There is nothing wrong with the request. However it was soundly rejected by the shareholders (only 2.95%). That's how corporate democracy works. The problem is that they kept pushing to get their way even after they had been voted down by the shareholders.
The more I hear about Tim Cook, the more I admire him. That was a really great put-down he delivered. There comes a point where you can't reason any further with unreasonable people and you just have to tell them to fuck off.
But you can't. If the motivations weren't there, they wouldn't have asked the question. That kind of question only exists when there's an underlying motivation to use such information as ammunition. This is why such attacks are so cunning. The question sounds logical and fair, but it must be avoided because the potential damage is massive.
Well, for Apple to collect that information would probably be significant work. What's the cost of swapping out bad metals in their batteries? Some of it is really hard to quantify.
But, it wasn't a serious request for information. That's what was wrong with the request — it wasn't one. They were trolling. And you don't feed trolls.
Shouldn't they be doing that anyway? Like, shouldn't the company know how much policies cost it versus the alternatives? Or it's better not to know the costs if you're doing the right thing?
As a couple other people have already noted, it's not actually a request for information. It's an attempt to gain a high-profile platform to promote an ideological position, which can be deduced from examining the motivations of the requester. You can't decouple the motivation from the request -- they're two parts of the same object.
