As someone that recently ended up with an iPhone XR (I was intending to stay with my 7 for a couple more years, but circumstances gave me this new phone) I have to say that FaceID is an under-appreciated feature.
Some people have trouble with it, and that's a bummer, but I've never had any issue. It works at surprising angles and it's more convenient for me as a person that finds that he has gloves on or dirty/wet hands a surprising amount of the time. My phone never feels locked to me anymore. When I go back to my TouchID iPad, it feels broken. I wait for the hidden notifications to pop into view, and it takes me a moment to context switch and put my thumb on the fingerprint reader. My phone literally just beeped as I was writing this, and I leaned forward slightly and it unlocked while I was typing on my PC.
Is it worth the aesthetic tradeoffs or price? I can't answer that for you, but this is a seriously impressive bit of technology. My phone never feels locked anymore, just ready to go. When I need to fill in a password, I just keep looking at my phone and my password manager handles the rest.
I know it's a small thing to put your finger on a special fingerprint scanner in the grand scheme of things, but I honestly never want to go back.
You're right, the market owes them nothing. But the market continues to give them profits. Despite all the hue and cry over Apple's guidance correction, this was their second best quarter ever, which means it was also the second best quarter for any company, of all time, ever.
Basically, I don't think things are so simple as just 'lower the price'. It might undermine the perception of them as a luxury brand, and then we might REALLY see a downward spiral. Or maybe it would work, who knows? I don't think the answer is either of us, and until Apple starts having quarters that don't dwarf everyone else's, I don't think it's sensible to cast blame.
So here's something to consider about Apple's phones: while the prices have recently increased, their gross margins are exactly the same, around 38%. You can argue that that's an unreasonably high margin, certainly, but the amount of money they're trying to get back for the amount of money they're putting in hasn't changed very much over the years.
Of course, it's impossible to ignore that Apple is a Veblen good. The high price implies quality, regardless of whether or not that's true. People that are affluent or aspire to be affluent look at iPhones as aspirational goods. Part of the reason why sales dipped in China is because this year's most expensive iPhone didn't look that much different from last year's. In general, Chinese people are more wealth/status conscious, and more conspicuous about how they display it. If you're going to buy an expensive phone, why not buy the top-end Huawei, since it looks different and ALSO costs a lot of money? (OS ecosystems matter less in China; WeChat is the REAL ecosystem, it's multi-platform, and the lock-in effect is considerably reduced.)
I wouldn't throw stones at Apple's marketing and accounting teams just yet. It was a hard year for a lot of companies in China, and Apple is still making money hand over fist. Certainly don't fire anyone over one 'bad' quarter. One quarter is an outlier, two quarters may be a coincidence, and three quarters is a trend. That's when you can start flinging some blame around.
There's a really excellent breakdown of the terms of the Enterprise agreement in the Facebook thread (https://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13320022&cid=58046318) and it's clear that this is a violation of that agreement no matter how you swing it. Unless these people are contractors and only use the application on-site (which is to say, at Google, under the DIRECT supervision of an employee) this is a clear breach of the contract.
Google may have a little less to lose than Facebook by having the certificate rejected, but it's not going to be a trivial thing for them either.
I didn't say 'design defect', I said 'manufacturing defect'. If the device breaks 2 years in because some RAM took 2 years to fail, that's not a design problem, that's just a part that happened to die.
By all accounts, the iMac Pro is actually a fantastic machine, so there's still hope. But the laptops are the bestselling Macs, so they REALLY need to get on top of that. There's basically nothing in the lineup that I could recommend to a friend or family member that wants a laptop.
Because those things shouldn't be necessary. The old keyboards (and the magic keyboards) didn't need that sort of babying.
There's nothing wrong with butterfly switches per se, but they've built an unreliable keyboard. It not only costs buyers money and time, it costs APPLE hundreds of dollars every time one of these dumb things needs to be replaced—and the problem is sufficiently large that the keyboards they released a few years ago are under a replacement program that extends beyond any normal warranty. As a shareholder (like, a couple thousand dollars worth:P) I want to know why they're putting these unreliable and costly keyboards into their products. It's bad for the bottom line AND for their reputation.
Overpriced is relative. It's exactly perfect for the work my partner does as an academic, and there's nothing else even remotely in its category. Apple is the only player in the tablet space worth talking about, so when the options are 'get the product that works best for my workflow' or 'have nothing', the choice is relatively clear.
Honestly, if we hadn't had AppleCare, the insurance policy on my credit card would've covered it, but for $200, we got an insurance policy that covers both accidental damage AND any problems that come up from Apple's side. My home insurance (and credit card) wouldn't cover a manufacturing defect 2 years into the life of the device. So in this case, again, the choice is clear.
I look at iPhones and iPads and they're effectively unrepairable and this doesn't bother me in the least. Apple repairs or replaces them quickly, and that's a perfectly acceptable model to me. We dropped a brand-new iPad Pro at home, and with AppleCare they just replaced it without any fuss.
But that's not how it is with the MacBooks right now—and maybe it will never be, so you're right. If you can't guarantee that the device is going to work for its entire operational life without breaking on its own, someone has to be able to repair it. If I drop it, that's on me, but just opening and closing the lid, or typing...it's garbage.
I don't think there's any conspiracy at Apple to make people replace stuff earlier than they normally would, I actually think they're just churning out bad laptops and that's honestly worse. That sort of failure in process is deeply worrying to me.
I think this will be seen as a particularly dark time in Apple's laptop history. Between the butterfly keyboard and this, we're seeing problems that even long-time Apple fans won't stand for. I'm actually of the opinion that Apple can make a laptop as unrepairable as they like, as long as it doesn't break or they're willing to replace it without any fuss, but that's just not what we're seeing here.
Their nickle-and-diming is truly baffling. They used to pick the more expensive options (and charge for them) knowing that cheaping out would just cause trouble down the road. Buy it nice, or buy it twice, as they say.
I'm glad I don't need to have a laptop in my life. If I did, I would really be looking at buying something old and used. None of these new laptops looks like a good investment right now.
I don't know about the exact test you're talking about, but there IS this blind test page that tries to show how Bluetooth affects the quality of music. http://www.brentbutterworth.co...
Look at it like this: Apple makes its money by selling you a physical device. After that, they provide a few services to keep you locked in. That's a very good business model, and doesn't rely on you giving up any appreciable privacy.
Give that, it's trivial for Apple to play up the privacy side of their business. It wasn't necessarily what they set out to do, but it fell in their lap, and now they're leveraging it because it gives them a competitive advantage.
But I think we can trust they'll continue on this path for a while, because nothing is more damaging than a privacy scandal from a company that claims to be all about your privacy.
So TRUST in Apple's business agenda, because it's all about trying to limit the tools of its nearest competitors.
That's really interesting—and it further undermines the advice that getting a tan is bad for you. Just don't get a tan all at once, and try not to burn. Generally good advice.
"So Lindqvist decided to look at overall mortality rates, and the results were shocking. Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers.
There are not many daily lifestyle choices that double your risk of dying. In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, Lindqvist’s team put it in perspective: “Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor of a similar magnitude as smoking, in terms of life expectancy.”"
And also:
"Melanoma, the deadly type of skin cancer, is much rarer, accounting for only 1 to 3 percent of new skin cancers. And perplexingly, outdoor workers have half the melanoma rate of indoor workers. Tanned people have lower rates in general. “The risk factor for melanoma appears to be intermittent sunshine and sunburn, especially when you’re young,” says Weller. “But there’s evidence that long-term sun exposure associates with less melanoma.”"
So regardless of whether you believe sun is bad for your or not, I rather think saying "the advice is clear" is so abjectly wrong, you should probably take everything else that's said with a huge grain of salt. There is almost never completely clear advice when it comes to things like thins.
What? No, this is what happens to everything when you try to draw more current than the battery can provide. This same mechanism has been rolled out to EVERY iPhone running iOS 11 and 12 afaik, not just the 6. My iPhone XR has the same battery health screen that my partner's iPhone SE has.
This is a perfectly good way to handle the issue of degrading battery performance. I'd rather have a slow phone than a phone that shuts off randomly.
In this case, there is literally no good way to secure your phone. If the police are going to beat you, they'll beat you until you give them your password, too. At least your phone was a more convenient object to have the whole time that you weren't under arrest for something so heinous that the police decided you were worth the risks of depriving you of your rights.
The Apple battery case is shaped like that for 2 reasons:
1) Because it moves the battery out of the way of the antenna. This is the primary reason. 2) It makes the phone easier to hold (kinda like a pop-socket, but uglier and always there)
It's one of Apple's few forays into the realm of function with almost no regard to form. Or in this case, the form is part of the function, but the form looks like hell.
Using a biometric system allows me to keep a 15+ character passcode on my phone without meaningfully impacting my day. It means my phone is immune to casual (or even some non-casual) break-ins, but is still very useful and accessible to me. (Particularly now that I have an iPhone XR; it never FEELS locked to me because the transition is so seamless.)
If someone swipes my phone or I lose it, I have no fear that my data will be taken. If someone has kidnapped me and threatens me, they'll have my data whether it's protected by a password or biometrics.
I'm FAR more worried about persistent data tracking around the web and the amount of data that filters through google and facebook than my biometrics being the weak point in my security.
Ultimately, all security is a tradeoff between security and convenience. My phone is a device that I want to be convenient, and that means I trade a tiny bit of security for it.
Believed by who? Cook has said the XR was the most popular iPhone every single day since it started shipping. Lying about that would be a major securities violation if it were discovered to be untrue, so we can take him at his word. Sales may not be what they expected, but the iPhone XR is their most popular phone this quarter, end of story.
I think what Gruber is talking about are things like the processor tech or the Face ID system. We would be seeing more phones with guts more like Apple's and more secure facial recognition. We already know that they're apeing the look and feel of iPhones, and they seem to catch up to the tech (fast fingerprint sensors, dot projectors) on a timeline that suggest they copied the idea but didn't actually lift the manufacturing process.
Chinese people love luxury goods (citation, I'm half Chinese and ostentatious displays of wealth have been a cultural standout for me as someone that’s been raised in Canada but goes back to visit my Chinese family). Apple has traded on its high prices there for a long time, but I think we're starting to see the limits of that as they bump up against other factors. If Apple were just another brand, they never would have made this much headway in the first place.
The guidance claims "record activations" in North America, which we can take as truthful since Apple has no desire to be accused of misleading investors. The misplaced grumbling about the headphone jack has nothing to do with the real problem: China.
There are a few reasons for the weakness in China, not least of which is the current trade debacle, but also some patriotism on the part of the Chinese and the anger at the treatment of Huawei and its executive here in the west.
On top of that, WeChat is the real platform in China, not Android or iOS. You pay for things through WeChat. It has its own App Store. It runs on everything. It's a market where Apple has to compete on factors other than its ecosystem. They still trade on their luxury status, but with all the other factors at hand, it becomes harder to retain customers.
With the new guidance, Apple will still have its second best quarter EVER, and the guidance is a pullback of 7%â"the only other time they've lowered their guidance it was 10%, in 2002 and it was a couple hundred million dollars.
Apple has some real work ahead, no doubt, but misidentifying the problem as high prices or lack of a headphone jack wonâ(TM)t solve anything.
These predictions based on the supply chain come out every year, and they've been wrong every year. It would be too late to cut orders for the XR or XS; what Apple is probably doing is cutting supply for next year's phones from certain suppliers for various reasons. Maybe the supplier didnâ(TM)t live up to expectations or the prices were too high. Apple's supply chain works a long way in advance.
It may be that all this is true, just don't take it for granted that it is. Like Apple or hate them, making bad predictions about them is all these analysts have done for years because it pays the bills. I won't be surprised if Apple has a mediocre year (I bought an iPhone 7 last year and had no intention of upgrading, but I got a XR as a gift; the old phones are so good now that upgrading is pointless until the phone falls apart), but I won't be surprised if they also have a really great year. Nobody knows but Apple right now.
They are not "slaves in all but name only". The working conditions are pretty good in a lot of those Chinese factories, the workers make enough money to send home to their rural families, and despite the sensationalist claims, suicide rates are roughly equivalent to the non-factory worker population. I would say that it is far more likely that your vegetables were picked by someone in the USA that is functionally a slave or that your clothes are made by some child in a sweatshop than your phone is made by a "slave". Indeed, one of the reasons why the work has moved to China is the presence of so much SKILLED labour all concentrated in one place.
China isn’t perfect, the factories often try to get away with shit, not everyone there is acting in good faith...but I could say exactly the same thing about a lot of places in North America. I think the real fear here is that despite everything, we AREN'T any better than the Chinese, and it offends our moral sensibilities that we might not have any moral high ground to stand on when it comes to workers and their rights.
What? Don't be ridiculous. Google and Facebook are beholden to nobody, and will sell you out to any other corporation or government without the slightest thought. Go capitalism!
Slashdot Mirror
As someone that recently ended up with an iPhone XR (I was intending to stay with my 7 for a couple more years, but circumstances gave me this new phone) I have to say that FaceID is an under-appreciated feature.
Some people have trouble with it, and that's a bummer, but I've never had any issue. It works at surprising angles and it's more convenient for me as a person that finds that he has gloves on or dirty/wet hands a surprising amount of the time. My phone never feels locked to me anymore. When I go back to my TouchID iPad, it feels broken. I wait for the hidden notifications to pop into view, and it takes me a moment to context switch and put my thumb on the fingerprint reader. My phone literally just beeped as I was writing this, and I leaned forward slightly and it unlocked while I was typing on my PC.
Is it worth the aesthetic tradeoffs or price? I can't answer that for you, but this is a seriously impressive bit of technology. My phone never feels locked anymore, just ready to go. When I need to fill in a password, I just keep looking at my phone and my password manager handles the rest.
I know it's a small thing to put your finger on a special fingerprint scanner in the grand scheme of things, but I honestly never want to go back.
You're right, the market owes them nothing. But the market continues to give them profits. Despite all the hue and cry over Apple's guidance correction, this was their second best quarter ever, which means it was also the second best quarter for any company, of all time, ever.
Basically, I don't think things are so simple as just 'lower the price'. It might undermine the perception of them as a luxury brand, and then we might REALLY see a downward spiral. Or maybe it would work, who knows? I don't think the answer is either of us, and until Apple starts having quarters that don't dwarf everyone else's, I don't think it's sensible to cast blame.
So here's something to consider about Apple's phones: while the prices have recently increased, their gross margins are exactly the same, around 38%. You can argue that that's an unreasonably high margin, certainly, but the amount of money they're trying to get back for the amount of money they're putting in hasn't changed very much over the years.
Of course, it's impossible to ignore that Apple is a Veblen good. The high price implies quality, regardless of whether or not that's true. People that are affluent or aspire to be affluent look at iPhones as aspirational goods. Part of the reason why sales dipped in China is because this year's most expensive iPhone didn't look that much different from last year's. In general, Chinese people are more wealth/status conscious, and more conspicuous about how they display it. If you're going to buy an expensive phone, why not buy the top-end Huawei, since it looks different and ALSO costs a lot of money? (OS ecosystems matter less in China; WeChat is the REAL ecosystem, it's multi-platform, and the lock-in effect is considerably reduced.)
I wouldn't throw stones at Apple's marketing and accounting teams just yet. It was a hard year for a lot of companies in China, and Apple is still making money hand over fist. Certainly don't fire anyone over one 'bad' quarter. One quarter is an outlier, two quarters may be a coincidence, and three quarters is a trend. That's when you can start flinging some blame around.
There's a really excellent breakdown of the terms of the Enterprise agreement in the Facebook thread (https://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13320022&cid=58046318) and it's clear that this is a violation of that agreement no matter how you swing it. Unless these people are contractors and only use the application on-site (which is to say, at Google, under the DIRECT supervision of an employee) this is a clear breach of the contract.
Google may have a little less to lose than Facebook by having the certificate rejected, but it's not going to be a trivial thing for them either.
I didn't say 'design defect', I said 'manufacturing defect'. If the device breaks 2 years in because some RAM took 2 years to fail, that's not a design problem, that's just a part that happened to die.
By all accounts, the iMac Pro is actually a fantastic machine, so there's still hope. But the laptops are the bestselling Macs, so they REALLY need to get on top of that. There's basically nothing in the lineup that I could recommend to a friend or family member that wants a laptop.
Because those things shouldn't be necessary. The old keyboards (and the magic keyboards) didn't need that sort of babying.
There's nothing wrong with butterfly switches per se, but they've built an unreliable keyboard. It not only costs buyers money and time, it costs APPLE hundreds of dollars every time one of these dumb things needs to be replaced—and the problem is sufficiently large that the keyboards they released a few years ago are under a replacement program that extends beyond any normal warranty. As a shareholder (like, a couple thousand dollars worth :P) I want to know why they're putting these unreliable and costly keyboards into their products. It's bad for the bottom line AND for their reputation.
Overpriced is relative. It's exactly perfect for the work my partner does as an academic, and there's nothing else even remotely in its category. Apple is the only player in the tablet space worth talking about, so when the options are 'get the product that works best for my workflow' or 'have nothing', the choice is relatively clear.
Honestly, if we hadn't had AppleCare, the insurance policy on my credit card would've covered it, but for $200, we got an insurance policy that covers both accidental damage AND any problems that come up from Apple's side. My home insurance (and credit card) wouldn't cover a manufacturing defect 2 years into the life of the device. So in this case, again, the choice is clear.
I look at iPhones and iPads and they're effectively unrepairable and this doesn't bother me in the least. Apple repairs or replaces them quickly, and that's a perfectly acceptable model to me. We dropped a brand-new iPad Pro at home, and with AppleCare they just replaced it without any fuss.
But that's not how it is with the MacBooks right now—and maybe it will never be, so you're right. If you can't guarantee that the device is going to work for its entire operational life without breaking on its own, someone has to be able to repair it. If I drop it, that's on me, but just opening and closing the lid, or typing...it's garbage.
I don't think there's any conspiracy at Apple to make people replace stuff earlier than they normally would, I actually think they're just churning out bad laptops and that's honestly worse. That sort of failure in process is deeply worrying to me.
I think this will be seen as a particularly dark time in Apple's laptop history. Between the butterfly keyboard and this, we're seeing problems that even long-time Apple fans won't stand for. I'm actually of the opinion that Apple can make a laptop as unrepairable as they like, as long as it doesn't break or they're willing to replace it without any fuss, but that's just not what we're seeing here.
Their nickle-and-diming is truly baffling. They used to pick the more expensive options (and charge for them) knowing that cheaping out would just cause trouble down the road. Buy it nice, or buy it twice, as they say.
I'm glad I don't need to have a laptop in my life. If I did, I would really be looking at buying something old and used. None of these new laptops looks like a good investment right now.
I don't know about the exact test you're talking about, but there IS this blind test page that tries to show how Bluetooth affects the quality of music. http://www.brentbutterworth.co...
Look at it like this: Apple makes its money by selling you a physical device. After that, they provide a few services to keep you locked in. That's a very good business model, and doesn't rely on you giving up any appreciable privacy.
Give that, it's trivial for Apple to play up the privacy side of their business. It wasn't necessarily what they set out to do, but it fell in their lap, and now they're leveraging it because it gives them a competitive advantage.
But I think we can trust they'll continue on this path for a while, because nothing is more damaging than a privacy scandal from a company that claims to be all about your privacy.
So TRUST in Apple's business agenda, because it's all about trying to limit the tools of its nearest competitors.
That's really interesting—and it further undermines the advice that getting a tan is bad for you. Just don't get a tan all at once, and try not to burn. Generally good advice.
"So Lindqvist decided to look at overall mortality rates, and the results were shocking. Over the 20 years of the study, sun avoiders were twice as likely to die as sun worshippers.
There are not many daily lifestyle choices that double your risk of dying. In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, Lindqvist’s team put it in perspective: “Avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor of a similar magnitude as smoking, in terms of life expectancy.”"
And also:
"Melanoma, the deadly type of skin cancer, is much rarer, accounting for only 1 to 3 percent of new skin cancers. And perplexingly, outdoor workers have half the melanoma rate of indoor workers. Tanned people have lower rates in general. “The risk factor for melanoma appears to be intermittent sunshine and sunburn, especially when you’re young,” says Weller. “But there’s evidence that long-term sun exposure associates with less melanoma.”"
So regardless of whether you believe sun is bad for your or not, I rather think saying "the advice is clear" is so abjectly wrong, you should probably take everything else that's said with a huge grain of salt. There is almost never completely clear advice when it comes to things like thins.
What? No, this is what happens to everything when you try to draw more current than the battery can provide. This same mechanism has been rolled out to EVERY iPhone running iOS 11 and 12 afaik, not just the 6. My iPhone XR has the same battery health screen that my partner's iPhone SE has.
This is a perfectly good way to handle the issue of degrading battery performance. I'd rather have a slow phone than a phone that shuts off randomly.
In this case, there is literally no good way to secure your phone. If the police are going to beat you, they'll beat you until you give them your password, too. At least your phone was a more convenient object to have the whole time that you weren't under arrest for something so heinous that the police decided you were worth the risks of depriving you of your rights.
The Apple battery case is shaped like that for 2 reasons:
1) Because it moves the battery out of the way of the antenna. This is the primary reason.
2) It makes the phone easier to hold (kinda like a pop-socket, but uglier and always there)
It's one of Apple's few forays into the realm of function with almost no regard to form. Or in this case, the form is part of the function, but the form looks like hell.
Using a biometric system allows me to keep a 15+ character passcode on my phone without meaningfully impacting my day. It means my phone is immune to casual (or even some non-casual) break-ins, but is still very useful and accessible to me. (Particularly now that I have an iPhone XR; it never FEELS locked to me because the transition is so seamless.)
If someone swipes my phone or I lose it, I have no fear that my data will be taken. If someone has kidnapped me and threatens me, they'll have my data whether it's protected by a password or biometrics.
I'm FAR more worried about persistent data tracking around the web and the amount of data that filters through google and facebook than my biometrics being the weak point in my security.
Ultimately, all security is a tradeoff between security and convenience. My phone is a device that I want to be convenient, and that means I trade a tiny bit of security for it.
Believed by who? Cook has said the XR was the most popular iPhone every single day since it started shipping. Lying about that would be a major securities violation if it were discovered to be untrue, so we can take him at his word. Sales may not be what they expected, but the iPhone XR is their most popular phone this quarter, end of story.
I think what Gruber is talking about are things like the processor tech or the Face ID system. We would be seeing more phones with guts more like Apple's and more secure facial recognition. We already know that they're apeing the look and feel of iPhones, and they seem to catch up to the tech (fast fingerprint sensors, dot projectors) on a timeline that suggest they copied the idea but didn't actually lift the manufacturing process.
Chinese people love luxury goods (citation, I'm half Chinese and ostentatious displays of wealth have been a cultural standout for me as someone that’s been raised in Canada but goes back to visit my Chinese family). Apple has traded on its high prices there for a long time, but I think we're starting to see the limits of that as they bump up against other factors. If Apple were just another brand, they never would have made this much headway in the first place.
The guidance claims "record activations" in North America, which we can take as truthful since Apple has no desire to be accused of misleading investors. The misplaced grumbling about the headphone jack has nothing to do with the real problem: China.
There are a few reasons for the weakness in China, not least of which is the current trade debacle, but also some patriotism on the part of the Chinese and the anger at the treatment of Huawei and its executive here in the west.
On top of that, WeChat is the real platform in China, not Android or iOS. You pay for things through WeChat. It has its own App Store. It runs on everything. It's a market where Apple has to compete on factors other than its ecosystem. They still trade on their luxury status, but with all the other factors at hand, it becomes harder to retain customers.
With the new guidance, Apple will still have its second best quarter EVER, and the guidance is a pullback of 7%â"the only other time they've lowered their guidance it was 10%, in 2002 and it was a couple hundred million dollars.
Apple has some real work ahead, no doubt, but misidentifying the problem as high prices or lack of a headphone jack wonâ(TM)t solve anything.
These predictions based on the supply chain come out every year, and they've been wrong every year. It would be too late to cut orders for the XR or XS; what Apple is probably doing is cutting supply for next year's phones from certain suppliers for various reasons. Maybe the supplier didnâ(TM)t live up to expectations or the prices were too high. Apple's supply chain works a long way in advance.
It may be that all this is true, just don't take it for granted that it is. Like Apple or hate them, making bad predictions about them is all these analysts have done for years because it pays the bills. I won't be surprised if Apple has a mediocre year (I bought an iPhone 7 last year and had no intention of upgrading, but I got a XR as a gift; the old phones are so good now that upgrading is pointless until the phone falls apart), but I won't be surprised if they also have a really great year. Nobody knows but Apple right now.
They are not "slaves in all but name only". The working conditions are pretty good in a lot of those Chinese factories, the workers make enough money to send home to their rural families, and despite the sensationalist claims, suicide rates are roughly equivalent to the non-factory worker population. I would say that it is far more likely that your vegetables were picked by someone in the USA that is functionally a slave or that your clothes are made by some child in a sweatshop than your phone is made by a "slave". Indeed, one of the reasons why the work has moved to China is the presence of so much SKILLED labour all concentrated in one place.
China isn’t perfect, the factories often try to get away with shit, not everyone there is acting in good faith...but I could say exactly the same thing about a lot of places in North America. I think the real fear here is that despite everything, we AREN'T any better than the Chinese, and it offends our moral sensibilities that we might not have any moral high ground to stand on when it comes to workers and their rights.
What? Don't be ridiculous. Google and Facebook are beholden to nobody, and will sell you out to any other corporation or government without the slightest thought. Go capitalism!