15 ms·

Update on Supply of iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max

333 points by feross 4y ago

user_named 4y ago
Iphone 14 isn't selling well in China. PR defense against low sales numbers.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dagmx 4y ago
  Pray tell why you think this has anything to do with Chinese sales numbers?
Brajeshwar 4y ago
Last month, I was pleasantly surprised that Apple was doing a next-day delivery of the new iPhones. Now, it has gone back to almost a month delay here in India.
TechnicolorByte 4y ago
Wow, don’t think I’ve seen Apple issue a PR like this before. No doubt Apple’s considering now more than ever to continue to diversify their supply chain. China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach.
- ozzythecat 4y ago
  I don’t recall a similar announcement even at the height of COVID. Do we know what’s now changed?
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    Expectations, I'd bet. During peak covid, everything was a bit like this - but now the perception is closer to "business as usual, with economic headwinds".
  - Veliladon 4y ago
    One of Foxconn's biggest factories has been locked down because of COVID. They're one of the biggest suppliers of iPhone final assembly labour. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/02/apple-iphone-assembly-plant-under-new-covid-lockdown-in-china-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/02/apple-iphone-assembly-plant-...
    - lumost 4y ago
      - Arn_Thor 4y ago
        This is a consequence of China’s zero-Covid policy. Nationally, the instruction is to eliminate outbreaks, even of new and milder variants. Leading up to the party congress local authorities appear to have reported inaccurately low numbers to avoid bad news for the leadership. Now, after the congress, the task is to quickly eliminate outbreaks to avoid the need for even harsher measures like full-city lockdowns like seen in Shanghai earlier this year. Additionally China has spent the past three years telling its population that the rest of the world has been irresponsibly murdering its citizens by adopting a “live with Covid” policy. So when rumors of a possible lockdown of the factory or its economic zone started spreading, employees fled either because they feared an outbreak or because they didn’t want to get locked in there for an indeterminate period of time.
        ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        jstummbillig 4y ago
        What have you heard about it? I find it hard to assess with the currently available information (and, apparently, so does the world given the huge disparities in politics). Long covid is real and scary. So are cancer, heart attacks and car crashes, but it would be a really bad idea to skip a cost/benefit analysis of the possible counter measures available at societal level because of that.
  - jonas21 4y ago
    The last few months are the height of COVID in China.
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      This winter might be especially bad for covid in China. It's 1-2 years behind the rest of the world.
      - rob74 4y ago
        The policy in China is 1-2 years behind. Everyone else has realized that with Omicron a zero Covid policy is no longer feasible (and, where vaccination rates are high, not needed either), but that hasn't yet gotten through to Xi (or it has, but he thinks reversing the policy will somehow cause him to "lose face").
        dehrmann 4y ago
        Not just policy, but immunity. Barring mass covid parties, it'll take China 1-2 years to get immunity on par with the rest of the world.
  - moviedo 4y ago
    "Zhengzhou, China. The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity. As we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are prioritizing the health and safety of the workers in our supply chain." From different news outlets and youtube channels that cover china's zero covid policy I feel the statement above referring to the health and safety of the Foxconn workers is pure PR puff. I really like this youtube channel call China Insights witch gives some decent information on this exact Foxconn issues and how the workers are fleeing the lock-down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9DXebls8Bc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9DXebls8Bc
  - smallmind 4y ago
    Three possible reasons: 1. Workers only get food if they show up for their shift. If they are sick and don't work, there is no place to get food in the Foxconn campus. Due to the lockdown, the workers can't order food delivered online if sick. 2. When local governments force people to quarantine, they are supposed to provide basic meals. However, it seems most workers who were quarantined recently did not receive any food or water for days because the local government expected Foxconn to provide it instead. 3. Someone made a viral video suggesting everyone who was quarantined in a dormitory room died of a new deadly disease. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKBAeie5wY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKBAeie5wY
    - bpye 4y ago
      Well any one of those three sound absolutely horrendous.
      - throwaway290 4y ago
        > 3. Someone made a viral video suggesting everyone who was quarantined in a dormitory room died of a new deadly disease. This is now just routine, very easy way to get views (courtesy government of some country that chose to hush the beginnings of a pandemic).
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    It is now the height of Covid in China because they refused effective western vaccine help (because apparently that hurts Xi’s feelings).
- xuki 4y ago
  I guess this is severe enough that they're obligated to let investors know.
  - echelon 4y ago
    It is. Workers are fleeing and returning home. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/fearing-covid-workers-flee-from-foxconns-vast-chinese-iphone-plant.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/fearing-covid-workers-flee-f... These sources include some dramatic video: https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/chinese-workers-jump-fence-to-escape-apple-iphone-factory-lockdown/ https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/chinese-workers-jump-fence-to-... https://hongkongfp.com/2022/11/05/we-were-scared-workers-at-foxconn-iphone-factory-in-china-recount-covid-chaos/ https://hongkongfp.com/2022/11/05/we-were-scared-workers-at-...
    - sva_ 4y ago
      Direct link to the video https://nitter.net/StephenMcDonell/status/1586633671150211072 https://nitter.net/StephenMcDonell/status/158663367115021107... It looks very disturbing to see them hauling their luggage (why do they have luggage at their place of employment?) out of something that I can only interpret to look like a prison.
      - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
        > why do they have luggage at their place of employment? Because it's also their place of residence.
      - bretpiatt 4y ago
        It is known as Foxconn City where workers all live on campus, good article from 2017 for more context https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- wongarsu 4y ago
  > China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach I imagine it's politically difficult. If they open the floodgates, it's going to be worse than for most other countries because they haven't had a chance to build natural immunity from exposure, only from vaccines. And any wave of infections is going to be seen as a failure of zero-covid, making the hardships of it meaningless; a failure of the party. I'm not sure how they are going to get out of it without letting some heads roll. Maybe a wonder vaccine that will make all of China immune.
  - cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  - ttul 4y ago
    The Chinese vaccine is pretty good, so their population is already well protected, assuming they have been vaccinating everyone as thoroughly as they have been locking them down… I think one problem in China is that old people have resisted being vaccinated because they don’t trust the authorities. And old people are obviously the most at risk of dying or being seriously ill. It’s a made in China problem, for sure.
    - cactusplant7374 4y ago
      About 50% of 80+ Chinese citizens are unvaccinated. It’s really quite amazing China hasn’t forced them to vaccinate.
      - kccqzy 4y ago
        Why does it not? The ethics of forced vaccination notwithstanding, if China is okay with using its authoritarian rule to impose massive lockdowns repeatedly, surely it'd be comfortable using its power to force vaccination?
        cactusplant7374 4y ago
        Because their vaccines aren’t good enough compared to mRNA. And that would show the world they aren’t a leader.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  My first thought was that it’s shocking to see an announcement like this on a Sunday. Then I realized they might be hoping the news gets buried. But with the election on Tuesday, I think that would have happened either way!
  - tenpies 4y ago
    Yes, if Apple wanted to bury, a Friday afternoon release would have been in order. More likely these are new developments and Apple just heard of them relatively recently, keeping in mind that it's already Monday morning in China. This is also quite likely retaliation from China for Biden's latest trade war actions. Apple, is after all, one of two major US companies whose share price has not been turned into rubble. Doing this days before Midterms, knowing how desperate the Democrats are, is perfect timing. If Apple's share price falls drastically, it will be headline news and will likely also materially impact most indexes. What's the other major US company whose share price hasn't been rubble-ized? Why Tesla of course. And their biggest and - most likely - only profitable factory is in China.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      Hasn't been rubble-ized? TSLA's at $227 from a high of almost $400 this year, so I'm no sure what you mean. And given the shutdowns, it seems to me that Tesla's China factory would be the unprofitable one.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    shocking to see an announcement like this on a Sunday. Then I realized they might be hoping the news gets buried When companies want to bury the news, they release it on Friday. It's called "taking out the trash." /Former journo
    - gnicholas 4y ago
      I’ve heard that, but isn’t that assuming the news will be released on a weekday? I can’t remember the last time a corporate press release went out on a Sunday.
pshirshov 4y ago
- GlacierFox 4y ago
  Okay, cool.
- npc12345 4y ago
- Ptchd 4y ago
  I don't trust GrapheneOS's founder (I don't trust Apple either though but at least they have more people controlling the machine)
  - pshirshov 4y ago
    Well, I clearly remember the crowd being butthurt after CSAM scanning announcement and "migrating" to graphene, calyx and all the likes.
slaw 4y ago
Is Apple going to really start moving out of China? So for only 2% of iPhones are assembled out of China and only one factory in Vietnam is being build. https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/09/30/apple-will-take-a-decade-to-move-just-some-production-out-of-china https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/09/30/apple-will-take-a...
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  They are also moving into India. I would expect they're very happy to encourage protectionist laws encouraging/requiring them to build phones in countries they sell to. It allows them to tell their Chinese partners that they have no choice in moving some manufacturing away.
- threeseed 4y ago
  I don't know why Apple isn't more diversified. Forecasts are that China wants to forcibly reclaim Taiwan much sooner than anticipated. And maybe they are confident that China wouldn't retaliate against them but surely that's not a risk worth taking. Foxconn has been asked to ramp up production in India but not sure if you would call it a success or not.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Is it possible even Apple does not have the resources to single handedly diversify the world’s most complicated supply chains?
    - radicaldreamer 4y ago
      It takes a decade to build up a supply chain for complex electronics products. Even though Apple, Foxconn, Wistron have started building in India, it's going to be a while before it's able to service the capacity that China is at and even longer before margins (both quality and profit) are up to where they are with their Chinese lines (which are more like city sized factories with tons of supporting infrastructure).
nrp 4y ago
The context for this (which Apple of course wants to avoid shining too much light on) is this: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-cities-brace-wave-foxconn-workers-covid-hit-zhengzhou-2022-10-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-cities-brace-wav... A combination of isolation of the manufacturing site, lockdown of the surrounding region, and some number of workers gone.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
KoftaBob 4y ago
Xi's obsession with "zero-covid" will continue to lead to things like this, and will seriously wreck their attractiveness as a manufacturing hub for the world over time.
- threeseed 4y ago
  According to WHO, China's Sinopharm COVID vaccine has "not yet been evaluated in the context of circulation of widespread variants of concern". So maybe they don't have a choice and that letting COVID run through whilst everyone could be effectively unvaccinated would quickly overwhelm their health care system and lead to mass death. Xi very much cares about political stability and it would be pretty toxic if China has all of these troubles whilst the rest of the world has moved on.
  - shagie 4y ago
    China could have bought vaccines from other makers. Sinopharm wasn't very effective to begin with ( https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sinopharm-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin... has it at 79% compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines starting out in the mid 90% range). ... and then you get a visitor to Shanghai Disney testing positive and https://youtu.be/yioG7mK01U0 https://youtu.be/yioG7mK01U0 Realizing that I am delving into speculation, this sounds more like the refinement of establishing a police state where one can use "someone you came in contact with tested positive for Covid" and shutting down large segments of a city and sending people to government quarantine camps than a desire for political stability.
- taolegal 4y ago
  Puzzling that this is downvoted
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- endisneigh 4y ago
  I'm curious how many deaths would be acceptable to you, if you were the leader? China would probably see tens of millions of deaths minimum if they had the laize-faire approach some western nations have taken. That being said it's not really clear what their exit plan is for zero-covid, as it cannot be sustained indefinitely.
fazfq 4y ago
COVID-19 restrictions, jesus. What is this 2020?
- vehemenz 4y ago
  This is the appropriate response. It's more about China saving face and their attempt to maintain control than actual Covid-19 prevention, although there is some of that too. They had a choice to accept Pfizer and Moderna early on and chose not to. Now they're paying for it politically, socially, and epidemiologically.
gigatexal 4y ago
I hope there’s stock for when I head back to the states to buy one in February.
- Ptchd 4y ago
  you could buy one on Ebay today
  - system2 4y ago
    iPhone 14 Pro Max is $2,400 on eBay. I wonder if any dumbass is buying it.
    - Ptchd 4y ago
      I saw brand new ones for $1,400 not sure what the MSRP is though....
    - steelframe 4y ago
      There's a certain level of wealth where intelligence doesn't come into play. If a multi-millionaire wants their brand new toy right now, whether it's $2,400 or $1,400 or $4,000 is irrelevant.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
notRobot 4y ago
I love how the length of the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is longer than the length of the press release.
- pcurve 4y ago
  looks like standard verbiage they used for press release that contain language financials.. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/10/apple-reports-fourth-quarter-results/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/10/apple-reports-fourth-...
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Same, hah I was expecting it to have something like "warning this press release is known to cause cancer in the state of California" in its kitchen sink of legalese warnings.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  I love how the length of the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is longer than the length of the press release. I was a little sad that the history boilerplate at the end starts off talking about the Macintosh in 1984, as if the Apple ][ never existed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
earth2mars 4y ago
don't sweat folks. Get a Pixel and you get better camera and don't miss much.
- It_s_me 4y ago
  I want to get a Pixel 7 Pro (sending from my Pixel 2XL) but no 5G support for the country I'm currently residing (Greece) is a bit of deal-breaker. Rooting is an option but I don't thing I want to go that way. (Has been doing it on my Nexus 5.) It's the 1st time I'm considering a switch from Android to iOS.
  - CameronNemo 4y ago
    Have you considered the Fairphone 4? I am in the US otherwise I'd probably have bought one already.
- filoleg 4y ago
  Thanks, but no. I own a Pixel 6 Pro as my second phone (for work), and I prefer not having to treat my phone like it is a (non-M1) laptop. I.e., constantly worry about having a way to charge it whenever I am out and about. It isn't just my perception either, the reviews all pointed out the battery to be lacking. Meanwhile, I charge my iPhone about once every 2 days (or once a day before i go to sleep, in case I am using it very heavily on that particular day). No idea what the whole "better camera" complaint is either. Pretty much every in-depth technical review (by blogs/people who actually have knowledge of photography and camera tech) of iPhone 14 Pro camera laud it as great, which my personal experience confirms.
  - earth2mars 4y ago
    do me a favor. can you check how much you use your iphone vs android. It seems you use your work phone more than iphone. thats why its running out of battery most likely. also, i would prefer iphone over android for work because they have better enterprise compatibility. Android is always a mess with work profile in my experience. also, w.r.t camera, DXOmark rated pixel 7 pro more than iphone 14 pro max. even latest macrumours review (check comments of that review) shows pixel is clear winner for example, go and take moon pictures with your 6 pro and iphone 14 pro. tell me which one has moon vs white blob.
rumblestrut 4y ago
I bought an iPhone 14 Pro with the thought “this needs to last me a couple of years.” It’s not the color I wanted per se, but my old phone wasn’t working well for my needs and I figured continued supply chain issues would linger for awhile. It’s only a matter a time before Apple starts making hardware closer to home en masse. Home, of course, being “not just in China.” The era of de-globalization is upon us.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Which is scary because as more of this happens, there will be less reason for China to be nice. Once there's no real reason for them to play nice with the west, we're going to see more problems.
  - factsarelolz 4y ago
    We need to accept this and start immediately facing it head on. I'm talking a 5 Trillion Dollar investment into manufacturing in the US. Set a goal of 5 years. After that 5 years we cease any and all import from China and countries beholden to them. While extracting and exporting every ounce of oil the US has. The profit made goes into Nuclear and Renewable Energy. Next we Annex Canada and Mexico to further build out US infrastructure. We will dub this the Nation of North America.
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      Need to stage a false flag attack on a radio station first.
  - throwaway98797 4y ago
    they hold a lot of us denominated debt we are cool for awhile
  - adolph 4y ago
    Itll take a few years and in the meantime China will age out of feeling frisky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China
wwweston 4y ago
Back in late April/early May I was doing some travel and realized I had totally forgotten my 96 W charger for my work Macbook Pro at home. "Well," I thought, "no fun to spend my own cash on a new charger, but better than the disaster of losing capacity to work while traveling, guess I'll just pop into an Apple Store and pick one up." They didn't have one. OK, I asked -- did they know anyone who did? "No clue, you might want to call Apple Support." Doing so revealed that there were none of these available anywhere, and the schedule on which they were projected to be available was early July. Fortunately, I had two fallbacks: (1) I was traveling in metro LA, which meant that I could check craigslist or FB marketplace or whatever and maybe a handful of 15mm Angelinos would have something up for sale. (2) The MBP charged via USB-C so presumably I could find anything that could deliver 96W or thereabouts and use it. Option #1 panned out, but it was still a flashbulb moment for me indicating that we're not exactly in familiar territory economically. It isn't just consumption goods that are sometimes scarce, this was a key piece of equipment the lack of which might have interrupted my productive capacity entirely or forced the cost/adaptation of entirely new substitutes.
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  You don’t need anywhere near the full wattage, you will just charge slower. I frequently get by with a 60W charger, and I’ve even charged with the USB ports in my car which I think are 30W max.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > The MBP charged via USB-C so presumably I could find anything that could deliver 96W or thereabouts and use it. Do macs let you trickle charge at lower power? If that works, you could limp along with any USB-C charger.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    Yes, you can get by on significantly less power if you can charge it while the lid is closed. It might just run on the USB-C power with the lid open, and say "not charging" but when the lid is closed it will start to fill up the battery to capacity.
sircastor 4y ago
3 or 4 weeks ago I was trying very hard to buy an iPhone 14 pro (purple no less) and it was down to trying to order for pickup every morning at ~6am. I got lucky one day, so did not have to wait for 6 weeks. I find it interesting that Apple is addressing this directly.
jiggawatts 4y ago
Someone here a while back was talking about how in the farming industry, "leaky" vaccines have been used for a long time. They mentioned that in the poultry industry that just resulted in viruses evolving to be fantastically virulent, which means that unvaccinated populations of chickens have viruses just rip through them at unbelievable speed. Note that this doesn't mean that the viruses are more dangerous, just that they're more evasive against that first line of immune defence and are harder to avoid. What does this have to do with iPhones? China can't keep up their zero-COVID policy forever. While they keep trying, COVID is slowly becoming more and more virulent overseas due to our use of leaky vaccines. Either they give up now, and deal with the fast-but-maybe-manageable wave of infections, or they wait until it evolves to be so infectious that it becomes totally unmanageable. They're stretching a rubber band further and further while repeatedly mumbling something about a "not letting go policy".
- epolanski 4y ago
  I am no expert but as it becomes more infetious it also becomes less dangerous.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Usually
  - astrange 4y ago
    There’s no rule saying that happens. Most likely for earlier pandemics, it’s us that changed to make it less dangerous, by dying until we evolved past it.
- slaw 4y ago
  China can keep covid policy for another 15 years. Xi is only 69 and previous China's dictator Mao lived till 82. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping
  - jiggawatts 4y ago
siculars 4y ago
While I’m sure everything in this PR is true, I’m also gonna take a moment to read between the lines. Apple will/should leverage this relatively unprecedented/innocuous statement to accelerate diversity in their supply chain. With the US squeezing China with sanctions it is only a matter of time before China retaliates against Apple. Politically, reducing pressure on China in the US is not tenable in this climate. We’re in a one way ratchet and Apple needs to diversify away from China as quickly as possible. Covid lockdowns in China ultimately provide a fantastic opportunity and official/formal face saving measure for Apple (and all other US manufacturers) to establish alternate supply chains without openly antagonizing China.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Yet, somehow, you can buy iPhone 14 Pro in Russia, of all places, where Apple has officially suspended all sales, and it'll be delivered to you in an hour. No wait time at all.
- rvnx 4y ago
  Yes until it gets remotely locked as part of a future sanctions package
  - Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
    I don't think this will ever happen.
    - rvnx 4y ago
      I hope not as well.
  - busymom0 4y ago
    Doubt Apple will let that happen. That will look very bad security wise.
  - supertrope 4y ago
    The US Government wants average Russians and dissidents to be able to access foreign media through the Internet. Bricking electronics would be counterproductive.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
nemo44x 4y ago
- redtriumph 4y ago
  Save everyone a ‘google’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-is-preparing-to-notify-employees-of-large-scale-layoffs-this-week-11667767794 https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-is-preparing-to-notify-emp...
- t3rabytes 4y ago
  Did you read the part of the PR that says there are none to buy because they can’t make them?
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    Yes and the part where they said there’s no demand for them too.
    - spiderice 4y ago
      What are you on about? Go re-read the press release. They said the exact opposite.
      - nemo44x 4y ago
        You’re right. I added an edit to my post.
gowings97 4y ago
Diversifying a supply chain is not so easy. Takes tooling, JiT/Sequencing of parts, etc. Apple is going to have to invest (subsidize) to build it up from scratch. And frankly I don't see Pegatron, Wistron, and Foxconn being too eager to do this. I've heard they're already dragging their feet.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > Apple is going to have to invest (subsidize) These terms should not be used interchangeably, the meaning is totally different. You expect to see financial returns from investment
  - paxys 4y ago
    You also expect to see financial returns from subsidies. The meaning isn't totally different. They are just a type of investment.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      not at all, some subsidies are humanitarian, or purely political. If you have deeper pockets, you could subsidise your products to bancrupt competitors, a technique called dumping. EU subsidised renewables to enable renewable tech development - a worthy goal, but not an investment. UK founded the Green Investment bank, it did actual investment into R&D and construction. Same goal, but one us subsidy, one is investment. US corn subsidies no longer make any sense - but cannot be removed because it would piss off a major voting block. If you were to su sidise farming from scratch, you would at least pick a variety of plants to make a balanced meal nutritionally
      - paxys 4y ago
        Again, you are describing every kind of investment, not just subsidies.
      - rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
        > not at all, some subsidies are humanitarian, or purely political. Considering that we’re talking about Apple subsidizing factories to diversify its supply chain, do you think we’re talking about humanitarian and political subsidies at all? I’m sorry but it seems that people are deliberately being obtuse here.
applecore 4y ago
What does China know about COVID-19 that the rest of us do not? Why put in place such a severe policy of forced internment, in response to very few cases, when cheap and plentiful vaccines are available? (Never mind that mRNA vaccines have never been approved for use in China, which is mind-boggling, given that they're proven to be safe and effective for preventing serious illness or death from COVID-19.)
- rarecoil 4y ago
  If you didn’t have any faith in the mechanisms you had to mitigate COVID-19 pharmaceutically, you would act in much the same manner. Sinovac may just not be that good over time, or maybe it’s just a pride thing in which we have a political leader staking heroic, superhuman claims on a Zero-COVID strategy.
  - type-r 4y ago
    I mean, Sweden was going free-for-all before any vaccines even existed and seemed to do OK.
- atty 4y ago
  I think there are many factors. First, the Chinese healthcare system is much smaller than western healthcare systems. Combine that with a much larger population and a pandemic and you end up in a bad situation really fast. Secondly, they’ve refused the mRNA vaccines, which are significantly more effective than their home grown vaccine. Third, and possibly most importantly, Xi et al both inflated the danger of Covid in their communications to the public, and made zero Covid a point of national and personal pride for Xi. He would lose face if they turned back now.
- raziel2701 4y ago
  In my opinion the reason is political, that is, I think zero-covid policy is a form of citizen control to prevent protests/insurrection against the accumulation of power by Xi, but also against the economic crumbling surrounding the collapse of their real estate market.
- 4y ago
system2 4y ago
How hard for a trillion dollar company to build their own infrastructure in the U.S. and do it relatively cost effective?
- prawn 4y ago
  Obviously fairly hard. Suspect the "cost effective" bit is a big part of it.
  - darkwizard42 4y ago
    I actually think the scale is the issue. It is just SO many phones and then subsequently, SO many parts. Without dropping any velocity in their ability to ship phones rebuilding a massive setup like what they have access to in China is not even limited by the money (probably by the technical know how)
    - gowings97 4y ago
      Automotive bill of materials are far more extensive and requirement heavy (physical space/warehousing, subassembly integration and part sequencing, double checking firmware/electronic systems as the vehicle comes down the line) compared to consumer electronics. Yes, TSMC 4nm is more complex from an electronics standpoint. But from a supply chain process standpoint, automotive is way more complex. All of the best consumer electronic manufacturing sequencing and tooling is in China though, hence the problem we have today. Tim Cook is a supply chain guy though, so I'm curious how he will approach and solve this problem.
- shagie 4y ago
  What would it take to build a city that mirrors the auto manufacturing capabilities of Detroit in its classic car period? Note that this isn't Ford, or GM that did it.. but rather Ford and GM and hundreds of smaller companies that supplied the raw materials to a company to make the parts that were used by companies that supplied the parts to the auto makers. And so, yes, you could - but its not something that one company can do - or for that mater even has the competency to do for the same reason that Ford doesn't run steel mills.
yrgulation 4y ago
Hopefully they will move manufacturing to europe and north america. Relying on dictatorships or corrupt countries doesnt help much on the long term.
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
  India and Vietnam I think
  - sheeshkebab 4y ago
    One is another communist regime and the other has issues with even basic electricity and running water.
    - throwaway12390 4y ago
      What's powering their IT infra a nd trains then?
      - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
        British infrastructure
        cocoland2 4y ago
        Source ?
    - cocoland2 4y ago
      In god we trust, Others bring data - Deming. Unless you are living under a rock, here are some dashboards you will find interesting https://cea.nic.in/dashboard/?lang=en https://cea.nic.in/dashboard/?lang=en https://npp.gov.in/dashBoard/cp-map-dashboard https://npp.gov.in/dashBoard/cp-map-dashboard and water https://ejalshakti.gov.in/jjmreport/JJMIndia.aspx https://ejalshakti.gov.in/jjmreport/JJMIndia.aspx No place is perfect unless you are living in Utopian LaLa land or one has drunk too much KoolAid. There are problems which are being addressed by state / central governments. In my home state of Kerala, there is plenty of Water and decent Hydel plants for power.So even the argument that you place is only tangentially accurate.
bombcar 4y ago
Strange, the carrier versions are showing as in stock at retailers (Best Buy near here) but the unlocked is unavailable. Strange.
hindsightbias 4y ago
Cook should be sacked. After a President openly hostile to trade with China, Covid and a crazy Zero Covid policy, now he’ll throw up his hands and say “who could have known?” With a $100B in cash sloshing around overseas, he’s had 6 years to be a genius.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
aaron695 4y ago
mahirsaid 4y ago
"Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it." Sure maybe at one time, perhaps early 2000's. Apple you can thank samsung for all the success you've had over the years. lets be frank!
sytelus 4y ago
What is the real status of covid in China? Is this just political thing or is it new strain? Are hospitals there overloaded? Government working off of the data? For rest of the world, covid seems to be just history.
- Tempest1981 4y ago
  > For rest of the world, covid seems to be just history. Is that really true? Or do you mean endemic? I guess fewer people I know are dying...
DrWorldwide 4y ago
188 comments in and no mention of Peter Zeihan?
panda_2134 4y ago
Foxcoon has been modern slavery for long[1], in case anyone doesn't know. Workers are suffering from sexual harrasment as well as poor working conditions. It seems like that someone assumed this started only after the covid-zero thing, but it's actually not. (though this has definitely made the workers' lives worse) That's how the "advantage of low labor cost" works. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
can16358p 4y ago
Serious question: is COVID-19 still a thing? From wherever on Earth and whoever I see, life is completely back to normal though I have no friends in China. Is COVID still impacting work in China?
- bdcravens 4y ago
  China has far more restrictions than others when there are outbreaks of cases. https://www.politico.eu/article/china-maintain-zero-covid-policy/ https://www.politico.eu/article/china-maintain-zero-covid-po...
- thepasswordis 4y ago
  You are commenting on a press release where apple is saying that covid19 is impacting the factories where their iPhones are made. Yes. Covid is still impacting work in China.
  - can16358p 4y ago
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  China is still trying to aggressively maintain a zero covid policy
  - arcticfox 4y ago
    This is kind of fascinating. I’m not a Covid denier or anything along those lines, but a zero covid policy at this point (widely available vaccinations, clear endemic status) just seems like a crazy policy. Like maybe the craziest thing I’ve heard of from modern China
    - piggybox 4y ago
      Yes it's crazy, to say the least
    - 4y ago
mensetmanusman 4y ago
I wonder if China knows that Covid can be dormant in animals and is never going away.
- coolspot 4y ago
  The fact that they are still insisting on zero-covid policy is weird and kinda sus.
ck2 4y ago
As someone who doesn't follow phones at all it's just so weird to me to see it up to 14 already. I think I have a few 4s from years ago someone threw out, I guess useless now and should be discarded before battery burns apartment down, imagine how many millions of other dead devices out there. Are they going to just keep rolling, someday "iphone 37" like firefox/chrome versions? Meanwhile still on same i5 PC build from 2012
- sdze 4y ago
  every year a new one. Does that surprise you?
eddsh1994 4y ago
I went to buy an iPhone 14 Pro yesterday in the Bay Area from the local Apple Stores and the wait time is a month everywhere around here.
dawnerd 4y ago
I mean, bestbuy has had plenty in stock around here so demand I’d say hasn’t been all that high. I thought about upgrading from the 13 pro before realizing how dumb that’d be.
ritcgab 4y ago
The so called "zero-covid policy" in China has already failed, in practice, though the party would never admit their failure. Now they identify thousands of new cases daily in almost all states. A lot of tragedies happened during massive, brutal lockdown across the whole country. People are not getting paid, facing mental health difficulties, even food shortages when they are forced to stay at home. No COVID deaths, but a lot deceased. Chinese state media will not cover these. It's somewhat saddening that people get to know all these only when Apple cannot supply enough iPhones.
- propogandist 4y ago
  most of the coverage is meant to drive hysteria about the looming iPhone shortage, there’s little care for the covid situation on the ground in China contributing to the problem. Apple stories get clicks, but there will be virtually no research on how China’s zero covid policy is the root cause, as it will be deemed “negative sentiment” which will get less CPM, or their content may even get demonetized. Modern “tech news” is a joke.
- nnx 4y ago
  90% of which are asymptomatic as of today (569 symptomatic over 5643 cases). And percentage is most likely under-estimated as they're more likely to miss more asymptomatic cases than symptomatic cases.
Tempest1981 4y ago
So 2 years after inventing excellent COVID vaccines, why aren't they available world-wide? (Honest question) Cost? Logistics? Patents? Willpower?
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  Some world leaders have fragile egos and can't bear to admit the American vaccines worked out fine.

333 points by feross 4y ago

user_named 4y ago

Iphone 14 isn't selling well in China. PR defense against low sales numbers.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dagmx 4y ago
Pray tell why you think this has anything to do with Chinese sales numbers?

Brajeshwar 4y ago

Last month, I was pleasantly surprised that Apple was doing a next-day delivery of the new iPhones. Now, it has gone back to almost a month delay here in India.

TechnicolorByte 4y ago

Wow, don’t think I’ve seen Apple issue a PR like this before. No doubt Apple’s considering now more than ever to continue to diversify their supply chain. China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach.

ozzythecat 4y ago
I don’t recall a similar announcement even at the height of COVID. Do we know what’s now changed?
- Moissanite 4y ago
  Expectations, I'd bet. During peak covid, everything was a bit like this - but now the perception is closer to "business as usual, with economic headwinds".
- Veliladon 4y ago
  One of Foxconn's biggest factories has been locked down because of COVID. They're one of the biggest suppliers of iPhone final assembly labour. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/02/apple-iphone-assembly-plant-under-new-covid-lockdown-in-china-.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/02/apple-iphone-assembly-plant-...
  - lumost 4y ago
    - Arn_Thor 4y ago
      This is a consequence of China’s zero-Covid policy. Nationally, the instruction is to eliminate outbreaks, even of new and milder variants. Leading up to the party congress local authorities appear to have reported inaccurately low numbers to avoid bad news for the leadership. Now, after the congress, the task is to quickly eliminate outbreaks to avoid the need for even harsher measures like full-city lockdowns like seen in Shanghai earlier this year. Additionally China has spent the past three years telling its population that the rest of the world has been irresponsibly murdering its citizens by adopting a “live with Covid” policy. So when rumors of a possible lockdown of the factory or its economic zone started spreading, employees fled either because they feared an outbreak or because they didn’t want to get locked in there for an indeterminate period of time.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        jstummbillig 4y ago
        What have you heard about it? I find it hard to assess with the currently available information (and, apparently, so does the world given the huge disparities in politics). Long covid is real and scary. So are cancer, heart attacks and car crashes, but it would be a really bad idea to skip a cost/benefit analysis of the possible counter measures available at societal level because of that.
- jonas21 4y ago
  The last few months are the height of COVID in China.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    This winter might be especially bad for covid in China. It's 1-2 years behind the rest of the world.
    - rob74 4y ago
      The policy in China is 1-2 years behind. Everyone else has realized that with Omicron a zero Covid policy is no longer feasible (and, where vaccination rates are high, not needed either), but that hasn't yet gotten through to Xi (or it has, but he thinks reversing the policy will somehow cause him to "lose face").
      - dehrmann 4y ago
        Not just policy, but immunity. Barring mass covid parties, it'll take China 1-2 years to get immunity on par with the rest of the world.
- moviedo 4y ago
  "Zhengzhou, China. The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity. As we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are prioritizing the health and safety of the workers in our supply chain." From different news outlets and youtube channels that cover china's zero covid policy I feel the statement above referring to the health and safety of the Foxconn workers is pure PR puff. I really like this youtube channel call China Insights witch gives some decent information on this exact Foxconn issues and how the workers are fleeing the lock-down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9DXebls8Bc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9DXebls8Bc
- smallmind 4y ago
  Three possible reasons: 1. Workers only get food if they show up for their shift. If they are sick and don't work, there is no place to get food in the Foxconn campus. Due to the lockdown, the workers can't order food delivered online if sick. 2. When local governments force people to quarantine, they are supposed to provide basic meals. However, it seems most workers who were quarantined recently did not receive any food or water for days because the local government expected Foxconn to provide it instead. 3. Someone made a viral video suggesting everyone who was quarantined in a dormitory room died of a new deadly disease. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKBAeie5wY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hKBAeie5wY
  - bpye 4y ago
    Well any one of those three sound absolutely horrendous.
    - throwaway290 4y ago
      > 3. Someone made a viral video suggesting everyone who was quarantined in a dormitory room died of a new deadly disease. This is now just routine, very easy way to get views (courtesy government of some country that chose to hush the beginnings of a pandemic).
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  It is now the height of Covid in China because they refused effective western vaccine help (because apparently that hurts Xi’s feelings).
xuki 4y ago
I guess this is severe enough that they're obligated to let investors know.
- echelon 4y ago
  It is. Workers are fleeing and returning home. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/fearing-covid-workers-flee-from-foxconns-vast-chinese-iphone-plant.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/31/fearing-covid-workers-flee-f... These sources include some dramatic video: https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/chinese-workers-jump-fence-to-escape-apple-iphone-factory-lockdown/ https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/chinese-workers-jump-fence-to-... https://hongkongfp.com/2022/11/05/we-were-scared-workers-at-foxconn-iphone-factory-in-china-recount-covid-chaos/ https://hongkongfp.com/2022/11/05/we-were-scared-workers-at-...
  - sva_ 4y ago
    Direct link to the video https://nitter.net/StephenMcDonell/status/1586633671150211072 https://nitter.net/StephenMcDonell/status/158663367115021107... It looks very disturbing to see them hauling their luggage (why do they have luggage at their place of employment?) out of something that I can only interpret to look like a prison.
    - dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
      > why do they have luggage at their place of employment? Because it's also their place of residence.
    - bretpiatt 4y ago
      It is known as Foxconn City where workers all live on campus, good article from 2017 for more context https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-l...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
wongarsu 4y ago
> China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach I imagine it's politically difficult. If they open the floodgates, it's going to be worse than for most other countries because they haven't had a chance to build natural immunity from exposure, only from vaccines. And any wave of infections is going to be seen as a failure of zero-covid, making the hardships of it meaningless; a failure of the party. I'm not sure how they are going to get out of it without letting some heads roll. Maybe a wonder vaccine that will make all of China immune.
- cokeandpepsi 4y ago
- ttul 4y ago
  The Chinese vaccine is pretty good, so their population is already well protected, assuming they have been vaccinating everyone as thoroughly as they have been locking them down… I think one problem in China is that old people have resisted being vaccinated because they don’t trust the authorities. And old people are obviously the most at risk of dying or being seriously ill. It’s a made in China problem, for sure.
  - cactusplant7374 4y ago
    About 50% of 80+ Chinese citizens are unvaccinated. It’s really quite amazing China hasn’t forced them to vaccinate.
    - kccqzy 4y ago
      Why does it not? The ethics of forced vaccination notwithstanding, if China is okay with using its authoritarian rule to impose massive lockdowns repeatedly, surely it'd be comfortable using its power to force vaccination?
      - cactusplant7374 4y ago
        Because their vaccines aren’t good enough compared to mRNA. And that would show the world they aren’t a leader.
gnicholas 4y ago
My first thought was that it’s shocking to see an announcement like this on a Sunday. Then I realized they might be hoping the news gets buried. But with the election on Tuesday, I think that would have happened either way!
- tenpies 4y ago
  Yes, if Apple wanted to bury, a Friday afternoon release would have been in order. More likely these are new developments and Apple just heard of them relatively recently, keeping in mind that it's already Monday morning in China. This is also quite likely retaliation from China for Biden's latest trade war actions. Apple, is after all, one of two major US companies whose share price has not been turned into rubble. Doing this days before Midterms, knowing how desperate the Democrats are, is perfect timing. If Apple's share price falls drastically, it will be headline news and will likely also materially impact most indexes. What's the other major US company whose share price hasn't been rubble-ized? Why Tesla of course. And their biggest and - most likely - only profitable factory is in China.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Hasn't been rubble-ized? TSLA's at $227 from a high of almost $400 this year, so I'm no sure what you mean. And given the shutdowns, it seems to me that Tesla's China factory would be the unprofitable one.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  shocking to see an announcement like this on a Sunday. Then I realized they might be hoping the news gets buried When companies want to bury the news, they release it on Friday. It's called "taking out the trash." /Former journo
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    I’ve heard that, but isn’t that assuming the news will be released on a weekday? I can’t remember the last time a corporate press release went out on a Sunday.

pshirshov 4y ago

GlacierFox 4y ago
Okay, cool.
npc12345 4y ago
Ptchd 4y ago
I don't trust GrapheneOS's founder (I don't trust Apple either though but at least they have more people controlling the machine)
- pshirshov 4y ago
  Well, I clearly remember the crowd being butthurt after CSAM scanning announcement and "migrating" to graphene, calyx and all the likes.

slaw 4y ago

Is Apple going to really start moving out of China? So for only 2% of iPhones are assembled out of China and only one factory in Vietnam is being build. https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/09/30/apple-will-take-a-decade-to-move-just-some-production-out-of-china https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/09/30/apple-will-take-a...

parker_mountain 4y ago
They are also moving into India. I would expect they're very happy to encourage protectionist laws encouraging/requiring them to build phones in countries they sell to. It allows them to tell their Chinese partners that they have no choice in moving some manufacturing away.
threeseed 4y ago
I don't know why Apple isn't more diversified. Forecasts are that China wants to forcibly reclaim Taiwan much sooner than anticipated. And maybe they are confident that China wouldn't retaliate against them but surely that's not a risk worth taking. Foxconn has been asked to ramp up production in India but not sure if you would call it a success or not.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Is it possible even Apple does not have the resources to single handedly diversify the world’s most complicated supply chains?
  - radicaldreamer 4y ago
    It takes a decade to build up a supply chain for complex electronics products. Even though Apple, Foxconn, Wistron have started building in India, it's going to be a while before it's able to service the capacity that China is at and even longer before margins (both quality and profit) are up to where they are with their Chinese lines (which are more like city sized factories with tons of supporting infrastructure).

nrp 4y ago

The context for this (which Apple of course wants to avoid shining too much light on) is this: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-cities-brace-wave-foxconn-workers-covid-hit-zhengzhou-2022-10-30/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinese-cities-brace-wav... A combination of isolation of the manufacturing site, lockdown of the surrounding region, and some number of workers gone.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

KoftaBob 4y ago

Xi's obsession with "zero-covid" will continue to lead to things like this, and will seriously wreck their attractiveness as a manufacturing hub for the world over time.

threeseed 4y ago
According to WHO, China's Sinopharm COVID vaccine has "not yet been evaluated in the context of circulation of widespread variants of concern". So maybe they don't have a choice and that letting COVID run through whilst everyone could be effectively unvaccinated would quickly overwhelm their health care system and lead to mass death. Xi very much cares about political stability and it would be pretty toxic if China has all of these troubles whilst the rest of the world has moved on.
- shagie 4y ago
  China could have bought vaccines from other makers. Sinopharm wasn't very effective to begin with ( https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sinopharm-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin... has it at 79% compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines starting out in the mid 90% range). ... and then you get a visitor to Shanghai Disney testing positive and https://youtu.be/yioG7mK01U0 https://youtu.be/yioG7mK01U0 Realizing that I am delving into speculation, this sounds more like the refinement of establishing a police state where one can use "someone you came in contact with tested positive for Covid" and shutting down large segments of a city and sending people to government quarantine camps than a desire for political stability.
taolegal 4y ago
Puzzling that this is downvoted
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
endisneigh 4y ago
I'm curious how many deaths would be acceptable to you, if you were the leader? China would probably see tens of millions of deaths minimum if they had the laize-faire approach some western nations have taken. That being said it's not really clear what their exit plan is for zero-covid, as it cannot be sustained indefinitely.

fazfq 4y ago

COVID-19 restrictions, jesus. What is this 2020?

vehemenz 4y ago
This is the appropriate response. It's more about China saving face and their attempt to maintain control than actual Covid-19 prevention, although there is some of that too. They had a choice to accept Pfizer and Moderna early on and chose not to. Now they're paying for it politically, socially, and epidemiologically.

gigatexal 4y ago

I hope there’s stock for when I head back to the states to buy one in February.

Ptchd 4y ago
you could buy one on Ebay today
- system2 4y ago
  iPhone 14 Pro Max is $2,400 on eBay. I wonder if any dumbass is buying it.
  - Ptchd 4y ago
    I saw brand new ones for $1,400 not sure what the MSRP is though....
  - steelframe 4y ago
    There's a certain level of wealth where intelligence doesn't come into play. If a multi-millionaire wants their brand new toy right now, whether it's $2,400 or $1,400 or $4,000 is irrelevant.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

notRobot 4y ago

I love how the length of the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is longer than the length of the press release.

pcurve 4y ago
looks like standard verbiage they used for press release that contain language financials.. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/10/apple-reports-fourth-quarter-results/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/10/apple-reports-fourth-...
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Same, hah I was expecting it to have something like "warning this press release is known to cause cancer in the state of California" in its kitchen sink of legalese warnings.
reaperducer 4y ago
I love how the length of the disclaimer at the bottom of the page is longer than the length of the press release. I was a little sad that the history boilerplate at the end starts off talking about the Macintosh in 1984, as if the Apple ][ never existed.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

earth2mars 4y ago

don't sweat folks. Get a Pixel and you get better camera and don't miss much.

It_s_me 4y ago
I want to get a Pixel 7 Pro (sending from my Pixel 2XL) but no 5G support for the country I'm currently residing (Greece) is a bit of deal-breaker. Rooting is an option but I don't thing I want to go that way. (Has been doing it on my Nexus 5.) It's the 1st time I'm considering a switch from Android to iOS.
- CameronNemo 4y ago
  Have you considered the Fairphone 4? I am in the US otherwise I'd probably have bought one already.
filoleg 4y ago
Thanks, but no. I own a Pixel 6 Pro as my second phone (for work), and I prefer not having to treat my phone like it is a (non-M1) laptop. I.e., constantly worry about having a way to charge it whenever I am out and about. It isn't just my perception either, the reviews all pointed out the battery to be lacking. Meanwhile, I charge my iPhone about once every 2 days (or once a day before i go to sleep, in case I am using it very heavily on that particular day). No idea what the whole "better camera" complaint is either. Pretty much every in-depth technical review (by blogs/people who actually have knowledge of photography and camera tech) of iPhone 14 Pro camera laud it as great, which my personal experience confirms.
- earth2mars 4y ago
  do me a favor. can you check how much you use your iphone vs android. It seems you use your work phone more than iphone. thats why its running out of battery most likely. also, i would prefer iphone over android for work because they have better enterprise compatibility. Android is always a mess with work profile in my experience. also, w.r.t camera, DXOmark rated pixel 7 pro more than iphone 14 pro max. even latest macrumours review (check comments of that review) shows pixel is clear winner for example, go and take moon pictures with your 6 pro and iphone 14 pro. tell me which one has moon vs white blob.

rumblestrut 4y ago

I bought an iPhone 14 Pro with the thought “this needs to last me a couple of years.” It’s not the color I wanted per se, but my old phone wasn’t working well for my needs and I figured continued supply chain issues would linger for awhile. It’s only a matter a time before Apple starts making hardware closer to home en masse. Home, of course, being “not just in China.” The era of de-globalization is upon us.

bamboozled 4y ago
Which is scary because as more of this happens, there will be less reason for China to be nice. Once there's no real reason for them to play nice with the west, we're going to see more problems.
- factsarelolz 4y ago
  We need to accept this and start immediately facing it head on. I'm talking a 5 Trillion Dollar investment into manufacturing in the US. Set a goal of 5 years. After that 5 years we cease any and all import from China and countries beholden to them. While extracting and exporting every ounce of oil the US has. The profit made goes into Nuclear and Renewable Energy. Next we Annex Canada and Mexico to further build out US infrastructure. We will dub this the Nation of North America.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    Need to stage a false flag attack on a radio station first.
- throwaway98797 4y ago
  they hold a lot of us denominated debt we are cool for awhile
- adolph 4y ago
  Itll take a few years and in the meantime China will age out of feeling frisky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_China

wwweston 4y ago

Back in late April/early May I was doing some travel and realized I had totally forgotten my 96 W charger for my work Macbook Pro at home. "Well," I thought, "no fun to spend my own cash on a new charger, but better than the disaster of losing capacity to work while traveling, guess I'll just pop into an Apple Store and pick one up." They didn't have one. OK, I asked -- did they know anyone who did? "No clue, you might want to call Apple Support." Doing so revealed that there were none of these available anywhere, and the schedule on which they were projected to be available was early July. Fortunately, I had two fallbacks: (1) I was traveling in metro LA, which meant that I could check craigslist or FB marketplace or whatever and maybe a handful of 15mm Angelinos would have something up for sale. (2) The MBP charged via USB-C so presumably I could find anything that could deliver 96W or thereabouts and use it. Option #1 panned out, but it was still a flashbulb moment for me indicating that we're not exactly in familiar territory economically. It isn't just consumption goods that are sometimes scarce, this was a key piece of equipment the lack of which might have interrupted my productive capacity entirely or forced the cost/adaptation of entirely new substitutes.

hamandcheese 4y ago
You don’t need anywhere near the full wattage, you will just charge slower. I frequently get by with a 60W charger, and I’ve even charged with the USB ports in my car which I think are 30W max.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> The MBP charged via USB-C so presumably I could find anything that could deliver 96W or thereabouts and use it. Do macs let you trickle charge at lower power? If that works, you could limp along with any USB-C charger.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Yes, you can get by on significantly less power if you can charge it while the lid is closed. It might just run on the USB-C power with the lid open, and say "not charging" but when the lid is closed it will start to fill up the battery to capacity.

sircastor 4y ago

3 or 4 weeks ago I was trying very hard to buy an iPhone 14 pro (purple no less) and it was down to trying to order for pickup every morning at ~6am. I got lucky one day, so did not have to wait for 6 weeks. I find it interesting that Apple is addressing this directly.

jiggawatts 4y ago

Someone here a while back was talking about how in the farming industry, "leaky" vaccines have been used for a long time. They mentioned that in the poultry industry that just resulted in viruses evolving to be fantastically virulent, which means that unvaccinated populations of chickens have viruses just rip through them at unbelievable speed. Note that this doesn't mean that the viruses are more dangerous, just that they're more evasive against that first line of immune defence and are harder to avoid. What does this have to do with iPhones? China can't keep up their zero-COVID policy forever. While they keep trying, COVID is slowly becoming more and more virulent overseas due to our use of leaky vaccines. Either they give up now, and deal with the fast-but-maybe-manageable wave of infections, or they wait until it evolves to be so infectious that it becomes totally unmanageable. They're stretching a rubber band further and further while repeatedly mumbling something about a "not letting go policy".

epolanski 4y ago
I am no expert but as it becomes more infetious it also becomes less dangerous.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Usually
- astrange 4y ago
  There’s no rule saying that happens. Most likely for earlier pandemics, it’s us that changed to make it less dangerous, by dying until we evolved past it.
slaw 4y ago
China can keep covid policy for another 15 years. Xi is only 69 and previous China's dictator Mao lived till 82. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping
- jiggawatts 4y ago

siculars 4y ago

While I’m sure everything in this PR is true, I’m also gonna take a moment to read between the lines. Apple will/should leverage this relatively unprecedented/innocuous statement to accelerate diversity in their supply chain. With the US squeezing China with sanctions it is only a matter of time before China retaliates against Apple. Politically, reducing pressure on China in the US is not tenable in this climate. We’re in a one way ratchet and Apple needs to diversify away from China as quickly as possible. Covid lockdowns in China ultimately provide a fantastic opportunity and official/formal face saving measure for Apple (and all other US manufacturers) to establish alternate supply chains without openly antagonizing China.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

Yet, somehow, you can buy iPhone 14 Pro in Russia, of all places, where Apple has officially suspended all sales, and it'll be delivered to you in an hour. No wait time at all.

rvnx 4y ago
Yes until it gets remotely locked as part of a future sanctions package
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
  I don't think this will ever happen.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    I hope not as well.
- busymom0 4y ago
  Doubt Apple will let that happen. That will look very bad security wise.
- supertrope 4y ago
  The US Government wants average Russians and dissidents to be able to access foreign media through the Internet. Bricking electronics would be counterproductive.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nemo44x 4y ago

redtriumph 4y ago
Save everyone a ‘google’ https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-is-preparing-to-notify-employees-of-large-scale-layoffs-this-week-11667767794 https://www.wsj.com/articles/meta-is-preparing-to-notify-emp...
t3rabytes 4y ago
Did you read the part of the PR that says there are none to buy because they can’t make them?
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Yes and the part where they said there’s no demand for them too.
  - spiderice 4y ago
    What are you on about? Go re-read the press release. They said the exact opposite.
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      You’re right. I added an edit to my post.

gowings97 4y ago

Diversifying a supply chain is not so easy. Takes tooling, JiT/Sequencing of parts, etc. Apple is going to have to invest (subsidize) to build it up from scratch. And frankly I don't see Pegatron, Wistron, and Foxconn being too eager to do this. I've heard they're already dragging their feet.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
> Apple is going to have to invest (subsidize) These terms should not be used interchangeably, the meaning is totally different. You expect to see financial returns from investment
- paxys 4y ago
  You also expect to see financial returns from subsidies. The meaning isn't totally different. They are just a type of investment.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    not at all, some subsidies are humanitarian, or purely political. If you have deeper pockets, you could subsidise your products to bancrupt competitors, a technique called dumping. EU subsidised renewables to enable renewable tech development - a worthy goal, but not an investment. UK founded the Green Investment bank, it did actual investment into R&D and construction. Same goal, but one us subsidy, one is investment. US corn subsidies no longer make any sense - but cannot be removed because it would piss off a major voting block. If you were to su sidise farming from scratch, you would at least pick a variety of plants to make a balanced meal nutritionally
    - paxys 4y ago
      Again, you are describing every kind of investment, not just subsidies.
    - rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y ago
      > not at all, some subsidies are humanitarian, or purely political. Considering that we’re talking about Apple subsidizing factories to diversify its supply chain, do you think we’re talking about humanitarian and political subsidies at all? I’m sorry but it seems that people are deliberately being obtuse here.

applecore 4y ago

What does China know about COVID-19 that the rest of us do not? Why put in place such a severe policy of forced internment, in response to very few cases, when cheap and plentiful vaccines are available? (Never mind that mRNA vaccines have never been approved for use in China, which is mind-boggling, given that they're proven to be safe and effective for preventing serious illness or death from COVID-19.)

rarecoil 4y ago
If you didn’t have any faith in the mechanisms you had to mitigate COVID-19 pharmaceutically, you would act in much the same manner. Sinovac may just not be that good over time, or maybe it’s just a pride thing in which we have a political leader staking heroic, superhuman claims on a Zero-COVID strategy.
- type-r 4y ago
  I mean, Sweden was going free-for-all before any vaccines even existed and seemed to do OK.
atty 4y ago
I think there are many factors. First, the Chinese healthcare system is much smaller than western healthcare systems. Combine that with a much larger population and a pandemic and you end up in a bad situation really fast. Secondly, they’ve refused the mRNA vaccines, which are significantly more effective than their home grown vaccine. Third, and possibly most importantly, Xi et al both inflated the danger of Covid in their communications to the public, and made zero Covid a point of national and personal pride for Xi. He would lose face if they turned back now.
raziel2701 4y ago
In my opinion the reason is political, that is, I think zero-covid policy is a form of citizen control to prevent protests/insurrection against the accumulation of power by Xi, but also against the economic crumbling surrounding the collapse of their real estate market.
4y ago

system2 4y ago

How hard for a trillion dollar company to build their own infrastructure in the U.S. and do it relatively cost effective?

prawn 4y ago
Obviously fairly hard. Suspect the "cost effective" bit is a big part of it.
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  I actually think the scale is the issue. It is just SO many phones and then subsequently, SO many parts. Without dropping any velocity in their ability to ship phones rebuilding a massive setup like what they have access to in China is not even limited by the money (probably by the technical know how)
  - gowings97 4y ago
    Automotive bill of materials are far more extensive and requirement heavy (physical space/warehousing, subassembly integration and part sequencing, double checking firmware/electronic systems as the vehicle comes down the line) compared to consumer electronics. Yes, TSMC 4nm is more complex from an electronics standpoint. But from a supply chain process standpoint, automotive is way more complex. All of the best consumer electronic manufacturing sequencing and tooling is in China though, hence the problem we have today. Tim Cook is a supply chain guy though, so I'm curious how he will approach and solve this problem.
shagie 4y ago
What would it take to build a city that mirrors the auto manufacturing capabilities of Detroit in its classic car period? Note that this isn't Ford, or GM that did it.. but rather Ford and GM and hundreds of smaller companies that supplied the raw materials to a company to make the parts that were used by companies that supplied the parts to the auto makers. And so, yes, you could - but its not something that one company can do - or for that mater even has the competency to do for the same reason that Ford doesn't run steel mills.

yrgulation 4y ago

Hopefully they will move manufacturing to europe and north america. Relying on dictatorships or corrupt countries doesnt help much on the long term.

cokeandpepsi 4y ago
India and Vietnam I think
- sheeshkebab 4y ago
  One is another communist regime and the other has issues with even basic electricity and running water.
  - throwaway12390 4y ago
    What's powering their IT infra a nd trains then?
    - TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
      British infrastructure
      - cocoland2 4y ago
        Source ?
  - cocoland2 4y ago
    In god we trust, Others bring data - Deming. Unless you are living under a rock, here are some dashboards you will find interesting https://cea.nic.in/dashboard/?lang=en https://cea.nic.in/dashboard/?lang=en https://npp.gov.in/dashBoard/cp-map-dashboard https://npp.gov.in/dashBoard/cp-map-dashboard and water https://ejalshakti.gov.in/jjmreport/JJMIndia.aspx https://ejalshakti.gov.in/jjmreport/JJMIndia.aspx No place is perfect unless you are living in Utopian LaLa land or one has drunk too much KoolAid. There are problems which are being addressed by state / central governments. In my home state of Kerala, there is plenty of Water and decent Hydel plants for power.So even the argument that you place is only tangentially accurate.

bombcar 4y ago

Strange, the carrier versions are showing as in stock at retailers (Best Buy near here) but the unlocked is unavailable. Strange.

hindsightbias 4y ago

Cook should be sacked. After a President openly hostile to trade with China, Covid and a crazy Zero Covid policy, now he’ll throw up his hands and say “who could have known?” With a $100B in cash sloshing around overseas, he’s had 6 years to be a genius.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

aaron695 4y ago

mahirsaid 4y ago

"Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it." Sure maybe at one time, perhaps early 2000's. Apple you can thank samsung for all the success you've had over the years. lets be frank!

sytelus 4y ago

What is the real status of covid in China? Is this just political thing or is it new strain? Are hospitals there overloaded? Government working off of the data? For rest of the world, covid seems to be just history.

Tempest1981 4y ago
> For rest of the world, covid seems to be just history. Is that really true? Or do you mean endemic? I guess fewer people I know are dying...

DrWorldwide 4y ago

188 comments in and no mention of Peter Zeihan?

panda_2134 4y ago

Foxcoon has been modern slavery for long[1], in case anyone doesn't know. Workers are suffering from sexual harrasment as well as poor working conditions. It seems like that someone assumed this started only after the covid-zero thing, but it's actually not. (though this has definitely made the workers' lives worse) That's how the "advantage of low labor cost" works. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn_suicides

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

can16358p 4y ago

Serious question: is COVID-19 still a thing? From wherever on Earth and whoever I see, life is completely back to normal though I have no friends in China. Is COVID still impacting work in China?

bdcravens 4y ago
China has far more restrictions than others when there are outbreaks of cases. https://www.politico.eu/article/china-maintain-zero-covid-policy/ https://www.politico.eu/article/china-maintain-zero-covid-po...
thepasswordis 4y ago
You are commenting on a press release where apple is saying that covid19 is impacting the factories where their iPhones are made. Yes. Covid is still impacting work in China.
- can16358p 4y ago
thatguy0900 4y ago
China is still trying to aggressively maintain a zero covid policy
- arcticfox 4y ago
  This is kind of fascinating. I’m not a Covid denier or anything along those lines, but a zero covid policy at this point (widely available vaccinations, clear endemic status) just seems like a crazy policy. Like maybe the craziest thing I’ve heard of from modern China
  - piggybox 4y ago
    Yes it's crazy, to say the least
  - 4y ago

mensetmanusman 4y ago

I wonder if China knows that Covid can be dormant in animals and is never going away.

coolspot 4y ago
The fact that they are still insisting on zero-covid policy is weird and kinda sus.

ck2 4y ago

As someone who doesn't follow phones at all it's just so weird to me to see it up to 14 already. I think I have a few 4s from years ago someone threw out, I guess useless now and should be discarded before battery burns apartment down, imagine how many millions of other dead devices out there. Are they going to just keep rolling, someday "iphone 37" like firefox/chrome versions? Meanwhile still on same i5 PC build from 2012

sdze 4y ago
every year a new one. Does that surprise you?

eddsh1994 4y ago

I went to buy an iPhone 14 Pro yesterday in the Bay Area from the local Apple Stores and the wait time is a month everywhere around here.

dawnerd 4y ago

I mean, bestbuy has had plenty in stock around here so demand I’d say hasn’t been all that high. I thought about upgrading from the 13 pro before realizing how dumb that’d be.

ritcgab 4y ago

The so called "zero-covid policy" in China has already failed, in practice, though the party would never admit their failure. Now they identify thousands of new cases daily in almost all states. A lot of tragedies happened during massive, brutal lockdown across the whole country. People are not getting paid, facing mental health difficulties, even food shortages when they are forced to stay at home. No COVID deaths, but a lot deceased. Chinese state media will not cover these. It's somewhat saddening that people get to know all these only when Apple cannot supply enough iPhones.

propogandist 4y ago
most of the coverage is meant to drive hysteria about the looming iPhone shortage, there’s little care for the covid situation on the ground in China contributing to the problem. Apple stories get clicks, but there will be virtually no research on how China’s zero covid policy is the root cause, as it will be deemed “negative sentiment” which will get less CPM, or their content may even get demonetized. Modern “tech news” is a joke.
nnx 4y ago
90% of which are asymptomatic as of today (569 symptomatic over 5643 cases). And percentage is most likely under-estimated as they're more likely to miss more asymptomatic cases than symptomatic cases.

Tempest1981 4y ago

So 2 years after inventing excellent COVID vaccines, why aren't they available world-wide? (Honest question) Cost? Logistics? Patents? Willpower?

kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Some world leaders have fragile egos and can't bear to admit the American vaccines worked out fine.