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Apple starts to behave normally

by on15 April 2014

And this is news

It is a sad state of affairs when a company starts making the news because it is not behaving like an ass. A court appointed monitor, who Apple tried to get fired because he was telling them what to do, said the fruity cargo cult appeared be making a "promising start" to enhancing its antitrust compliance programmes.

Last year Apple was found by a court to have conspired to raise e-book prices, and monitor was appointed to make sure the company behaved. Apple through its toys out of the pram and the monitor Michael Bromwich, said executives made his job impossible. Apple fanboys apparently also launched their usual array of death threats for standing against the cult. Apple appealed against the appointment of Bromwich and an appeals court told it to sling its hook and behave. Bromwich said that Apple appears to have seen the light a little, but more work is required.

In a 77-page report filed in U.S. District Court in New York, Bromwich said the relationship between his team and Apple has "significantly improved" since a federal appeals court in February rejected the iPhone maker's bid to halt his work. However, while progress had been made in enhancing Apple's antitrust compliance program as ordered by US District Judge Denise Cote, his team has only been able to speak with a limited number of company employees.

So far senior Apple executives are still sulking and refusing to speak to him for daring to say that they were wrong. The monitoring team "still lacks a significant amount of the information it needs to fulfil its monitoring obligations," Bromwich said.

The judge had in July found that Apple played a "central role" in scheming from late 2009 into early 2010 with five publishers to raise e-book prices and impede competitors such as Amazon. If Apple were a person, it would have been jailed for ignoring what amounts to be its court appointed probation officer, but corporates are allowed a lot more leeway when it comes to ignoring the justice system.

Last modified on 15 April 2014
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