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They aren't secretive, but they are hungry, and they are foolish. I'd venture the shanzhai chinese geeks fiddling relentlessly with hardware in Guangzhou are m

by gbog 13y ago

They aren't secretive, but they are hungry, and they are foolish. I'd venture the shanzhai chinese geeks fiddling relentlessly with hardware in Guangzhou are much closer to Steve Jobs' ideal than the average Apple Store clients. On one side you have rich kids who can afford a $30 dongle, knowing perfectly (after reading this article) that they are giving away $25 to a marketing department and that they are bowing to their own voodooish cargo cult. These guys are simply afraid of the remote possibility of having to spend 5 mn of their precious time checking a connection, and maybe too, something really catastrophic! lose ONE of their 10.000 instagram pizza photos because of a subpar component in their setup. On the other side you have these ugly hackers who are photocopying hardware components for 1 year old companies named Yunxingdianziguangzhoujituanyouxiangongsi, and their logo is ugly, and these guys are Chinese! I know them: they are hungry, not only hungry for money, but also hungry for knowledge, recognition, they are curious about the world, about the future, and they have no fear for bad taste: a pink iPhone clone with teddy bear shape? check!

WoodenChair 13y ago
It's a poor analogy for many reasons, not the least of which is to SJ: - Taste mattered a great deal - he definitely did have a "fear for bad taste" - Things being perfect and working perfectly out of the box without "5 mn of their precious time checking a connection" mattered a great deal - User experience mattered more than price - SJ wasn't interested in commodities Also I don't know why you would refer to the guys as "ugly" and why you exclaim that "and these guys are Chinese!" There's something subtly racial about your view in the whole post. Would it be any less of an exclamation if they were Peruvian?
- gbog 13y ago
  Wow, you got it wrong: it must be my mistake, I was a bit too assuming on the context. - For me being "foolish", in the mouth of Steve Jobs, means not caring at all about what other people will say or think. I see a link with the peculiar "bad taste" of shanzhai: they do not care what "good taste" people think of pink Teddy bear shaped phones. - I am living in China since 10 years, my wife is Chinese, my kids are half-Chinese, all my colleagues and many of my friends are Chinese. My comment was not "subtly racial", it was (trying to be) ironically emphasising the fact that in some people's disdain of shanzhai cheap gadgets, there is also the fact that those who build them are Chinese. Just like 30 years ago saying a car was Japanese meant something cheap, copied, second-grade, right now the same applies to Chinese manufacturing. And, in fact, often justifiably so! There are three kind of products quality made in China: 1) The very cheap that is sold in developping countries (have you ever seen those electric plugs with a single hair of copper inside for conductivity? cost nothing, burns after 10mn use). 2) The high quality sold to developed countries with Western brands. E.g. the Apple usb dongle in question here. 3) The medium quality sold internally and in developed countries as cheap alternatives to 2) above. By the way, this 3) class is the most interesting because as the Chinese middle class raise its income level, it will have to become better and better, until a Chinese brand will do better than what is imitated currently (just as Japan did with cars, hifi, etc.). I hear often that Chinese people cannot produce quality because of some of their "cultural atavism", and I think this is very wrong. In the past, they were manufacturing the best of breed in many domains, and in all their region of influence having "北京" (Beijing) stamped on goods was enough to triple its price.

by gbog 13y ago

WoodenChair 13y ago

It's a poor analogy for many reasons, not the least of which is to SJ: - Taste mattered a great deal - he definitely did have a "fear for bad taste" - Things being perfect and working perfectly out of the box without "5 mn of their precious time checking a connection" mattered a great deal - User experience mattered more than price - SJ wasn't interested in commodities Also I don't know why you would refer to the guys as "ugly" and why you exclaim that "and these guys are Chinese!" There's something subtly racial about your view in the whole post. Would it be any less of an exclamation if they were Peruvian?

gbog 13y ago
Wow, you got it wrong: it must be my mistake, I was a bit too assuming on the context. - For me being "foolish", in the mouth of Steve Jobs, means not caring at all about what other people will say or think. I see a link with the peculiar "bad taste" of shanzhai: they do not care what "good taste" people think of pink Teddy bear shaped phones. - I am living in China since 10 years, my wife is Chinese, my kids are half-Chinese, all my colleagues and many of my friends are Chinese. My comment was not "subtly racial", it was (trying to be) ironically emphasising the fact that in some people's disdain of shanzhai cheap gadgets, there is also the fact that those who build them are Chinese. Just like 30 years ago saying a car was Japanese meant something cheap, copied, second-grade, right now the same applies to Chinese manufacturing. And, in fact, often justifiably so! There are three kind of products quality made in China: 1) The very cheap that is sold in developping countries (have you ever seen those electric plugs with a single hair of copper inside for conductivity? cost nothing, burns after 10mn use). 2) The high quality sold to developed countries with Western brands. E.g. the Apple usb dongle in question here. 3) The medium quality sold internally and in developed countries as cheap alternatives to 2) above. By the way, this 3) class is the most interesting because as the Chinese middle class raise its income level, it will have to become better and better, until a Chinese brand will do better than what is imitated currently (just as Japan did with cars, hifi, etc.). I hear often that Chinese people cannot produce quality because of some of their "cultural atavism", and I think this is very wrong. In the past, they were manufacturing the best of breed in many domains, and in all their region of influence having "北京" (Beijing) stamped on goods was enough to triple its price.