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Why You Can't Manufacture Like Apple
HughPickens.com writes Medium reports that although many startups want to design something that mimics the fit and finish of an Apple product, it's a good way to go out of business. "What happened when Apple wanted to CNC machine a million MacBook bodies a year? They bought 10k CNC machines to do it. How about when they wanted to laser drill holes in MacBook Pros for the sleep light but only one company made a machine that could drill those 20 m holes in aluminum? It bought the company that made the machines and took all the inventory. And that time when they needed batteries to fit into a tiny machined housing but no manufacturer was willing to make batteries so thin? Apple made their own battery cells. From scratch." Other things that Apple often does that can cause problems for a startup include white plastic (which is the most difficult color to mold), CNC machining at scale (too expensive), Laser drilled holes (far more difficult than it may seem), molded plastic packaging (recycled cardboard is your friend), and 4-color, double-walled, matte boxes + HD foam inserts (It's not unusual for them to cost upwards of $12/unit at scale. And then they get thrown away.). "If you see a feature on an Apple device you want to copy, try to find it on another company's product. If you do, it's probably okay to design into your product. Otherwise, lower your expectations. I assure you it'll be better for your startup."
Simply, you can't manufacture like Apple, because if you manage too, you'll be just as expensive and the vast majority will want the name brand anyway. It's a me, too, that doesn't work.
But they had to buy 10k CNC machines to build 1M bodies? Doesn't sound right. Only 100 per machine.
it appears to be a very predatory way of doing business on my eyes.
I remember an article I read on the late 80's or early 90's about how some small companies of that era feared growing too fast and ended up catching the attention of Microsoft, that at that time was buying everything and everybody (prices are pretty lower at that times). Building something cool that Microsoft would need was the fastest way of going out ot business.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Is it possible that Apple does things like this not so much to be unique and high-end, but to drive would-be competitors into bankruptcy?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
One of my many duties at work is very basic supply-side logistics for a much simpler form of manufacturing.
If your organization needs to be told these things then you are already completely screwed.
Yes, yes, let us get to the Apple bashing orgasm... We must all be sheep. Because some people are clueless as to why anyone would want a well made, easy to use product, and therefore must assume we're all mindless and under the spell of dead Steve Jobs. I started with a couple of Android smartphones. I got really upset by them being abandoned by the manufacturer while they were less than a year old. I disliked their plasticky build. I wasn't completely thrilled by the somewhat balky operation. When I could finally afford an iPhone, I looked around at current Androids first and ended up buying an iPhone 4s. I really liked it a lot. Not saying it was perfect but a couple of years later I saved up and got the iPhone 5s. Here's a bulletin for the lot of you. I am a computer tech. I repair tech all day long. I know one or two things about technology in general. I made an informed choice and was so satisfied with that choice that I made the same choice when it came time to upgrade. Just because YOU don't get my choice does not make me or a lot of other people sheep!
What I have sometimes pondered is why Google has not become its own hard disk drive manufacturer. Would it be feasible? I believe they continuously chuck in crazy amounts of storage into their data centers and make massive HDD orders.
Because stamping out 100 million copies of a single model (e.g., iphone) is a LOT more cost effective than trying to tool up to stamp out 10 million copies each of 10 different models. Which means that they can increase their profit margin or increase feature set at the same price as they see fit.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
isn't an expert at everything. He wanted Apple to spend much of their cash reserve to buy back stock. Which would only enrich people like him who were in AAPL post-peak price (I believe he was in at an avg $400). These are the sorts of things you can do with their kind of money in the bank that will make you lots more money in the long run. Shareholder return is one of the things that needs to be balanced against the other things a company does.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If the startup made the same huge profit margins that Apple does, I don't see why doing any of these things would be a problem.
The real lesson is that you'll need your customers to pay *a lot* more than it costs to make something if you want to do silly, expensive things while making it.
-Lod
But they had to buy 10k CNC machines to build 1M bodies? Doesn't sound right. Only 100 per machine.
They were battery operated, and looked cool! No seams for battery doors or holes for pesky charger ports!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
the little guys can't compete in the same product space, until they decide to go make a new product category. like mobile devices that MS paid lip service to but didn't really do anything useful
Next up, Apple has more money to throw around than a Startup! Full Story @ 11!
It's cute to see how much money they blow on their designs, but really, is this news, or stuff that matters?
Nice way to interpret his intent into something base can prop your ad hominem upon.
There's nothing wrong with establishing an argument that claims you work in a particular field and therefore are accustomed to making educated choices about stuff related to that field.
If someone calls themselves a chef or a foodie, it may not make them right when they say how long you should boil pasta, but it means their opinion about it IS based on care, thought, and knowledge about the subject at hand. If someone random says "boil spaghetti for 20 minutes" then you may be more apt to consider their opinion as out of hand than someone who presents "credentials".
If slashdot wasn't such a fucking non-stop pissing-contest people might not feel the need to present "papers please" when offering their thoughtful opinions about stuff.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
On Slashdot your point is especially salient and I agree with the tone as well...
In your average real life scenario....socializing at the kid's little league game, at the bar, out on a cigarette break with random coworkers, waiting in line at a store, etc, it's a decent way to establish that you aren't the average "lol technology" user. If you have reasonable amount of authority in any random subject it isn't actually a dick move to highlight that fact to give your words more gravity.
Calm down.
My current CEO says form and style are essential in our next product. The board and him agree that design is the key to success. He says he was an Apple like feel that oozes quality. He wants to be like Steve Jobs.
Then he says we're going to do that by hiring an undergrad design major part time from a local college once we finish our mechanical and board designs. He will polish it up and make it great.
He said all this within 2 mins. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The project manager then offers up design tips from his wife...
Also, I'm told we need to target Logitech's price point...
People completely underestimate what it takes to make an Apple-like product. This is especially true for engineers (of which I am one) who tend think to since it's not technically hard to do, it must mean that designers don't bring much to the table. "I can bevel that edge", "That rounded corner isn't hard to do", etc etc. We also tend to think that function is most important and that form is an afterthought... even though we don't actually say that.
Apple has clearly stolen a TARDIS in order to make a hole that's smaller on the outside.
Medium doesn't report, anyone can post an article there.
The claim wasn't that there was only one CNC company or only one laser drilling company. It's that there was only one at the time that could meet their specs and they could afford to just buy those companies, which you with your startup can't do. So don't expect to compete with Apple on the manufacturing quality because they can afford the very best and in many cases you can't.
That's one heck of a sleep light.
In completely unrelated news, Slashdot's support of non-ASCII characters is refreshingly anachronistic.
Never claimed to be the absolute final word on the subject of technology. No where near that in fact. I merely pointed out that as someone who works in the field I might be qualified as a person making an informed choice and not just one of the sheep buying what they're told. Now had I claimed to be some uber tech guru your label for my argument might have made more sense. As it is...
If the startup made the same huge profit margins that Apple does, I don't see why doing any of these things would be a problem.
And if someone dropped billions of dollars in my hands I could do some pretty cool stuff too. What exactly is your point since that is a purely hypothetical conjecture? Startups don't have the kind of money that Apple does which is exactly the point.
NO startup can possibly match Apple's manufacturing costs. Very few companies of any size are able to match Apple when it comes to manufacturing costs on the products they make because Apple can buy stuff at such enormous scales. Read up on economies of scale. Apple only produces a small number of products so even companies like Samsung are unlikely to be able to match their costs because they spread out their purchases among more products. Apple is able to economically do things that set their products apart that at smaller scales would be economically impractical. This makes the gap even harder to close since it gives their products features that actually differentiate them from the competition in ways other than price.
Indeed. It would be even worse if they did not have those jobs, but the bad working conditions and low pay are still a problem. I wonder if some kind of fair trade system could be developed for electronics, just like we have for food products?
The original article says a "20 um hole", which is just under a thousandth of an inch. Please RTFA before commenting.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Cell phones, tablets and hand helds are in an arena subject to rapid change. Small companies will go through economic hell as they are forced to quickly change things to keep up with a rapidly changing market. The tooling, architecture, outside vendor supplies as well as an ever changing need for experts in various fields will quickly bankrupt most start ups. For example take that laser drill mentioned in the article. You are going to need at least one person with very deep knowledge of laser drills. And that is worse than it sounds. Being an expert with one laser drill is of little help when you have a dozen choices to make in selecting a new drill. And what if that expert has only dealt with a laser drill on black plastic? So out of the blue you need to drill in aluminum alloy. Even the logistics of simple packaging can consume a bright worker for months. And make no mistake you will compete in every tiny area associated with bringing a product to market. It is difficult enough to assure that very few companies survive long term.
If only Apple took such pride in craftsmanship with iTunes, I would agree completely.
Buggy, non-intuitive, tons of undocumented features. "It Just Works" does not apply to that steaming load.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
we're all mindless and under the spell of dead Steve Jobs
Why not?!
Many of us are under the spell of dead Jesus of Nazareth.
And as far as miracles are concerned, Steve Christ raised Apple from the almost dead.
Can Jesus claim the same?!
Nope!
Beware of false profits! Er, prophets. Well, same thing actually. Religion is THE most profitable enterprise on the planet.
Anyway, I pray to Steve Christ/Buddha* because HE actually has proof of HIS miracles and enlightenment!
...
..
* Look up the definition of Christ and Buddha. Referring to one individual by those terms is like referring to THE Congressman.
see, I dont care for apple, No need to get into my reasons im sure other posters here have already listed them. HOWEVER I also understand that different people have different wants and needs in their devices. the iphone is better for some people, and the android is better for others. Depending on ones needs depends on what I recomend to people. I will bust my friends balls, but in the end whatever makes people happy is what they should get
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
As it is...
Maybe you don't know I think I am.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Whilst the iphone is pretty, what apple actually sells is a device you don't have to babysit, that does what it says on the box in a manner that is both attractive and pleasant to use.
The reason many people, myself included by apple gear is because I have spent the past 20 years babysitting computer shit because it half does what it says, needs care to use to ensure it doesn't get malware, etc. I'm fucking over it. I don't care about the theoretical reduced flexibility if the device does what I actually want it to do, and doesn't need babysitting.
Being pretty is a bonus, not the primary motivator.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Reading this, you would think that Apple is the only large company making tech.
This is what all large companies do. For instance, Windows was built on hundreds of companies that Microsoft went out and bought because they needed the tech. Samsung builds shit from scratch all the time, and probably has more CNC machines at its disposal than Apple.
This is nothing more than an Apple puff piece. To remove the marketing content, one would have to replace Apple with "large corporation", then the article's title would just be "No, You Can't Manufacture Like a Large Corporation". Then you can replace the author's name with "Duh".
Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.
That's cute. Samsung can't manufacture like apple using slave labour either.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
If only they had asked you, a random dotslash reader, they would have avoided this waste of time article.
You should set up a news aggregator that decides which news is wrong based just on your bullshit detector.
In fact, you should be working at a three letter agency. They need that. Or run for king as you would do great.
Some of that info seems bogus. 10,000 CNC mills? Unlikely. 10,000 CNC machines of all types across all of Apple manufacturing, maybe.
There's a nice video about how Apple machines a round can for their round desktop computer. They're going through a lot of steps to make a can, yet they're doing it in a low-volume way. Here's how soft drink cans are made. Same shape, but much higher production volume.
Apple is doing this to justify charging $2700 for an x86-64 machine with midrange specs.
He meant 10 thousand CNC machines...not that they were $10K. That's an almost unbelievable number; and array of 100 x 100 CNC machines.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Do you work for the Microsoft advertising department?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I always go with Logitech.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
And don't forget that those armies of near-slaves also work for all tech companies, not just Apple.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Stop living in 2009.
It's Wozniak.
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"How do you explain..."
I don't really follow Microsoft acquisitions enough to speculate on their reasoning, but the Facebook reasoning was pretty obviously that the WhatsApp company cost (predominantly non-US) telephone companies $19B in per-SMS charged revenue over a period of 2 years, and it therefore gave Facebook some incredible leverage with those phone companies to make the purchase in such a way that a small group of phone companies couldn't drive WhatsApp out of business by increasing data costs to compensate (which would hurt Facebook.
So, to recap, Apple wants a nicer looking sleep light, and as a result hip replacements just got a lot more expensive.
This is why you outsource manufacturing.
Outsource to a big company like Foxconn or Solectron that has already invested in all the expensive equipment and processes (in both cases, some of it actually paid for by Apple), and have them do your manufacturing for you.
The incremental cost ends up pretty tiny, relative to COGS, and you get a better finished product at only a fractionally higher cost than if you were stupid enough to do your own manufacturing. The argument in the article only holds up if you are stupidly building the widgets yourself.
> While iTunes could stand improvement, of course, it is still oly about a million times better than anything else. At least a million.
You're so funny.
Quit swimming in the kool-aid.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, people with Apple products call me for help just like people with other products. Apple's shit doesn't do magic either, and when their "magic" fails, the poor soul who does the troubleshooting must do so without "advanced" configuration options, logs or system messages, 'cause those are ugly and confuse people, you know. Apple's computers aren't better, just simple-minded, which is good when that's all you need and when it actually works, but in my experience it isn't and it doesn't.
HTC seemed to manage just fine building devices of the quality of Apple or even better. I've dropped my 3.5 year old HTC Desire (solid aluminum body) more times than I can count and it still works as it did the first day. My first tablet - an HTC Flyer, case by apparently the same design team - serves my every day aswell.
I've seen and held my share of iPhones, and IMHO HTCs devices are better.
As far as enclosures go, I'd even say the new iPhone 6 ripps one or two things from the HTC One M8.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Wow that must have been a HUGE laptop to have a 20 meter hole drilled in it.
Just another "innovation" from Apple...
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I am typing this on a six year old MacBook and I am still satisfied with it. Maybe next year I will replace it. Please do not call me "pathetic", I think that I have gotten my monies' worth out of this machine.
Those white plastic laptops of Apples got quite a few calls into their support center.
#1: yellowing and cracking of plastic.
#2: Hard drive failure
#3: Battery failure
I think with the 3 items combined, the failure rate must have been in the high %30 mark.
Anyone that owned one shoudl be able to verify that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
There is No Such Agency :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
> If you check the little box that says "let iTunes manage my music library" it does
That does not work so well when working with a 2GB shuffle (which I use in the car, since it can be used without a display and instead uses a computerized voice).
It's bugs in dealing with podcasts REQUIRE me to manually manage them. It simply will not properly download the ones I want from the cloud automatically and I am forced to micromanage them.
I'm sure the technology behind the interface is teh ossim, but it's interface really is atrocious and is enough to compel me to seek products from other manufactures once my current devices die.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
CNC machines aren't made by only one company
That doesn't mean all CNC machines are equal or that they can all meet the same specifications, run rates or handle the same products.
laser drilling isn't really rocket science
I think you have no idea what you are talking about. Drilling one hole with a laser isn't too hard. Drilling millions of holes with tight tolerances with near perfect repeatability IS as difficult as "rocket science". (as if that is some sort of valid comparison...) That's exactly what make manufacturing hard.
packaging have been done better etc.
Really? Name me one consumer electronics manufacturer that provides better packaging than Apple does.
What I have sometimes pondered is why Google has not become its own hard disk drive manufacturer.
Because it is a relatively low margin cut throat business and Google has no particular expertise or advantage to bring to the table aside from a lot of cash. With the volume they purchase nobody gets hard drives cheaper than Google does so why would they get into this line of business? All it would accomplish is to drive down their margins and possibly even invite anti-trust scrutiny if they became a big enough player.
You suffer from word diarrhea. Apple sucks.
Next!
I also can't make watches like a Swiss watchmaker charging $300000 for a watch. Who cares what kinds of specialized equipment Apple temporarily corners the market on in order to build their expensive and fragile jewelry-like devices?
Those many different models are often just variations.
That's true but every different option adds cost and complexity to the supply chain. The fewer versions of a product you make the lower your costs will be. Every product variation has extra administrative overhead cost, engineering cost, manufacturing cost, freight cost, inventory cost, etc. Whenever you buy from a company offering lots of options you are paying extra for them even if you don't actually take advantage of them because some of the costs are shared.
Sometimes there are good reasons to offer products with extra options or multiple products but a lot of companies don't really think it through. My company produces a wire harness that goes into some SUVs. We produce two versions of this product which are identical except for a grommet. There was no technical requirement for the grommets to be different but two engineers in different wings of the company couldn't be bothered to talk with each other and so we now have to maintain two SKU numbers, two order books, two bills, get worse pricing on grommets because the volume on each is lower, pay more in freight, have to stock more inventory etc.
people who care about computers or phones above anything else than what they can achieve with them tend to be quite pathetic fucks.
Interesting assessment. So, all this things you do with the "things you use for doing something"... let me ask you... how many of them could you do if there wasn't someone out there caring about accomplishing that thing, then making it possible?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Scratch that... I need to learn to read... really, seriously... sorry...
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Anonymous coward, you have never in your life knowingly talked to a gay person. I think you have three problems in your life: No man wants you, no woman wants you, and your parents are ashamed of you.
Sitting here, next to my wife, reading Slashdot on my MBP, I have to say it made me giggle. It at least qualifies as funny, even if it doesn't advance to the next round on "Slashdot's Got Jokes".
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
When did things change from bashing Apple users by insinuating that they're gay to bashing gays by insinuating that they're Apple users?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Well phrased.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
I'll stop bashing when I stop reading reports about their Labor abuses. Deal?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Perhaps you could stoop to enlightening us as to the alternatives and why the're better.
We are a small family farm.
We're building our own USDA/State inspected meat processing facility - almost done.
I designed the facility myself from scratch.
We have done all the construction of our building.
We will do all the work in the facility ourselves.
We built much of the equipment for our butcher shop, mostly out of stainless steel.
We built many of the tools to build the above equipment.
We invented techniques, tools and processes to do what we need to do.
More people need to innovate.
It is quite doable.
My favorite is still the articles that talked about the suicides at Foxconn facilities making XBoxes for Microsoft, yet included pictures of Apple products for the story.
HTC seemed to manage just fine building devices of the quality of Apple or even better.
It's possible to match the product Apple makes but HTC isn't making much money doing it. Virtually all the profits in the smartphone market go to Apple or Samsung. HTC makes some fine products but so far they haven't found a way to make good products and do much better than breakeven profits. Unfortunately I haven't seen anything from them that I believe will change that equation either. They aren't the low cost manufacturer (that's probably Samsung) and they don't control the software platform and their competitors use the same software platform so there is nothing to really set them apart even if their hardware is marginally better.
I've seen and held my share of iPhones, and IMHO HTCs devices are better.
The piece of the equation that you are missing is that they don't run the same software. Apple's devices are almost always very nice but there are plenty of companies that can make a nice piece of hardware. What makes Apple products different is the software. You could install Android on the iPhone hardware but then there is no real reason anyone would pay extra for it over devices from HTC or Samsung or others. Same is true for the Macintosh - you can put Windows on it but then there is really nothing to make it any different from a Dell. Apple in reality is a software company that sells their software bundled on some really nice devices. While Apple hardware is among the best out there (often anyway) nobody really buys it for the hardware. They buy it for the software which they know comes in a nice package.
This reminds me of an early version of the program Painter. Instead of a box, it came in a paint can. I always wondered what the cost comparison was between the two.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Sounds like you're a typical nerd who gets asked to support apple gear and you're out of your depth, so just say "it's crap" because you don't understand it.
If you don't have the source code, you don't truly understand it. That's why I don't depend on Apple gear unless I have to, and I've yet to find a case where I have to. In some other niches I don't have as much choice, so I deal with it. The main advantage of open source is that you usually have more options when things go wrong.
I guess it's also worth a mention that as a 20-year veteran developer, I prefer a linux/windows combination. It's been vastly more cost effective to use virtualized linux on custom-built desktops than it ever has been to use OSX. Apple hardware is expensive and underpowered, and the "looks" and "fit'n'finish" have zero bearing on me doing my job well. OSX itself is fine, but heavy, but it doesn't help me work in any particular way - the global menu is utterly idiotic and archaic, but at least they finally implemented proper dual screen support a few years back. Apple is stronger in the smartphone tablet department, but I've been seeing really strong stuff come from the android side of the camp lately. Apple seems to spend more time on transitions and effects and occasionally API polish, Android seems to spend more time on features.
Last I checked blackberries don't allow tethering via bluetooth or wifi, and while they do email real well, they didn't do much else all that well. I'm not sure it makes one a "trend-jumper" to desire new features that are useful. Blackberries didn't evolve, and they died, a lesson Apple had best pay attention to.
I couldn't care less what the apple product LOOKS like, I care what it does and how much trouble I'm likely to have with it. I have been a rabid Apple hater my entire life, until perhaps the past 6 years. Right now they are the best products out there. While I'd rather have a high quality hardware device with higher end processing/graphics capabilities that also has high design and mfg quality and not be paying for bullshit like laser etched holes and other ID related nonsense, they are all low quality shit, and having bought several I refuse to do it again. I would rather have reduced specs and a higher price than buy something cheap, fast and a trash can ornament. You have Apple, or you have cheap chinese shitshop, even if it has a Dell/HP logo. Knowing what I know about computer design, something I did for a living for 15 years, I choose Apple, for now. If HP or Dell or company Q wants to step up their game and start making a computer that is not utter shit, the decision may change in the future.
For the same reason I buy Apple, I buy Honda. I've owned a lot of Fords, they were shit, I won't buy another Ford. My Honda's have been going strong for 10 years, and fuck it, they cost 15-20% more up front but the TCO is far less. If Honda burns me I will start looking again, but as long as they make good stuff they have my loyalty.
what the fuck are you smoking? iTunes has got to be by far, the worst music manager hands down I've ever used.
.isamusicplayer in the directory, just in case you know, it doesn't detect your MP3 player correctly, or your syncing to an SD card to put in said player.
>If you check the little box that says "let iTunes manage my music library" it does. It makes folders based upon ID3 tags and files that shit away proper. Now if you're one of those tards who thinks you can manage your library better than iTunes, maybe it will piss you off.
it does that now? winamp did that for years. In fact winamp could scan multiple directories and automaticly import music, videos and all media automaticly, with an array of options for guessing metadata if none was present.
Also, banshee, Rythmbox, and just about every other program does this too, and they all do if far far far better. ALL of these programs automaticly add and delete new music put in your Music folder, they can all sort your mp3s by filename, and you can turn that feature off. Banshee also has bulk ID3 editing modes, and also has a nice de-duplication feature to look through your library to help you find duplicate files to save disk space. Last time I used iTunes you had to import new music manually.
They all (banshee, winamp, rythmbox), sync with your iPod, android phones, MTP entabled music player, and the linux ones Banshee and Rythmbox follow the FreeDesktop.org format of being able to interpret any directory as a music player if you put a blank file named
oh god, I think your taking the "macfag" thing too far. It started when gay bashing was socially acceptable, and I guess continues as an anarchornism, but we are desperately trying to make macfag one word, and use the word "fag" in the south park meaning, or "obnoxious asshole burden to society", or "someone we would like to throw into a bonfire", and somehow seperate the fag in macfag from any homosexual connoations.
Its homophobic as shit to compare apple users to homosexuals in the first place.
Graham Chapman and Scott Thompson would like to have a word with you.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Actually, I had looked at BlackBerries a while back. Didn't care for them much. I really didn't like the keyboard. If you'd read my original post, I said that I've owned Android phones. I have Android, Windows and Apple tablets. My comment was quite simply, that knowing a little about technology, enough, I think, to understand specs, features and services provided by various vendors. I actually put quite a lot of thought into any purchase I make over $100 or so. I also said I shopped the current Android phones first and then I moved from Android to Apple anyway. You have no basis for your commentary. You don't know me and you don't know anything about my decision making process. You are making the same sort of mindless comment as the OP in this thread. "Anyone who buys and Apple product is just a sheep follow the here." I'm here to say that there are plenty of us who've made well-informed choices and decided to choose an Apple phone. Just because you don't make the same choice is no reason to run us down!
Tell them what? "Fuck off, lower your product quality. It's so high we can't copy/leverage your work easily."
I used to. They're dropping the ball on quality and aren't the leaders on innovation/technology any more either.
It's a shame, they were an easy choice for years.
I have a moto x. My last phone was an iphone. I can say with certainty, with the same level of care and forethought the Motorola has been much easier to use and better overall. It's crashed fewer times, it hangs less, it does everything the iphone did and little more conveniently; a little less like you'd arrange a system for a child. I'm not sure what technology you've been using before, but there are many other phones today that are on par or better than the iphone.
To some degree, I think it's an implied response to the latent, often heard criticism that people who use Apple are a bunch of idiots who don't know anything about computers. Especially in the context of responding to someone calling Apple fans "sheep", which implies that they're stupid followers and that their opinions are thoughtless and uninformed.
I've found that if you say anything positive about Apple in a public forum like Slashdot, there's a decent chance you'll get a response that implies that you don't understand computers very well. As a result, I'll admit that I sometimes feel the need to throw out something that explains that, yes, I'm very familiar with other systems and can provide praise and criticism of all of them.
+1 Insightful. People buy things that work for them. There may be a limitation that makes a product bad for *you* but that doesn't mean it's bad for everyone. This applies to all products. Yes, you try to purchase things that are made by "good" companies, but at the end of the day few people make their buying decisions on anything other than whether it fulfills their needs.
> Last time I used iTunes you had to import new music manually.
That is still the case, with the latest version. You have to manually tell iTunes to "Add a folder" or "Add a file". You cannot tell it to simply watch a folder for new stuff. For a music manager published in the year 2104 put out by a company that builds things that "Just Work" , that is astoundingly lame.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
oh god, I think your taking the "macfag" thing too far. It started when gay bashing was socially acceptable, and I guess continues as an anarchornism, but we are desperately trying to make macfag one word, and use the word "fag" in the south park meaning, or "obnoxious asshole burden to society", or "someone we would like to throw into a bonfire", and somehow seperate the fag in macfag from any homosexual connoations.
Its homophobic as shit to compare apple users to homosexuals in the first place.
Gay bashing is still socially acceptable. Just step outside of New York, San Francisco, and Hollywood.
It's not "homophobic", either. Homophobia would be the fear of homosexuals, not the hatred or mistreatment of them.
Guess what - most of the nation hates Jews, too. It's not racist, either, it's anti-Semitic.
I don't hate gays (or Jews) but I sure as shit hate fags like you that try to tell me what's acceptable and what isn't, as if you speak for the majority of the world/nation/whatever, and as if such a majority (if it existed) would be any authority on the matter that other people had to give a shit about.
Wow, is that ever a crock. So, a person calling themselves a foodie means they've have exercised "care, thought and knowledge"? If I call myself a world champion surfer, does that mean I've ever waxed a board? Appeals to authority are one of the most dishonest forms of fallacy:
http://www.nizkor.org/features...
But maybe you're just not familiar with logical fallacies. Well, that's something about which I know a thing or two to snatch a phrase from esteemed computer tech Marlin Schwanke. And you will not find an "ad hominem" anywhere in my post. If you think you also know a thing or two about fallacies, I invite you to point mine out. The purpose of my post was to point out the fallacy via sarcasm. There was no ad hominem. I didn't say Marlin Schwanke was stupid, or that all computer techs are stupid or that he's somehow a bad person or a Republican. I just pointed out the absurdity of claiming this authority as if it meant something.
I'll just bet you're a computer tech, too. And that, my friend, you can take as an ad hominem.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I never liked Logitech's shit.
I wish MS would go back to making keyboards again, and real mice too. They had some great shit, now it's all hyper stylized / "ergonomic" (unusable, completely non-ergonomic) trash.
The original article says a "20 um hole", which is just under a thousandth of an inch. Please RTFA before commenting.
Who gives a shit? I have a false tooth with tighter tolerances than that.
It's not a matter of being hard, it's a matter of being fucking pointlessly absurd.
A show of hands here: How many of you know someone who "works in the field" who doesn't really know his ass from an RS 232 connector?
Or maybe the view from inside the brotherhood of computer techs is somewhat different from the view from outside. You might want to make note.
Not you, Marlin. You're probably a fine person and an excellent computer tech. But beware of making appeals to authority. They are a logical trap.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Medium reports..." makes as much sense as saying "WordPress.com reports..." or for that matter, "Geocities reports..."
Medium is a self-publishing fancy hipster bloggy vehicle. It doesn't have a staff of journalists, nor even pseudo-journalists nor curators like Timothy. It's a prettified competitor to wordpress.com for the hipsters, while being slightly less self-indulgently vapid than Thought Catalog. Slightly.
"Bolt reports, on their blog at Medium, because they can't be arsed to put one on their own website,..." would be more accurate. Except they do actually have a blog on their own website, and this same article is on it. Though their "blog" on their site is just an index page of posts on their hipster Medium account.
Medium doesn't report squat, comprende?
If there is one thing Steve Jobs taught me,is that Apple isn't about "the technology". The view as a "technologist" may not even be germain as you think. He's always been about "usability" - but it's more than just that. Even this article talks about Apple as a battery company, a manufacturing company, a machine tool company, etc. Even the last video saw on the watch made me realize that I was more impressed with it a piece of jewelry than a piece of technology. With Apple,you often have to look at it from a perspective that has nothing to do with "technology" to really understand it.
I'm no expert on logical fallacies like you are, but it seems like there's an all too familiar logical fallacy being committed here too (hint: it has something to do with the two bolds).
well shit, hating a group of people not doing anything wrong is not acceptable. I'm not pretending to speak for some majority, just common decency.
So why do you hate people for voicing their opinion on what is or is not common decency?
Or, I'm going to start peddling these "legalize rape, murder, and heroin" pamplets to kids, and how dare you speak to me about moral outrage!!!
You forgot to include the "...but" in boldface. So, you actually missed the fallacy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Last I checked blackberries don't allow tethering via bluetooth or wifi, and while they do email real well, they didn't do much else all that well"
You haven't checked in a while I tethered via bluetooth on my Bold 9000 (2008), and the 9900 could tether via wi-fi in January 2012 (though a few months later, depending on carrier). They STILL do email better than any other phone or app I've used. On-device filters, Level 1 notifications, blacklist/whitelist, ultra-configurable alarms, settings, profiles, etc, etc. Holy crap I miss it for email.
"Blackberries didn't evolve, and they died, a lesson Apple had best pay attention to."
THAT last point is valid.. to a point. I'm on an iPhone because corporate replaced Blackberries with the "Mediocre" app. (it's supposed to be called "Good", which is highly dubious at best).
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Also, Foxconn doesn't make public statements about their commitment to workers rights while cheerfully ignoring the abuses. I was prepared to give Apple a pass the first time they claimed they weren't aware. The second I was leery. We're on something like the 5th or 6th report. Apple, like all tech companies, abuses it's workforce. The difference is they spend a lot of time claiming they don't....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I agree. I found it quite offensive actually.
-- Cheers!
You're a ridiculous, abject moron. Undeniably an ad-hominem, but since it's obviously true I'm ok with it =]
For the record, the ad-hominem in question was calling Marlin's integrity, intent, and legitimacy into question as your justification for calling his position and opinion unviable and of no value. Either you can't see that, hence you're a moron, or you can but you choose to argue and troll away regardless... hence you're a moron.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
20 m holes in aluminum ... with a LASER! And Apple bought the company,
iDefense is going to be awesome and really sleek looking.
not all, I hate how all tech companies get lumped in with consumer crap production as if that is the only thing being produced in the world that is tech, or even electronic
I happen to work for one, we beat the Chinese every single day in quality and output, but we dont make crappy ass phones that are worthless a year down the road
agreed, you can have 100,000 CNC machines, doesnt matter if your design is so complex that it cant be made in an effecent and cost effective way
you want a hand made rolls for tens of millions of people, something has to give, in thecase of consumer products its quality and people, bought a tv within the last 10 years, if you did you probably have bought 2-3
meanwhile my parents CRT RCA finally gave up... after being in service since 1990
You keep hearing about it in the news, Apple claims to do something to fix it, and more often than not it's the exact same company in the news again for illegal labor practices.
Apple is able to build their own stuff by buying machines with money saved by utilizing illegal labor.
Let's not sugar coat this bullshit any more than it needs it, okay Slashdot?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Shit go real keyboard.
Unicomp, Ducky or Filco.
A Corsair RGB if you like bling.
Look in your "iTunes music" folder for that folder called "automatically add to iTunes". Make an alias to it if you wish. It's been there since 2010, by the way.
Find me another music player that will automatically transcode selected portions of my library (which is all ripped in lossless format) down to a maximum bitrate on my portable devices, so I can listen in hi-fi at home and still carry everything around with me. Then, when I change a tag or edit a playlist or skip a song on either platform, the changes are synced between the full-quality version and the low-quality version, automatically.
Yeah I didn't think so.
I'm sorry - that really doesn't make any sense. Are you suggesting that for Apple to manufacture absolutely the best product they possibly can, and to not race to the bottom like everyone else, is anti-competitive?
They stamp out competition by being better and more desirable. How dare they.
Well, that's swell. But it's still buggy, non-intuitive, and with tons of undocumented features.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Important to note is that the real problem is that big companies are raising the barrier to entry by buying specialized companies.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
"Products for girls"??
As opposed to big manly products for big manly men like you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
That is all.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
No argument.
Please quote the part of my original comment where I did any of that or even implied any of that.. Otherwise, you may just be full of it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My informed choice is I won't but Apple products. Yes, they are sleek and pretty, and do what they must mostly without a hassle. But, guess what? They live in their own little world: connect a USB hard disk that doesn't have the approved formats from Apple and your computer will ask you to "fix it". If you make the mistake to accept, say goodbye to your data (unless you have a tech around who knows the tools to get it back). Try to set up a network connection that doesn't conform to what Apple thinks wifi connections should do and you have to jump through hoops to create an installer so it gets set up correctly because Apple decided to cut the ability to set it up from your phone.
These are just two examples of how easy dealing with Apple products is.
"Oh yeah "Ooh, aah", that's how it always starts. But then there's running and screaming." (Ian Malcom, "The Lost World")
I wonder if some kind of fair trade system could be developed for electronics, just like we have for food products?
The simplest fix is to charge a tariff to offset the benefits of cheap labor. Then you get money and eliminate the benefits of slavery, without actually outlawing trade. In order to prove that you're unfairly assessing these tariffs, they have to prove that they're not oppressing their people, so the process drives transparency.
It won't fix the low value of human life in China overnight, but it will apply pressure in the correct direction. Sadly, it's not even on the radar.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It also can't remove duplicates automatically or by a rule. For a while when I had an iPhone I ended up using a completely separate app to handle that in the iTunes database.
It depends if having more models sells more devices. Apple clearly thinks that having two memory sizes will sell more iPhones.
And they seem to have a pretty compelling case for that notion. Apple also explicitly does not try to be all things to all people. They make a few products that appeal to a lot of people but they don't really spend a lot of effort customizing to a wider but harder to serve audience. Apple is maximizing profit rather than revenue. The thing they have to be careful of is that leaves a foothold for competitors in the parts of the market they aren't serving. But by taking the most profitable bits of the market they manage to suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room for competitors. It's risky but they've pulled it off so far.
They must have concluded that tailoring to each market would boost sales enough to overcome the extra cost of having multiple models.
Sometimes the extra expense of product variations is worth it. Other times it simply means that the product isn't good enough. It always costs more money to have more variations. The question is whether the increase in marginal revenue exceeds the increase in marginal cost. As long as it does then it is arguably worth doing. As soon as marginal cost equals or exceeds marginal revenue then profits will decrease.
nope, not accurate. all he was saying was "I like apple products for these reasons. inb4 n00b". whenever anyone makes a pro-apple comment, it's common for them to be shouted down by people claiming that they are ignorant about technology, or even worse, women.
So you understand the Linux kernel source and have personally audited it?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Hating things is your right. Whether or not someone is doing something wrong is a matter of opinion.
You call it common decency, yet you don't realize that it's merely an opinion.
Go ahead and pass out those pamphlets. I disagree, but I don't care if that's your opinion and you express it. I'm not going to cry foul and organize a hate campaign to stop you from having or expressing an opinion because I disagree with it - that's your SOP.
I get evaluation phones on a regular basis at work. I've had perhaps 3 crashes on various iphones since 2008. I've used the Galaxy S4, The HTC One as examples of recent alternatives. Didn't like either of them. The shipping firmware on the HTC had bugs I stumbled across within a week, the S4 feels unpleasant to hold. And I do not like the android UI. If you do, great. I have zero interest in spending time to "learn how to use" my phone. It is an appliance.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
In that case, his self-identification as a computer tech who knows a thing or two was not only fallacious, but also superfluous.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I didn't say that if you have the source that you understand the software.
I said that if you don't have the source, then you don't understand the software.
Logic 101...
I use an iPhone 4 for work. The screen is too small, so I'm happy the iPhone 6 models have bigger screens. But my main phone is a Nexus 5. I always have the latest version of Android. But overall, Android let's me access files anywhere and use them however I need to use them My Apple phone experience is ruined by the iTunes ball and chain and not being able to use my files as and when I need to.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Thanks for allowing that those of us choosing an Apple phone might have valid reasons!
Because that wasn't the point. Are you actually annoyed by these labor practices - in which case you either live in a house free of electronics or ones of Walkman vintage - or are you just looking at an excuse to drink some Hatorade at one company? So, once again:
1) Which of your devices is not made by Foxconn or one of their competitors using the same labor practices?
2) Which tech companies have gone beyond Apple's token efforts at improving said practices?
Maybe it wasn't an argument at all, but a joke? Fancy that, and form an Apple use, of all people. (To be fair, I also use an Android phone, run my business on Linux, use Windows for testing, and have been eying a Chromebook Pixel for a while now)
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The original point: choosing an apple product does not automatically qualify someone for the stereotype.
Not: "I am an authority."
Rather: "I am not a sheep."
It's the part where this article is supposedly bashing Apple that confounds me.
Of course its your right, and I never suggested otherwise. I never made an argument to the contrary.
However, If I handed said pamplets to school kids promoting rape, murder, and heroin use, regardless of legal, or other *rights*, I'd still be doing a morally reprehensible thing, and people would still form bad opinions of me, and the community might consider action, albeit non-forceful to get me to reconsider.
That is the point I am making here. Not that anyone should censor you.
"Well, sorry. You'll just have to deal with it until the situation improves."
Improves? You mean, until the sheep switch and buy Galaxy Notes or some other "cool" Android phone?
Personally, I think the term "sheep" applies more to the people who walk into a phone store and walk out with whatever the salesperson was pushing that particular day, be it an iPhone or a HTC One.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
"... make one wonder why the pinouts were not placed near the components..."
Because the same components are often used in different phones? Because the board is on one side of the phone and the components are on the other? Because adding more traces to route from a chip to a pinout on the edge can make the circuit board wider or require additional layers?
Apple employs some of the best designers and engineers in the business, but some AC here on /. thinks they know more.
"... just a matter of time before someone makes a modular phone..."
Which will work just as well as modular laptops and modular desktops. What you fail to get is that phones, like computers, are systems. Swapping out a "modular" camera just doesn't work, because on the iPhone the camera depends on advances in the CPU, GPU, and image processing chips. Just like swapping out a CPU in a 3-yro desktop rarely gives you a major performance gain, because that CPU isn't running on a system with a faster memory bus, faster interface bus, and better peripherals. Systems are just that, systems.
Further, every socket and connector you add increases costs, increases the size of the device (or decreases internal volume, e.g. battery space), and decreases reliability.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You're not reading my post....
Foxconn is a lousy company that does lousy things. They know this, and don't put up a friendly image about it or pretend like they care about their workers. Costco they ain't. They're in it to make money and they're going to do it in whatever way the law allows
No large tech company has gone beyond Apple, but then again at least most are honest about the unpleasant things they do (in so much as the law and legal liabliity allows).
Apple goes on and on and on about how they care deeply about their workers. That's actually worse, because it gives people an excuse to ignore the horrible things their suppliers are doing. It's like buying a Prius. It makes you feel better without actually _doing_ anything better. It's a set back.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And I'm saying that unless you have personally audited the source code, and the machine code for the compiler, you are trusting someone else, and that it does what it says it does. Which is not any different to running closed source software. I still have a compiler and development environment on my mac if i want to write my own software.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
That's just your problem - I am reading your post and responding to it.
And the dissonance: so Apple is better than everybody else, yet Apple is the only company you're castigating for what every electronics company does: contract their manufacturing to Foxconn.
You're not responding to the problems with your argument.
And I'm saying that unless you have personally audited the source code, and the machine code for the compiler, you are trusting someone else, and that it does what it says it does. Which is not any different to running closed source software.
Your first sentence is completely true. Your second sentence does not follow from the first.
If you're running closed source software then you have to trust the folks that wrote it or choose not to buy it. If you are running open source software then you have the option of trusting the folks that wrote it, auditing/fixing it yourself, paying somebody else to audit/fix it for you and trusting them, or choosing not to buy it.
The difference is that with open source software you get a choice in who you have to trust that you don't get when you buy something closed. If you buy something that is closed your only options are to buy it or not.
Unless you wrote your own compiler from machine code, you are still trusting the people who wrote your compiler. You are also trusting the people who wrote the microcode in your CPU. You are trusting third parties irrespective of whether or not you are running open source, and as demonstrated by the leaked NSA docs, there are bugs available for your hard drive firmware that you will never find.
IN short: you're boned and trusting third parties irrespective of how open your OS is - unless all of your hardware is open, all of the firmware for your hardware is open, and you have personally audited all of it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
IN short: you're boned and trusting third parties irrespective of how open your OS is - unless all of your hardware is open, all of the firmware for your hardware is open, and you have personally audited all of it.
Heck, I'm trusting my next door neighbor to not shoot me when I step out the door.
The fact that I didn't build every component of my computer from raw silicon doesn't mean that there isn't value in having some knowledge of how some parts of it work.
Besides, I'm not talking about keeping my data out of the hands of the NSA. I wasn't actually concerned with security at all in my post. I'm just saying that open source software gives you options that you don't otherwise have, because having the source gives you the ability to fix the 99.999999% of problems that weren't caused by the NSA sticking a rootkit into your CPU.
Sure. In theory. If we're going to talk reality, i have far less problems with OS X than i do with Linux in the first place.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.