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Apple Only Wants To Put Its Stores Where White People Live, Investigation Reveals (theoutline.com)
Brian Josephs, writing for The Outline: New York's northernmost borough is the city's most diverse, has the lowest income per household, and is the only borough without an Apple Store after one opened up in Brooklyn's predominantly white neighborhood of Williamsburg last year. This trend holds true on a national scale. That means 251 of the 270 stores, or 93 percent, are located in majority-white ZIP codes. Of the 19 that are not located in majority-white ZIP codes, eight are in ZIP codes where whites are still the largest racial bloc. For context, Garden City, New York, a city with a population of around 22,000 that is 94 percent white, has an Apple Store. Lake Grove, New York, which has a population of around 11,000 and is 89 percent white, has an Apple Store. By comparison, nearly 1.5 million people live in the densely-packed Bronx, which is only 21 percent white. Bronx residents must travel either north to Ridge Hill or down to the Upper East Side to get to an Apple store. Apple told me it couldn't comment on the record about what criteria it uses to decide where new stores are built or the demographics of its stores' neighborhoods, but USC Marshall School of Business professor Ira Kalb reasoned that the company is "going after the high-end of the market, so their store location choices typically go after areas that are considered upscale."
You go where the money is? Reasonable business decision, I'd say.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Not an Apple fan, but really? Right or wrong, 'white people' tend to live in more affluent neighborhoods. Seems to be non-news to me.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
The article makes it sounds like Apple selects the store locations based on skin color, but I suspect Apple just picks places with high potential customer demographics. That those areas happen to correlate with skin color is not Apple's fault.
I'm shocked that a company isn't selling expensive overpriced items in any of those affluent black neighborhoods.
Are you sure that Apple isn't just plunking their stores in places where people have more money? From TFA:
"Apple Store neighborhoods have a median household income of about $73,475 per year; black American households earn a median average of $38,555, according to the ACS estimate for 2016. The median household income in the Bronx is $34,299."
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
We must uphold Google's SJW agenda!
New York's northernmost borough is the city's most diverse, has the lowest income per household...
Apple doesn't give a shit about race, all it cares about is money.
Seems that Slashdot is trolling us. Instead of realizing this is non-news, they're trying to race bait us.
Correlation does not imply causation. And in this case, it seems like there are pretty good candidates for the common cause. And the article even recognises that - the headline is clickbait.
Seems like Apple has bigger problems then selecting rich shopping districts to build stores. Besides, I hate the apple store customer service is poor, takes for ever to cash out. Thankfully other stores sell apple products in the low rent distrcts.
Dirty bastards want to build stores in areas with people who actually have disposable income. The horror!
It's just a hunch, but I have a feeling that this study is discarding much of the evidence that could suggest it was wrong as outlier data.
But then again, many examples of so called blatant discrimination are often explained by confirmation bias as well, so it's hardly anything new.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What troll got put in charge of picking titles and articles? I seriously doubt Apple gives two shits about the skin color of their customers, it's all green to them after all.
The worst that can be said is that Apple wants to build stores in areas with demographics which strongly correlate with skin color, but that's hardly surprising, nor would apple be alone in this behavior.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Facts always get in the way of people who claim the world has a liberal bias.
This is a tabloid article.
Apple doesn't put stores in regions where people can't afford 1100$ phones?
Who would have thought?
Another recent article on that website: https://theoutline.com/post/25...
And I quote:
Okay, so, here's a controversial opinion that will likely anger some people. You don't have to say anything. Ever. About anything. Ever. Especially if you're a man.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
As a former Apple retail store employee--I had to ask and enter in zip codes for every customer after every single point of sale transaction. These transactions can be retail sales or Genius Bar service transactions. This polling of zip codes is what is used to determine where Apple's real estate team will invest in building stores.
Seeing stores pop up in Brooklyn and Queens are the result of thousands upon thousands of transactions having the corresponding zip code tallied up.
How much of this is racially motivated vs how much of this is monetarily motivated? If they open stores where the money is, and that happens to be mostly white people, then how is this at all a race issue?
Now, on the other hand, if Apple was specifically omitting affluent minority areas - I could see the issue, but that doesn't seem clear to me from the article?
Found only neighborhoods who can afford their products are predominately white. This has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with Apple.
They used to call "baiting" articles like TFA here "Yellow Journalism". I'm not sure where the "Yellow" came from; but the definition is "Something published as 'News' that is actually nothing more than the author's Opinion, and generally published to further the author's agenda".
Plus, as many others here have pointed out, Correlation is not Causation. Apple is studiously, almost fervently, ethnically and culturally-diverse in its policies, advertising, marketing and even product design. And they don't just talk the talk, they actually walk the walk, too.
This article really should be taken down, and the Slashdot editor that approved it should be dismissed, with an Apology to Apple.
they dont want to put their stores in the ghetto??
the nerve of some people, how dare they avoid the high crime areas [/sarcasm]
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I have to go 200 miles to get to an Apple Store.
The last time I saw someone in person who was not white was probably 5 months ago.
Middle of nowhere, 100% white, and median household income of like 40k... So yea' Apple goes where the MONEY is.
I'm sure the Apple stores in affluent areas take money from people regardless of color.
There are so many problems, this is not one of them.
SJW's need to pick actual battles instead of trying to start a war over a sneeze.
msmash has became worse than BeauHD at this point - nothing but pure far-left garbage anymore.
Yeah, definitely money. It even admits that the only borough without an Apple Store is the one with the lowest income per household, but for some reason, race is the reason why Apple is avoiding it.
Can you say "click bait"? I knew you could.
I mean, once they settled on the all-white design, their stuff would have looked out of place in black neighborhoods.
Have you ever driven through the streets of north manhattan? It is scary as hell!
I haven't clicked the article. I just know.
You see, black skin contrasts so horribly with the case... you can't have that!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not that long ago I saw right here on Slashdot that we had (A) identified a gene for a kind of cancer that was very difficult to treat and (B) this gene was largely unique to people of African ancestry. So, because we have a high rate of people that die of cancer of African ancestry therefore racism. But we were just told this tendency was genetic! A + B = racism, that's the only way to add that up apparently.
When I go to most any store to buy electronic the people at the cash register will ask for a ZIP code. I asked one day why they did this, it was so they could plan for more stores. I hated being asked for my address before, as that meant I'd get more crap in the mail from the stores. This practice is rare now, but they still ask for your ZIP code.
When more minorities buy stuff from Apple, and give their ZIP code, then we'll see more stores in those neighborhoods.
I remember seeing some comedy skit where Blacks were portrayed as paranoid about being tracked by the government. Is there some truth to this? I didn't get the joke. If this is true, and many minorities are reluctant to give their ZIP code then the people that plan where stores go don't know that people willing to buy their stuff are traveling so far to buy. Maybe this has something to do with the culture that comes with the race. Paranoid parents raise paranoid children.
Another thing I see are neighborhoods that protest when someone wants to open a store there. Walmart is a popular target. Walmart, or whomever, wants to open a store because they think people will shop there. People in the neighborhood protest because they this this store will bring the "wrong" kind of people to the neighborhood, or there's some racist undertone to the store. (Selling chicken in a Black neighborhood? Are you racist?)
Here's the deal, not everything is about race. If all people see is racism then I think they protest too much.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
This is nothing more than your typical "correlation is not causation" scenario.
Whenever you find yourself reading a story which might lend itself to a questionable cause-and-effect relationship, the questions you have to ask yourself are simply: 1) Who wrote this? and 2) What is their agenda?
Because there is almost always an agenda.
The only color businesses care about is the color green, as in the color of money.
Show me a graph that shows income high, racial diversity low and call Apple racists and you will have a case.
As much as I am highly pro equality, and believe in equal rights for all, I don't believe you can point your finger at Apple in this case. Unless you can show decisions were made based on race and not income I think this is a symptom and no where near a cause.
This article seems like it's trying to make race an issue. Several other posters commented that the Apple Stores seem to be placed where the money is. Even the quote at the end doesn't mention race. Stop trying to sow discord.
I think this "articile" was written to remind people that there is a new $1000+ phone available at your, possibly-local, Apple store. I am surprised author did not mention that some people may have to go to Target or Best Buy this Friday to get $250 - $300 gift card w/ new activation.
Seriously, there is no healthy food or healthy restaurants available in most "hoods" but this is what the author chose to write about..
"...has the lowest income per household..."
This is more than likely the ONLY reason Apple doesn't put it's stores there. Their devices are already sold at a premium, so why would they put their stores in places less likely to be patronized? WTF does this have to do with race??
Actually, Apple wants to be in areas with high concentrations of wealthy millennials and hipsters. Fuck it! Let them. There are better options than Apple out there - less expensive too.
Map the stores to INCOME, not skin color.
Yes, there's high commonality to white = wealthy, people of color = less wealthy, but you could just as easily say "Apple wants to place its stores near people with expensive haircuts" or "...people who travel a lot".
Of course, one could map it to skin color if one was disingenuous and wanted a divisive clickbait headline. But who would be such an asshole as to do that deliberately?
-Styopa
Maybe look at some other retailers how they also stay away from high crime areas? Yes they just happen to be black areas, but why is that? Well because black people commit the most crimes? You know, you want to be treated better, act better.
I think the reason why this got in, is because we are suppose to Hate Apple, and we want to find every reason to hate Apple and prove how Evil they really are...
Apple is the worlds largest company, they do a lot of nasty things... However compared to Microsoft during the late 1990's, Apple has been a relatively good company in terms of not forcing us to be locked in. There is a thriving android market, and if You don't want an Apple device you are not really stuck with a no name brand that everyone laughs at you for having.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
New York's northernmost borough is the city's most diverse, has the lowest income per household
But go right ahead and tell me how this is a race thing. Next up, learn how mysoginy means only mothers are expected to breastfeed their children!
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Minorities generally can't afford expensive products. You don't see many high value stores in the ghetto folks, this is nothing new and shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
Support your local school shooter, give them your firearms.
Apple puts stores where there are customers who will buy their products. This includes various cities in China, Africa and other nations where the whites are a minor portion of the population. See Google Maps:
https://www.google.com/maps/se...
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
This is exactly what TFA's author/employer and every other click-bait outlet wants us to do.
The author knows his story is full of holes, 1/2 truths and outright omissions just to create "buzz" and get more views. Fucking media assholes. Then this site, a site for nerds supposedly, republishes it.
This is not news. This is bullshit!
More race card pulling....Sad. Its okay to be white.
Look what happens to the Nike store and the liquor shop in the first five minutes of looting.
...is that "Brian Josephs, writing for The Outline" is a racist looking for excuses. Or at least a biased journalist. Either way, not worth my time.
Same goes for msmash for posting this tripe.
Next!
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/c... Letâ(TM)s be glad the article goes further than the headline. Thatâ(TM)s becoming rare stuff these days.
With fewer than 300 stores nation-wide, it's perfectly acceptable that they locate their stores, peddling $1K phones, $2K laptops, and $3K desktops, where people can likely afford them.
Building a store in a neighborhood with few potential customers is a bad business decision.
These aren't social experiments or welfare offices - these are for-profit businesses.
Ken
They have more brains than to waste their cash on low quality, way overpriced iPhones with non-upgradable battery that won't even last them a day.
Rich tend to be indifferent. They don't mind being ripped off having cash to burn and are so obsessed with careers they spend less time talking than poor people so shitty non-removable battery is not an issue for them.
Putting an iStore in a poor neighborhood would be an idiotic decision even by the intelligence standards of the bean counters making the decisions.
Yet all parties are fucking geniuses contrasted with race baiting media scum who professionally troll the public without regard for consequences. There is a pedo under every rock, a terrorist in every airport, everyone is out to get you with trashy hot button controversies to fill the void. Anything to make a buck no matter how misleading or outrageous. The media has essentially become a professional trolling organization.
has the lowest income per household
is the only borough without an Apple Store
I can't help but think there's a less insidious, more direct relationship at work here...
So, I'd just like to point out the idiocy of what is being proposed. I'll leave out the word white:
a MAJORITY of stores are placed in locations that are a MAJORITY of the MAJORITY race. Really? WOW
New York Times: "Apples chooses not to build a store on an empty stretch of ice shelf in Antarctica. Women and minorities hardest hit."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Reuters is reporting that Illegal student labor is being used to assemble the new iPhone X.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-foxconn-labour/apple-says-illegal-student-labor-discovered-at-iphone-x-plant-idUSKBN1DM1LA
So... where's your moral outrage for the poor people that have to make the damn things to begin with? I think that beats your moral outrage over Apples sales practices by a wide margin.
For CRYING OUT LOUD! Perhaps the fact the group in question can't afford $800 Apple phones is a f'n clue? I live in a decently high income neighborhood, I haven't done a racial profile but my 'immediate neighbors' are rather 'diverse' if I have to use that word. The stores in the neighborhood primarily reflect the income NOT the racial make up. Go across town to some of the less affluent neighborhoods & the stores reflect the income there...
this is it. It's kind of 'default' racism.There was a /. story about how algorithms en up being 'racist' because of it.
It's not racism on Apple's part per se, but the natural result of centuries of accumulated bias. It's little things, like a black family getting a worse rate on home loans because the dad got passed over for a promotion a few years ago because he went to worse schools. It all percolates up until things like this just draw attention to it. When a SJW talks about 'micro-aggression' that's also kind of what they mean. A lot of little things building up with complex interactions over time.
The problem is that the journey from 'black guy passed up for one promotion' to "Apple puts stores in white neighborhoods" is a long one. So when you read headlines like this you're first reaction is probably "That's bullshit, Apple doesn't care where they put their stores". Although a few might start to wonder why the phrases 'white neighborhood' and 'black neighborhood' exist and if that's a sign of something underneath...
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https://www.apple.com/retail/s...
Beijing
Chaoyang Joy City
101 Chaoyang North Road
Chaoyang District
4006171284
China Central Mall
China Central Mall
81 Jianguo Road, Chaoyang District
4006171210
Sanlitun
Building 6, No. 19, Sanlitun Road
Taikoo Li Sanlitun, Chaoyang District
4006171363
Wangfujing
Beijing apm, No. 138 Wangfujing Street
Dongcheng District
4006171205
Xidan Joy City
131 North Xidan Avenue, Joy City
Xicheng District
4006171204
Chongqing
Jiefangbei
108 Zourong Road
Yuzhong District
4006171224
MixC Chongqing
55 Xiejiawan Street
Jiulongpo District
4006171215
Paradise Walk Chongqing
8 Paradise Walk
Jiangbei District
4006171240
Fujian
Thaihot Plaza
Thaihot Plaza
6 Zhuyu Road, Jin’an District
4006171354
Xiamen Lifestyle Center
SM Lifestyle Center
No.399 JiaheRoad, Siming District
4006171383
Guangdong
Parc Central
No. 218, Tianhe Road
Tianhe District
4006139742
Zhujiang New Town
International Grand City L1
222 Xingmin Road, Zhujiang New Town
4006393601
Holiday Plaza Shenzhen
First, putting 93% of their stores in majority-white zip codes is meaningless without also knowing what percentage of zip codes are majority-white. Pulling some demographics out of a zip code database gives 17,409 zip codes which are more than 50% white. 2591 zip codes where whites are 50.0% or fewer. So white-majority zip codes comprise (17409)/(17409+2591) = 87.0% of all zip codes.
That is, if Apple located the stores randomly based on zip code, you would expect 87% of them to be in white-majority zip codes. On top of that, there's a margin of error. 99% of the time, you'd expect these stores to fall within a range of (2.576)*sqrt((0.87)*(1-0.87)/(270)) = 0.0527, or +/- 5.3%. That is, 99% of the time you sprinkled the stores randomly in a table of zip codes, you'd end up between 81.7% to 92.3% of stores in white-majority zip codes. 93% falls just outside this range, so we're talking about just barely being 99% confident that this is a real deviation, not a random occurrence.
Second, these are zip codes, not areas of equal population or population. Zip codes vary in population by about a 7:1 ratio. It's much more advantageous for a business to put a store into a zip code with a high population. So if there's any correlation between zip code population and racial diversity, it could be enough to offset the margin statistical significance we found above. I don't have time to research this, but my hunch would be that the low population zip codes tend to be skewed towards white-minority (e.g. remote areas like Indian reservations, sections of Alaska with large Inuit population, etc) compared to white-majority zip codes. Since a business is unlikely to put a store in an area of low population, that would erase a good chunk of the discrepancy between 87% and 93%.
Third, related to the second, is that high population density zip codes tend to be smaller and near other high population density zip codes. So whereas a store in a medium population density zip code may be meant to stand on its own, a store in a high population density zip code may be meant to draw customers from nearby zip codes. That is, people in neighboring zip codes are expected to travel the short distance to the single store servicing all those zip codes. I also suspect that high population density zip codes tend to be more white-minority (e.g. the Bronx). If so, this would also skew the number of stores in minority zip codes down. Not because there are fewer stores within a x mile radius, but because there are more zip codes within an x mile radius.
tl;dr - This looks more like just a straight random distribution, with some biasing due to how minorities tend to distribute themselves geographically compared to whites. Not some form of discrimination on Apple's part.
Correlation is not causation.
but you're doing a bang up job of blaming the victim. You do know that poor people don't actually go after whitey, no matter what Charles Manson tells you (read the article, I'm not just trolling).
Poor people overwhelmingly commit crimes against other poor people. That makes sense. I've experienced the reason personally when I moved to a well to do area after landing a nice job and got followed around by cops in my junker car for 3 weeks until they learned I was harmless. If you're poor in a rich neighborhood and you're not cleaning their pools or mowing their lawns you stand out like a sore thumb. If you keep showing up you're liable to get pulled over and have some trumped up drug charges thrown at you. Heck, our entire drug war is a combination of subsidies for private prisons (who couldn't survive w/o the huge numbers of non-violent drug offenders that are cheap to house) and excuse to screw with minorities. Ever look up the history of why Marijuana is illegal? Hint, migrant farm workers from a certain country liked it and it was a great way to kick 'em out of the country at the end of the season.
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on the problem of institutionalized racism. Blacks and Hispanics are still at a tremendous disadvantage in the country. There's still a _lot_ of racism out there. It didn't all go away because a few federal laws passed and we mostly stopped lynching them.
That said before the alt-right crowd piles in here about the war on white men I'll say this: Yes, there is a war one white men. It's being run by billionares like the Koch bros et al. It is not being masterminded by a few female community college professors who would like it very much if you'd stop hitting on them thank you very much. If you're a white man you're correct that you're getting the short end of the straw, but you're rage is misdirected. What's worse it's mostly directed against people who want to help you economically.
I forget who said it (Pretty sure it was a brit) but there was some commentator who stood aghast as folks marched in the street against them being given health insurance (e.g. the ACA). That's the problem we've got right now. We need to get you guys on board with addressing the real source of your problems. Google "Justice Democrats" if you want a place to start.
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" has the lowest income per household" Well shit, sherlock, there you go. No company that shills 1000 dollar phones is going to set up in the fucking ghetto.
has the lowest income per household
Seriously, must Apple target the bottom of the market as aggressively as the top of the market?
The vast majority of counties in NY state have no Apple store (but they do have Best Buy stores, which carry Apple products), and the vast majority of those under-served counties are majority white.
You have to look real hard to make this a racial issue.
Ken
" Apple only wants to put its stores where the demographics show the best chance of selling their products "
Which isn't nearly as ominous sounding as the race bait bullshit that is all the rage these days.
Swear, if it isn't racist ( which is everything apparently. . . including Math :| ), it's " I was touched by so and so 30 years ago. "
You ever see a Ferarri dealership in a poor neighborhood ? You understand why right ? ( Hint: It has nothing to do with skin color )
the point of the story is to start a discussion on the concept of "Institutionalized Racism". You're reaction to this story ought to be confusion instead of disbelief. That fact that phrases like "White Neighborhood" and "Black Neighborhood" still exist in 2017 should clue you in that something is wrong.
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the point of articles like this is to point out that trends like segregation still exist even in 2017. Apple stores showing up in 'white' neighborhoods is a symptom, not a cause. You've got to recognize symptoms as real before you can treat a disease.
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is while that yes, Blacks are getting screwed over by institutionalized racism whites are also suffering (albeit from just plain old declining wages, outsourcing and poor economic prospects). That's where the whole 'White Lives Matters' thing comes in.
Basically everybody's screwed. Sure, some more than others, but it means nobody has any sympathy for anybody. We're all at each other's throats. Maybe we should be asking just who it is that set up at each other's throats?
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Will you lend me a gallon of premium gas so I can catch a Nascar.
So what, the iPhone is a luxury product for the cell phone segment. If you are on any kind of public assistance or prepaid/MVNO cellular plan you shouldn't be walking around with one, at least not a current flagship model. They are like the Rolex or other swiss brands of the watch world. You don't have Rolex dealers in the middle of the ghetto either.
Mom made 2.15/hr and dad made 3.15/hr when I was born in our apartment. I dropped out of school and used my passion for programming to still obtain and hold 6 figure incomes. Most recently 245k/yr owning my own consulting llc.
I am white with no generational wealth and self-made from being ignored by corporate america due to being self taught. I love hearing how my success is from something other than passion and perseverance. Please tell me more...
Putting a store in an area with no customers doesn't help the people who live near it. It's not Apple's job to fix decades of bad social and economic policy.
Yet another classic case of correlation is not causation. May be they took data on per capita income or per household income, or average education or average or average per sq feet sale in nearby stores or a combination of above and others. I think even Bloomingdale, Nordstrom etc may show the same majority white correlation.
Build a huge gleaming white shop in the middle of the Bronx full of shiny white things that nobody in the neighbourhood can afford.
That'll go down well.
Apple has had a policy of putting stores in more affluent areas pretty much since, well, always. Attempting to make this a racial issue is absolutely retarded. Along those lines, leave it to someone from the state with the second-most number of Apple stores (21) in the entire country to complain about not having one more. Several states (e.g. Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, etc) only have one store in the entire state! Maybe we should have an investigation about whether Apple is anti-agricultural?
What's interesting is that the "publication" where this "investigation" is being reported (yes, those are sarcastic quote marks) seems to have only one sponsor, Macallan's, and only one product being advertised, Macallan Rare Cask, which is priced in the over $200/bottle range. You think they (i.e. the publication) give a shit whether they are fairly serving a non-white audience?
Maybe they should investigate why so many minorities are trapped in poor neighborhoods?
mod parent up +1 insightful
mod parent up +1 insightful
A few weeks ago someone on Reddit posted a comparison of Walmart vs. Whole Foods in the SF Bay Area.
There's no Apple Stores up the 880 corridor until you get to either Oakland or drive out to Pleasanton. There's a ton along Hwy 101, which goes by all the affluent towns where there's a ton of cash.
Same thing for Tesla dealerships. If you're selling premium priced goods, you put the stores in the places where people can afford them. Not a lot of Ferrari dealerships down in Hollister.
How many brands lack stores in the same areas?
text filter
text filter
That's plainly racist, therefore Donald Trump's fault!
n/t
Wow more bullshit stories - does anyone do research these days.
Look at per income per capita or a billion other factors before making it racial.
Critical thinking:
How does a question of
What question led some one to ask "is Apple trying to sell only to white people?" and then 'investigate' that question?
How did some one arrive at this question? What were they doing when this question struck them?
And when they did, why did they think it was important?
Can you answer these questions? As with any headline, such answers are absolutely necessary to understanding the message. The motivations of the speaking party provide the context for their words.
From the article:
âoeWhen my wife has to get serviced by Apple, she goes all the way to Ridge Hill, which is a 20-minute drive north of the Bronx,â
Interpretation:
My wife has to drive 20 minutes to the Apple Store, this made her angry, this made me angry, I bet the root cause is white privilege and the hatred of whites for us brown folk, because everything is white people's fault!
At BEST it seems like a preoccupation with some perverted 'social justice' and a hatred of white people with a desperation to find any potential link to an 'important white institution' and 'inequality'.
This isn't some funny silly thing that's happening. These aren't just stupid people not understanding economics. They are stirring up racial hatred that the people funding them hope to weaponize at some point in the future. Your reaction of indifference would be extremely unwise.
Apple is not obliged to put their stores in places chosen by anyone else other than themselves, this is pure speculation based on spurrious correlation, and it's just plain stupid to think they have anything else other than money on strategic placement of stores.
And I'm not a fan of the company myself, but if you are gonna write some hitpiece article, you are gonna have to do better than this crap.
This is the kind of stupid shit article that makes people create terms like SJWs and use it in a derrogatory manner.
You are not contributing to the discussion here. Unless you found some internal memo stating that the construction of Apple stores needs to avoid black neighborhoods specifically or something like that, this is just bullshit. It's pure sensationalist use of statistics to bend the company image with some lame ass weak and indirect libel.
I'd avoid posting anything from the source of this crap in the future, as it's no different than Breitbart pulling crap out of their asses.
Fucking shame to put such piece of garbage here, I thought Slashdot was better than that.
Actually it is Apple's job. Apple is among the companies who most benefit from society's unfair structuring. They are one of the biggest and most successful companies in America today. Just look at their bank balance, they've got roughly 16 billion in cash on hand. That did not happen in a vacuum.
We used to call it noblesse oblige. The cult of ayn rand and brutalist libertarianism has convinced too many of the powerful to abandon that responsibility for the sake of, well, greed. But that won't last. There is a reason everyone knows the phrase "let them eat cake" and it isn't just about Antoinette, its about what happened to France as a whole -- guillotines aren't a good look on anyone.
Its called marketing. And it works
Virtually 100% white, not a single Apple store. Must be racism.
Economies so good and communities so secure that we attract upscale stores? How dare we have moved there and created those!
Economies so bad and communities so insecure that businesses flee? How dare we have moved away and left those!
"Do not forget that these people want you broke, dead, your kids raped and brainwashed, and they think it's funny."
here's a good example of the sort of fallacy you're falling into and told much better than I could.
And there's generally very little looting after disasters in America. Less when there's a Democrat in charge and the response to the disaster is something besides incompetence or indifference. Trump's response was Ok (if you're not in PR) because he hadn't finished replacing the Obama FEMA appointees. In PR where he handed over to his men they're still mostly without power.
You're pushing a false narrative that poor people are poor because they have bad morals. It's used by the wealthy to excuse abandoning them to their fate. It helps you feel better about yourself when you ignore their plight. It's a narrative, and a false one. If it wasn't society would be in chaos since 100 years ago during the Guilded Age 90% of people were what we called poor. There's plenty of other evidence to make that narrative into so much bullshit, but the folks who push it (like yourself) generally won't look for such evidence because, well, it means admitting you're being a stinker by abandoning the poor.
But don't take my word for it, here's a much better explanation.
I realize this is going to touch a nerve. But it's like dentistry. There's no way to fix it without some pain. And I'm not a very good dentist either. You should probably see a specialist. I recommend Bernie Sanders.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I was going to ask if you were new here, but based on your user id, clearly not. Congrats on waking up from your coma!! You've missed quite a bit in the last 5-10 years, most important of which is that /. gets click-bait crazy about anything Apple related. Also, fyi, M$ is generally not used anymore. :-)
You're basically arguing that they "stole it" merely because they have it. That's the kind of retarded stuff that keeps the brother down.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
that racism underpins your whole economy. That's what institutionalized racism _means_. It means you've built racism into your institutions. That's what makes it so insidious. And it's one of the few times in my life I get to use the world insidious for it's real meaning (proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects) instead of just using it as a generic word that means something is bad, m'kay.
And sure, this is an extreme example being used to get attention to the problem. My hypothetical black man and his missed opportunity are much more grounded but they also don't strike up a discussion of institutionalized racism.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If apple plops its high-priced stores in lower-income locations then all that will do is depress it even more since the money that would go to supporting children instead goes for the latest phone/tablet/gadget. Thank you apple, thank you!
I've had periods of my life when I was poor (homeless in fact, living behind a Target store) and times when I was pretty well off financially. I've had people mentor me and help me see where I messed up that caused things to go bad and where I've done things that worked out well. There is a very obvious pattern.
90% of the bad results in my life have been due to short-term thinking vs long-term. Doing what I feel like doing right now vs what will bring me rewards later is how I screw up, most of the time. That includes dropping out of school, buying what I wanted instead of paying my taxes (a $73,000 mistake), marrying the woman who was giving me good sex today instead of looking for a relationship that would lead to long-term happiness, etc.
Good results have come from going back to school, planning to work hard for four years so that I could be better off four or ten years later. Dating the responsible, caring woman who said "no sex before marriage", because I wanted long-term happiness more than I wanted sex today, etc. These things have worked well, financially and otherwise.
A tendency to think short-term absolutely will make someone end up broke, whether they started out broke or not. Lottery winners demonstrate this - almost everyone who wins more a million dollars is right back to their old financial condition within five years. It's as if the person and their habits, they way they habitually make decisions, determines their wealth - handing them $10 million doesn't have any permanent effect on their wealth whatsoever. If someone starts out mega-rich, short-term thinking may end up with them $12 million in the hole - not only broke but owing $12 million. That's just another flavor of broke.
> You're pushing a false narrative that poor people are poor because they have bad morals.
"Morals" is a word philosophers have struggled to define for centuries. For sake of discussion today, let's say that "morals" includes biblical teachings such as:
Learn from your elders
Don't fuck your neighbor's wife
Plan ahead with a budget when you start a project
Save up for a rainy day
Don't murder
Don't commit perjury
Don't be jealous
Don't worship material things
Actually, only fuck your own wife
That's most of the seven deadly sins and the ten commandments, so it's a reasonable list of morals. In fact, each of those things DOES tend to lead to trouble, financial trouble and other trouble. They also tend to have a common theme, "don't do stuff that is fun today, but hurts tomorrow". If you look at the news this week you'll see a lot of people who had great success in life but they are losing it because they didn't follow the last one.
So yes, people who live in the ghetto their whole life and never get out normally ARE stuck in the ghetto mindset of short-term thinking. They play lottery or buy 20" rims today (or worse, rent rims) rather than saving up that money for when something bad happens. People who think long-term, who save up to be able to fix a broken car, who put in the time to work hard in school, tend to move out of the ghetto. I did.
The rich white people running the government tends to keep crime lower in neighborhoods where affluent white people shop. These people usually want to make their own tribe comfortable before helping anyone else.
This is not so much racial profiling by Apple as it is simple arithmetic to maximum profit, as required by an publicly traded company. Rather the root cause is founded in the failure of our government and the democratic process and the lack of class mobility in America.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You're basically arguing that they "stole it" merely because they have it.
And you are basically making a self-serving mischaracterization in order to avoid the cognitive load of critically examining how you ended up being a beneficiary of the current system. Enjoy sleeping well at night, and pray that you've already died when those guillotines are put up again. Hope you don't have any children.
You do have white privilege though. The privilege of not having race to blame for your failures so you have to learn from them and grow.
The "racism" BS has to stop. 95% of your "average joes" on the street get along fine with anyone of any color; we just don't care what you look like. The only folks perpetually yelling and screaming about "racism" is the unhinged far left, and media that is hell bent on perpetuating racism.
Apple store placement has zero to do with racism, rather it has everything to do with profitability. Apple is going to place their upscale stores wherever they determine they can maximize sales, end of story. It's always been that way, always will be, and makes complete sense.
I'm investigating the idea of starting my own biz (not in technology) and I'm doing demographic studies right now to determine a location that will ensure the highest amount of traffic to my shop for my particular service. Common sense business 101.
To the idiots who came up with this Apple Store racism notion, grow up. Stop pretending to be offended by everything, or inventing scenarios that don't exist. You're beyond pathetic.
Yay! Your personal good fortune totally disproves the reality of tens of millions of people.
> I love hearing how my success is from something other than passion and perseverance. Please tell me more...
You won the lottery dude. Just like all those black musicians and professional athletes. Do you seriously believe that you are a harder worker than tens of millions of non-white kids born into poverty/? Really? How is it that you are so smart and successful and yet so stupid that you can't see yourself as a massive statistical outlier? Is it some kind of religion you've got that you disbelieve in the laws of probablity, standard deviation, normal distributions, etc? Or are you just unwilling to consider the possibility that there was more to your success than your work ethic?
BTW, I billed $500K+/yr for my personal consulting working for DoD contractors for about ten years and am now retired. The difference between you and me? I took a critical look at why I made millions while so many smart, hardworking people around me didn't. And the answer was pretty simple. Luck. And that doesn't bother me one bit because my self-image isn't tied to the money I've made. Its tied to what I've done for the least of those in my community.
The name is hypocrite
Your analysis is pretty interesting if it is factual. Sadly I'm too lazy to look for myself :-( so I'll just "+1" it.
While droves of comments are covering this, might as well throw in my little take. Someone might want to actually look at a few maps before running this kind of garbage (try Arcgis.com). This is not about race, at least not directly. Apple stores are built in areas where the income is high and the population is dense. Unfortunately, and primarily due long standing racism, areas of low income/high population have a tendency to be minority communities. Apple has no interest in placing their stores in the latter for obvious reasons. The answer, as always, is to not target the symptoms of an issue (theft, violence, social disorder, etc) but their causes (injustice, poverty, accountability, etc).
If you didn't get into some odd contract where you don't have to work then I wouldn't call it luck. You worked hard all your life, probably went to school and sacrificed a decent wage for some years to get a degree, sacrificed on comfort and social interactions to enhance your knowledge for your career, sacrificed time with your wife to put in 60 hours a year. All these things aren't luck. And all these things a lot of people aren't willing to do. Yes luck/timing/opportunity is involved but for you but without it you would still be making far more than average. Don't pass your guilt about being overpaid onto someone else. If your so serious about this injustice it sounds like you have money to do something about it, at least in your local community, spread some "luck".
What they REALLY should do is put their stores where rich and incredibly clueless dumbassess live. That's really their customer base moreso than based on race.
Funny how there isn't an Apple store next to my trailer park.
Wow, I guess technical competence can only take you so far. What a pity a comment couldn't be constructed from one-pixel transparent gifs.
Requiem for the American Dream
I mean, there's not one Apple Store in Africa. How racist is that?
You worked hard all your life,
And so do tens of millions of people of color. The fact that they don't get the same results ought to make you ask why. It seems you answer to that is its because you are super ultra special. And you are right. Another word for special is lucky.
If your so serious about this injustice it sounds like you have money to do something about it, at least in your local community, spread some "luck".
Thanks for the advice. Since it apparently wasn't clear from my previous post, that's exactly what I'm doing with my life now. If you are pulling 250K/yr you can do a LOT for your community too.
Apple is not so racist a company that they'd prefer to lose millions in lost sales by forcing poor neighborhoods to take an extra bus to the apple stores in richer neighborhoods. There's just no market for Apple products in poor neighborhoods. Stop throwing racism cards at everything. Not everything is racist. Some things poor people just don't make a good market for.
You could say the same thing about the location of Bentley dealerships, or luxury watch stores, or maybe even abortion clinics. I don't know the economics of how their teams decide to place their stores; but I do know its not racist.
Racist investigation finds racism, film at 11. ::yawn::
Fuck this editor. Stupid clickbait shit.
In the past that was true, the cycle that causes some populations to fall further and further off the grid is that the culture is one where you do not have stable two parent loving families. The crack epedemic was the final straw The school where I teach, 95% of the kids have little to no contact with their dads, have siblings from multiple fathers. Reference Jerry Springer. Familes that don;t support each other. There are many success stories but few as compared to tortured souls. Nothing to do with money. Don't need money to clean the house. Their democratic elected officials funnel money into nonprofits run by friends and family and the people in the communities get fed complete BS with many scare tactics and unproductive advice
It's the hypocrisy of telling us how they want us to live, the extreme virtue signalling, followed by doing what they want for the extra bucks they really really want.
Apple places their stores where they're most likely to generate revenue to maximize the investment of building them. There aren't a lot of whites in China, are there?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Asians don't count when you're talking about diversity or racism, because neither of them are poor and/or disadvantaged.
Note that while that is untrue given worldwide numbers it's true in the US, and if it's true in the US it must be true worldwide.
How?
They use poor third-world workers with no rights to make stuff that they then sell to middle class and rich whites.
They claim that American citizens are unwilling to do the work, or that the product would be unaffordable if they had to pay a decent wage to non-slave labor.
A Republican who threatens to upend their slave labor business model gets elected and they scream and rant that he is illegitimate, must be removed from office, must die, etc and they start ranting about leaving the Union. Their actors start pretending to knife him to death, behead him etc. The Republican president supports tariffs to protect American workers and industries, but the super rich Dems align with rich non-Dems (Whigs back then, RINO Repubs now) to support "free trade" instead with claims the trade protections would bring ruin.
Some things never change.
Those white folks are fools to spend money on Apple products.
Apple "simplifies" the wrong things, pushing complexity into undiscoverable, convoluted, and cumbersome that are even dangerous at times...
Colored people are benefiting from this!
You haven't actually been to China.
If you had, you'd notice the number of cosmetics that are promoted to make your face whiter.
You see in Asia, dark skin is considered to be a sign of poverty, it means you work outside all day, pale skin is a sign of wealth, it shows you dont need to work oustide.
Nice troll, but you missed two important points. Pale skin is actually quite predominant in China (you fell into the standard casual racism trap of assuming they're all yellow) and that this survey was conducted in the United States, not China. You'll notice there aren't a lot of Chinese stores, certainly few in the Gansu province.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Apple stores are in high end shopping areas like most fashion brands. However Apple products are widely available at most retail shops and of course on line. The Apple stores offer a nice environment, a long reservation for support , and seminars. What other computing products companies offer more diverse locations?
I'd wager that store location is more strongly correlated with income bracket than it is with skin color.
Slashdot is racist!
Now I know why I didn't put my western saddle and boot company in the Bronx! And it would have made so much financial sense to put it there!
Life is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, it both blows and sucks
“When my wife has to get serviced by Apple, she goes all the way to Ridge Hill, which is a 20-minute drive north of the Bronx,”
Here we go...
I didnâ(TM)t see any comparison with, e.g. Microsoft stores. But then no one visits those stores. And comparing locations with Metro PCS? Retail site selection (for both brands) is very scientific and based on demographics. Clearly Apple knows their customers which is why Apple Stores rate among the highest sales per square foot of any retail operation. Then thereâ(TM)s Best Buy and a myriad of other retail outlets that offer Appleâ(TM)s âoeluxury brandâ (how ridiculous to make such an assumption) which are located everywhere. If they do not offer the same customer experience why not focus on that? Apple is just the brand thatâ(TM)s on top so everyone finds a way to kick them.
The government needs to shut Apple down for racism and confiscate their property. The utopia Marx promised is bound to come and we can once again sing Kumbaya.
There's a difference between a race to the bottom, and having a good quality desirable entry level product.
For example, I bought my kids laptops for christmas last year. I went with dell education series latitude 13s. They're well built, they're pretty rugged, and the specs have been more than sufficient.
The screen certainly isn't amazing, but it gets the job done. It's got 4GB ram, and 128GB SSD... battery life is great and gets them through the day. And they were under $700, that's not race to the bottom cheap... but its almost half the price of anything I can buy with an apple logo on it.
The macbook starts at 1300, macbook starts at 1000. For working on homework, they bring nothing to the table. The apples have markedly nicer screens, they're a bit faster, and they're thinner and lighter.
My kids are kids... not hipster graphic artists. They need to view lecture notes, write English essays and science lab reports, lookup marks, do basic research, etc.
The 13" dell is bulkier, but is still light. It's also a lot more rugged. And its about half the cost to replace in the event of loss / breakage / or theft.
The dell also has ethernet, HDMI and USB-A ports, all of which have already come in handy at school. The mac's mostly need dongles for any of that; which is additional cost, and more stuff to carry around, forget and lose -- I just spent $40 bucks on yet another stupid thunderbolt to ethernet adapter for my macbook pro after my last one went missing...
No investigation can reveal what "Apple wants". That's tomfoolery. This totally non-expert, non-verified, non-peer-reviewed, non-scientific "investigation" just Makes Stuff Up. The only thing anyone can conclude from these highly suspect zip code conclusions is that Apple seems to locate its stores near its best customers.
When will everyone realize that they're playing us all off against one another in order to keep us from going after -them-?
Is iPhone a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
I have never seen a Caucasian with an Apple product, and I am of that same demographic.
People in the Bronx, regardless of race and income, have an Apple Store (or rather more like a dozen) in far closer proximity than > 99% of the US population.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.