Apple doesn’t seem terribly concerned with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call for a boycott of its products. If anything, it seems pretty proud to have drawn the controversial frontrunner’s ire.
During a phone conversation with reporters shortly after Trump’s call went out, senior Apple executives made their feelings about the campaign known — and their feelings are pretty funny.
The unnamed execs “said they felt they were in good company given the other groups and people Trump has criticized in the past,” Reuters reports.
Those groups include coffee giant Starbucks, which annoyed Trump with its shockingly (to him) non-Christmas holiday cups, and Macy’s department store, which dropped all Trump-branded merchandise after he described immigrants to America as “killers and rapists.”
Apple is currently engaged in a showdown with Federal courts surrounding orders to provide authorities access to an iPhone 5s used by one of the assailants in the San Bernardino mass shooting in December. The court has requested (officially) that the iPhone creator build a version of the iOS operating system that will allow investigators to get around the passcode lock on the device.
CEO Tim Cook responded with an open letter declaring the company’s intention to fight the orders in the name of security and privacy, claiming that agreeing would compromise the integrity of all iOS devices.
Apple still has a couple days to file its official response to the order. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has piled on the pressure with its own document that says that Apple’s reluctance to comply is part of its marketing strategy.
The company isn’t worried that this case will hurt its sales, but it also directed some fire at the DoJ.
JUST IN: In response to DOJ filing earlier, sr. Apple exec. says company has not said that unlocking an iPhone is technically possible – DJ
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) February 19, 2016
We don’t know what effect — if any — Trump’s latest call for a boycott will have, but we can’t help but feel that his position would be stronger if his campaign hadn’t sent it from Twitter’s iOS app.