91–100 of 167 posts
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The bulk of the parts are not coming from China. Maybe some very commodity assembly and back end steps. But the vast majority of the manufacturing value add happens in Taiwan (semiconductors) and Korea (display).
I imagined the storage and RAM also come from Korea. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the battery comes from China.
How was Apple able to maintain its production of iPhones in China during the height of Covid-19 in China?
There is the truth, as in the party wants zero covid. And there is the truth. The party wants to earn money, no matter what. So work is allowed, and ignored, just dont tell Xi and some excessive Covid measures are driven into some unimportant areas for show. The ilusion of a strong state, the same as russias military ..
Instead, they do extensive testing and quarantining to prevent outbreaks at a factory like that.
So no, it isn’t “performative zero COVID”.
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They don't seem to be minimum wage workers in China[1] and India[2]. And are in fact much closer to median than minimum. Europe's minimum wages are much higher in comparison[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_China [2] https://www.india-briefing.com/news/guide-minimum-wage-india... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
I don't understand your point. Google says Chinese manufacturing jobs pay $11k per year in 2020. This is a salary level of a south/east European factory worker.
I just checked job postings in Bulgaria(the poorest EU country) and $11k is just a bit above entry level salary for unskilled uneducated manufacturing workers. It's higher with taxes, experience, etc. and there's a lot of better options at that level.
And the truth is even if you can find cheap employees in Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Macedonia, infrastructure is not there and investment wouldn't make much sense because there's not a lot of people here that are okay with such low wages.
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In the words of Gabe Newell: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be…
I can agree to some extent with Gaben's take. In fact, Steam has been instrumental in changing my habits because it's more convenient than the alternative. However, once you have a paid service and an unpaid service with otherwise identical convenience levels, the act of paying will always introduce that much more friction. Let's say we have that donation system with online publications. Even if it's one-click, you s…
Not gonna claim that I have some moral highground for my opinions/actions though.
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> You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe You'd be well bellow the gross average everywhere in the EU, even the poorest countries. Outside of the EU you might have a shot in Albania or Moldova, but you'd lack all the infrastructure and stability you'd need for large scale manufacturing.
Average is a really bad way of measuring what people get paid though. The average pay in Poland is currently 6700PLN/month , and that's a crazy amount of money for that country. Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN, just to show you the disparity between the average and "real" pay of real people. A factory worker will make much closer to 2000PLN a month than 6700PLN.
The cynical side of me senses that what would land with India and Vietnam is labor-intensive, commoditized assembly of parts. "X% of iPhones manufactured in India" is sort of misleading if the bulk of parts are still coming from China. In some ways, I think this is going China's way. They are moving up the ladder into specialized manufacturing and away from manual labor. A smart strategy considering the demographic d…
The bulk of the parts are not coming from China. Maybe some very commodity assembly and back end steps. But the vast majority of the manufacturing value add happens in Taiwan (semiconductors) and Korea (display).
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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.
At the end of the day, the goal is to enjoy a data sequence that exists in the world. If someone thinks that they can “own” a data sequence on the internet, and labored to produce it based on that belief, that’s unfortunate.
I don't necessarily see a problem with looking at things this way, but the end result is that we have extremely powerful adtech companies, the deterioration of journalism (not that it was great to begin with), predatory business models, an attention economy, harder lives for artists, otherwise great projects killed, etc.
I'm aware that this was all inevitable, and I am pretty stingy myself when it comes to online material, but my point is that there is a cost to pay at the macro level. By definition, if you enjoy a type of material and aren't paying for it and use adblocking software, someone else is paying for it, whether it's the creator themselves or some overarching entity or some other aficionado. If you want to freeload in a way that is unsustainable if everyone does it, whilst enjoying a great diversity of material, that's unfortunate.
On a more positive note, I'd say donation systems such as Kickstarter or Patreon or Substack have come a long way
I tried looking around to get how much of the iPhones are actually made in India and couldn’t find any clear information. Apple seems to be relying on Foxconn’s Indian subsidiary, and it is described as an assembly partner, so I’d expect all the parts and chips to be coming from neighboring countries (so mostly China?) It is still a pretty big deal, but my assumption would be that aside from the trumpeting headlines,…
I tried looking around to get how much of the iPhones are actually made in India and couldn’t find any clear information. Apple seems to be relying on Foxconn’s Indian subsidiary, and it is described as an assembly partner, so I’d expect all the parts and chips to be coming from neighboring countries (so mostly China?) It is still a pretty big deal, but my assumption would be that aside from the trumpeting headlines,…
You're talking about turning a ship 10000x the size of the Titanic. A company like Apple with a CEO that built his career on logistics and production? You can be sure there's a plan. You just aren't allowed to see it.
This, this and THIS !
Do not underestimate Apple when it comes to supply chain management, they are the kings.
Don't believe me ?
Look at the COVID-induced semi-conductor shortage.
Every other manufacturer out there that relies on a very strict definition of Just-In-Time supply chain has had issues with stupid-long lead times.
Meanwhile Apple ? Most of their product range has remained on next-day delivery throughout, and custom-build stuff has only been delayed by a few weeks rather than the months and years seen at other manufacturers.
Apple work much much closer with their supply chain than the majority of other manufacturers out there.
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I dont get why companies distort words to their advantage and private citizens accept this, then do as you and post about "theft".
I'm Canadian so lets look at my governments definition:
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-322.ht...
Theft
322 (1) Every one commits theft who fraudulently and without colour of right takes, or fraudulently and without colour of right converts to his use or to the use of another person, anything, whether animate or inanimate, with intent
(a) to deprive, temporarily or absolutely, the owner of it, or a person who has a special property or interest in it, of the thing or of his property or interest in it;
(b) to pledge it or deposit it as security;
(c) to part with it under a condition with respect to its return that the person who parts with it may be unable to perform; or
(d) to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be restored in the condition in which it was at the time it was taken or converted.
Can you outline what has been "Stolen" using the above law?