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Apple To Donate Profit Portion From Black Friday For AIDS Fight
An anonymous reader writes Apple will donate a portion of their sales from online and retail stores on Cyber Monday and Black Friday as a contribution to the worldwide fight against AIDS. Apple kicks off a two-week fundraising campaign for RED, the charity started by U2 lead singer Bono and Bobby Shriver. It includes 25 partnering app-makers, from Angry Birds to Toca Boca, which will donate all proceeds from purchases of their apps or in-app upgrades. In a statement, Apple CEO Tim Cook said: "Apple is a proud supporter of (RED) because we believe the gift of life is the most important gift anyone can give. For eight years, our customers have been helping fight AIDS in Africa by funding life-saving treatments which are having a profoundly positive impact. This year we are launching our biggest fundraising push yet with the participation of Apple's retail and online stores, and some of the brightest minds in the App Store are lending their talents to the effort as well."
But there are a lot of very unglamorous diseases that kill more people every year. And that's my problem with these celebrity causes: they're mostly for show. A portion of profits; that is to say, just enough money that the goodwill advertising can make it back up again.
They've been doing this kind of promotion for years. They introduced the original RED iPod when Jobs was still in charge.
At least put some thought into your crappy trolling efforts.
So much negativity and cynicism here. /. backlash if, say, Ubuntu would do a similar effort this week?
Would there be a similar
I dislike this defeatist attitude of it's obviously not everything so why bother. By that same logic, don't bother donating any difference yourself because that $50 - $100 probably isn't enough either. In fact, unless you're fully capable of handing them a cure to AIDS yourself, best to not even get involved.
Never mind that any company that tried donating more than a token amount would quickly find itself being sued by the shareholders who are going to be wondering why all of the profits are being spent on some charity that the shareholder's themselves likely had no choice in choosing.
It will be interesting to see if Apple becomes more charitable under Cook. Jobs was pretty stingy that way (very stingy in his perosnal life, but I think Apple unde rhim did do a few charitable contributions)
Draco? The head of one of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world? He's making drugs now?
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This... IIRC, they teamed up with U2 (the band) to do it. You bought a candy apple red iPod (IIRC) it came with a free U2 album on it, and a portion of the proceeds went towards AIDS research. Nothing new about that or TFA.
PS: Jobs was just as much of an ideological left-winger then as his replacement is now - likely more so.
As for future product lines? Dunno. None of that shit is easy, Jobs was just damned good at picking the winners.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Reread the post you responded to, in particular "If you actually care about AIDS, budget for the full retail price, get the best deal possible (maybe even not an iThingy), and donate the difference yourself. ". The complaint is the intentionally misleading wording, and pointing out a better way of helping if you really wanted to support the cause.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Now every idevice comes with a free U2 album, whether you want it or not!
I don't think Jobs cared too much. If you look at his life, he comes off as a bit of a sociopath. However, like so many other good businessmen he realized the importance of having a good public image and a small bit of charitable giving that amounts to an alternative form of advertising is never a bad thing.
Well that's nice if someone would rather donate the full $$$ towards AIDS research, but most people want the iDevice or whatever product they're buying. Having $ or maybe even $$ donated to AIDS research by Apple for each sale is more than you could expect to get if you took all of the people who donated instead of buying something instead.
Is this completely good-will on Apple's part? I don't think so as they're essentially using it to get free press/advertising and they realize that even if they won't phrase it in that manner. I don't even think it will increase sales all that much, but if it suckers some idiot into buying an iDevice, that they otherwise wouldn't have, so that they can feel good about themselves it's money in the bank as far as Apple is concerned.
It's a decent gesture on the part of the company even if they're not doing it for the purest of reasons.
Anyone who was actually as ignorant as the character you're trolling as would drown the first time it rained.
You bigoted, clueless cave men have no place in the modern world. All you can do is thrash impotently on the Internet when the rest of have left you behind and denied you loons power over anyone from outside your cults.
If they're not making a profit off the discounted items, then no money goes to AIDs research. It's not a decent gesture. They're only doing it because it'll drum up more sales. If they really cared, they wouldn't advertise it, or at least not right before.
What you said, but also they should be honest. If they are giving .5% of "profits" to charity the wording in TFA could have reflected this more accurately than the implication that all profit is going to the foundation as the wording attempted to imply.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Jobs was good at dropping losers.
Sunk cost fallacy isn't something Jobs was a victim of. Did work like we thought? drop it, move on.
He was also an expert at getting people to do more then they thought they could.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I disagree. Jobs did a lot and didn't take credit.
Apple is, and has been, the greenest computer company on the planet. They just didn't advertise it until the green peace terrorist started lying about it. Apple, under Jobs, did many good things, they just didn't use it as PR. They used the user experience as PR.
Yes, there are a lot of issues with Apple.
Jobs was a hippie.
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If they're not making a profit off the discounted items, then no money goes to AIDs research. It's not a decent gesture. They're only doing it because it'll drum up more sales. If they really cared, they wouldn't advertise it, or at least not right before.
But I thought the meme on Slashdot was that Apple makes "obscenely high" profits on their products; so which is it?
1. Apple is being disingenuous because they won't be making any profits to give away?
2. Apple is evil because they make "high" profits?
Can't have it both ways.
Me too. http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wik...
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Apple donate it to something that will matter. Like a charity that does actual research on terminal diseases.
Yeah Apple, save the Slashdot posters - find a cure for terminal stupidity.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
PS: Jobs was just as much of an ideological left-winger then as his replacement is now - likely more so.
Stop, right there. Jobs was a masterpiece at marketing, but he didn't have a single shred of socialism in him. He was a die hard capitalist to the core.
What Steve Jobs was good at, was convincing you of things.
Apple is, and has been, the greenest computer company on the planet.. They just didn't advertise it until the green peace terrorist started lying about it.
Doesn't this logic mildly upset you. Apple wasn't "green" until someone called them out on being "not green", that someone was a grass roots longstanding activist organization.(mabey with some questionable methods, but thats not relivant to the conversation). Then all of a sudden they are the "greenest company in tech".
Jobs was a hippie.
and the real hippies are terrorists.
I love this logic.
Doesn't this logic mildly upset you. Apple wasn't "green" until someone called them out on being "not green", that someone was a grass roots longstanding activist organization.(mabey with some questionable methods, but thats not relivant to the conversation). Then all of a sudden they are the "greenest company in tech".
Now that is utter bullshit. Greenpeace posted complaints about Apple because Apple didn't donate to the good cause, and because even in 2007 complaining about Apple would produce headlines.
At that time Greenpeace published a list marking computer companies on their greenness based on their promises. Among other things, they rated HP up for promising to get rid of some poisonous components and rated Apple down for not making any such promises - not realising (or worse, fully knowing) that Apple had removed the same poisonous components in the previous year.
can you back up your "best korea" style rhetoric with sources?
Apple is, and has been, the greenest computer company on the planet.. They just didn't advertise it until the green peace terrorist started lying about it.
Doesn't this logic mildly upset you. Apple wasn't "green" until someone called them out on being "not green", that someone was a grass roots longstanding activist organization.(mabey with some questionable methods, but thats not relivant to the conversation). Then all of a sudden they are the "greenest company in tech".
Jobs was a hippie.
and the real hippies are terrorists.
I love this logic.
You hate reality. When Greenpeace first issued its "Guide to Greener Electronics" report in 2006 they gave Apple bad marks, because they didn't give out any information on their environmental policies, while giving good marks to the likes of HP because they promised to stop using certain chemicals. IOW they made up their scores on the PR blurbs by the companies, instead of their actions.
http://technicalconclusions.wordpress.com/2007/05/13/greenpeace_apple/
Next year they had to up Apple's score because they had long stopped using those chemicals, while HP's actually dropped because they didn't follow through.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Stop projecting.
This isn't rocket science. Black Friday deals, i.e. discounts. If the discounts reduce profits to zero (see, "If they're not making a profit off discounted items"), then zero is what they donate. Take your false dichotomy rant elsewhere.