No one is apple bashing. Its simple facts that people like you just cant see.
The ipad costs a bloody fortune for what it is as does the iphone whether you like it or not. Both arent brilliant at all.
Companies didn't struggle whatsoever. They tested the water with various tablets as no one was sure what was going to happen.
Oh you couldn't bring evidence to prove your case could you. Where is this 8x cheaper to make version of the ipad you are talking about? Let alone when it came out? Show us, you said it, it must have been true in your mind at least. You must have had some idea what you were referring to, show us please!! If the ipad is 8x more than it costs to make any other company could sell their ipad for just 1x more and make a 100% profit, in other words they could sell their ipad for 8 times less aka 62 dollars, multiply that by 2 and you get 125 dollars. Where was this 125 dollar ipad competitor when ipad came out? Let alone with the same component quality!!
The reality was that the real ipad competitors came out at or even higher priced, by a wide margin. Simple facts man, if you don't have them, where is your credibility.
Agreed, but all the companies I buy electronics stuff from are unashamedly low-price Asian brands. None of them pretend to be "great American brands" like Apple do, but actually make everything in China.
Apple employ some 10,000 people in the Silicon Valley alone. They must be doing something there. The big money generating jobs the company creates are plentiful in America. Research, design, and marketing. I doubt most unemployed Brits and Europeans let alone Americans would be jumping for the lowliest of the McJobs working assembling parts in factories. Apart from some of the poorer immigrants that might be more greatful for the opportunity of course.
Are some of the low priced Japanese electronic brands pretending to be Japanese since they're manufactured in China?
Having watched that video, I gotta say I thought it was quite sickening what a cheapskate that asian woman at the end was.
The guy wants to build an office for 12,000 people to do their jobs in, his company is (apparently) the biggest tax-payer in the area and he's intent on building something that IS going to become a landmark-building in the area and ALL she can come up with is trying to get him to commit to offer free wifi or iPods for everybody in the area?
Gotta love Jobs' reply; that he figures the tax his company pays should be used by the city to provide any such facilities that the city wishes to have.
Bazinga!
Thought Jobs' was looking pretty rough there.
It's pretty courageous of him to talk about the stuff "we want to complete by 2015" when there's a good chance he's not going to be around then.
Regardless of whether you're an Apple fanboy or not, I don't think there's any denying he's been one of the big movers in the tech industry over the years.
Beyond that, it seems a little silly to single out Apple for the way they treat chinese labour.
I suspect the computer you're using to read this was built in similar conditions, along with your TV, stereo, oven, fridge etc.
Beyond that, it seems a little silly to single out Apple for the way they treat chinese labour.
I suspect the computer you're using to read this was built in similar conditions, along with your TV, stereo, oven, fridge etc.
Maybe so, but then why are the Guardian and two NGOs singling out Apple?
perhaps it's just because they're more high profile....
Maybe so, but then why are the Guardian and two NGOs singling out Apple?
perhaps it's just because they're more high profile....
I suspect you're right.
I've lived and worked in China and taken the opportunity to visit a few factories where various things I'm involved with are manufactured and those kind of conditions are pretty standard.
Thing is, there's no point in complaining that the people who manufacture those Android-powered iPad knock-offs are working like dogs in a shithole because nobody's going to listen and nobody's going to care whereas I guess the people reporting bad conditions at Foxxconn probably hope that Apple will step in and try to put things right.
That video goes to great lengths to stress how it's workers at an APPLE production plant who're working in poor conditions whereas they actually mention the real issue but fail to address it properly.
The core issue is that the Foxxconn factory was built with chinese government money and the employees were hired using government recruitment programmes and, frankly, the chinese government simply doesn't give a flying f**k about the labour force as long as Apple are building products over there.
While I was over in China we were using millions (billions probably) of gallons of chemically-treated seawater.
We were storing it in large tanks and when they were filled up the local authorities were contracted to dispose of it.
We created COSHH assesments for the contaminated water which specified that it contained a biocide (which kills off plant life) and an oxygen scavenger (which removes oxygen from the water) and made it perfectly clear (in no uncertain terms, on multiple occasions) that the contaminated waste water MUST be disposed of in a responsible manner.
When the tanks began to fill up we phoned up our contact at the local authority and he said tankers would be sent to take away the water.
Nobody showed up.
The following day the tanks were almost full and, despite repeated phone-calls, still nobody showed up.
As a result of this we had to shut down our work and we pointed out that this was costing millions of dollars per day for the client and a delay in the work would, eventually, cost the government millions of dollars per day in lost revenue.
That night a bunch of guys from the local authority arrived but no tanker lorries arrived.
They hooked up a bunch of 12" diameter plastic hoses and petrol-driven water pumps and we thought "okay, they're getting ready for when the tankers do show up.
They weren't though.
Once the pumps were hooked up they simply ran the hoses across to a nearby irrigation river for the local farmers fields and began pumping the water into it! :eek:
We stopped them and refused to let them continue.
We showed them the COSSH assesments and told them this method of disposal was totally unacceptable.
The next day we went to a meeting with the local authority and insisted they supplied tankers as they'd agreed but they refused.
We pointed out that the chemicals in the water would almost certainly kill off all the vegetation that the irrigation system supplied water to and probably decimate the local farming industry.
They simply told us not to worry about that and let them do as they wished.
Eventually, they signed a bunch of papers absolving my company of all responsibility for damage to the environment (which they all thought was very funny) and let them go ahead.
3 months later all the farmers fields were completely barren and the soil was ruined.
We were also hiring large generators from the local authority.
These turned out to be WW2 vintage and failed to run reliably for more than a few hours at a time.
Their solution was to cut the power cables to the nearby town and use the domestic power to supply our equipment and then hook up the generators to the town and let them suffer an unreliable power supply for several months.
The chinese government simply does not give a shit about the general population.
The problem is your concern rings false. It is arbitrarily, and probably based on other motivations, and so it really has no moral weight.
You try to shift blame, the simple fact is that consumers have voted with their wallets for decades now, and they have driven these changes regardless of what you think.
All of which is irrelevant to the point I was making.
All of which is irrelevant to the point I was making.
Cheap labour means massive profits.
Nope, it means lower prices, if you have massive profits someone is going to take less of a profit and undercut you. Or did you forget that part of the equation:P
Nope, it means lower prices, if you have massive profits someone is going to take less of a profit and undercut you. Or did you forget that part of the equation:P
No, I didn't. Are you trying to suggest Apple don't have a massive profit margin? Seriously?
No, I didn't. Are you trying to suggest Apple don't have a massive profit margin? Seriously?
That is based on their success, not their labour costs, if labour costs = massive profits every company going into china would reap massive profits. So you've really seriously missed the point. Further more china is the silicon valley of manufacturing, it is more than cheap labour, it is the pool of talent and industry at hand that can actually deliver a product in a rapid fashion, it is the entire supply chain. So going on and on about the cheap labour shows how narrow your vision has become.
That is based on their success, not their labour costs, if labour costs = massive profits every company going into china would reap massive profits. So you've really seriously missed the point. Further more china is the silicon valley of manufacturing, it is more than cheap labour, it is the pool of talent and industry at hand that can actually deliver a product in a rapid fashion, it is the entire supply chain. So going on and on about the cheap labour shows how narrow your vision has become.
I disagree. If Apple genuinely weren't concerned about their massive profit, they wouldn't use cheap labour.
You have no concept of whether my vision is narrow or not. What a ridiculous comment!
I disagree. If Apple genuinely weren't concerned about their massive profit, they wouldn't use cheap labour.
You have no concept of whether my vision is narrow or not. What a ridiculous comment!
Your conclusions are evidence enough of a narrow vision. As I already pointed out there are a multitude of reasons manufacturing has moved away. The multitude of factors allows things to simply get done in china, whereas here you'd be mired down with health and safety and folks like you..who frankly wouldn't pay for what you eventually made anyways..no matter what self righteous nonsense spewed out of their mouths.
How about this, since you think apple have a massive profit based purely around labour how about you start your own apple competitor company and hire only UK labour to make your products, I'd love to see how you'd fare.
Your conclusions are evidence enough of a narrow vision. As I already pointed out there are a multitude of reasons manufacturing has moved away. The multitude of factors allows things to simply get done in china, whereas here you'd be mired down with health and safety and folks like you..who frankly wouldn't pay for what you eventually made anyways..no matter what self righteous nonsense spewed out of their mouths.
How about this, since you think apple have a massive profit based purely around labour how about you start your own apple competitor company and hire only UK labour to make your products, I'd love to see how you'd fare.
Oh you know how you'd do...
but you just like to argue.
Start my own apple competitor company? Lmao!
My point still stands. It's all about profit. Nothing to do with morals or self righteousness. Just simple facts.
I think you're assuming I hate Apple, when I don't.
And I like to argue? Irony much? This is a discussion forum and I'm discussing.
I swear half the people in this country literally cream their pants when the next iPhone or iPad comes out every five minutes, I honestly don't get the hype. I heard the other week that Androids are selling more than iPhones which made me chuckle a bit and Blackberry isn't far behind and I have a BB so thats quite encouraging.
Steve Jobs has done great to get Apple where they are today from just making a competitor to Microsoft with their Apple computers to now making phones and the latest tablet gadgets. Thing me as a consumer just your average bloke doesn't get the hype about all this, I have a standard BB Curve which does just what I want it to do. Its pretty much bullet proof and I have had no problem with it, whereas the times I have had a play on a few of my mates iPhones at some point or another they have froze up on me and before you all say oh thats the 3GS models this was the latest iPhone 4! I had a quick play with the apps and in all honesty saw no need for them in everyday life. Most of it is all gimmicky and tacky looking and it didn't excite me one bit.
Also I was in carphone warehouse the other day just seeing what deals they have as a friend of mine wanted to get a new blackberry phone so I had a look for her. I noticed there was an iPad on the display so I thought I'd have a little play on it for a while and again I wasn't all that fussed to be honest its just a bigger version of the iPhone. Now I know people have already said its not but to me it looked pretty much the same as the iPhone but bigger, and would you really walk along the street, stop, get out your iPad and look up an app on where the nearest starbucks is? no, I honestly do not get the hype one bit, I can see for some people it would be fun to have for games and the endless silly apps. But Steve Jobs hasnt hauled me in with his pitch, I'm sticking with Blackberry and its got what I need plus theres some really good free apps for it too whereas there isnt many free apps with the iPhone. He is good at what he does though.
The council come accross as just wanting to rubber stamp this project and why not. The questions were a bit on the retarded and sychophantic hero worshiping side. There are many questions which I want answered but were never even touched on. I thought a few of my questions were going to be asked when the "benefit of the community" was raised, but all the council members ment by this was free Wi-Fi and products, where they should have asked things like how much free access can people have to the "landscape". I would also like to have seen them push for public facilities such as sports fields and pitches to benefit the community, but no they just want free tech.
After the ipad came out what did the competitors do? They STRUGGLED to come out with a competitive tablet for the same price, in fact several of the equivalent devices actually cost MORE than apples version because they couldn't make it any cheaper.
Sorry if the facts get in the way of your knee jerk apple bashing.
Its all made in China, you not seen the reports of suicide nets fitted at one plant where the workers make Apple product and are under so much pressure they have been topping themselves.
Apple use the same cheap labour source as the rest of the consumer electronics industry does namely China, ain't nothing special about their components my old mukka, now't magical or special. Lets make stuff in the USA or the UK and pay UK minimum wage, your £500 iPad or PC will double or more in price...would you pay that?
Everyone of us using a PC is guilty of encouraging these working conditions because we all want out stuff cheap, will it stop us wanting cheap.....no it won't.
I've notwatched it, but does that mention how the workers were forced to sign a contract saying they would not commit suicide due to the poor working situations and not being allowed to talk.
Apple really do come across as one of the worst companies for workers rights, half the time I think that sweatshops have better conditions.
Its all made in China, you not seen the reports of suicide nets fitted at one plant where the workers make Apple product and are under so much pressure they have been topping themselves.
Apple use the same cheap labour source as the rest of the consumer electronics industry does namely China, ain't nothing special about their components my old mukka, now't magical or special. Lets make stuff in the USA or the UK and pay UK minimum wage, your £500 iPad or PC will double or more in price...would you pay that?
Everyone of us using a PC is guilty of encouraging these working conditions because we all want out stuff cheap, will it stop us wanting cheap.....no it won't.
The nets are just a show, but people don't really understand the scale of the issue, foxconn alone has almost a million workers. Some are going to kill themselves regardless when you have numbers that high.
Comments
related vid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3YFGixp9Jw
You do realise the guys got cancer and has barely few months to live right
And if it was not for Mr Jobs we would not have Pixar.
An insightful vid. Thanks for posting.
No I didn't.
Oh you couldn't bring evidence to prove your case could you. Where is this 8x cheaper to make version of the ipad you are talking about? Let alone when it came out? Show us, you said it, it must have been true in your mind at least. You must have had some idea what you were referring to, show us please!! If the ipad is 8x more than it costs to make any other company could sell their ipad for just 1x more and make a 100% profit, in other words they could sell their ipad for 8 times less aka 62 dollars, multiply that by 2 and you get 125 dollars. Where was this 125 dollar ipad competitor when ipad came out? Let alone with the same component quality!!
The reality was that the real ipad competitors came out at or even higher priced, by a wide margin. Simple facts man, if you don't have them, where is your credibility.
Companies didn't struggle? Lol, remember the j00j00? The "tech crunch pad"? Yea you don't do you... How about the motorolla zoom? http://blog.laptopmag.com/ipad-competitors-the-cost-is-too-damn-high Are you really forgetting even recent history so readily now?
Apple employ some 10,000 people in the Silicon Valley alone. They must be doing something there. The big money generating jobs the company creates are plentiful in America. Research, design, and marketing. I doubt most unemployed Brits and Europeans let alone Americans would be jumping for the lowliest of the McJobs working assembling parts in factories. Apart from some of the poorer immigrants that might be more greatful for the opportunity of course.
Are some of the low priced Japanese electronic brands pretending to be Japanese since they're manufactured in China?
Yup this clip with Jonathan Ive(brit) shows a glimpse of the behind the scenes at the r&d facility.
The guy wants to build an office for 12,000 people to do their jobs in, his company is (apparently) the biggest tax-payer in the area and he's intent on building something that IS going to become a landmark-building in the area and ALL she can come up with is trying to get him to commit to offer free wifi or iPods for everybody in the area?
Gotta love Jobs' reply; that he figures the tax his company pays should be used by the city to provide any such facilities that the city wishes to have.
Bazinga!
Thought Jobs' was looking pretty rough there.
It's pretty courageous of him to talk about the stuff "we want to complete by 2015" when there's a good chance he's not going to be around then.
Regardless of whether you're an Apple fanboy or not, I don't think there's any denying he's been one of the big movers in the tech industry over the years.
Beyond that, it seems a little silly to single out Apple for the way they treat chinese labour.
I suspect the computer you're using to read this was built in similar conditions, along with your TV, stereo, oven, fridge etc.
Maybe so, but then why are the Guardian and two NGOs singling out Apple?
perhaps it's just because they're more high profile....
Your not the only one, I happen to think the same as you
I suspect you're right.
I've lived and worked in China and taken the opportunity to visit a few factories where various things I'm involved with are manufactured and those kind of conditions are pretty standard.
Thing is, there's no point in complaining that the people who manufacture those Android-powered iPad knock-offs are working like dogs in a shithole because nobody's going to listen and nobody's going to care whereas I guess the people reporting bad conditions at Foxxconn probably hope that Apple will step in and try to put things right.
That video goes to great lengths to stress how it's workers at an APPLE production plant who're working in poor conditions whereas they actually mention the real issue but fail to address it properly.
The core issue is that the Foxxconn factory was built with chinese government money and the employees were hired using government recruitment programmes and, frankly, the chinese government simply doesn't give a flying f**k about the labour force as long as Apple are building products over there.
While I was over in China we were using millions (billions probably) of gallons of chemically-treated seawater.
We were storing it in large tanks and when they were filled up the local authorities were contracted to dispose of it.
We created COSHH assesments for the contaminated water which specified that it contained a biocide (which kills off plant life) and an oxygen scavenger (which removes oxygen from the water) and made it perfectly clear (in no uncertain terms, on multiple occasions) that the contaminated waste water MUST be disposed of in a responsible manner.
When the tanks began to fill up we phoned up our contact at the local authority and he said tankers would be sent to take away the water.
Nobody showed up.
The following day the tanks were almost full and, despite repeated phone-calls, still nobody showed up.
As a result of this we had to shut down our work and we pointed out that this was costing millions of dollars per day for the client and a delay in the work would, eventually, cost the government millions of dollars per day in lost revenue.
That night a bunch of guys from the local authority arrived but no tanker lorries arrived.
They hooked up a bunch of 12" diameter plastic hoses and petrol-driven water pumps and we thought "okay, they're getting ready for when the tankers do show up.
They weren't though.
Once the pumps were hooked up they simply ran the hoses across to a nearby irrigation river for the local farmers fields and began pumping the water into it! :eek:
We stopped them and refused to let them continue.
We showed them the COSSH assesments and told them this method of disposal was totally unacceptable.
The next day we went to a meeting with the local authority and insisted they supplied tankers as they'd agreed but they refused.
We pointed out that the chemicals in the water would almost certainly kill off all the vegetation that the irrigation system supplied water to and probably decimate the local farming industry.
They simply told us not to worry about that and let them do as they wished.
Eventually, they signed a bunch of papers absolving my company of all responsibility for damage to the environment (which they all thought was very funny) and let them go ahead.
3 months later all the farmers fields were completely barren and the soil was ruined.
We were also hiring large generators from the local authority.
These turned out to be WW2 vintage and failed to run reliably for more than a few hours at a time.
Their solution was to cut the power cables to the nearby town and use the domestic power to supply our equipment and then hook up the generators to the town and let them suffer an unreliable power supply for several months.
The chinese government simply does not give a shit about the general population.
All of which is irrelevant to the point I was making.
Cheap labour means massive profits.
Nope, it means lower prices, if you have massive profits someone is going to take less of a profit and undercut you. Or did you forget that part of the equation:P
No, I didn't. Are you trying to suggest Apple don't have a massive profit margin? Seriously?
That is based on their success, not their labour costs, if labour costs = massive profits every company going into china would reap massive profits. So you've really seriously missed the point. Further more china is the silicon valley of manufacturing, it is more than cheap labour, it is the pool of talent and industry at hand that can actually deliver a product in a rapid fashion, it is the entire supply chain. So going on and on about the cheap labour shows how narrow your vision has become.
I disagree. If Apple genuinely weren't concerned about their massive profit, they wouldn't use cheap labour.
You have no concept of whether my vision is narrow or not. What a ridiculous comment!
Your conclusions are evidence enough of a narrow vision. As I already pointed out there are a multitude of reasons manufacturing has moved away. The multitude of factors allows things to simply get done in china, whereas here you'd be mired down with health and safety and folks like you..who frankly wouldn't pay for what you eventually made anyways..no matter what self righteous nonsense spewed out of their mouths.
How about this, since you think apple have a massive profit based purely around labour how about you start your own apple competitor company and hire only UK labour to make your products, I'd love to see how you'd fare.
Oh you know how you'd do...
but you just like to argue.
Start my own apple competitor company?
My point still stands. It's all about profit. Nothing to do with morals or self righteousness. Just simple facts.
I think you're assuming I hate Apple, when I don't.
And I like to argue? Irony much? This is a discussion forum and I'm discussing.
Steve Jobs has done great to get Apple where they are today from just making a competitor to Microsoft with their Apple computers to now making phones and the latest tablet gadgets. Thing me as a consumer just your average bloke doesn't get the hype about all this, I have a standard BB Curve which does just what I want it to do. Its pretty much bullet proof and I have had no problem with it, whereas the times I have had a play on a few of my mates iPhones at some point or another they have froze up on me and before you all say oh thats the 3GS models this was the latest iPhone 4! I had a quick play with the apps and in all honesty saw no need for them in everyday life. Most of it is all gimmicky and tacky looking and it didn't excite me one bit.
Also I was in carphone warehouse the other day just seeing what deals they have as a friend of mine wanted to get a new blackberry phone so I had a look for her. I noticed there was an iPad on the display so I thought I'd have a little play on it for a while and again I wasn't all that fussed to be honest its just a bigger version of the iPhone. Now I know people have already said its not but to me it looked pretty much the same as the iPhone but bigger, and would you really walk along the street, stop, get out your iPad and look up an app on where the nearest starbucks is? no, I honestly do not get the hype one bit, I can see for some people it would be fun to have for games and the endless silly apps. But Steve Jobs hasnt hauled me in with his pitch, I'm sticking with Blackberry and its got what I need plus theres some really good free apps for it too whereas there isnt many free apps with the iPhone. He is good at what he does though.
http://gizmodo.com/5810723/apples-new-mothership-compared-to-the-rest-of-spaceships-around-the-world
Oh it seems there are far more than GCHQ that are similar!
But it does confirm the size difference, GCHQ is 195M diameter, the apple building will be a whopping 460M diameter!!
The wimbledon court #1 was an interesting comparison at 100M for the stadium.
Its all made in China, you not seen the reports of suicide nets fitted at one plant where the workers make Apple product and are under so much pressure they have been topping themselves.
Apple use the same cheap labour source as the rest of the consumer electronics industry does namely China, ain't nothing special about their components my old mukka, now't magical or special. Lets make stuff in the USA or the UK and pay UK minimum wage, your £500 iPad or PC will double or more in price...would you pay that?
http://www.dailytech.com/Foxconn+Installs+AntiSuicide+Nets+at+Its+Facilities/article18877.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/28/foxconn-plant-china-deaths-suicides
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/05/23/news/google-and-apple-federal-sting-and-suicide-nets-at-ipad-2-factory/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13624798
Everyone of us using a PC is guilty of encouraging these working conditions because we all want out stuff cheap, will it stop us wanting cheap.....no it won't.
I've notwatched it, but does that mention how the workers were forced to sign a contract saying they would not commit suicide due to the poor working situations and not being allowed to talk.
Apple really do come across as one of the worst companies for workers rights, half the time I think that sweatshops have better conditions.
The nets are just a show, but people don't really understand the scale of the issue, foxconn alone has almost a million workers. Some are going to kill themselves regardless when you have numbers that high.