consequences of letting zero-integrity optimization machines (psychopaths) run companies like this.

Of course they do this, what else are they supposed to do? It's their nature. Expecting otherwise is idiotic.

Getting outraged by this is like getting mad at the sun for rising. But if the legal system displays this absurd sham outrage, everyone will continue to be distracted from the actual problem, which is that society has no mechanism for intercepting these individuals and keeping them away from roles where they will obviously do things like this, because of course they will.

This is permitted constantly, we keep obtaining the same result constantly, all while the people who supposedly safeguard society gape and scratch their heads like orangutans. They are utterly taken aback that allowing the same transparently stupid situation doesn't magically start working, providing an object lesson in the meaning of stupidity itself.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That's gonna be an expensive bribe to Pammy

[–] kingofras@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

And his skin colour doesn’t help either. Word on the street is she may be a tiny bit racist.

[–] MisterMoo@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

I’m frankly shocked that Phil Schiller was on the “don’t be dishonest” train about anything.

[–] devfuuu@lemmy.world 13 points 5 days ago

As long as they paid the king it should all be fine.

[–] drspod@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

What did he lie about? What was the larger case about?

[–] atrielienz@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It seems that he made claims in court that Apple the company did not knowingly engage in practices that would be considered anti-competitive under the law.

"For a year and a half, Apple has engaged in bad faith, levying a variety of different and new fees to app developers to get around the spirit of the judicial order. It put up scare screens, engaged in sleazy privilege claims, and lied under oath to the judge about its decision-making. Normally these kinds of tactics happen without consequence for important business executives. But this time, the judge accused Apple Vice-President of Finance, Alex Roman, of having “outright lied under oath,” and referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for a criminal contempt investigation. She also went out of her way to blame Apple CEO Tim Cook directly." - From the article.

[–] mj_marathon@programming.dev 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 13 points 4 days ago

First of all how dare you