RUSH: Tammy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Hi. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How are you?
RUSH: Just fine. Great to have you.
CALLER: (giggles) Thank you so much for taking my call. I was told that if I’m quick, I could thank you for helping my husband and I win a game that we played in our Sunday school class. The game was called the Not-So-New-Newlywed Game, and one of the questions was, have I become more like him or he like me? I said, “He has me listening to Rush now, so I’m more like him,” (giggles) and our answers matched.
RUSH: Cool!
CALLER: (giggles) Thank you.
RUSH: Well, you’re more than welcome. That’s — that’s a cute little story.
CALLER: (giggles) So the reason I called is I’m also a Mac fan like you are, and I finally convinced my husband that he should buy me a new laptop, and I was gonna ask you what you recommend. But after hearing what Tim Cook said to shareholders, I’m a little sad and upset and feel like I shouldn’t waste my money
RUSH: (groans)
CALLER: So I’m just wondering, you know, what you feel about the future of Apple without Steve Jobs?
RUSH: Oh, man! Oh, man, what a question.
CALLER: (giggles) I went through the years without him, and I don’t want to do that again.
RUSH: Well, the short answer is that if you want to buy a new Mac laptop, go do it. If you’re worried about how long Apple’s gonna be around, don’t worry about that. Your Mac computer will have a long life —
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: — and it will be serviced properly, and whatever Tim Cook said in the shareholder meeting will not affect whatever you’re able to accomplish with your Mac computer. Now, if you’re having second thoughts about buying because of what he said, then that’s another story. That’d be a personal decision that you would have to make.
CALLER: Well, I was a little upset at first ’cause I’m so sick and tired of these people. I mean, from a marketing standpoint, why would you want to turn people away?
RUSH: He didn’t think he was. See, this is the key. He didn’t think he was. I’m convinced of it. For those of you don’t know what happened, Apple had shareholders meeting couple weeks ago. And one of the groups that owns Apple stock is a very respected group of conservative scientists, and they happened to be of the opinion that man-made global warming is a hoax.
Amy Ridenour runs this group, and one of her lawyers showed up representing the group, and during Q&A, she actually got the microphone, and got to ask Tim Cook question. Now, Apple has made a big deal out of being “responsible environmental partners.” They are building data centers all over the country, in North Carolina, in New York, I think in Utah and Nevada.
And these are giant server farms to handle iCloud and Siri and all these Internet services that they’re doing, and they are very proud when they tell you that they are close to using 100% renewable energy to power them. In addition to the data centers like in Maiden, North Carolina, they’ve got this giants solar panel farm. Now, remember that Algore is on the board of directors there, Tammy.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Okay. So Algore is the environmentalist nutcase personified
CALLER: (giggles)
RUSH: Now, Tim Cook. I don’t know Tim Cook. I’m gonna assume that Tim Cook believes in manmade global warming. I’m gonna assume that he thinks man is destructive and that his company is going to engage in “responsible environmental behavior.” But also, I’m convinced that Tim Cook believes that Apple’s customers are also of like mind. I think Cook believes that the majority of people that buy Apple stuff, want Apple to be stewards of the earth and not destroy the environment.
So I don’t think that Cook thinks when he was… He wasn’t really rude, but he told the guy that asked the question this. The question to Cook basically was, “Look, this is not proved. This manmade global warming is not proved. You’re dumping a lot of money here into essentially a hoax, and that money could be better spent on shareholder value, on profit.” Cook said, “If you don’t like the way we are doing our environmental policy, then get out of the stock.”
Well, you never hear a CEO telling people not to buy the stock. No matter what. You just don’t hear that. And Cook said (summarized), “Look, there are a lot of things we do here at Apple that we don’t concern ourselves return on investment. Like we have all kinds of programs built into the iPhone, the iPad for the deaf and the hard-of-hearing and the blind, and we don’t care about the profit that we make there.
“We’re doing that as a service to our customers. We don’t do ROI on everything we do.” Now, the question then became, “Well, what is his job at CEO? Is it to be steward of the earth or is it to guarantee/promote value for Apple shareholders?” Depending on where you look, there have been scathingly critical editorials of Cook. One was Investor’s Business Daily.
There are others that have been praising him to the hilt for being environmentally conscious and a brave guy and understanding that we are destroying the planet and that Apple is a great steward. I’m sure Cook thinks that he was scoring points with the vast majority of Apple customers and investors with that comment. That would be my wild guess. Now, your question, your decision is: Okay, here’s this company. You’ve got the CEO who said what he said. Do you want to help that company’s profit line by buying its products?
CALLER: It hurts. It definitely does.
RUSH: And if you don’t, then you’ve gotta find a substitute or a different computer to go buy. Your problem is, you like Mac.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: But you don’t want to prop up something that you might politically disagree with. But at the same time, you wondered if what he did was gonna hurt their growth. They’re in a phase right now of comparative no growth. They’re still growing, but not as rapidly, and the future doesn’t look as rosy as it did years ago because the market, the smartphone market’s being saturated. There just aren’t as many people that don’t have them to buy them now, so everybody, the investors, are waiting on the new category.
Will it be the TV? Will it be the iWatch? Will it be something else, a new version of something that nobody’s got or a better version of something that’s already out there, and nobody knows that yet. So I think Apple is a long-term buy. I think if you’re gonna buy stock in Apple, just sit tight on it. It’s not going anywhere. But your question really has to do with do you want to prop up a company or at least patronize a company where the CEO basically told people like you to take a hike.
CALLER: I know Jobs was more product over ROI, which hey, but you know —
RUSH: Well, now, Jobs, let me tell you something. Jobs was the same way. He just wouldn’t have said what Cook said. Jobs was far more conservative, at least — no, let me take that back. Jobs was a pure capitalist in a liberal body. He managed to convince the American left that he was one of them while he is out there kicking capitalist butt day in and day out, unapologetically. He was totally oriented toward money, totally oriented profit, totally oriented innovation, totally, totally, totally.
Jobs cancelled the Apple charitable program when he reclaimed the CEO job in 1997. Cook put it back when Jobs died. So, in terms of just pure profit, Jobs was full speed ahead, but Jobs also very seldom appeared in the conference. He didn’t talk to investors. Cook always did that even when he wasn’t CEO, along with the CFO. So I don’t know what to tell you, because I didn’t particularly appreciate it but it’s not gonna make me throw away my Apple stuff.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: I know who they are before I buy their stuff. I just love their stuff.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: It’s the best. There’s nothing even close to it. You’re not gonna find — not just the computer, you’re not gonna find the ecosystem that goes along with that computer buying anything else. You’re just not. Do you have an iPhone? Do you have an iPad?
CALLER: I have a Mini.
RUSH: Okay. Well, iCloud, you’re gonna be able to sync ’em be, have the same important data on both, automatically. You won’t have to do anything, it’ll just happen. If you go buy a Windows machine, then your iPad is gonna be entirely different from what’s on your Windows machine, and they’re not gonna be compatible in a whole lot of important ways. I’m not trying to talk you into it one way or the other. I marvel at ’em. They’re literally the best at what they do.
CALLER: Yeah, I agree. I may just put it off for a long while until, you know, I can —
RUSH: You know what?
CALLER: — live with it.
RUSH: I understand this, but life’s too short. Get what you want. Get what you want and enjoy it. It’s still a free country. And I guarantee, you not buying a Mac is not gonna affect Tim Cook’s day. In fact, he’ll never know if you don’t. I know. I have to run, Tammy.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Tammy, I know you’re still out there. Your dilemma is the same as liberals’. If they want to listen to radio, they’ve gotta listen to this one. It’s the best. They might hate everything I stand for but they got no choice if they want to listen to quality, entertaining, fun, good, enigmatic, gripping radio. They have to listen to me, just like you might have to go buy your MacBook. Life is filled with compromises.
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