Apple reportedly squeezing supplier to stop building MacBook Air clones from Asus - Page 2

Why bother to innovate when you can copy Apple and just litigate your way to market share. Samsung's doing it and now Asus, but it's tough going with all the uncertainty of litigation. Samsung has yet to to feel the biggest sting when Apple drops them as a supplier for a $10 billion dollar loss. The only copying Asus will be dong is paying lawyers millions just like Samsung and end up a battered company. These Wintel clone makers must be real desperate. Sounds like a dying gasp from another PC maker who can't make it in a post PC world!

I am not convinced Apple moving all their laptops to a Macbook Air model is smart. We have seen so many Apple victories in the last few years I think everyone is starting to believe that anything they do will turn to gold. It is one thing to create a smartphone unlike anything the world has seen. It is one thing to create an entirely new "tablet" space with the iPad. It is another thing altogether to dramatically change an existing product that is growing market share and change it so it is similar to a product that is not growing (or selling) as well as the original. I fail to see the logic.

Granted, I think Macbook Air/Ultrabooks are nice, but Apple is going to screw something up one day with their compulsive need to push the market forward. The expectation to keep their profits growing at the current pace will be their downfall (especially now that Steve is not around).

Mark my words: one day they will push too hard and Apple will have it's on Windows Vista-like fiasco to deal with.

Please, stick to Apple discussion (on which I usually tend to agree with you), because you're clueless and misguided about any other subject. Calling Israel a democracy is a big stretch, and real analysis of what a democracy actually entails, and what aspects are actually present in Israel, makes it clear that it is nothing close to one. I agree that the Syrian gvt is a brutal dictatorship, but Israel is and has been involved in it's own brutality and it's crimes are well known and ongoing.

Apple is doing the entire industry a service by forcing competitors to come up with their own ideas. What if every car on the road looked like a Mercedes? Competition is supposed to give us choice, not copies.

Are you saying that Samsung signed a non-compete agreement with Apple?

China has embraced some Western Capitalism which has led them to have greater economic success, but they are still commies and they basically are ruled by one party. That's one reason why I don't really give a crap about any workers in China. They may have embraced capitalism, but until they ditch their failed, primitive and authoritarian political beliefs, things won't change much.

Israel is technically a Parliamentary democracy. You might be one of those misguided leftists who hate Israel for whatever reason, but that doesn't change what they are.

The fact that Apple even had to ask Pegatron is ridiculous

Apple needs to beef up its non-competitive clauses with its manufacturing partners. It should be crystal clear to the vendors that they cannot do this.

Pegatron used to be subsidiary of ASUStek, the company marketing the ASUS brand. Makes this quite a funny thing.

...in China.

If Apple pretends exclusivity from manufacturers, the manufacturer's business model needs to work with just one client, a position nobody wants to be in. Pegatron will appease in the short run, but it does not sound like a sustainable strategy.

Add to that the labor conditions issues, which will not go away, the problems with leaks of information, and the overall importance of the Chinese market.

So I think Apple should build or buy a plant in China, and start manufacturing there. This plant would serve many purposes. Being of Apple's own property, it would be the first one to get new devices, and the first place new production techniques are tested and scaled. Plant workers would be Apple employees and have better wages, benefits, and working conditions, while also having far greater incentive to adhere to product secrecy.

Such a plant would also be a marketing coup for the Chinese market, as it would indicate a much higher level of commitment to China.

I am not suggesting Apple produce everything by itself. Just a significant percent. Rather than pressure Pegatron, why not buy it outright?

Technology is changing. Television will eventually go resolution-independent, vector-based for distribution, which will allow for meaningful use of very large screens without compromising on small screens. Why not get the OSs resolution independent first?

The shift is just where the processing takes place.

I deployed one of these Asus systems where I work at and my impression is their "Air" knockoff is nowhere near the fit/finish of the MacBook Air. The keyboard is awful, I had to practically bang on the keys to get them to acknowledge each keystroke (o.k. - that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly wasn't able to do touch-typing), the trackpad was just plain awful as well - to the point that I had to plug in an external mouse to actually get some work done.

The case itself is made of this brushed metal - it felt more like steel rather than aluminum and the edges were really sharp. When I took it out of the box some of the adhesive stickiness of the wrapper was left behind on the metal and I couldn't find anything to clean the smudges off of the case. I don't know if it came from the plastic cellophane that was used during shipping or if it was on there prior to shipping - but the adhesive was sticky, smudgy and extremely hard to remove.

I didn't take it apart to inspect the innards - but the system was built with screws all over the bottom supposedly to access the battery, memory, hard drive, etc.

So - from a hardware perspective (because that's the only comparison that can be drawn here), there's no competition is hands-down a winner for Apple.

My opinion is - bleah - nice try.

If Apple were ever to build it's own plants somewhere (which I find highly unlikely at least for the time being), they can surely find a better place than China to do it in.

Guys, there are thousands of places in the Web where one can praise or bash Israel, 24x7.

This isn't one of them. Stick to Apple, it's competitors, manufacturers, even talk of the US or China in that context. But let's keep the Middle East and its problems as far away from here as possible.

Thank you.

Personally, I find it kind of ridiculous that other people copy apple's designs, then fault apple for not making things more "open" or giving them a "fair playing ground" or whatever.

Take the "tablet industry". One way to say things is to say apple invented it. Another way to say it is apple invented a product, called an iPad, which now hundreds of companies want to copy... creating a tablet "industry". Apple would be just as happy if there wasn't any industry.

In other words, apple's product is so good that now people assume nobody would want anything else. So instead of inventing, they copy apple.

This is when capitalism gets dumb. As soon as I saw the whole "ultrabook" thing, I knew it was destined to fail. You can't win by copying apple, they are too smart to allow that to happen.

China's logistical advantages have been widely discussed. I am all for a US plant, but I understand that that's just not going to happen, as Jobs himself said not long ago.

Thailand has not proven to be such a good bet (and unless they reforest, it will flood again and again). So, where do you have in mind?

I know that and I don't disagree with you. But you should perhaps tell that to the person who first brought up the subject in this thread. That person was not me.

Because Apple's current strategy makes higher profits for Wall Street.

Just a quick reminder for the "Apple should quite focusing on lawsuits and put more energy into their products" crowd: Apple has this thing called legal counsel? And law firms which they employ?

And surprisingly, those attorneys are not working on the next MacBook Pro or iTV or iPad. Apple doesn't have to pull personnel out of R&D to put on figuring out what to sue someone for. Jony Ive isn't getting distracted, Scott Forstall doesn't have to drop what he's doing to deliver a deposition and Tim Cook can take time out of his busy schedule to talk to the lawyers about whether or not to proceed with a given piece of litigation without forgetting to make products.

I get the feeling people imagine that Apple HQ has turned into some kind of war room with big maps on the wall and the top brass spending their days screaming at subordinates ala Hitler's bunker. Lawyers. They do work.

Agreed. Thank you for that post.

I'm not really sure where else besides China, but I do agree that the US is a non starter for Apple.

What would vector-based capture look like, I wonder... Can you mention even one vector-based image capture device on the market? (any market, home, business, etc.).

My guess is that in Bangladesh, wages are lower than China. So Apple could pay more than than people make by dump picking, and still make massive profits.

Hmm. At first blush, it does seem like Apple could get themselves in hot water over this. Generally speaking, under the antitrust laws that I am familiar with, it is illegal to abuse your dominant market position; for instance, in the 90s, Microsoft could have gotten in trouble if they told a small component maker that they couldn't sell their components to Apple, lest Microsoft remove support from said component in the next version of Windows.

However, since Apple employs some of the savviest lawyers around, I suspect there is more to this than meets the eye. For one thing, with Apple's global market share (traditional PC only, not tablets), Apple does not enjoy a monopolistic position (if I recall, usually 70% share). Second, Asus is not a small company being pushed around.

Thirdly, and this is what I suspect lest Apple be imitating MotoMo, is that Pegatron is using the same assembly line that Apple had them build (including the very at-the-time unique uni-body aluminum assembly line), and that Apple possibly invested in this line and has some legal recourse about demanding exclusivity. We don't know the details of Apple's contract with Pegatron. But Apple throws a lot of money at suppliers, and likely has specific terms; this may fall under contract-law.

If there are no such terms, and as long as Apple does not meet the criteria of having a monopolistic position, I believe Apple is free to be cut-throat about this. Business is cut-throat. It's only when a company gets too much power and competition is stifled that the Feds will step in.

Citrus based solvents work well for that. Cheap,non-toxic,don't hurt finish, etc.

Thank you.

*applause*

Sorry but YOU are the one that started with the political rhetoric about Israel. I only mentioned it in passing as an observation that the middle east is a risky place at the moment, be it Israel or any other country in the region. Apple building an R&D plant there seemed unusual.

Don't point your finger at someone else. You are the one that decided to introduce some political agenda.

I am going to go ahead and boldly guess that Bangladesh lacks anywhere near the kind of infrastructure, qualified engineering personnel, and supplier network Apple would need. That, plus it's an even bigger flood risk than Thailand.

If it was just about wages, everybody would manufacture in Haiti.

Which is the only leverage Apple has if there's no contractual obligation for Pegatron to comply.

Didn't Apple buy a bunch of CNC machines for Pegatron? If they did then they likely have some say in what those machines are used for.

I agree, but Apple is treading a fine line here. With the amount of information available to us, it appears Apple hasn't done anything wrong, yet. However, remember this is the same type of behavior that landed Microsoft in Anti-trust hot water.

The biggest difference is that it was determined M$ has a monopoly on the PC market - Apple definitely does not. But, strong-arming suppliers and vendors does not engender good relationships or public perceptions, which could come back to bite them arse in the long run.

Another thing to keep in mind here is that laws/regulations in China are far different from the US, so one can't apply US logic to whatever situations exist over there.

This.

Nope, you were wondering why Israel so I answered the question. It seems to be a hot bed of tech at the moment and that's why Apple is investing there, to gain access to new technologies such as that SSD controller company which they recently bought. And Apple is also opening research centers there.

Lawyers execute. But there is only so much management focus to go around. Tim Cook's day lasts 24 hours, even if he uses less of them to sleep than most mortals. There are only so many meetings he can be at, so may mails he can read and comprehend, so many instructions he can give.

In the technology world, legal efforts are essentially defensive, regardless of the legal action itself. Offense is played not by lawyers, but by disrupting the market with new products, services, solutions, and so on.

Apple, like any other customer, has the right to take their business wherever they want, for whatever reason they want. Apple cannot force Pegatron to refuse to build for Asus, but they can sure as hell advise Pegatron that they will lose Apple business if they do.

But Israel has no more chance to become a manufacturing center for Apple than does the US, so it has no relevance to the topic.

you mean have 4 wheels and 2 to 4 doors and use a combustion based engine? Maybe have a windsheild with wipers...... your right...all cars are different...

I dont think this is true for Snow Leopard but Lion is a total joke. Every time I've tried Lion I always revert back to Snow Leopard.

Your sarcastic analogy would be equivalent to "you mean have a display and a keyboard with a hinged lid with ports on the side?" Surely you can see the difference.

I found the performance improvements over Snow Leopard justify using Lion alone and thats without getting into how much better it works on Notebooks.