I couldn't resist, with the first three comments being about how people wanted 3d printers that could print 3d printers, which accomplishment has already been achieved some time back.
The problem here is that the charter of a public company is to create shareholder value. Apple have managed to do this by creating great products which engender significant brand loyalty. Decades of hard work have led to a virtuous cycle which, agree with it or not, has them on a huge upswing.
But if they were not maximizing profits in every way possible, shareholders could sue them. Until corporations are held to a standard where profit at all costs isn't the primary goal, this sort of thing is going to continue.
I'm with you, but my question remains: how many people would be willing to pay the higher prices, just for the knowledge that they're doing the right thing? What would happen if Apple offered two iPhones, say for $200 with contract and $2000 with contract, and one was built in China, the other in Georgia. Do you think even 1% of people would pay 10x more for a socially responsible device? What if--with all the component and facility costs--it was more like $6000 for a phone?
I'm old enough to remember Coca-Cola's response to pressure on them to divest from South Africa. They made it sound like they were there for humanitarian purposes, not for profit. "Jobs we provide are the only thing standing between tens of thousands of black South Africans and abject poverty." Translation: labor is cheap there, and we don't want to give it up.
Unfortunately, no omelet is made without cracking a few eggs. I'm sure that some people would be unhappy if the Foxconn factories shrank in size or disappeared. But the question is, which path leads to sustainable practices around the world? There are a lot of out-of-work people in other places in the world who would love to have those jobs if they were moved out of China.
Some recent article about Steve Jobs quoted an Apple executive saying paying US wages in mainland China (instead of $17/day) would only increase the price of an iPad by $70.
And if you were going to pay US wages you could always, I don't know, build the damn thing in America?
I'm not exactly a Buy American nazi, but if the flagship products of greenwashing high-end manufacturers can't be built here, then what can?
Maybe not. The Chinese allow business to setup differently than we do here in America:
See this recent NYT article.
It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.
If you're just talking about assembly, $65/phone additional cost is probably about right at minimum wage. But don't forget that the great majority of the components are sourced from vendors who make them at factories with similar conditions. If you build every last piece here in the states, you're talking quite a bit more.
And that's after the sunk costs of getting the factories going. If you amortize the cost of those factories even over several years, you're probably adding a cost greater than that of the labor. Long story short, a fully US-made phone will cost more. How many people would be willing to pay $1500 or more for a "fair trade" device?
And don't forget, there are a lot of materials that are sourced from far off locations where work conditions are not great, to say the least. If you're using a cell phone--any phone, not just an iPhone--you've helped fund a civil war and sex-slavery in the Congo. And it's not just phones; the materials that are most common there are used in computers, DVD players, TVs...
Reminds me of the interaction at the end of the movie, "The Untouchables". When a reporter asked Eliot Ness what he would do if prohibition were repealed, he answered, "Probably have a drink."
(Note, I understand that the movie was based on real people and events, but I quote that comment as being from the movie because it's my sole source for the interchange, and I'm not sure if the real Elliot Ness actually said it.)
You don't think that the DOJ had a way of confirming the most salient information? Like bugging phone calls, capturing emails, taking photographs of meetings?
Well, one of the things it does support is embedding HTML5 widgets, which implies that Canvas is supported. I know it's not LaTex, but I'm sure there's some library for converting your formulae based on that system (or others) into Canvas.
I did note during the presentation that they showed an Algebra 1 book multiple times, and maybe this is why they don't have anything higher. Presumably, however, if they don't already support mathematical equations natively right now, either there's an easy way to do it, or it'll be supported in version 1.01. Suggesting that they'd make this big a deal about it and ignore everything above Trig (I figure you need the fancy stuff once you start doing integrals, right? So that's be Calc A and above) is a little silly.
Samsung also manufactured at least some of the displays, and, IIRC, some of the NVRAM. This may be a big part of the reason Apple is going after them. With the A4 and A5 chips, for example, they are supposed to be acting simply as a manufacturer, taking designs that Apple brought to them. For displays and memory, Apple had significant requirements, and brought a lot of money to the table to ensure that Samsung could ramp up and meet their demands. Taking those resources from the part-manufacturer arm and making them available to the device-manufacturer arm so that the parent company could build nearly identical devices for even less is, say, questionable. Especially so if, say, the device manufacturer arm is getting the parts for the same cost or below cost to what Apple paid.
Clever of Google to give away Android. The reason Microsoft is going after the hardware vendors is that they are the ones selling a product based on software which (allegedly) uses their patents, so they can easily make a case for getting a slice of that pie. Even a very big slice of zero--the cost Google charges for Android--is still zero.
Of course, Google makes their money on advertising revenue from their services, and those services are all built into Android, but at this point, so many people use their services via other technology (Windows, Mac, Linux browsers and desktop apps, iOS, Blackberry browsers and apps, etc) that it would probably be a much harder fight to determine exactly what Google is making from Android, and how much is reasonable to charge.
The estimates I've seen are that Google is making about $10 per device, on average, per Android phone or tablet. Microsoft makes more than that (I've seen $15 per device quoted), so it seems that MS is in a pretty good position.
Nice. Pity you posted AC. The example I like came from Wikipedia: to the tune of "This art is worthless because it's trash." Pretty simple, straightforward, and the kind of logical fallacy that people often do when they're either uneducated, drunk, or simply don't really care about what they're discussing enough to put together a real argument.
This topic comes up often, and it seems like the only thing people are interested in is having carriers stop using the word "unlimited" in their marketing. But for all the outrage, for the great majority of people doing the complaining, "unlimited" plans actually are unlimited from a functional sense. I'd much rather have carriers use a word that's up to interpretation than have them set strict limits which will then lead to outrageous fee hikes when normal usage moves upwards and that 2GB/mo "premium" plan is no longer so awesome.
Maybe instead of out-and-out throttling the top users, maybe there should be some means by which their traffic could be de-prioritized so that the smaller users, when requesting something, don't feel like the network is saturated. Let's put it this way: if the bandwidth is available, then sure, let those top 1% use whatever they can. But other people who are paying the same rate for unlimited access shouldn't have their access limited by the abusers just because they're using less data.
This way, carriers can watch the moving target of the top 1% (bleeding edge) to determine where usage is going and how they want to adjust for it in time for the top 20% (cutting edge) to get there, and well ahead of the mainstream and late adopter crowds, without changing their marketing, and without setting strict limits which will be outdated in six months.
If you're against the use of the word "unlimited", you should be apoplectic at the abuse of the word "free". And "guaranteed". And "genuine". And "open". And all sorts of things.
You don't go far enough. The first recorded usage of "begs the question" was in Greek. Archaic Greek.
We have a perfectly good term for the anachronistic meaning of "begs the question", and that is "circular argument". The common usage of the phrase makes much more sense than the official usage, if only because the official usage requires a unique definition of "beg" which is basically never used outside of that context.
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Plus, didn't you notice? I used one exclamation point the first time, two the second, and three the third. It was meta-commentary.
:) Suddenly I'm thinking of the Simpsons episode where Homer duplicates himself with the cursed hammock.
I couldn't resist, with the first three comments being about how people wanted 3d printers that could print 3d printers, which accomplishment has already been achieved some time back.
The problem here is that the charter of a public company is to create shareholder value. Apple have managed to do this by creating great products which engender significant brand loyalty. Decades of hard work have led to a virtuous cycle which, agree with it or not, has them on a huge upswing.
But if they were not maximizing profits in every way possible, shareholders could sue them. Until corporations are held to a standard where profit at all costs isn't the primary goal, this sort of thing is going to continue.
I'm with you, but my question remains: how many people would be willing to pay the higher prices, just for the knowledge that they're doing the right thing? What would happen if Apple offered two iPhones, say for $200 with contract and $2000 with contract, and one was built in China, the other in Georgia. Do you think even 1% of people would pay 10x more for a socially responsible device? What if--with all the component and facility costs--it was more like $6000 for a phone?
I'm old enough to remember Coca-Cola's response to pressure on them to divest from South Africa. They made it sound like they were there for humanitarian purposes, not for profit. "Jobs we provide are the only thing standing between tens of thousands of black South Africans and abject poverty." Translation: labor is cheap there, and we don't want to give it up.
Unfortunately, no omelet is made without cracking a few eggs. I'm sure that some people would be unhappy if the Foxconn factories shrank in size or disappeared. But the question is, which path leads to sustainable practices around the world? There are a lot of out-of-work people in other places in the world who would love to have those jobs if they were moved out of China.
How original!!!
How original!!
How original!
I had to practically bribe the salesguy to sell me an iPhone. No wonder iPhones are selling so poorly!
Some recent article about Steve Jobs quoted an Apple executive saying paying US wages in mainland China (instead of $17/day) would only increase the price of an iPad by $70.
And if you were going to pay US wages you could always, I don't know, build the damn thing in America?
I'm not exactly a Buy American nazi, but if the flagship products of greenwashing high-end manufacturers can't be built here, then what can?
Maybe not. The Chinese allow business to setup differently than we do here in America: See this recent NYT article.
If you're just talking about assembly, $65/phone additional cost is probably about right at minimum wage. But don't forget that the great majority of the components are sourced from vendors who make them at factories with similar conditions. If you build every last piece here in the states, you're talking quite a bit more.
And that's after the sunk costs of getting the factories going. If you amortize the cost of those factories even over several years, you're probably adding a cost greater than that of the labor. Long story short, a fully US-made phone will cost more. How many people would be willing to pay $1500 or more for a "fair trade" device?
And don't forget, there are a lot of materials that are sourced from far off locations where work conditions are not great, to say the least. If you're using a cell phone--any phone, not just an iPhone--you've helped fund a civil war and sex-slavery in the Congo. And it's not just phones; the materials that are most common there are used in computers, DVD players, TVs...
Duh... Sharks!
Reminds me of the interaction at the end of the movie, "The Untouchables". When a reporter asked Eliot Ness what he would do if prohibition were repealed, he answered, "Probably have a drink."
(Note, I understand that the movie was based on real people and events, but I quote that comment as being from the movie because it's my sole source for the interchange, and I'm not sure if the real Elliot Ness actually said it.)
You don't think that the DOJ had a way of confirming the most salient information? Like bugging phone calls, capturing emails, taking photographs of meetings?
Well, one of the things it does support is embedding HTML5 widgets, which implies that Canvas is supported. I know it's not LaTex, but I'm sure there's some library for converting your formulae based on that system (or others) into Canvas.
I did note during the presentation that they showed an Algebra 1 book multiple times, and maybe this is why they don't have anything higher. Presumably, however, if they don't already support mathematical equations natively right now, either there's an easy way to do it, or it'll be supported in version 1.01. Suggesting that they'd make this big a deal about it and ignore everything above Trig (I figure you need the fancy stuff once you start doing integrals, right? So that's be Calc A and above) is a little silly.
(In other words, you missed one.)
Are you positive?
Samsung also manufactured at least some of the displays, and, IIRC, some of the NVRAM. This may be a big part of the reason Apple is going after them. With the A4 and A5 chips, for example, they are supposed to be acting simply as a manufacturer, taking designs that Apple brought to them. For displays and memory, Apple had significant requirements, and brought a lot of money to the table to ensure that Samsung could ramp up and meet their demands. Taking those resources from the part-manufacturer arm and making them available to the device-manufacturer arm so that the parent company could build nearly identical devices for even less is, say, questionable. Especially so if, say, the device manufacturer arm is getting the parts for the same cost or below cost to what Apple paid.
Clever of Google to give away Android. The reason Microsoft is going after the hardware vendors is that they are the ones selling a product based on software which (allegedly) uses their patents, so they can easily make a case for getting a slice of that pie. Even a very big slice of zero--the cost Google charges for Android--is still zero.
Of course, Google makes their money on advertising revenue from their services, and those services are all built into Android, but at this point, so many people use their services via other technology (Windows, Mac, Linux browsers and desktop apps, iOS, Blackberry browsers and apps, etc) that it would probably be a much harder fight to determine exactly what Google is making from Android, and how much is reasonable to charge.
The estimates I've seen are that Google is making about $10 per device, on average, per Android phone or tablet. Microsoft makes more than that (I've seen $15 per device quoted), so it seems that MS is in a pretty good position.
The other thing!
Rim shot!
Nice. Pity you posted AC. The example I like came from Wikipedia: to the tune of "This art is worthless because it's trash." Pretty simple, straightforward, and the kind of logical fallacy that people often do when they're either uneducated, drunk, or simply don't really care about what they're discussing enough to put together a real argument.
To wit: this thread is stupid because it's dumb.
This topic comes up often, and it seems like the only thing people are interested in is having carriers stop using the word "unlimited" in their marketing. But for all the outrage, for the great majority of people doing the complaining, "unlimited" plans actually are unlimited from a functional sense. I'd much rather have carriers use a word that's up to interpretation than have them set strict limits which will then lead to outrageous fee hikes when normal usage moves upwards and that 2GB/mo "premium" plan is no longer so awesome.
Maybe instead of out-and-out throttling the top users, maybe there should be some means by which their traffic could be de-prioritized so that the smaller users, when requesting something, don't feel like the network is saturated. Let's put it this way: if the bandwidth is available, then sure, let those top 1% use whatever they can. But other people who are paying the same rate for unlimited access shouldn't have their access limited by the abusers just because they're using less data.
This way, carriers can watch the moving target of the top 1% (bleeding edge) to determine where usage is going and how they want to adjust for it in time for the top 20% (cutting edge) to get there, and well ahead of the mainstream and late adopter crowds, without changing their marketing, and without setting strict limits which will be outdated in six months.
If you're against the use of the word "unlimited", you should be apoplectic at the abuse of the word "free". And "guaranteed". And "genuine". And "open". And all sorts of things.
And certainly not an anonymous coward.
You don't go far enough. The first recorded usage of "begs the question" was in Greek. Archaic Greek.
We have a perfectly good term for the anachronistic meaning of "begs the question", and that is "circular argument". The common usage of the phrase makes much more sense than the official usage, if only because the official usage requires a unique definition of "beg" which is basically never used outside of that context.
Ever hear of airbags?