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The end of Apple’s affair with China

economist.com

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Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#13

Post by gjsman-1000 »

To me, I think that Apple's reliance on China, and Taiwan, was and is an extremely risky and misguided decision. Imagine if Apple had developed a total reliance on chip factories built in, say, Ukraine, back in 2018. That's about where we are now with Taiwan and China, I believe.

It's sure been profitable - but at, I would argue, obscene risk. A few years of TSMC being unavailable would have Apple on life support. Apple would actually be worse off than many companies and the ditching Intel decision would do a total 180 into a massive mistake. Nobody cares if you have higher-performance products if you can't make them.

Edit: For those saying that can't happen, think Ukraine in 2012 or 2018. Russia? Invading? Can't happen. For Taiwan, China, invading? Can't happen.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#14

Post by rapsey »

pcurve wrote: post #7

Very insightful. It corrected a lot of incorrect information I had on this issues. 1. Labor cost is an issue but at 530 per month as of 2020 Chinese mfr labor is still relatively cheap and only twice as expensive as India. 2. Sales in China peaked in 2015-6 in terms of percentage of revenue for Apple 3. Despite the move, analysts predict 80% of Apple products will still be made in China by 2025.

> 1. Labor cost is an issue but at 530 per month as of 2020 Chinese mfr labor is still relatively cheap and only twice as expensive as India.

Only by US standards. You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe. The US is a huge outlier regarding salaries compared to practically anywhere else.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#15

Post by moreira »

chmaynard wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

I suppose all copies of all pages are theft, if you choose to look at it that way. Me saving a .html file locally, Google caching their search results, archive.org saving copies of pages.

The internet is built around this, and we've all collectively decided that it's OK.

But to your point, their robots.txt does allow this kind of access, so this argument is moot - they explicitly allow bots like archive.org's to crawl & index these pages' content.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#16

Post by rapsey »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

To me, I think that Apple's reliance on China, and Taiwan, was and is an extremely risky and misguided decision. Imagine if Apple had developed a total reliance on chip factories built in, say, Ukraine, back in 2018. That's about where we are now with Taiwan and China, I believe. It's sure been profitable - but at, I would argue, obscene risk. A few years of TSMC being unavailable would have Apple on life support. Ap…

There was no alternative at the time regarding overall production. China gave them the option to be extremely flexible and efficient. Other countries like India/Vietnam is copying the Chinese cookbook.

Ony TSMC is capable of producing the most performant chips.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#17

Post by hunterb123 »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

To me, I think that Apple's reliance on China, and Taiwan, was and is an extremely risky and misguided decision. Imagine if Apple had developed a total reliance on chip factories built in, say, Ukraine, back in 2018. That's about where we are now with Taiwan and China, I believe. It's sure been profitable - but at, I would argue, obscene risk. A few years of TSMC being unavailable would have Apple on life support. Ap…

> For those saying that can't happen, think Ukraine in 2012 or 2018. Russia? Invading? Can't happen.

They "invaded" Crimea in 2013, a lot of people expected what's currently happening.

edit: 2014 not 2013. Also Crimea overwhelmingly supported being annexed into Russia as they were severely mistreated by Ukraine.

There were very clear tensions leading up to both Crimea and Ukraine events.

But using the political events of Ukraine/Russia to support tossing Taiwan to the PRC is not something I agree with.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#18

Post by Bakary »

bzax wrote: post #10
chmaynard wrote: post #4

Quoted post unavailable.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft : "the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it" Has the rightful owner been deprived of their property? What, exactly, is the property in question?

I pirate quite a bit but what bothers me about this reasoning is that at the end of the day the goal is to not pay for other people's labor, and the reason it happens is primarily the ease of achieving this rather than the nature of the thing in question. Whether it's specifically called theft or not has significant legal implications, but is also a moot point in an ethical and aesthetic sense.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#19

Post by gjsman-1000 »

rapsey wrote: post #16
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #13

To me, I think that Apple's reliance on China, and Taiwan, was and is an extremely risky and misguided decision. Imagine if Apple had developed a total reliance on chip factories built in, say, Ukraine, back in 2018. That's about where we are now with Taiwan and China, I believe. It's sure been profitable - but at, I would argue, obscene risk. A few years of TSMC being unavailable would have Apple on life support. Ap…

There was no alternative at the time regarding overall production. China gave them the option to be extremely flexible and efficient. Other countries like India/Vietnam is copying the Chinese cookbook. Ony TSMC is capable of producing the most performant chips.

> There was no alternative at the time regarding overall production. China gave them the option to be extremely flexible and efficient. Other countries like India/Vietnam is copying the Chinese cookbook.

Yes, and no. Apple has done manufacturing in America before, a long time ago (remember the Apple II?). Also with the $200B in cash they had, they could probably build every factory down to the screw factory they needed. Also worth remembering is that iPhone bodies don't change very much (iPhone SE is like, a decade of a design and still going). $200B would buy at least 5 or more latest-gen chip plants, easily, or at least give TSMC all the capital they needed.

If I was Tim Cook, I would have absolutely looked into segmentation. American manufacturing for American customers, Chinese manufacturing for European/Asian customers, Indian manufacturing for Indian customers.

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