10 ms·

Apple is a generally more well run, mature, patient, and scrupulous company than most others.

NeverFade 4y ago
You make them sound like saints. They are not, and they have a history of being less scrupulous than some of these other companies. Here's just a small example of what they're capable of when their obsession for secrecy and control makes them flex their corporate muscle: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/ind... And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persistent labor-abuse issues[0], the Chinese government boosting iPhone production with child slave labor, and all the many other scandals they've been involved with. I really have no idea how anyone would get the notion that they are any better than the rest of the pack. Perhaps their upbeat pristine presentations, live from Cupertino. They should broadcast one from their sweatshops in Shenzhen. Some of the highschool kids they pressed into 11 hour shifts to assemble their iPhones could sing the praise of Tim Cook: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/apple-iphone-x-reportedly-assembled-by-illegal-student-labor.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/apple-iphone-x-reportedly-as... [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn... EDIT: clarified some comments and added better sources.
- desro 4y ago
  Curious about where you source any Fair Trade silicon you might be using?
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Thousand metric tons a year Russia 580 Brazil 390 Norway 350 United States 310 France 120 Iceland 110 Malaysia 80 Bhutan 70 Kazakhstan 67 India 60 Spain 58 Canada
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    I'm not pretending Apple is worse than the rest of the industry. I'm refuting GP's blanket statement that they are much better.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China where employees kill themselves an awful lot, the Chinese government boosting iPhone production with child slave labor, and all the many other scandals they've been involved with. This tired argument again. Apple has always led the industry in their auditing of their supply chain and taking proactive steps to address illegal and unethical behaviour. There will always be mistakes but it's how you deal with them that counts. If you're going to call Foxconn a sweatshop then arguably Amazon, Tesla etc should be called them as well.
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    > Apple has always led the industry in their auditing of their supply chain and taking proactive steps to address illegal and unethical behaviour. Based on what data? The workers staged massive protests just a couple of months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in-china-rocked-by-fresh-worker-unrest.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in... Foxconn has repeatedly had issues with labor abuse: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn... 5 years ago it was the massive child-slave-labor scandal, which I suppose is what you refer to as "mistakes happen". Apple chose to continue to use Foxconn for production, even though they had similar scandals before and after the child-slave-labor one, until our present day. That's not a "mistake". Apple is deliberately choosing to use a producer which has had persistent issues with labor abuse, some of which were as serious as pressing schoolchildren into 11 hour shifts of slave labor. Let's face reality here: Apple is using Foxconn because they produce their products quickly and cheaply. They don't care about the abuse as long as it makes more cheap gadgets with fat profit margins. They aren't saints, nor better than other companies in their position. > If you're going to call Foxconn a sweatshop then arguably Amazon, Tesla etc should be called them as well. I never said Apple is worse than the rest of the industry. I refuted the notion that they are far better, and the overall halo of sainthood hung over them in this thread.
- petesergeant 4y ago
  > where employees kill themselves an awful lot Is that true? Last I read[0] "the suicide rate was comparable to its host country’s". 0: 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...
  - licebmi__at__ 4y ago
    I have no idea of the data, but is suicide evenly distributed on society? I mean, it’s mostly a topic, but I expect more suicide from unemployed, disabled or old people, not employed adults.
  - NeverFade 4y ago
    I clarified the comment, since suicide rates aren't the only factor by which to judge or point out the issues at Foxconn. Foxconn had a long list of labor abuse[0], and apparently they still do given large-scale worker protests last November[1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in-china-rocked-by-fresh-worker-unrest.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in...
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persistent labor-abuse issues[0] Ah yes. Foxconn. The company that only produces products for Apple. And Amazon And Google And Sony And Google And Microsoft And Intel And Fiat Chrysler And ... And yet, only Apple is held accountable, and only Apple publishes regular audit reports on worker conditions etc.
daevout 4y ago
I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple, but I'm glad to see all that unfairly amassed wealth benefitting even the lowest rungs of its corporate hierarchy through the unusual benefit of not being terminated at the drop of a hat. Bravo!
- sircastor 4y ago
  > I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple In a world where Amazon, Meta, Google, Wal-Mart, Time-Warner, Comcast, etc exist, you think Apple is the most anti-competitive?
  - testfrequency 4y ago
    Maybe ask the Vape companies or any developers who had their apps cloned what they think?
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      Are vape companies competing with Apple?
  - arthurcolle 4y ago
    Yes, I am not OP but obviously they are more anti-competitive if ONLY for their killing off support for progressive web apps over the last 3 or 17 releases of iOS/Safari
    - culi 4y ago
      I'm a big fan of PWAs, but this really seems like small fries compared to something like Walmart which has an internal planned economy many times larger than the Soviet Union ever achieved. If you sell your product in Walmart they basically own everything about it. They deem how you make your product, the supply chain, the prices you charge, everything And they use this incredibly granular level of control to run out any possible competition
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Gigachad 4y ago
Apple is the only one that doesn’t seem to start up hundreds of obviously useless projects. Google will hire thousands to work on an obviously doomed streaming service, to build a new OS, and so many other obviously bad ideas and then just fire them all later. Vanishingly few Apple products seem to be discontinued. Usually after a long life like the iPod.
- crummy 4y ago
  Don't they have an Apple Car? Like a literal car they were working on making? I guess that's the exception though. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/apple-is-allegedly-working-on-a-passenger-car-breakthrough-battery-tech/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/apple-is-allegedly-work...
  - M4v3R 4y ago
    They do tons of R&D work and sometimes they’re working silently for many years before they release an actual product. This was the case with iPhone for example.
  - sebzim4500 4y ago
    Is that useless? Or has it just not been released yet?
  - manuelabeledo 4y ago
    Or Airpower. I would say that their push for smart speakers has also yielded mediocre results, at best. Let's see what will happen with their AR headset, as they have been working on AR since at least 2017 [0]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/the-full-saga-of-apples-troubled-mixed-reality-headset-has-been-revealed/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/the-full-saga-of-app...
- Centigonal 4y ago
  You wouldn't know about Apple's failed projects. Like other big tech companies, Apple has teams working on R&D and new products. Unlike the other big tech companies, the bar for publicly releasing a new product is extremely high at Apple, and unreleased products are kept secret.
gsatic 4y ago
Yup its just that they have become the largest seller of status signalling veblan goods in history, in times where inequality is at its highest. It would be nice instead, if they used their cash hoard to stop wasting time upgrading the iphone with more superficial shit. Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. And kill the toxic advertising supported attention economy that has caused chaos all over the world. Now its just another group of unimaginative optimizing corporate robots, with no actual compass heading beyond hoarding cash.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  >Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. 60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down?
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    I have an iPhone, but I'm not willing to spend $1300 on one. I bought my last one refurbished for about $250, an iPhone 7 Plus, about three years ago, and I still have no issues with it. And Boost Mobile (where I got mine) is currently advertising a deal for an iPhone 8 for $80, or an iPhone 11 for $350. Not all of that 60% are paying the full price for a brand new iPhone, probably not even the vast majority of them. iPhones tend to last (and continue to receive updates -- I'm still getting updates on mine) for quite a while. That being said, I agree with you that they don't need to bring the price down. And I disagree with the parent, because there's already ways to get (older) iPhones pretty cheap, almost as cheap as they were calling for.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    >60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down? Source? This comment sounds hyperbolic when many very capable iPhones versions are available for $700+ and 90% of people would not know the difference between a $700 and $1,300 iPhone. In my family, we have an iPhone 6, X, XS, XR and 2020 SE still working.
sangnoir 4y ago
The answer is rather pedestrian: Apple is mostly a hardware company. Apple isn't primarily in e-commerce, streaming or online ads and did not get as big a boost from millions of people suddenly trapped in their homes as other tech companies. Apple was never tempted to overhire, I suspect Apple had the opposite pressure during lockdowns due to its many retail workers seeing fewer customers, while Amazon's warehouses were brisk.
- devsatish 4y ago
  This is the right take ! The pandemic hiring overall was all mostly ‘E-commerce’ driven.
  - berniedurfee 4y ago
    Agreed as well. This seems like an odd metric to use to compare a bunch of tech companies with very different market dynamics. The Venn diagram between these companies would show some overlap, but not much.
blippage 4y ago
I've thought about this, and I agree, and I'm no lover of any of the FAANGs. It makes Apple look like they know what they're doing, whilst the others are just following others and going in and out with the tide. I think it all boils down to Tim Cook. Tim always seemed analytical and strategic in his thinking, and Apple's behaviour in this matter only serves to underscore that. As an operational guy, I think Tim is the best that any company has ever seen.

You make them sound like saints. They are not, and they have a history of being less scrupulous than some of these other companies. Here's just a small example of what they're capable of when their obsession for secrecy and control makes them flex their corporate muscle: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/07/iphone.5.probe/ind... And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persistent labor-abuse issues[0], the Chinese government boosting iPhone production with child slave labor, and all the many other scandals they've been involved with. I really have no idea how anyone would get the notion that they are any better than the rest of the pack. Perhaps their upbeat pristine presentations, live from Cupertino. They should broadcast one from their sweatshops in Shenzhen. Some of the highschool kids they pressed into 11 hour shifts to assemble their iPhones could sing the praise of Tim Cook: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/apple-iphone-x-reportedly-assembled-by-illegal-student-labor.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/apple-iphone-x-reportedly-as... [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn... EDIT: clarified some comments and added better sources.

desro 4y ago
Curious about where you source any Fair Trade silicon you might be using?
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Thousand metric tons a year Russia 580 Brazil 390 Norway 350 United States 310 France 120 Iceland 110 Malaysia 80 Bhutan 70 Kazakhstan 67 India 60 Spain 58 Canada
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- NeverFade 4y ago
  I'm not pretending Apple is worse than the rest of the industry. I'm refuting GP's blanket statement that they are much better.
threeseed 4y ago
> And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China where employees kill themselves an awful lot, the Chinese government boosting iPhone production with child slave labor, and all the many other scandals they've been involved with. This tired argument again. Apple has always led the industry in their auditing of their supply chain and taking proactive steps to address illegal and unethical behaviour. There will always be mistakes but it's how you deal with them that counts. If you're going to call Foxconn a sweatshop then arguably Amazon, Tesla etc should be called them as well.
- NeverFade 4y ago
  > Apple has always led the industry in their auditing of their supply chain and taking proactive steps to address illegal and unethical behaviour. Based on what data? The workers staged massive protests just a couple of months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in-china-rocked-by-fresh-worker-unrest.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in... Foxconn has repeatedly had issues with labor abuse: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn... 5 years ago it was the massive child-slave-labor scandal, which I suppose is what you refer to as "mistakes happen". Apple chose to continue to use Foxconn for production, even though they had similar scandals before and after the child-slave-labor one, until our present day. That's not a "mistake". Apple is deliberately choosing to use a producer which has had persistent issues with labor abuse, some of which were as serious as pressing schoolchildren into 11 hour shifts of slave labor. Let's face reality here: Apple is using Foxconn because they produce their products quickly and cheaply. They don't care about the abuse as long as it makes more cheap gadgets with fat profit margins. They aren't saints, nor better than other companies in their position. > If you're going to call Foxconn a sweatshop then arguably Amazon, Tesla etc should be called them as well. I never said Apple is worse than the rest of the industry. I refuted the notion that they are far better, and the overall halo of sainthood hung over them in this thread.
petesergeant 4y ago
> where employees kill themselves an awful lot Is that true? Last I read[0] "the suicide rate was comparable to its host country’s". 0: 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...
- licebmi__at__ 4y ago
  I have no idea of the data, but is suicide evenly distributed on society? I mean, it’s mostly a topic, but I expect more suicide from unemployed, disabled or old people, not employed adults.
- NeverFade 4y ago
  I clarified the comment, since suicide rates aren't the only factor by which to judge or point out the issues at Foxconn. Foxconn had a long list of labor abuse[0], and apparently they still do given large-scale worker protests last November[1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in-china-rocked-by-fresh-worker-unrest.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/23/huge-foxconn-iphone-plant-in...
dmitriid 4y ago
> And we didn't even talk about their sweatshops in China which has always had persistent labor-abuse issues[0] Ah yes. Foxconn. The company that only produces products for Apple. And Amazon And Google And Sony And Google And Microsoft And Intel And Fiat Chrysler And ... And yet, only Apple is held accountable, and only Apple publishes regular audit reports on worker conditions etc.

daevout 4y ago

I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple, but I'm glad to see all that unfairly amassed wealth benefitting even the lowest rungs of its corporate hierarchy through the unusual benefit of not being terminated at the drop of a hat. Bravo!

sircastor 4y ago
> I can't think of a company more blatantly engaged in anti-competitive practices than Apple In a world where Amazon, Meta, Google, Wal-Mart, Time-Warner, Comcast, etc exist, you think Apple is the most anti-competitive?
- testfrequency 4y ago
  Maybe ask the Vape companies or any developers who had their apps cloned what they think?
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    Are vape companies competing with Apple?
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  Yes, I am not OP but obviously they are more anti-competitive if ONLY for their killing off support for progressive web apps over the last 3 or 17 releases of iOS/Safari
  - culi 4y ago
    I'm a big fan of PWAs, but this really seems like small fries compared to something like Walmart which has an internal planned economy many times larger than the Soviet Union ever achieved. If you sell your product in Walmart they basically own everything about it. They deem how you make your product, the supply chain, the prices you charge, everything And they use this incredibly granular level of control to run out any possible competition

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Gigachad 4y ago

Apple is the only one that doesn’t seem to start up hundreds of obviously useless projects. Google will hire thousands to work on an obviously doomed streaming service, to build a new OS, and so many other obviously bad ideas and then just fire them all later. Vanishingly few Apple products seem to be discontinued. Usually after a long life like the iPod.

crummy 4y ago
Don't they have an Apple Car? Like a literal car they were working on making? I guess that's the exception though. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/apple-is-allegedly-working-on-a-passenger-car-breakthrough-battery-tech/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/apple-is-allegedly-work...
- M4v3R 4y ago
  They do tons of R&D work and sometimes they’re working silently for many years before they release an actual product. This was the case with iPhone for example.
- sebzim4500 4y ago
  Is that useless? Or has it just not been released yet?
- manuelabeledo 4y ago
  Or Airpower. I would say that their push for smart speakers has also yielded mediocre results, at best. Let's see what will happen with their AR headset, as they have been working on AR since at least 2017 [0]. [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/the-full-saga-of-apples-troubled-mixed-reality-headset-has-been-revealed/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/the-full-saga-of-app...
Centigonal 4y ago
You wouldn't know about Apple's failed projects. Like other big tech companies, Apple has teams working on R&D and new products. Unlike the other big tech companies, the bar for publicly releasing a new product is extremely high at Apple, and unreleased products are kept secret.

gsatic 4y ago

Yup its just that they have become the largest seller of status signalling veblan goods in history, in times where inequality is at its highest. It would be nice instead, if they used their cash hoard to stop wasting time upgrading the iphone with more superficial shit. Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. And kill the toxic advertising supported attention economy that has caused chaos all over the world. Now its just another group of unimaginative optimizing corporate robots, with no actual compass heading beyond hoarding cash.

midoridensha 4y ago
>Bring prices of the phones down to 50 bucks. Put it in the hands of everyone. 60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down?
- cableshaft 4y ago
  I have an iPhone, but I'm not willing to spend $1300 on one. I bought my last one refurbished for about $250, an iPhone 7 Plus, about three years ago, and I still have no issues with it. And Boost Mobile (where I got mine) is currently advertising a deal for an iPhone 8 for $80, or an iPhone 11 for $350. Not all of that 60% are paying the full price for a brand new iPhone, probably not even the vast majority of them. iPhones tend to last (and continue to receive updates -- I'm still getting updates on mine) for quite a while. That being said, I agree with you that they don't need to bring the price down. And I disagree with the parent, because there's already ways to get (older) iPhones pretty cheap, almost as cheap as they were calling for.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  >60% of Americans already have them, and are perfectly happy to spend $1300 on them every few years, even if it means not paying rent or having to starve themselves. Why would they want to bring the price down? Source? This comment sounds hyperbolic when many very capable iPhones versions are available for $700+ and 90% of people would not know the difference between a $700 and $1,300 iPhone. In my family, we have an iPhone 6, X, XS, XR and 2020 SE still working.

sangnoir 4y ago

The answer is rather pedestrian: Apple is mostly a hardware company. Apple isn't primarily in e-commerce, streaming or online ads and did not get as big a boost from millions of people suddenly trapped in their homes as other tech companies. Apple was never tempted to overhire, I suspect Apple had the opposite pressure during lockdowns due to its many retail workers seeing fewer customers, while Amazon's warehouses were brisk.

devsatish 4y ago
This is the right take ! The pandemic hiring overall was all mostly ‘E-commerce’ driven.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Agreed as well. This seems like an odd metric to use to compare a bunch of tech companies with very different market dynamics. The Venn diagram between these companies would show some overlap, but not much.

blippage 4y ago

I've thought about this, and I agree, and I'm no lover of any of the FAANGs. It makes Apple look like they know what they're doing, whilst the others are just following others and going in and out with the tide. I think it all boils down to Tim Cook. Tim always seemed analytical and strategic in his thinking, and Apple's behaviour in this matter only serves to underscore that. As an operational guy, I think Tim is the best that any company has ever seen.