Watch: ‘They Were Laughing At Us’ – Alex Agius Saliba Opens Up About Meeting Apple Heads At Cupertino
Maltese MEP Alex Agius Saliba made international headlines this month thanks to the story of him taking on the world’s most valuable company Apple and winning… but Agius Saliba’s story started years ago.
Sitting with Lovin Malta for a recent interview ahead of the new iPhone 15’s release, the MEP has detailed the steps which led up to the tech giant switching to USB-C – and the gruelling, at times downright offensive turns in the saga.
“They were laughing at us,” Agius Saliba said when asked about the treatment he received when, as part of a European Parliament delegation, he had visited Apple’s beautiful Cupertino Head Office.
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From a fabulous tour of the premises to being asked to carry tables around for the delegation to actually be able to start discussing the new changes, Agius Saliba opened up about the visit which actually happened three whole years ago.
“We had another big argument,” Agius Saliba recollects. “We were being threatened, ‘politely’ during these past months that Apple would be implementing a specific programme whereby basically, Apple-approved cables give a superior speed to those cables which aren’t approved by them, something which would’ve gone against the same legislation which we negotiated and approved in the EU and something which they backed out of as well.”
At the end of the day, however, Agius Saliba sees this recent charging port overhaul not just as a massive win for customers in Europe and worldwide, but also as a sign that, “if the European Union is ambitious and ultimately challenges even the biggest company in the world, and all these big tech companies, at the end of the day, if you do something which is right, right for consumers, the right option for our environment, you ultimately eventually get there.”
What do you make of Alex Agius Saliba’s story?
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