Have you not been paying any attention at all to this thread? Please, get yourself a good strong coffee or something and wake up. Excuses? From Apple, obviously. The figure of 700,000 workers was provided by your fool-in-arms Flaneur (this reply is for him and Slurpy, too) as a justification for the 'impossibility' of creating enough manufacturing/assembly jobs in the US or Europe. I illustrated how the West is more than capable of doing this—if we simply decide to do so.
R&D means 'research and development'. These are research institutes/entities involved in the cutting edge scientific and technological research which make possible (among other things) the technology used in modern society, including but by no means limited to Apple products. These entities may be attached to the state, universities, or the private sector, or combinations thereof. They are instrumental in providing the science and/or conceptual/working framework behind the development of say, an iPhone (hence why it says "Designed by Apple in California" on an iPhone box). Examples below.
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">You're seriously going to suggest that the US/Europe are somehow incapable of matching Chinese "expertise" in science and/or the development of technology/manufacturing? Hilarious! You then couch your request for an </span>
example<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> in pseudo-obfuscation by insinuating that cheap labor is a major factor in science and technological development itself (news flash, most times it's not); or that the West somehow can't provide enough high-quality engineers to design plants and manage production processes; which is nonsense (see below). </span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">The ONLY reason those factories are in China and not somewhere much closer to home is because western multinationals would have a lower profit margin if they had to pay American, European, Japanese or Korean workers a living, legal wage in their respective country, which is why in general they don't. You </span>
seem<span style="line-height:1.4em;"> to have trouble grasping this most basic fact. </span>
You ask, "Do you have a sense of what the all-in-cost of doing something like this in the U.S. would be, compared to China? Can you share your analysis with us, instead of pulling an assertion out of your a**?" You're asking the wrong question. The pertinent one is, Do YOU have any sense of the impact on the West of NOT doing this, not only for our manufacturing sector, but throughout the entire economy including our service and support industries? Clearly, you don't, because your head is lost where the sun doesn't shine. Last I read, Apple has $192 billion in cash reserves. Intel's new cutting edge chip fabrication plant in Arizona cost ('only') $5 billion, and is keeping jobs in the US, where workers (at least not yet) do NOT have to work 14 hour days for $1.98 an hour. What part of that math can you not comprehend?
Examples of R&D institutes? Sure! Here's a list of the world's best, as gauged by citation and peer-reviewed journal indices. Have you actually worked in an R&D institute in China? Because based on your defeatist and simplistic replies I'd be very surprised if you'd ever had any experience of what often passes for academic/research publication there, not to mention the 'quality assurance' standards absent from so many of those Chinese factories (we've all read those stories or have a personal anecdote). Regardless, I've provided a few other facts for your sorely-needed benefit. Read 'em and weep:
ENGINEERING R&D INSTITUTES WORLD RANKING, INCLUDING COUNTRY (2014): In order, highest rank first. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics USA; <span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Partners HealthCare System USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Rice University USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees FRA; City University of Hong Kong HKG;</span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;"> </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Harvard University USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Swiss Federal Institute of Technology CHE; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">University of Pennsylvania USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Northwestern University, Evanston USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Utrecht University NLD; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Stanford University USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">National ICT Australia AUS; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Brown University USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">General Motors Company USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">University of Amsterdam NLD; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">Columbia University USA; </span>
<span style="color:rgb(53,53,44);line-height:1.4em;">The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology HKG; </span> <span style="line-height:1.4em;">Microsoft Corporation USA. Etc. See a pattern there? Good. The same </span>
<span style="line-height:22.399999618530273px;">patterns exist for Materials Science, Computer Science, Physics, Medicine, etc. </span>
FIELDS MEDALS (the 'Mathematics Nobel', awarded once every 4 years); Highest rank first. USA, 14 (one of the recipients was born in China); France, 13; Russia, 9; UK, 6; Japan, 3. <span style="line-height:1.4em;">http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/aboutus/jcfields/fields_medal.html</span>
<span style="line-height:1.4em;">TOTAL PATENT COUNT, BY COUNTRY (All years to 2014): Highest rank first. </span>
USA, 2,874,103; Japan, 1,014,977; Germany, 347,875; Taiwan, 150,121; South Korea, 146,153; UK, 133, 063; France, 132,840; Canada, 116, 413; Italy, 59,058; Switzerland, 54, 294; Netherlands, 47,556; Sweden, 47,112; China, 36,440; Australia, 33,179; Israel, 32,095; Finland, 21561. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/cst_all.htm
WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS 2015 (IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FIELDS): Highest rank first. MIT, USA (including instrumentation, mechatronics, robotics and automation), Stanford; USA; Caltech, USA; Princeton, USA; University of Cambridge, UK; Imperial College London, UK; University of Oxford, UK; ETH Zurich, Switzerland; UCLA, USA; Berkely, USA. <span style="line-height:1.4em;">https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2015/subject-ranking/engineering-and-IT/#/</span>
I realize you're trying very hard. But with all the utterly irrelevant pap you've posted above, all you are telling us that the opportunity cost of your time is very low.
R&D institutes (btw, most R&D in the U.S. is done by corporations, not 'institutes') and high-ranked universities do not necessarily produce manufacturing assembly skills, which is pretty much what China does for Apple. Parts come from all over South and Southeast Asia, and Apple uses Chinese Foxconn workers to assemble and ship. Not much else.
It's like saying that because we have great medical schools, we must be also good at reading X-rays or removing sutures, or because we have excellent centers of IT learning, we must be good at running call centers.
Please learn about the idea of comparative advantage.
As an aside, manufacturing left the U.S. long ago and is not coming back. Less than 15% of the country's GDP and its employment comes from manufacturing. Something similar will happen in China too, but not for another fifty years.
You're funny. Once again, your argument comes down to the cost-saving/profit-generating advantages of manufacturing in China, because that's really all you have. You somehow think that R&D operates in isolation, and seem to actually believe China, a nation still struggling desperately to duplicate the American moon landings of almost 50 (fifty!) years ago, the manufacture of commercial passenger jets, etc. etc, somehow possesses 'secret knowledge' of how to put a VCR together. " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
I gave you every kind of cited statistic from some of the world's most reputable academic and government entities, that showed that America and the West are still ahead in practically every scientific and tech field (except 'reverse engineering', in which China has a huge lead over us " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />) yet you still cling to your sad mantra.
As for you never having heard the term 'R&D institute', and insisting we don't have them in the United States, why am I not surprised? Seriously, most people I know learned that one before high school. Get out much?
Once again—and I know you have trouble with these—some facts for your education.
California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
California Institute for Water Resources
Southern California Marine Institute
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Cooperative Institute for Climate Applications and Research
I can see you've put a lot of work into this cause, and you're going to parasitize any progressive news that Apple generates by itself.
You can't expect to be taken seriously at all until you acknowledget a problem you are currently waving your hands in front of, hoping no one will notice. That is, the deep, far-flung throughout Asia ecosystem of electronics R&D, manufacturing, logistics and assembly.
The US has a lead in intellectual capital, as I've said before, and that is its main stock in trade, export and salvation presently. Your list of institutes, universities and patents reflects this. But the consumer electronics industry in the US shriveled to almost nothing, starting in the 1960s, while all competence here was focused on aerospace and defense, and gov't attention was being squandered on Viet Nam and southern resistance to expanded civil rights.
Meanwhile, Japan's gov't and Sony, Matsushita, etc., were setting up the electronics ecosystem of the future. Did you ever take apart a VCR? It would do wonders for your reality IQ, which is now so sadly keyboard-etiolated. Those were the most complex consumer machines ever made, and when it came time to make the tiny hard drive that ended up in the first iPod, for example, engineers could draw on an ecosystem of local experience in making fine electronic/mechanical devices like VCRs and video camcorders.
Did you ever buy an American TV, radio, VCR, video camera, cassette recorder, CD/DVD player, etc.? No you did not. Every single part of those devices came from an ecosystem of design and manufacture that has been established in Asia for half a century, implanted in all the know-how it takes to run the materials acquisition and the factories.
It's an ecosystem and old-boy network like the world has never seen, because it's a quantum leap more complex, microscopic and coordinated than, say, the auto industry was. You have as good a chance of building a new one in the US as in Kazakhstan.
You have to get real about this and take the juvenile bring-the-jobs-back-home jingoism out of the discussion. You want to do something for the Chinese assemblers and machine-shop workers? Pressure the other 15 companies that use Foxconn and the other contract shops in China to match Apple's supplier requirements.
Yawn, the very existence of the Silicon Valley tech industry contradicts your above claim. In fact the computing industry rose hand in hand with and partly as a result of military/aerospace industry contracts.
I find it interesting that you say US companies can't build these items or assembly plants, when in fact it's won't, and those reasons are not about technological complexity, they're about economic profitability. Do you really think Intel, Freescale Semiconductor, and other American corporations can't build, for example, chip fabrication plants (which are far more complex than product assembly plants)? They already have, and in the US too. Do you really think that Apple, with all the brain-power and cash at its disposal, can't do this? If you can at least admit it's won't I could agree with you on that. But it is not can't. Never was. As you say, it was Japan who made this a priority in the 60s. But it wasn't China.
"David Knowles reports at Bloomberg that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent. "When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he's in, including China and Saudi Arabia," Fiorina said. "But I don't hear him being upset about that."
I find it interesting you decided to simply ignore the facts and comment only on Carly Fiorina. Apple has online stores in the following nations
Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If you are LGBT you can be punished by death. If he is such an advocate for LGBT rights then why do business in these countries? We already know the answer to that question. Why for Tim Cook is this an United States issue only?
Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment, surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.
So Tim Cook can't put himself on the moral high ground with his tweets, speeches and parades yet ignore the fact that Apple makes billions on the backs of slave labor and does business in countries that will kill you simply for being gay.
These are facts it doesn't matter who says them and it doesn't matter how much people defend Cook here, they can't be disputed. If you can show evidence that Apple does not do business in these nations or these nations don't have these laws then please present it. Right now all you are doing is pretending to be educated on the issue and shifting the focus.
Exactly. If he gave equal attention to all of these issues (including gay rights) I'd have some respect for the man. But he doesn't.
You want to do something for the Chinese assemblers and machine-shop workers? Pressure the other 15 companies that use Foxconn and the other contract shops in China to match Apple's supplier requirements.
Yawn, the very existence of the Silicon Valley tech industry contradicts your above claim.
Still wriggling on the hook . . .
Except for Intel, there isn't much manufacturing going on there in mass consumer manufacturing. Or industrial, as in servers, etc. All that went across the Pacific.
The founding of the Valley was based on large-scale integrated circuits on doped silicon, a product made possible not only by Bell Labs with its invention of the transistor, but by their development of mass manufacture (with Western Electric) of autoclaved artificial quartz (silicon) in the late 1960s. Fairchild brought the tech west to the Valley, IIRC, because of HP and Stanford. Intel spun off, the chip business took off, but one of Foxconn's first big customers in its early days was Intel, who had their motherboards made by Foxconn.
None of this has much to do with consumer electronics, though. It was Sony that jumped on the transistor and never looked back. Americans never capitalized properly on solid state electronics beyond the intellectually heavy area of chip design and manufacture. Still that way today, except you have to add software, search, networking and other soft IT applications of the computer industry in the Valley. But hardware is gone as an industry, except for chips, for many decades now. Time for you to realize this. Also, note that VCRs are no longer being made. That whole industry of fine drive mechanisms for tape is gone in Asia as well, just as surely as photo film is gone as an ecosystem.
I cite this because you should realize that as soon as the US starts trying to copy Asian manufacturing technology infrastructure, they are going to find they backed an obsolete technology by the time it's finished. I suggested you take apart an old, obsolete VCR, which is any and all of them, as a meditative exercise in growing up to confront the actual tiny nuts and bolts of the reality you are trying to talk about.
Is there an employee group in Apple that is for the NRA? No. Not that my sources are aware of. Is the NRA a human rights issue? No. It's just a membership club that's open to all who wish to join. Why would there even be an "NRA employee club" at apple. Maybe there could an Apple Employee Gun Club (which again, according to friends there isn't).
It's not apples job to solve the problems in the world. This show of support was for THEIR EMPLOYEE LGBT ORGANIZATION AT A PRIDE EVENT. Similar, like I said, to other employee groups participating in other events.
Also, your personal opinion that since Apple supports one small unimportant issue that isn't is somehow required to tackle every other issue equally is absurd. According to you, Apple should also fix illegal whaling. The Bokoharam kidnappings. Hey, why not the people suffering from the Greek economic collapse issue?
Apple, Tim Cook, and Apples employees can, by their constitutional right choose what they do and do not support.
You on the other hand require equal time for all issues so that is where I said you should put your money where your mouth is and practice what you preach. If you have such a hard on for violations of Chinese citizens right then I assume you personally are doing all you can to fight for them. Correct? And at the same time you should support other causes equally. Right? So we will expect to see you out there at the next pride supporting the LGBT community that still sees discrimination daily.
And I always practice what I preach. Thanks anyway.
Gay rights are certainly not "unimportant", but nor are they nearly AS important as the systematic oppression of working people, detention and execution of activists, journalists, etc. in China and other countries. And, why yes, I've in the past given gay rights my time, and long before Tim Cook came out, too. Among other things, I distinctly remember the beating some guys gave me after I stepped in one night to try to stop them kicking the life out of a gay dude outside a gay dance club.
So, once again, you got an answer form me. But you kind of avoided my question about what YOU'VE done. Now, when can we expect you to organize a march for divestment?
Now you are a human rights expert... I'm more aware than most based on my job and experience in Asia to know exactly what is going on, and exactly what is hyperbole, having spent time in China (specifically Shenzhen) and Taiwan. amongst several other East Asian countries. Yes , there are human rights issues in China. However I disagree with your attitude of divestment and prefer a position of engagement...based on my knowledge of the situation...not knowledge read third hand from a website. That's fine if you want to be so worried and involved in Chinese issues. Please do more to be involved. Every little bit helps. In the meantime the rest of us will focus on our chosen issues. To criticize someone for doing good when they aren't doing only the type of good you want them to is absurd. But, that's your opinion...and everyone has got one. Not all of them are right though.
I know exactly what I've done. My actions/support aren't in question here since that is not the issue you brought up. Like I mentioned before I do exactly what I advocate.
I'm glad you are the sole arbiter of what is and is not important...at least in your mind.
Gay rights are certainly not "unimportant", but nor are they nearly AS important as the systematic oppression of working people, detention and execution of activists, journalists, etc. in China and other countries.
Once again, you got an answer form me. But you kind of avoided my question about what YOU'VE done.
I suggested you take apart an old, obsolete VCR, which is any and all of them, as a meditative exercise in growing up to confront the actual tiny nuts and bolts of the reality you are trying to talk about.
Why don't we set an American team on trying to "figure out" how a VCR works, and the Chinese on designing a working quantum computer—without reverse engineering existing western prototypes (such as D-WAVE), and we'll see who finishes first.
C'mon, I don't think that "VCR" the best example you could have come up with.
Except for Intel, there isn't much manufacturing going on there in mass consumer manufacturing. Or industrial, as in servers, etc. All that went across the Pacific.
The founding of the Valley was based on large-scale integrated circuits on doped silicon, a product made possible not only by Bell Labs with its invention of the transistor, but by their development of mass manufacture (with Western Electric) of autoclaved artificial quartz (silicon) in the late 1960s. Fairchild brought the tech west to the Valley, IIRC, because of HP and Stanford. Intel spun off, the chip business took off, but one of Foxconn's first big customers in its early days was Intel, who had their motherboards made by Foxconn.
None of this has much to do with consumer electronics, though. It was Sony that jumped on the transistor and never looked back. Americans never capitalized properly on solid state electronics beyond the intellectually heavy area of chip design and manufacture. Still that way today, except you have to add software, search, networking and other soft IT applications of the computer industry in the Valley. But hardware is gone as an industry, except for chips, for many decades now. Time for you to realize this. Also, note that VCRs are no longer being made. That whole industry of fine drive mechanisms for tape is gone in Asia as well, just as surely as photo film is gone as an ecosystem.
I cite this because you should realize that as soon as the US starts trying to copy Asian manufacturing technology infrastructure, they are going to find they backed an obsolete technology by the time it's finished. I suggested you take apart an old, obsolete VCR, which is any and all of them, as a meditative exercise in growing up to confront the actual tiny nuts and bolts of the reality you are trying to talk about.
Yeah, we saw the same documentary. "Went" across the Pacific...such a beautifully ambiguous and passive verb construction. Like how other manufacturing just "went" (all without human decisions to do so of course) after China was allowed into the WTO.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that the very complicated processes of chip design, fabrication, software development, search, networking, etc. developed in SV, assembly of parts must remain elusive and out of reach of the United States? You can see why someone might question the fatalism inherent in that argument? As for obsolescence, do you really think Apple has no experience with the concept? They may be the masters of that particular strategy.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that the very complicated processes of chip design, fabrication, software development, search, networking, etc. developed in SV, assembly of parts must remain elusive and out of reach of the United States? Y
You've heard the expression: "Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube..." That is basically what happened when the US sent all of our manufacturing to China. Those jobs are not coming back. CE currently made in China cannot be made in the US because the end product would be too expensive, no one would buy it and whatever corporation tried to do that would quickly go out of business. That is why only products like the Mac Pro can be made in the US. It is the most expensive product they make with the fewest sales. The only way small mass market consumer electronics could be made in the US is for it to be 100% robotic assembly which would mean even fewer US jobs. As long as they are assembled by hand they will be assembled in developing nations like China, Brasil, etc where labor is cheap.
Actually the jobs exodus started much earlier than with China. Right after WWII the US helped the Japanese rebuild their infrastructure and some of the principle industries we outsourced to them were electronics and photography. Japan has now outsourced to Korea and China and they are in the same situation the US is in. Making small consumer electronics in Japan is also too expensive.
If Apple ever makes a car, they will most likely manufacture it in the US because shipping cars across the ocean is expensive which is why many foreign car makers have set up shop in the US so they can manufacture close to their end users.
Yawn, the very existence of the Silicon Valley tech industry contradicts your above claim. In fact the computing industry rose hand in hand with and partly as a result of military/aerospace industry contracts.
I find it interesting that you say US companies can't build these items or assembly plants, when in fact it's won't, and those reasons are not about technological complexity, they're about economic profitability. Do you really think Intel, Freescale Semiconductor, and other American corporations can't build, for example, chip fabrication plants (which are far more complex than product assembly plants)? They already have, and in the US too. Do you really think that Apple, with all the brain-power and cash at its disposal, can't do this? If you can at least admit it's won't I could agree with you on that. But it is not can't. Never was. As you say, it was Japan who made this a priority in the 60s. But it wasn't China.
Deng Xiao-Peng made it a priority for Terry Guo in the 1980s.
The US could start on a ten-year plan to develop the next generation of electronic technology, probably already are with nonotech to some extent, but it probably needs to be a massive or visionary gov't backed effort, like it was in aerospace, or DARPA. Not a thing we can get done until the anti-scientists among us die off or are neutered by shame.
But expecting Apple to move a continent's ecosystem of long-standing by themselves is asking them to commit suicide. Or divesting, South Africa style. To what?
It's all about the ecosystem. If you don't understand that, please follow in Jobs's footsteps and stop being virginal.
Yeah, we saw the same documentary. "Went" across the Pacific...such a beautifully ambiguous and passive verb construction. Like how other manufacturing just "went" (all without human decisions to do so of course) after China was allowed into the WTO.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that the very complicated processes of chip design, fabrication, software development, search, networking, etc. developed in SV, assembly of parts must remain elusive and out of reach of the United States? You can see why someone might question the fatalism inherent in that argument? As for obsolescence, do you really think Apple has no experience with the concept? :wow: They may be the masters of that particular strategy.
I don't know the doc you're referring to, i'm going by memory of watching the process happen since the 50s. Fatalism is bullshit. Prescriptions of copying geopolitical-technical revolutions is infantilism. Apple is doing just fine designing one knowledge-industry revolution after another. Their global supply-chain and sales machine is itself a new industrial revolution, it's American-derived and directed, but you are too blinded by sentimental liberalism and anti-corporatism to see it. A true liberal would never consider cutting off those Chinese workers, but would continue to support Apple in developing their lives.
You've heard the expression: "Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube..." That is basically what happened when the US sent all of our manufacturing to China. Those jobs are not coming back. CE currently made in China cannot be made in the US because the end product would be too expensive, no one would buy it and whatever corporation tried to do that would quickly go out of business. That is why only products like the Mac Pro can be made in the US. It is the most expensive product they make with the fewest sales. The only way small mass market consumer electronics could be made in the US is for it to be 100% robotic assembly which would mean even fewer US jobs. As long as they are assembled by hand they will be assembled in developing nations like China, Brasil, etc where labor is cheap.
Actually the jobs exodus started much earlier than with China. Right after WWII the US helped the Japanese rebuild their infrastructure and some of the principle industries we outsourced to them were electronics and photography. Japan has now outsourced to Korea and China and they are in the same situation the US is in. Making small consumer electronics in Japan is also too expensive.
If Apple ever makes a car, they will most likely manufacture it in the US because shipping cars across the ocean is expensive which is why many foreign car makers have set up shop in the US so they can manufacture close to their end users.
Well said. Tim Cook has stated that he wants to develop US manufacturing, but common sense would tell us that it's going to be a supply-chain driven effort, as well as custom and contained, like the Mac Pro. And the one very large reason for doing a car by Apple might just be that made in USA angle, where there IS a well-developed manufacturing ecosystem.
Now you are a human rights expert... I'm more aware than most based on my job and experience in Asia to know exactly what is going on, and exactly what is hyperbole, having spent time in China (specifically Shenzhen) and Taiwan. amongst several other East Asian countries. Yes , there are human rights issues in China. However I disagree with your attitude of divestment and prefer a position of engagement...based on my knowledge of the situation...not knowledge read third hand from a website. That's fine if you want to be so worried and involved in Chinese issues. Please do more to be involved. Every little bit helps. In the meantime the rest of us will focus on our chosen issues. To criticize someone for doing good when they aren't doing only the type of good you want them to is absurd. But, that's your opinion...and everyone has got one. Not all of them are right though.
I know exactly what I've done. My actions/support aren't in question here since that is not the issue you brought up. Like I mentioned before I do exactly what I advocate.
I'm glad you are the sole arbiter of what is and is not important...at least in your mind.
Really? I remember exactly the type of denial you're now spouting immediately after the Tiananmen Square Massacre (or "Incident" as the Chinese government still calls it) which according to official party propaganda a) never happened or b) was far less severe than reported. I was there at that time; were you? And yes, I've been back since and am familiar with the region. You speak as if "engagement" has had any substantial impact. It hasn't. China is certainly not Japan or South Korea; for example despite years of this "engagement" China still has by far the highest execution rate in the world, systematic slave prison labor, repression of minorities, massive state censorship, etc. This is hardly news and it sounds as if your experience there was limited to a nice hotel room, board room table, or maybe a tour of a model factory with Happy Workers. You ignore the realities of what's going on in that country and choose "engagement" not out of any real concern, but because it allows western companies to continue to profit enormously from the gross inequities of globalization.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not going to let you be the arbiter of what is and is not important in my mind, now, am I?
Really? I remember exactly the type of denial you're now spouting immediately after the Tiananmen Square Massacre (or "Incident" as the Chinese government still calls it) which according to official party propaganda a) never happened or b) was far less severe than reported. I was there at that time; were you? And yes, I've been back since and am familiar with the region. You speak as if "engagement" has had any substantial impact. It hasn't. China is certainly not Japan or South Korea; for example despite years of this "engagement" China still has by far the highest execution rate in the world, systematic slave prison labor, repression of minorities, massive state censorship, etc. This is hardly news and it sounds as if your experience there was limited to a nice hotel room, board room table, or maybe a tour of a model factory with Happy Workers. You ignore the realities of what's going on in that country and choose "engagement" not out of any real concern, but because it allows western companies to continue to profit enormously from the gross inequities of globalization.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not going to let you be the arbiter of what is and is not important in my mind, now, am I? :no:
but you are too blinded by sentimental liberalism and anti-corporatism to see it. A true liberal would never consider cutting off those Chinese workers, but would continue to support Apple in developing their lives.
Like a "true liberal" would have continued to invest in South Africa during Apartheid? Like those "sentimental liberal" types who opposed racial segregation and the system of violence, intimidation, and torture that sustained it? Or like Reagan (despite opposition within his own party) and Thatcher who were bitterly opposed to sanctions and divestment? They played the "We're concerned about Black lives" card, too.
You assume much...and you couldn't be further from the truth. And North Korea has trumps China in those areas (minus the minority issue).
Well why don't we all just go to the VERY bottom of the barrel to avoid the shit swirling around in the rest of it? And let's not forget who really calls the shots in North Korea, a nation which owes its continued existence to being a buffer state for China.
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I realize you're trying very hard. But with all the utterly irrelevant pap you've posted above, all you are telling us that the opportunity cost of your time is very low.
R&D institutes (btw, most R&D in the U.S. is done by corporations, not 'institutes') and high-ranked universities do not necessarily produce manufacturing assembly skills, which is pretty much what China does for Apple. Parts come from all over South and Southeast Asia, and Apple uses Chinese Foxconn workers to assemble and ship. Not much else.
It's like saying that because we have great medical schools, we must be also good at reading X-rays or removing sutures, or because we have excellent centers of IT learning, we must be good at running call centers.
Please learn about the idea of comparative advantage.
As an aside, manufacturing left the U.S. long ago and is not coming back. Less than 15% of the country's GDP and its employment comes from manufacturing. Something similar will happen in China too, but not for another fifty years.
You're funny. Once again, your argument comes down to the cost-saving/profit-generating advantages of manufacturing in China, because that's really all you have. You somehow think that R&D operates in isolation, and seem to actually believe China, a nation still struggling desperately to duplicate the American moon landings of almost 50 (fifty!) years ago, the manufacture of commercial passenger jets, etc. etc, somehow possesses 'secret knowledge' of how to put a VCR together.
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I gave you every kind of cited statistic from some of the world's most reputable academic and government entities, that showed that America and the West are still ahead in practically every scientific and tech field (except 'reverse engineering', in which China has a huge lead over us
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As for you never having heard the term 'R&D institute', and insisting we don't have them in the United States, why am I not surprised?
Seriously, most people I know learned that one before high school. Get out much?
Once again—and I know you have trouble with these—some facts for your education.
California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology
California Institute for Water Resources
Southern California Marine Institute
California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Cooperative Institute for Climate Applications and Research
Columbia University: The Earth Institute
Institute of Biosciences and Technology
Carl Sagan Institute
Molecular Medicine Research Institute
Keck Institute for Space Studies
American Institute of Mathematics
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
National Institute for Computational Sciences
The list goes on and on.
It's fun putting you in your place with real world examples, but, really, you're making this all a bit too easy and boring now.
Yeah, because running a call center is so much more difficult than quantum computing research.
Got logic?
I can see you've put a lot of work into this cause, and you're going to parasitize any progressive news that Apple generates by itself.
You can't expect to be taken seriously at all until you acknowledget a problem you are currently waving your hands in front of, hoping no one will notice. That is, the deep, far-flung throughout Asia ecosystem of electronics R&D, manufacturing, logistics and assembly.
The US has a lead in intellectual capital, as I've said before, and that is its main stock in trade, export and salvation presently. Your list of institutes, universities and patents reflects this. But the consumer electronics industry in the US shriveled to almost nothing, starting in the 1960s, while all competence here was focused on aerospace and defense, and gov't attention was being squandered on Viet Nam and southern resistance to expanded civil rights.
Meanwhile, Japan's gov't and Sony, Matsushita, etc., were setting up the electronics ecosystem of the future. Did you ever take apart a VCR? It would do wonders for your reality IQ, which is now so sadly keyboard-etiolated. Those were the most complex consumer machines ever made, and when it came time to make the tiny hard drive that ended up in the first iPod, for example, engineers could draw on an ecosystem of local experience in making fine electronic/mechanical devices like VCRs and video camcorders.
Did you ever buy an American TV, radio, VCR, video camera, cassette recorder, CD/DVD player, etc.? No you did not. Every single part of those devices came from an ecosystem of design and manufacture that has been established in Asia for half a century, implanted in all the know-how it takes to run the materials acquisition and the factories.
It's an ecosystem and old-boy network like the world has never seen, because it's a quantum leap more complex, microscopic and coordinated than, say, the auto industry was. You have as good a chance of building a new one in the US as in Kazakhstan.
You have to get real about this and take the juvenile bring-the-jobs-back-home jingoism out of the discussion. You want to do something for the Chinese assemblers and machine-shop workers? Pressure the other 15 companies that use Foxconn and the other contract shops in China to match Apple's supplier requirements.
Yawn, the very existence of the Silicon Valley tech industry contradicts your above claim. In fact the computing industry rose hand in hand with and partly as a result of military/aerospace industry contracts.
I find it interesting that you say US companies can't build these items or assembly plants, when in fact it's won't, and those reasons are not about technological complexity, they're about economic profitability. Do you really think Intel, Freescale Semiconductor, and other American corporations can't build, for example, chip fabrication plants (which are far more complex than product assembly plants)? They already have, and in the US too. Do you really think that Apple, with all the brain-power and cash at its disposal, can't do this? If you can at least admit it's won't I could agree with you on that. But it is not can't. Never was. As you say, it was Japan who made this a priority in the 60s. But it wasn't China.
"David Knowles reports at Bloomberg that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and potential 2016 presidential candidate Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent. "When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he's in, including China and Saudi Arabia," Fiorina said. "But I don't hear him being upset about that."
I find it interesting you decided to simply ignore the facts and comment only on Carly Fiorina. Apple has online stores in the following nations
Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If you are LGBT you can be punished by death. If he is such an advocate for LGBT rights then why do business in these countries? We already know the answer to that question. Why for Tim Cook is this an United States issue only?
China:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china
Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances. Harassment, surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown. Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues. While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.
So Tim Cook can't put himself on the moral high ground with his tweets, speeches and parades yet ignore the fact that Apple makes billions on the backs of slave labor and does business in countries that will kill you simply for being gay.
These are facts it doesn't matter who says them and it doesn't matter how much people defend Cook here, they can't be disputed. If you can show evidence that Apple does not do business in these nations or these nations don't have these laws then please present it. Right now all you are doing is pretending to be educated on the issue and shifting the focus.
Exactly. If he gave equal attention to all of these issues (including gay rights) I'd have some respect for the man. But he doesn't.
Or pressure them to divest.
Still wriggling on the hook . . .
Except for Intel, there isn't much manufacturing going on there in mass consumer manufacturing. Or industrial, as in servers, etc. All that went across the Pacific.
The founding of the Valley was based on large-scale integrated circuits on doped silicon, a product made possible not only by Bell Labs with its invention of the transistor, but by their development of mass manufacture (with Western Electric) of autoclaved artificial quartz (silicon) in the late 1960s. Fairchild brought the tech west to the Valley, IIRC, because of HP and Stanford. Intel spun off, the chip business took off, but one of Foxconn's first big customers in its early days was Intel, who had their motherboards made by Foxconn.
None of this has much to do with consumer electronics, though. It was Sony that jumped on the transistor and never looked back. Americans never capitalized properly on solid state electronics beyond the intellectually heavy area of chip design and manufacture. Still that way today, except you have to add software, search, networking and other soft IT applications of the computer industry in the Valley. But hardware is gone as an industry, except for chips, for many decades now. Time for you to realize this. Also, note that VCRs are no longer being made. That whole industry of fine drive mechanisms for tape is gone in Asia as well, just as surely as photo film is gone as an ecosystem.
I cite this because you should realize that as soon as the US starts trying to copy Asian manufacturing technology infrastructure, they are going to find they backed an obsolete technology by the time it's finished. I suggested you take apart an old, obsolete VCR, which is any and all of them, as a meditative exercise in growing up to confront the actual tiny nuts and bolts of the reality you are trying to talk about.
Is there an employee group in Apple that is for the NRA? No. Not that my sources are aware of. Is the NRA a human rights issue? No. It's just a membership club that's open to all who wish to join. Why would there even be an "NRA employee club" at apple. Maybe there could an Apple Employee Gun Club (which again, according to friends there isn't).
It's not apples job to solve the problems in the world. This show of support was for THEIR EMPLOYEE LGBT ORGANIZATION AT A PRIDE EVENT. Similar, like I said, to other employee groups participating in other events.
Also, your personal opinion that since Apple supports one small unimportant issue that isn't is somehow required to tackle every other issue equally is absurd. According to you, Apple should also fix illegal whaling. The Bokoharam kidnappings. Hey, why not the people suffering from the Greek economic collapse issue?
Apple, Tim Cook, and Apples employees can, by their constitutional right choose what they do and do not support.
You on the other hand require equal time for all issues so that is where I said you should put your money where your mouth is and practice what you preach. If you have such a hard on for violations of Chinese citizens right then I assume you personally are doing all you can to fight for them. Correct? And at the same time you should support other causes equally. Right? So we will expect to see you out there at the next pride supporting the LGBT community that still sees discrimination daily.
And I always practice what I preach. Thanks anyway.
Gay rights are certainly not "unimportant", but nor are they nearly AS important as the systematic oppression of working people, detention and execution of activists, journalists, etc. in China and other countries. And, why yes, I've in the past given gay rights my time, and long before Tim Cook came out, too. Among other things, I distinctly remember the beating some guys gave me after I stepped in one night to try to stop them kicking the life out of a gay dude outside a gay dance club.
So, once again, you got an answer form me. But you kind of avoided my question about what YOU'VE done. Now, when can we expect you to organize a march for divestment?
You're welcome.
I know exactly what I've done. My actions/support aren't in question here since that is not the issue you brought up. Like I mentioned before I do exactly what I advocate.
I'm glad you are the sole arbiter of what is and is not important...at least in your mind.
I suggested you take apart an old, obsolete VCR, which is any and all of them, as a meditative exercise in growing up to confront the actual tiny nuts and bolts of the reality you are trying to talk about.
Why don't we set an American team on trying to "figure out" how a VCR works, and the Chinese on designing a working quantum computer—without reverse engineering existing western prototypes (such as D-WAVE), and we'll see who finishes first.
C'mon, I don't think that "VCR" the best example you could have come up with.
Still wriggling on the hook . . .
Except for Intel, there isn't much manufacturing going on there in mass consumer manufacturing. Or industrial, as in servers, etc. All that went across the Pacific.
The founding of the Valley was based on large-scale integrated circuits on doped silicon, a product made possible not only by Bell Labs with its invention of the transistor, but by their development of mass manufacture (with Western Electric) of autoclaved artificial quartz (silicon) in the late 1960s. Fairchild brought the tech west to the Valley, IIRC, because of HP and Stanford. Intel spun off, the chip business took off, but one of Foxconn's first big customers in its early days was Intel, who had their motherboards made by Foxconn.
None of this has much to do with consumer electronics, though. It was Sony that jumped on the transistor and never looked back. Americans never capitalized properly on solid state electronics beyond the intellectually heavy area of chip design and manufacture. Still that way today, except you have to add software, search, networking and other soft IT applications of the computer industry in the Valley. But hardware is gone as an industry, except for chips, for many decades now. Time for you to realize this. Also, note that VCRs are no longer being made. That whole industry of fine drive mechanisms for tape is gone in Asia as well, just as surely as photo film is gone as an ecosystem.
I cite this because you should realize that as soon as the US starts trying to copy Asian manufacturing technology infrastructure, they are going to find they backed an obsolete technology by the time it's finished. I suggested you take apart an old, obsolete VCR, which is any and all of them, as a meditative exercise in growing up to confront the actual tiny nuts and bolts of the reality you are trying to talk about.
Yeah, we saw the same documentary. "Went" across the Pacific...such a beautifully ambiguous and passive verb construction. Like how other manufacturing just "went" (all without human decisions to do so of course) after China was allowed into the WTO.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that the very complicated processes of chip design, fabrication, software development, search, networking, etc. developed in SV, assembly of parts must remain elusive and out of reach of the United States? You can see why someone might question the fatalism inherent in that argument? As for obsolescence, do you really think Apple has no experience with the concept?
They may be the masters of that particular strategy.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that the very complicated processes of chip design, fabrication, software development, search, networking, etc. developed in SV, assembly of parts must remain elusive and out of reach of the United States? Y
You've heard the expression: "Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube..." That is basically what happened when the US sent all of our manufacturing to China. Those jobs are not coming back. CE currently made in China cannot be made in the US because the end product would be too expensive, no one would buy it and whatever corporation tried to do that would quickly go out of business. That is why only products like the Mac Pro can be made in the US. It is the most expensive product they make with the fewest sales. The only way small mass market consumer electronics could be made in the US is for it to be 100% robotic assembly which would mean even fewer US jobs. As long as they are assembled by hand they will be assembled in developing nations like China, Brasil, etc where labor is cheap.
Actually the jobs exodus started much earlier than with China. Right after WWII the US helped the Japanese rebuild their infrastructure and some of the principle industries we outsourced to them were electronics and photography. Japan has now outsourced to Korea and China and they are in the same situation the US is in. Making small consumer electronics in Japan is also too expensive.
If Apple ever makes a car, they will most likely manufacture it in the US because shipping cars across the ocean is expensive which is why many foreign car makers have set up shop in the US so they can manufacture close to their end users.
Deng Xiao-Peng made it a priority for Terry Guo in the 1980s.
The US could start on a ten-year plan to develop the next generation of electronic technology, probably already are with nonotech to some extent, but it probably needs to be a massive or visionary gov't backed effort, like it was in aerospace, or DARPA. Not a thing we can get done until the anti-scientists among us die off or are neutered by shame.
But expecting Apple to move a continent's ecosystem of long-standing by themselves is asking them to commit suicide. Or divesting, South Africa style. To what?
It's all about the ecosystem. If you don't understand that, please follow in Jobs's footsteps and stop being virginal.
I don't know the doc you're referring to, i'm going by memory of watching the process happen since the 50s. Fatalism is bullshit. Prescriptions of copying geopolitical-technical revolutions is infantilism. Apple is doing just fine designing one knowledge-industry revolution after another. Their global supply-chain and sales machine is itself a new industrial revolution, it's American-derived and directed, but you are too blinded by sentimental liberalism and anti-corporatism to see it. A true liberal would never consider cutting off those Chinese workers, but would continue to support Apple in developing their lives.
Well said. Tim Cook has stated that he wants to develop US manufacturing, but common sense would tell us that it's going to be a supply-chain driven effort, as well as custom and contained, like the Mac Pro. And the one very large reason for doing a car by Apple might just be that made in USA angle, where there IS a well-developed manufacturing ecosystem.
Now you are a human rights expert... I'm more aware than most based on my job and experience in Asia to know exactly what is going on, and exactly what is hyperbole, having spent time in China (specifically Shenzhen) and Taiwan. amongst several other East Asian countries. Yes , there are human rights issues in China. However I disagree with your attitude of divestment and prefer a position of engagement...based on my knowledge of the situation...not knowledge read third hand from a website. That's fine if you want to be so worried and involved in Chinese issues. Please do more to be involved. Every little bit helps. In the meantime the rest of us will focus on our chosen issues. To criticize someone for doing good when they aren't doing only the type of good you want them to is absurd. But, that's your opinion...and everyone has got one. Not all of them are right though.
I know exactly what I've done. My actions/support aren't in question here since that is not the issue you brought up. Like I mentioned before I do exactly what I advocate.
I'm glad you are the sole arbiter of what is and is not important...at least in your mind.
Really? I remember exactly the type of denial you're now spouting immediately after the Tiananmen Square Massacre (or "Incident" as the Chinese government still calls it) which according to official party propaganda a) never happened or b) was far less severe than reported. I was there at that time; were you? And yes, I've been back since and am familiar with the region. You speak as if "engagement" has had any substantial impact. It hasn't. China is certainly not Japan or South Korea; for example despite years of this "engagement" China still has by far the highest execution rate in the world, systematic slave prison labor, repression of minorities, massive state censorship, etc. This is hardly news and it sounds as if your experience there was limited to a nice hotel room, board room table, or maybe a tour of a model factory with Happy Workers. You ignore the realities of what's going on in that country and choose "engagement" not out of any real concern, but because it allows western companies to continue to profit enormously from the gross inequities of globalization.
Well, I hate to break it to you, but I'm not going to let you be the arbiter of what is and is not important in my mind, now, am I?
And I've never claimed to know what is important in your mind and to be frank, I really couldn't care.
Like a "true liberal" would have continued to invest in South Africa during Apartheid? Like those "sentimental liberal" types who opposed racial segregation and the system of violence, intimidation, and torture that sustained it? Or like Reagan (despite opposition within his own party) and Thatcher who were bitterly opposed to sanctions and divestment? They played the "We're concerned about Black lives" card, too.
Yeah. It's all so clear now.
You assume much...and you couldn't be further from the truth. And North Korea has trumps China in those areas (minus the minority issue).
Well why don't we all just go to the VERY bottom of the barrel to avoid the shit swirling around in the rest of it? And let's not forget who really calls the shots in North Korea, a nation which owes its continued existence to being a buffer state for China.