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How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

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Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#261
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung moved most or all of their factories from China recently.

But Korea is more export oriented than China (proportionally) and actually has expertise in these matters.

Samsung are vertically integrated, but Apple just outsource manufacturing to Foxconn, which has more expertise in the manufacturing of small electronics than Samsung.

And Foxconn have been told to bring up Apple supply lines in India.

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note 7 did explode. But that wasn't due to them cutting corners and they took it quickly off the market and it never happened to another model after they learned the design lesson where you need to give the battery cell space inside the phone to expand. And how does one battery incident from one brand prove that Apple is the best at making chargers? We're talking about different things here. "iPhones don't explode so…

An exploding phone is not a straw man argument. It’s an extremely valuable data point. Who is more likely to commit murder, a randomly selected person or a randomly selected person from those with an existing murder conviction?

By that logic ...

Apple phones had antenna problems. You probably should not buy that brand anymore.

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#263
post #237

I think it’s naive to expect that American companies like Apple that outsource everything but design and software and reap enormous profits are going to be able to do this indefinitely. China is getting better fast at doing these things too and will have tremendous advantages when it owns the entire stack. If American companies want to stay competitive in the long run they’re going to have to break their addiction to…

How is moving manufacturing to the USA going to protect against China developing expertise in design and software? Also the whole made in China panic is overblown. Most of the value in the parts in an iPhone is sourced outside China. CPUs in Taiwan (used to be Texas), flash memory in Korea, Japan and the US, camera module in Japan, Gorilla Glass in Kentucky, Japan and Korea etc, etc. Final assembly is only worth a fe…

It doesn't prevent China from developing expertise. That's inevitable. It prevents the US from falling dramatically behind.

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe that people are choosing Apple products over competitors because of anything to do with "racial equality". Especially since most of the components are manufactured in China, therefore by buying an Apple product (or basically any other piece of modern consumer electronics), you're helping to fund a racist ethnostate that's currently committing genocide. What has Apple done to promote racial e…

It's worth noting that 80% of Samsung smartphones are manufactured in Vietnam these days. Something people often forget even in today's geopolitical environment. I wish Samsung used that fact in their marketing, I think it would really play well.

I’m curious how most Americans feel about Vietnam. Yes, it’s been 50 years, but the war was a huge part of a decade of internal turmoil and a pretty significant defeat for our military.

Samsung may feel that it’s risky to trade on that name in the U.S. market.

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#265
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All with Apple's own custom designed chips, even relying on the same chip fabs as those other companies, and still managing to mostly avoid the huge shortages that those others have faced is impressive. I would not be surprised if the other companies are having shortages because of Apple taking up most of the fab capacity and support engineers.

>I would not be surprised if the other companies are having shortages because of Apple taking up most of the fab capacity and support engineers. The whole reason why Apple got the advantage and others dont is merely because Apple is willing put down payment, contract obligation and guarantee over number of years. And their volume will dictate how TSMC plan their capacity. Unless other company are willing to place som…

Toyota had a lot of trouble after the 2011 earthquake, I'm sure their decision to keep inventory is related to that

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only the executives' salaries were scrutinized this closely. If someone is telling you about sacrificing safety to save a lone cent they are insane or hopelessly inept at their job. On almost any profit margin imaginable. Sell a million of these for $88 and you have saved only $10,000 on $88 million in sales. I don't know the Kindle profit margin but I'm going to guess it is quite a bit. One court case about the c…

Charger blocks are not $88 retail let alone BOM. 1 cent in BOM translates to 5-7c in MSRP if I recall correctly. The charger itself is probably a dollar or two so you’re looking at 2-5% of the total charger cost. Maybe not a talent thing on the part of the engineer (although could be contributory) so much as getting pressure from management to cut BOM across the board without management specifying any kind of thresho…

Chargers used to be way more expensive, proprietary ones in particular.

Branded siemens, and ericsson chargers for phones were $100+ circa 2001

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#267
post #79

I worked in, and around OEM electronics since 2007. I've seen many guys like Tim Cook, most worse off ones. He squeezes suppliers, and know what he is doing. Others squeeze suppliers, and don't know what they are doing. On one of my first jobs, I've been witness to one such negotiations down to single cents, and microns of plastic for a few million units customized charger order. The order was such a whopper for a sm…

> using 2 cheaper through hole diodes in parallel instead of one a cent more expensive Just an idea, would it be possible to ask suppliers to jack up prices of THT power diodes so price follows forward current rating?

The guy came with his own prices, and said only buy passives from these companies.

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#268
post #204

From product innovation and design focused company into shareholders and politics first driven company. Closing the product ecosystem further, ignoring pro user needs, giving priority for dark pattern designs - dongle nightmare, giving access to user data to governments, censoring and creating barriers for OSS. I fully expect Apple to be the front-line operator in the new world envisioned by The Dirty Bunch Planners…

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Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#269
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only use Apple chargers in my house, even for non Apple devices. I’m not saying Apple is the only quality charger, but I have no real methodology to assess the quality of any other brand.

There was one person who wrote deep reviews of things like chargers and battery packs (I think) on Amazon, checking for standards compliance and design safety. Does anyone remember who?

Not on Amazon, but Ken Sherrif has dome some superb teardowns and analysis of Apple and non Apple chargers

http://www.righto.com/2012/05/apple-iphone-charger-teardown-...

http://www.righto.com/2016/03/counterfeit-macbook-charger-te...

Re: How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An exploding phone is not a straw man argument. It’s an extremely valuable data point. Who is more likely to commit murder, a randomly selected person or a randomly selected person from those with an existing murder conviction?

Sony, LG and many other devices didn't explode, so why aren't their chargers as safe as Apple's by the logic of your arguments so far? How does one negative battery incident from Samsung prove that Apple makes the safest chargers of ALL the major electronics manufacturers? Because so far you provided no proof or arguments to support this other than "murderer" metaphors and opinionated brand loyalty wrapped in whatabo…

I never said that Apple makes the absolute safest chargers. What I do know is that: 1) major companies like Samsung have made huge safety blunders 2) Apple has no such history at scale (ie entire product recalls) and analysts find its chargers are well engineered 3) there is no 3. I don’t have the inclination to ascertain the safety of Sony chargers, I’ll just get Apple ones and leave it at that.
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