In a nutshell, because Tim Cook is OK with child pornography.

I’m going to give Mr. Cook the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s not personally attracted to children. But he has a laissez-faire attitude towards the production and distribution of child pornography, and I’m sorry, but that’s gross.

If this were merely his personal opinion, I suppose I’d never know and I wouldn’t be writing this piece. But there are apps on the App Store that aid in the easy production of sexualized child imagery and Mr. Cook knows this and has done nothing about it. I am left to assume, therefore, that he’s OK with it. That he approves.

Why am I laying this at Tim Cook’s feet? Surely, you say, someone lower on the ladder is responsible for what is and is not on the App Store. And yes, that’s true, but if some flunky were OK with child pornography and let the apps stay in, then at some point, Mr. Cook would have to intervene and order the apps removed. He’s had plenty of time to do so and he hasn’t. So he’s OK with them.

And so as long as he’s running the company and allowing those apps, I’m done with Apple.

What are these apps, you ask? What weird, obscure apps are making it easy to create sexualized images of children?

Oh, just these tiny little apps called X and Grok, from a guy you’ve never heard of. Name of Elon Musk. I hear he likes shooting off rockets in his spare time.

That’s just two stories. There are a ton of ‘em out there.

I’ve been an Apple user since 1992. Many of you reading this weren’t even alive in 1992. I stuck with Apple through the bad days of the 1990s. I rejoiced at the return of Steve Jobs. I thrilled to the ascendance of the company.

For more than half my life, I’ve hewed to Apple because the company’s design and functional aesthetics either matches or approximates my own. Better yet, the company had an ethical stance that I agreed with. And when Jobs died and Cook took the reins, that ethical stance only seemed more and more potent. Apple stood for diversity, for the environment. Cook bravely came out as the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He famously told an investor who didn’t like Apple’s accessibility initiatives to “get out of the stock.” Because Apple had a moral and ethical imperative that superseded mere ROI.

But everything Trump touches dies, and Tim’s shaken the man’s hand too many times. In the first administration, there was kowtowing and knob-polishing, true, but then came the second administration and the million-dollar donation and the gold trophy. This time it felt different. It wasn’t just smart politicking with a wink and nudge that said, “I don’t actually like this guy…just doing my job.”

This time it felt like Cook — and by extension, Apple — was all-in.

And while this gave me the ick, it didn’t put me off Apple entirely. It was political. It was survival. And maybe there was still room for a wink and nudge.

But this…

Apple has now proven that it is no better than any other company. That it will bend its own moral and ethical standards to avoid even the appearance of angering Trump or his lickspittles, such as Musk.

Why is this the final straw? Because it’s so egregious. It’s so obvious. There’s no fuzzy moral, ethical, or legal quandary here. Apple is well within its rights to remove the apps and to put the onus of complaint on Phony Stark.

But they’re not doing this.

For decades, I’ve evangelized Apple’s products. I’ve sold more Apple gear by recommendation than I can reliably count. I long considered myself an Apple fan.

Now I am merely an Apple user.

Because, no, I’m not going to deep-six all the Apple gear I own — that’s the very definition of cutting off my nose to spite my face. I spent a lot of money on that stuff, and its quality and utility have not changed in the slightest.

But hey — should anything break or die, I will simply avail myself of the very robust, thriving second-hand market and get a year-old gadget instead of a brand new one. That’s fine.

Until Apple reverses course and shows it has some stones to go along with its multi-trillion-dollar bankroll, it’ll see no more money from me.