- Ireland granting tax benefits to Apple that turned out to be illegal (when both parties thought they were legal at the time) is not Apple's fault.

- PRISM, as I understand it, is a way for large companies that may be the subject of large quantities of (legal) NSLs/warrants to upload that data.

Per Wiki:

PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms.

I don't fault them for taking steps to reduce their compliance burden, nor do I have a belief that a company doing these by hand is more virtuous than one that does not.

- Offshore tech manufacturing in general sucks. Seriously. I can't think of a large vendor that doesn't use Chinese parts created under shitty-by-first-world-standards working conditions.

The no poach agreements on the other hand are completely evil and completely on them.

I don't even think that the no poach agreements are that bad. It would be one thing if the companies just didn't hire former employees but that's not the case, as some articles seem to mention or even imply. The issue was that Google's recruiters were proactively looking for entire teams of Apple's employees and simply offering them more money to come work for Google. That sounds really great for employees except that there's a very fine line for companies. There was never a formal anti-poaching agreement between these companies. It was more of an informal agreement that said "We don't want to take these to court because hiring entire teams of people out from under us falls under laws that prohibit tortious interference with business (contractual) relations so let's just agree to not actively go after our employees."

The issue was not that these companies were trying to keep people from moving up in their careers, they were trying to avoid the gray area that results from them having business relationships and using those to cripple each other. It's a bigger pain in the rear to go to court over these than it is to just not proactively do it.

As far as working conditions at factories go, Apple has at least put pressure on them to make improvements. What other major electronics company has done that?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/business/signs-of-changes-...

No one. This is why I'll never understand the criticism and why it annoys the crap out of me when articles about working conditions call it "Apple's manufacturing plant". It's not Apple's plant in any sense of the word except that they contract them out. Apple is under no obligation or responsibility to tell manufacturers how to run their businesses and I think they deserve kudos for constantly forcing these companies to improve working conditions and pay and for doing it contractually. They're blatantly putting their money where their mouth is.