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Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

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Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#551

Post by blackoil »

tooltalk wrote: post #79
arcticbull wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and it's likely that China is the only place they could actually manufacture their products. China isn't the cheapest place to make things anymore, and it hasn't been in a long time - that's been supplanted by Bangladesh, Vietnam, etc. It's even within spitting distance to manufacture in the US. Companies manufacture complex electronics products in China because everyone manufactures there. The skills are there,…

Samsung is the largest smartphone-maker in the world (and has been for much of past 10+ years). They ceased all their phone-making operation in China and left for Vietnam a couple of years ago (also most recently closed their last display, shipbuilding operation) -- along with 200+ suppliers, plus 20+ new domestic suppliers created there along the way. Now, most of Samsung phones are made in Vietnam and their output…

Foxconn has large presence in India and Vietnam.

Vietnam's plus are its cheap labour and proximity/good relations with China. As labour is growing costly in China, assembling of things is moving to Vietnam. Many components are still manufactured in China and exported to Vietnam.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#552

Post by tooltalk »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #474
tooltalk wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung is the largest smartphone-maker in the world (and has been for much of past 10+ years). They ceased all their phone-making operation in China and left for Vietnam a couple of years ago (also most recently closed their last display, shipbuilding operation) -- along with 200+ suppliers, plus 20+ new domestic suppliers created there along the way. Now, most of Samsung phones are made in Vietnam and their output…

> I just don't buy the argument that China as the world's electronic supply-chain can't be replaced. No one is really interested in taking the hit in creating in country supply chains for all of the low value stuff. Vietnam is too small to support that, SE Asia as a whole might work (or maybe India), but both are still politically and economically unstable to do much in this area yet. China has scale and stability. I…

>> China has scale and stability.

??? Vietnam has nearly twice South Korea's population (and less than Japan's) and of course, it also has scale, as South Korean businesses in Vietnam have shown repeatedly.

To boot, Vietnam has no immediate internal political threats (eg, compared against China's separatist movements by ethnic minorities in Tibet, Uigher, Inner Mongolia) or no potential regional geopolitical/territorial conflicts with neighbors (eg, Phillippines, Japan, India, etc), other than China. And, most importantly, despite having fought a war half-century ago, America's diplomatic and trade relationship with Vietnam is far less hostile -- it's in fact quite amicable -- than with China.

>> ... but the supply chains will remain plumbed through China for a while.

That's inevitable only b/c of Apple's political clout and relentless lobbying here in the US. I was hoping, while I was no fan of Trump, Trump's trade policy would at least partly address this, but oh boy, how quickly he caved in before Apple and dished out tariff exemptions.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#553

Post by leptoniscool »

ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #50

Daring Fireball [1] has another passage from the article which is illuminating with regards to any promises Apple makes about how it will resist governmental pressure to compromise its products, vis-à-vis Apple's CSAM scanning tool. "Sometime in 2014 or early 2015, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told members of the Apple Maps team to make the Diaoyu Islands, the objects of a long-running territorial di…

During the height of the Cold War, the US required maps and textbooks to show only portions of the USSR and never show US and USSR next to each other.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#554

Post by skinkestek »

AYBABTME wrote: post #452
chrononaut wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we see some of these behaviors within China maps, outside China? > .. the obfuscated coordinate system for geo-aligning maps .. https://goo.gl/maps/Qr2QRB7aB2jrg9Rk7 Roads are not aligned to the satellite imagery for example.

The same exists elsewhere, in South Korea that I know of. Bridges and dams disappear or move on maps, Google Maps doesn't have high res sat pictures, etc. Just to say, it's not great IMO but not only totalitarian states have a need for such obfuscation; healthy democracies too.

> Bridges and dams disappear or move on maps, Google Maps doesn't have high res sat pictures, etc.

Not defending what I see as childish China the slightest, but one should be aware that even the best democracies don't necessarily publish entirely correct maps, and it is on purpose ;-)

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#555

Post by blackoil »

echelon wrote: post #35
gonehome wrote: post #14

Apple’s approach to China remains the most disappointing (and hypocritical) thing about the company. When privacy really matters for the users that need it most, Apple sells them out for continued access to the Chinese market. https://stratechery.com/2021/the-information-on-apple-in-chi...

A Reddit comment [1] on this same article really hit home, > Mr. Cook has watched China's middle class grow to four hundred million while watching the domestic middle class shrink. Like GM, which sells more cars in China than the USA, Apple knows where the market opportunities reside. America needs growth again, whether that's immigration, childbirth and childcare subsidies, or seeking to merge with other democratic…

Had USA not spent decades destabilising South/Central America, It would have been a good place to bring lot of manufacturing to.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#556

Post by cable2600 »

i_have_an_idea wrote: post #147
ethbr0 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So will any company, when threatened by China Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, Dropbox, Medium, Wikipedia, DuckDuckGo? https://en.greatfire.org/search/alexa-top-1000-domains

You are making a very good point. There's no Facebook, Google, Twitter, Snapchat etc in China. But there are WeChat, Baidu, Weibo, QQ, etc. China is more than capable to clone and/or make its own version of these companies. And these companies will do as the government says. So, I think that's an excellent example to show that tech "boycotting" China does nothing to change them. Separately, you should also keep in mi…

Which HBO's Silicon Valley parodied: https://youtu.be/Km5XQxRrQvw

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#557

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tooltalk wrote: post #552
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just don't buy the argument that China as the world's electronic supply-chain can't be replaced. No one is really interested in taking the hit in creating in country supply chains for all of the low value stuff. Vietnam is too small to support that, SE Asia as a whole might work (or maybe India), but both are still politically and economically unstable to do much in this area yet. China has scale and stability. I…

>> China has scale and stability. ??? Vietnam has nearly twice South Korea's population (and less than Japan's) and of course, it also has scale, as South Korean businesses in Vietnam have shown repeatedly. To boot, Vietnam has no immediate internal political threats (eg, compared against China's separatist movements by ethnic minorities in Tibet, Uigher, Inner Mongolia) or no potential regional geopolitical/territor…

Vietnam has 90 million people. South Korea doesn’t have much scale, Japan has a bit, the numbers only start making sense if we could develop a supply chain throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, maybe using talent and capital from Singapore. Or India and South Asia, of course, if things were more stable. But alas, stability is important. And none of those regions are very stable.

> That's only inevitable b/c of Apple's political clout and relentless lobbying in here.

Apple is like .1% of the political clout and lobbying being brought to bear. Their only notability in this is that they are the only FAANG that has significant business in China.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#558

Post by systemvoltage »

tablespoon wrote: post #549
systemvoltage wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's despicable is that none of the mainstream media (WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox, etc.) are covering this story. The American people atleast deserve to be informed. How is this not the biggest blow to Apple in terms of its relationship with China? For those who want to go to source: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine... Does anyone have subscription? Would love to read Arch…

> What's despicable is that none of the mainstream media (WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo, Boston Globe, CNN, Fox, etc.) are covering this story. The American people atleast deserve to be informed. That's not true. IMHO, this is part of a larger story (Apple's obsequious compromises with China), and the NY Times has previously reported on other parts: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-ce... . It's seems Th…

I honestly feel like NYTimes is not going to cover it for political reasons. I am happy to be convinced otherwise.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#559

Post by anovikov »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #547
anovikov wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about claims (say display Crimea as part of Russia within Russia and as Ukraine elsewhere), but distorting SIZES of the places on maps according to someone's political preference is well... plain out ridiculous, laughable. It displays how messed up China is more than anything else. It's seriously hard to expect the place that does things like that, as a next superpower. You can't build a superpower on silly…

It's a mistake to treat "China" as one coherent entity with a single unified purpose, which chooses to prioritize the mapping issue front-of-mind. China has over a billion people. That one middle manager in the maps department is personally offended by territory appearing smaller, has zero relation to the rest of the country and shouldn't affect your opinion. Many bureaucrats in the USA draw stupid lines in sand that…

Because China is a dictatorship, it is OK to be seen as a single coherent entity, in my opinion.

Re: Apple CEO Tim Cook 'secretly' signed $275B deal with China in 2016

#560

Post by redis_mlc »

MichaelBurge wrote: post #547
anovikov wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing about claims (say display Crimea as part of Russia within Russia and as Ukraine elsewhere), but distorting SIZES of the places on maps according to someone's political preference is well... plain out ridiculous, laughable. It displays how messed up China is more than anything else. It's seriously hard to expect the place that does things like that, as a next superpower. You can't build a superpower on silly…

It's a mistake to treat "China" as one coherent entity with a single unified purpose, which chooses to prioritize the mapping issue front-of-mind. China has over a billion people. That one middle manager in the maps department is personally offended by territory appearing smaller, has zero relation to the rest of the country and shouldn't affect your opinion. Many bureaucrats in the USA draw stupid lines in sand that…

> That one middle manager in the maps department is personally offended by territory appearing smaller, has zero relation to the rest of the country and shouldn't affect your opinion.

That's not how the CCP works.

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