Apple Products

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1328583969' post='2382816']
True story. All from Vancouver.
[/quote]

Gulf islands actually

[quote name='Marie-Therese' timestamp='1328585840' post='2382839']
I hate anything branded Apple. I have an old ipod that I bought years ago because it was supposed to be such a great machine (I think its a 1st gen nano). Fact is, I think it su[acronym=''][/acronym]cks. The sound quality is total crapola. It forces you to be a total slave to Apple software. My daughter has a macbook that was issued by her school district as part of a grant program they won. Other than the fact that it's a computer that cost me only the insurance on it, if I had my druthers, I'd be giving her a PC to use instead. I used it a few times and I was completely underwhelmed.

And I'm very fond of the products of the fair province of British Columbia, myself.
[/quote]

Indeed

seeing if i can track down a Zune 120gb on craigslist. though i might go with a ipod 160 as they seem to be going for the same price. on the other hand my current ipod classic doesnt work too well now(pauses randomly unless kept fairly still, headphone jack is screwed a bit)

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1328589402' post='2382892']
Gulf islands actually
[/quote]

[img]http://i2.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/004/077/Raisins_Face.jpg[/img]

Wiki and IMDB tell me they're all from Vancouver.

[arfink]

Something to note here is that the problem is not with Apple itself. They buy manufacturing services from a larger company called Foxconn. Foxconn also makes products for about a bazillion other electronics companies, including Apple, Acer, Amazon (Kindle), ASRock, ASUS, Barnes and Noble (nook), Cisco, Dell, EVGA, HP, Intel, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft (Xbox systems), MSI, Motorola, Netgear, Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsing, Sharp, Sony, and Vizio, plus probably hundreds more.

Foxconn treats their workers badly, and these companies outsource the manufacturing to Foxconn.

[arfink]

Also keep in mind that Foxconn has not had many complaints at their factories except the one in Shenzen. The "factory" in Shenzen is actually 15 smaller factories plus a whole mess of infrastructure about the same size as a city. That's where the majority of the problems come into play: Foxconn is thought to employ anywhere from 200k to 450k employees at this one location. iPods, believe it or not, cannot be manufactured entirely by machine, and hand assembly of many components is required. You can see why they chose China.

To be sure, cramming almost 400k people into a small, dense urban environment is rife with problems.

[StMichael]

The problem today is that you can't look around your home and not find something manufactured in China.

Supermarkets, here in the US, even stock produce grown in China.

Those wonderful CFL bulbs, all made in China and exposing their workers to mercury poisoning.

How we got here, I can't say, but we need to reverse this dependency on anything from that communist country, first off how the Red Chinese government acts towards Roman Catholics. This is enough to want to boycott that country.

[qfnol31]

I can see the argument that they aren't the only one doing this exploitation, but everyone else can make the claim that they don't have the resources to make a change. Apple most certainly has the resources, but chooses instead to ignore the problem. How would you respond to that?

[StMichael]

I am not defending Apple. Apple, as well as others, have appealed to Red China.

I have had to do business with factories in Red China. Albeit on a very small scale. Not because I wanted to, but because they alone manufacture. It was not a pleasant experience whatsoever.

Companies have made demands on the Red Chinese government, etc. to no avail. They are assured that they will fall in line and then don't.

NIKE has had this issue for over 2 decades. The only way to change it is for there to be competition in manufacturing and there simply isn't any. Red China does all it can to deliver it faster, cheaper. There are no unions to deal with. No regulations. And they ensure they keep their currency worth low.

I for one would like for Apple to read more than "Designed In Cupertino" and actually made there. In fact, purchasing refurbished Apple products are the best as they as refurbished in the US.

Then we have the politics. Red China owns so much of our debt that we bow to them. It is a problem, but a problem that no single company can change unless Apple decides to make itself completely uncompetitive and dies out trying to manufacture here in the States.


[quote name='qfnol31' timestamp='1328633561' post='2383039']
I can see the argument that they aren't the only one doing this exploitation, but everyone else can make the claim that they don't have the resources to make a change. Apple most certainly has the resources, but chooses instead to ignore the problem. How would you respond to that?
[/quote]

[arfink]

[quote name='qfnol31' timestamp='1328633561' post='2383039']
I can see the argument that they aren't the only one doing this exploitation, but everyone else can make the claim that they don't have the resources to make a change. Apple most certainly has the resources, but chooses instead to ignore the problem. How would you respond to that?
[/quote]

I won't claim to defend Apple, I'm just pointing out the fact of the matter, which is that the cheapest, largest, and best trained group of technical assembly workers in the world happens to be the majority of the population of Shenzen China. So what's a businessman with no conscience going to do?

Manufacturing in the US is currently very difficult to do. Very few people will be enticed by low wages, long hours of physical exertion, and specialized training when you can just train for a better paying job outside of manufacturing.

I know alot of people here support the idea of a completely unfettered free market, but a labor union means nothing when global logistics makes it possible to simply pull the factory out from underneath troublesome and expensive US workers and replant it in China. Troublesome usually meaning that they desire to be paid a living wage with reasonable benefits. This is the kind of thing which will probably require the corrective action of tariffs and other regulation to fix.

Another interesting thing to take note of here is that in the United States we actually don't have the high-tech manufacturing infrastructure that China does. IE, the kinds of factories that would be needed to make the iPod simply don't exist here. Not for that kind of volume. Furthermore, even if such factories did exist and American companies used them to make American products, who would buy them? I cannot fathom paying the premium that "Made in the USA" demands in regards to computer products. A personal computer would once again costs tens of thousands of dollars. The free market built this problem, and it cannot and will not correct it, as far as I am concerned.

[elizabeth09]

I think that we have to choose for ourselves, what is right and what is wrong.