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Japanese ink supplier Seiko Advance produces colors for Apple’s iPhones
- threeseed 7y agoLink to the tweet from Tim Cook: https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1204212048139182080 https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1204212048139182080
- Animats 7y agoIs that olive drab, like the military uses?
- johnzim 7y agoIt's actually a really nice greyish-green colour. Not as drab as you'd think thanks to the way light diffuses through the glass With the dark green case, it has a VERY strong Newton MessagePad vibe which I love (having been a very happy Newton user during its twilight years.)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- saagarjha 7y agoAn interesting topic for Tim Cook to tweet about. Perhaps he’s trying to emphasize their use of non-Chinese companies in their manufacturing process?
- utopian3 7y agoSometimes a "public reference" is part of an enterprise's contractual negotiation. They can then use this (Tim Cook's visit + quote) to garner future sales.
- saagarjha 7y agoTim Cook is a very private person, and he puts a lot of work into maintaining his public persona. Every word that he says publicly is vetted and checked to make sure that it aligns with his and Apple’s position on whatever the relevant topics might be. I doubt that a small supplier in Japan would make them reconsider that policy.
- catalogia 7y agoWhat makes you think such a contractually agreed upon tweet wouldn't be "vetted and checked"?
- saagarjha 7y agoI’m saying that Tim Cook doesn’t just tweet things because a small supplier tells him to. It’s because it’s something nice that fits in with what Apple would like to say on a certain topic.
- catalogia 7y agoSuppose the small supplier is supplying 'something nice that fits in with what Apple would like to say on a certain topic.'
- Klonoar 7y agoUhhhhh... no. Having worked with Apple in Japan directly (not just engineering related work, but having worked with former Apple Japan execs), I can tell you that the relationships they hold with companies over there are valued internally. It's part of the culture, for better or for worse. I can't state for certain whether it matters in the context of Cook's Tweet, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest either. Don't be so quick to cast it aside. ;P
- saagarjha 7y agoOf course they are, I’m not saying they’re not. But that doesn’t mean Tim Cook doesn’t have a reason behind his tweets. (Note that I’m not saying this is a bad thing; it’s just that if they have anything to do with Apple they always align with something that the company would like to comment on, be it education or the environment or immigration policy.)
- toyg 7y agoMore likely the combination of authenticity, originality, and especially the “green” credentials. All the ink Mitsubishi provides is eco-friendly, and they have plans to go full-renewable for their energy needs in the next couple of years. Mark Carney yesterday almost intimated companies to get out of fossil fuels. Thurnberg’s books are everywhere. The switch to eco-friendly modes of production and consumption is likely to be the big issue of the next decade.
- dsalzman 7y agoI love mittlestand companies like this. Global, highly specialized, and all about product quality and customer service.
- rhizome 7y agoThanks for the TIL word!
- Kyro38 7y agoAnd of course it's a german word. These companies are the strength of the german industry !
- dmix 7y agoAnd the driving force of capitalism, megacorps only represent about 1% of companies and ~20% of employment (minimum wage jobs are also a very small percentage of all jobs despite the constant attention it gets). SMB are the real business world and where the majority of upward mobility is. Sadly most critiques of markets are hyper focused on the mega corps and policy gets made which only considers the big bad guys, which squeezes out the smaller firms as side effects of otherwise well intentioned policy. The rate of people starting new businesses has been declining lately and it’s concerning. Megacorps dominating absolutely everything is a big part of dystopian fiction for a good reason.
- toyg 7y agoI agree, but part of the reason is that such small businesses consistently fail to differentiate their policy objectives from the ones of megacorps. If I give a tax breaks to companies, megacorps will benefit disproportionately more than SMBs, but SMBs oppose thresholds and caps because they “discourage growth” and “increase red tape”. What is a legislator going to do? SMBs in many ways act as “temporarily embarrassed megacorps” and hence reap what they sow.
- fishingisfun 7y ago
- mc32 7y agoAlthough the article itself refers to the substance as ink, it’s usually called coating(s).
- radeklew 7y agoCould it be called an ink coating? My understanding is that the distinction between ink and pigment is that ink is a solution while pigment is a suspension, can there be both kinds of coatings? or is it a meaningless distinction to draw in this context? Sorry to barrage you with these questions if you don't know, but you brought up a pretty fine point so you seem knowledgeable about this :)
- mc32 7y agoI'm no expert but in industry (and it may differ from company to company) coatings is mostly paints and inks are separate. Inks usually permeate (and add coloration to) a medium while coatings/paints bind and coat (to) a medium.
- jbay808 7y agoAnodized aluminum forms a porous surface that is dyed with ink to colour it, if I recall correctly.
- paganel 7y agoSo I guess bike-shedding has now become mainstream, seeing that the CEO of the second-largest company on the planet has mentioned the color of one of his company's products as a thing to be amazed about.
- hombre_fatal 7y agoWell, if it really is that hard to produce a green ink that doesn't involve harsh materials, or if Apple is spending extra to use such an ink over the cheaper nastier inks, then it's notable and something worth bragging about and putting on the tin.
- ChikkaChiChi 7y agoDoes this new color cost extra? Or are they subsidizing a higher cost across all sales?
- paggle 7y agoNo, they charge the same price for all colors. Frankly the only products I’ve seen with different prices for different colors is autos.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
- drfuchs 7y agoAs a consumer-products company, color is something Apple has long been obsessed about. The highlight of Steve Jobs' intro of the multi-color iMac G3 in 1999 was his comment about their colors: "Don't you just wanna lick 'em?" (IIRC). See also, from 6 years ago: https://www.cultofmac.com/243579/how-apples-design-team-chooses-colors/ https://www.cultofmac.com/243579/how-apples-design-team-choo...
- paggle 7y agoSometimes it baffles me, the amount of sound and fury regarding the rose gold iPhone etc. For me it’s a utilitarian device but I know it’s not that for everyone.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoDespite the apparent similarity in English, and that they both now use the kanakana セイコー in their official names, it appears that this Seiko (正興, "revive justice") has nothing to do with the far larger Seiko (精工, "qualify craft") group of watches, Epson printers etc fame. http://www.seikoadvance.co.jp/company/profile.php http://www.seikoadvance.co.jp/company/profile.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiko#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiko#History_and_development
- ulucs 7y agoI wish western companies could have names that cool.
- afthonos 7y agoI think western companies avoid them because they seem like little-company names. I see a lot of small businesses named “Quality Plumbing”, “First Rate Contractors” etc. But if they do well, they’ll change their names to “Plumbz” and “Cment” (you’ll be shocked to learn I’m not a marketing expert), or no one will trust them outside their home town. Note that this wasn’t always so: Standard Oil, International Business Machines, General Electric, Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph were branded quite differently.
- desdiv 7y agoOn a related note, the Mitsubishi Group is a huge conglomerate that makes everything from cars to fighter jets to nuclear plants. Mitsubishi pens also dominate the stationery market, and I just assumed that it was part of the group. But it turns out the pen maker is actually unrelated to the conglomerate[0]. To add to the confusion, both the pen maker and the conglomerate have identical English names, Japanese kanjis, and even share the same three-red-diamonds logo. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni-ball https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni-ball
- kd5bjo 7y agoAt some point, the company was renamed from Masaki to Mitsubishi, and the logo similarity can’t be an accident. They may not be officially related, but there’s almost certainly an interesting history between the two companies.