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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

#111

Post by dragonwriter »

TillE wrote: post #81
dragonwriter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For those saying that can't happen, think Ukraine in 2012 or 2018. Russia? Invading? Can't happen? No one paying even a little bit of attention thought “can’t” since the invasion of Georgia in 2008. In 2012 they would have thought “has no reason to at the moment”, much as they would about Belarus today; what was unexpected in 2014 was the Maidan Revolution tossing out the Russia-aligned government, to which the inv…

> No one paying even a little bit of attention thought “can’t” Maybe that's true in the abstract, but how did those in power act based on this obvious threat? Europe completely refused to even begin to diversify its natural gas sources until this year, even though that obviously should have happened after the annexation of Crimea at the very latest. They invited catastrophe by relying on Russian energy. In practice,…

> Maybe that's true in the abstract, but how did those in power act based on this obvious threat?

Again, it wasn’t an obvious threat, not because Russia lacked capacity or will but because it already controlled Ukraine via a puppet government. That changing, and very quickly from the emergence of a significant protest movement, was the unpredicted wildcard.

> Europe completely refused to even begin to diversify its natural gas sources until this year,

Baltic Pipe, a major component of the diversification effort, was identified as an EC interest in 2013, completed a feasibility study in 2016, had capacity agreements in place in 2018, and went online this September.

Infrastructure isn’t something that pops into place when you snap your fingers.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#112

Post by slaw »

alistairSH wrote: post #82
slaw wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local grocery in Seattle is hiring, $26/hour. From what I read on hackernews is like entry software engineer job in Sweden.

€32.8* > $27.77 :shrug: * Euro zone, EU is less https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/d... https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages

One is labor cost the other is wage. Two different although related metrics.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#113

Post by marcus_holmes »

michpoch wrote: post #89
rapsey wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's the salary. Now, you have employers costs, which will be much higher in socialistic countries in EU.

not so much - US employees need very expensive employer-provided health insurance. In the EU that's covered by taxes instead. I couldn't find a direct comparison (hard because it varies by state & country), but it seems to be a wash:

https://topsourceworldwide.com/international-salaries/

note that China is 40% of salary as a payroll tax, which tops the list.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#114

Post by Akronymus »

Bakary wrote: post #104
Akronymus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally go out of my way to throw at least some money at services I use a lot assuming there are one time payments in some form. Or sometimes throw money at something I pirated before. For example, I have a lot of pirated epubs of light novels, as it's more convenient. Some authors have a donation option somewhere, where I throw some money their way, if I've enjoyed the books. I absolutely get that some friction…

To be clear, I'm not trying to assign blame here. I am pretty stingy myself. My point is simply that the argument that piracy exists or stops existing for convenience's sake makes sense in an asymmetrical situation where the legal option is less convenient or conversely becomes more convenient (Spotify, Steam, early Netflix) In a symmetrical situation with all other things being equal, the guiding principle of piracy…

Oh, gotcha. It seems I didn't quite tead your previous comment correctly.

I would add the personal feeling of doing the right thing to the symmetrical case, which IMO is distinct, as it's a negative incentive (I am amoral for pirating) rather than a positive (I am gicing the creator money)

But that could be considered splitting hairs.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#115

Post by AbrahamParangi »

twawaaay wrote: post #48
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…

That's like super naive. First, you mentioned it. "It has sure been profitable". That's kinda the whole point. You get more profits, you use those profits for R&D to further distance yourself from the competition. If there is any way to reduce your risk it is building a technological edge over competition and sizeable cash reserves. Second, even if Apple faced complete stoppage in production, its situation is differe…

If China invades Taiwan, it will not be possible to do business with China or Taiwan and every company with substantial exposure to this risk should be preparing for the possibility that all resources in China are instantly "lost" or unavailable for many years.

Apple's production capacity has taken decades to build and will take years at minimum to restore. Their exposure is so immense that it would make sense for them to spend a percentage of their cash position just on lobbying to try and prevent the outbreak of war.

Their risk is obscene. They're poorly positioned because their manufacturing base is undiversified and in the case of "complete shutoff of goods from China" it will be years before they're back at capacity.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#116

Post by xadhominemx »

zapdrive wrote: post #91
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagined the storage and RAM also come from Korea. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the battery comes from China.

Last time I checked, storage and RAM are semiconductors.

Memory is of course manufactured in Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, and China (at Korean owned factories). But you get the overall point

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#117

Post by xadhominemx »

sudosysgen wrote: post #96
xadhominemx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

iPhone displays are also made in China by BOE. They were also intending to use YMTC for NAND but didn't because of political pressure.

BOE gets a token allocation, that is true.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#118

Post by nvrspyx »

traceroute66 wrote: post #99
joezydeco wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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-T…

It took almost 3 months for me to get my MBP this year. Ordered in mid-March, wasn't delivered until early June.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#119

Post by xadhominemx »

waynecochran wrote: post #26

How was Apple able to maintain its production of iPhones in China during the height of Covid-19 in China?

COVID impacted EMS production facilities in the off peak season, so suppliers were able to move production around to different sites to dodge outbreaks. But it did impact production in Spring 2020.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#120

Post by Bakary »

bzax wrote: post #83
Bakary wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the contrary, I am not making the claim that "it isn't theft because no such property has been deprived". I think whether it is theft is a nuanced question, and it can only be answered if we are clear on what we think that property is. The US constitution perhaps defines such a property - to paraphrase lightly - "securing for limited times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings". If a simple e…

I'm not interested in the details of American laws or any national law for that matter or whether it meets the definition of theft in one locale or not. The dictionary-oriented debate about legal definitions or the appeals to the 90's information sharing ethos that I both often see come up in such discussions miss the overall point.

Presumably, the typical pirate enjoys having a wide variety of artistic and/or creative material at their disposal. For that material to exist, effort must be expended at some point, and for that to happen the creator must receive some support somewhere, if only to meet their basic needs.

If the legal option is less convenient than the pirate option, there is an argument in favor of piracy there. However, the question is what would happen if both services were equally convenient. Logically, only the willingness to pay would be the determining factor. Would the majority of pirates who now complain about convenience or cite informational freedom go out of their way to donate? My intuition makes me doubt that.

On one hand you have the freeloading pirate: either someone else pays for the material in time/energy/financing, or the material simply doesn't come into existence from lack of support. On the other, we tell artists and creators that it sucks to be them and they should just learn to deal with the fact that their work happens to be hard to finance and easy to pirate. They are held to a higher standard compared to other workers whilst we take their work for granted and enjoy its existence. Can we try to alter this state of things through laws? It's an open question I suppose. But the fundamental motivation behind piracy is only high-minded if the market is asymmetrical and punishes legal buyers.

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