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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

#71

Post by hunterb123 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #65
vxNsr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally Ukraine is the breadbasket of the world, people thought Russia wouldn’t do this because of how it would mess up the food supply chain… the exact same argument being made for why China can’t invade Taiwan, too many companies rely on it.

The Russian armed forces has had a lot of actual battlefield experience invading Georgia in the ‘00s, bombing Syria in the ‘10s, not to mention its internal bloody counterinsurgency occupation in Chechnya in the ‘90s. The Chinese military hasn’t fought a real war since against Vietnam in 1979, and its navy has had no experience at all since- Korea? The end of the civil war? War is entirely more uncertain for China, a…

The PRC constantly skirmishes with India and has land grabbed many islands in the South China Sea, many already occupied.

Yes, since and during the communist takeover of China, all of its military might has generally been directed inwards at it's own people, but they are still a military force and are well organized.

I'd equate the current period of the PRC to the Soviet arms build up of the Cold War.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#72

Post by rocgf »

rapsey wrote: post #33
rocgf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is a huge outlier regarding salaries compared to practically anywhere else. That is obviously not true, unless you exclude a lot of countries from "anywhere else".

Ok name the countries.

There are too many to name, it's basically the entire developed world, which is basically NA, Western Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea.

Not saying the US is not more expensive, but it's not a "huge outlier" by any means.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#73

Post by rapsey »

nmarinov wrote: post #55
rapsey wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A factory worker is living on minimum wage. Nowhere near average.

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.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#74

Post by Apocryphon »

hunterb123 wrote: post #71
Apocryphon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian armed forces has had a lot of actual battlefield experience invading Georgia in the ‘00s, bombing Syria in the ‘10s, not to mention its internal bloody counterinsurgency occupation in Chechnya in the ‘90s. The Chinese military hasn’t fought a real war since against Vietnam in 1979, and its navy has had no experience at all since- Korea? The end of the civil war? War is entirely more uncertain for China, a…

The PRC constantly skirmishes with India and has land grabbed many islands in the South China Sea, many already occupied. Yes, since and during the communist takeover of China, all of its military might has generally been directed inwards at it's own people, but they are still a military force and are well organized. I'd equate the current period of the PRC to the Soviet arms build up of the Cold War.

Yes they have a large and considerably upgraded military, but border skirmishes and planting flags on unpopulated rocks are hardly comparable to Russia’s recent post-Cold War military experience. The point is how the PLA would fare in an actual war is far from known yet.

As far as the Soviet military went, the fallout of that buildup, and the actual condition of the Red Army, are known after the fact now.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#75

Post by joezydeco »

makeitdouble wrote: post #37

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.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#76

Post by slaw »

alistairSH wrote: post #49
rapsey wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok name the countries.

Belgium. Denmark. Sweden. Germany. All relatively competitive with US on an hourly basis.

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

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#77

Post by Apocryphon »

gambiting wrote: post #70
dontbenebby wrote: post #61

This isn't news -- Apple opened factories in a bunch of SE Asian countries IIRC, and now stands poised to play them off each other since the old model of showing up and being shocked there are human rights abuses in... not just Xinjiang. Apple's real affair, along with the rest of the tech industry, is with countries like Ireland and Austria are "neutral" in the sense that they allowed untaxed gains to flow into them…

>>who seemed to have gone full Pirates of Silicon Valley and stolen the good features from iOS .......I'm sorry, what? It seems like iOS is "stealing" features from Android every few years, they basically let Samsung and others implement something first, improve it for a couple iterations, then finally they add it to iOS and say "look this is a massive step for iOS!", and I'm sitting there being like......we've had t…

I still think that widgets are an unnecessary Android import that bloats the simplicity of the iOS UX. At the very least they should’ve called it something else. Gadgets?

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#78

Post by narag »

rapsey wrote: post #14
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.

You can pay that much for a factory worker in eastern/south Europe.

I don't know about eastern Europe. In Spain, we are in the south, you can't pay 530 per month. Legal minimum salary is around double that number, then you need to add SS (30 to 40% of that) and just FYI, there's no way people will work in a factory for minimum wage anyway, so think of 2k for entry positions.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#79

Post by Bakary »

Akronymus wrote: post #39
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.

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 still have to think about your balance, have the negative emotion of spending money, when the archival site is just a click away. Let's say you have a very simple DRM-free bookshop, reduced to the most convenience possible of search, click, buy. You'll still have Libgen just a click away as well. At this point, the determining factor is the propensity to not pay for labor.

Re: The end of Apple’s affair with China

#80

Post by Darge »

gambiting wrote: post #59
Bayart wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Like, teachers are paid 2000-3000PLN

Can you please provide some sources for that claim?

For example [1] says that the lowest, starting salary is already over 3000. And the salaries for teachers grow with work experience.

[1] https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/10/12/polish-teachers-among...

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