Think before you speak, Mr. Sorkin. You may have shot your own foot with that thoughtless, stupid, untrue remark about one of the greatest companies of modern times, and arguably, one of the finest CEOs out there. Apple fans may not show up to see your movie.
There was no equivalency between what you said and Tim Cooks' remarks. Back off like a gentleman, not like a weasel.
And you've never in your entire life said anything rash before? It was a off the cuff irrational comment that ultimately should of not been said but was in an exaggerated sense. Relax a little.
Im an apple fan and just because he said something that had some assumptions facts does not mean that im going to boycott a artful movie about steve jobs. Critics are loving it and apparently fasbender did fantastic for the role.
That being said, apple has been publicly called out for low wage child labor and only after being called out and receiving bad press did apple change its policies, create policies and enforce policies. There are still questionable labor practices, and it is still VERY opportunistic to employe chinese to build apple products instead of manufacturing in america, because the wages per hour are so low there. And most of them are still in poverty/ live much lesser lives than low wage workers in the usa. We have labor and wage laws to protect humans rights to life happiness and prosperity. Apple wants to avoid those human rights and be opportunistic by cutting labor costs knowing it affects people in the same economic ways.
Apple also continues to do very little about memory capacity, ram, processor speeds until this very fall. Yet apple charges 700-1000% of the devices actual costs. That is why apple is sitting on over 150 billion in cash. Because its leaders are opportunistic.
Apple charges 30% of music, videos, movies, books, and app downloads. Apple rakes in billions for work it did not do. The cost of running and maintaining the app store would be roughly around 1.5-2.5% of app revenues. But apple takes from other peoples work anyways because they simply can. Because apple is opportunistic.
Apple raised its pricing for insurance on its devices. Even though prices per part were already broken down plus average labor costs to replace a iphone part, and applecare plus the fix fee are generally 600% more than it actually costs apple for the part and labor. Therefore apple is raising insurance on applecare out of opportunism.
Doing good business is great. Profiting is great. But taking from people just because you can, because you developed an ecosystem that surrounds peoples lives is just greedy opportunism.
Here's a list of Foxconn's current clients:
Acer
Amazon
Apple
Blackberry
Cisco
Dell
Google
Hewlett Packard
Huawei
Microsoft
Motorola
InFocus
Nintendo
Nokia
Sony
Toshiba
Xiaomi
Vizio
You appear to be correct.
This very, very obviously appears to be a problem that only Apple needs to address. Good on you for only calling them out.
I look forward to seeing the result of an American company telling the Chinese how to do business in China.
Sorkin is an uncreative writer whose drama-queen approach to steve jobs will flop, because so much of the story is already known. He will not be able to pass off his ridiculously over-dramatic nonsense in this context.
I saw the trailer and almost puked. Every word spoken was west-wing shite.
No, what's disgusting is that you respond to an intelligent, fact based post with absolute drivel. "Facts that you know"? What the hell does that even mean? RadartheKat laid things out in a manner which includes context and reality, and you go on to call him "disgusting" because you're simply too ignorant to even attempt to grasp the nuances of the situation? Right. Your false sel-righteousness, based on ignorance and lies, is whats disgusting.
I'll see it mainly because I enjoy Fassbender and I'm generally curious to see it but as far as Sorkin goes, the guy can eat shit.
Sorkin's remarks might have been more over the top, but Tim Cook did shoot first, and without any good reason. He didn't say this about Walter Isaacson. Seriously people, use a little more judgement than just this Crips vs Bloods mentality.
Without good reason? Why do people open their mouth when they don't have a clue. I'll give you a hint: Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine
I'll even give you a link to educate yourself, why TC did shoot first.
Sorkin is an uncreative writer whose drama-queen approach to steve jobs will flop, because so much of the story is already known. He will not be able to pass off his ridiculously over-dramatic nonsense in this context.
I saw the trailer and almost puked. Every word spoken was west-wing shite.
Now now. This will only make the contrarians post more of Sorkin's IMDB resume, as if. " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
Now now. This will only make the contrarians post more of Sorkin's IMDB resume, as if. " src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />
Sorkin talks like this is an ongoing feud between him and Cook. Cook never mentions him by name nor his specific movie, whereas Sorkin takes offense to a comment that was practically harmless compared to what he said about Cook and Apple. In fact, he takes an issue that did plague Apple even during Jobs' time at Apple (interesting that he makes it sound like Cook was the one who owns the factories and implimented the factory policies) and speaks about it as if it were still ongoing and that Apple has done nothing to try and resolve the issues (which they have...more than any other company that outsources hardware to China). Sure Cook "shot first" but it wasn't even a warning shot from a cap gun. Sorkin literally lambasts Cook. Sorkin took it way beyond too far. The great thing is, Cook seems like such a professional that he'll probably ignore it or brush it off. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would take it to the next level.
Also, I don't care if Sorkin intended to make money on the film or not, he did and it probably will (enough to cover the cost to film...I don't know) and to say that he took a paycut to get this thing done is disingenous at best. If he said he went from $5 million down to $50,000 I'd say ok...THATS a paycut. Still a boatload of money to most people...and more than those poor Chinese kids will ever see in their lifetime...only making 17 cents an hour. Tsk tsk.
Few days back, America's youngest self made female billionaire Elizabeth Holmes had interview with Mr. Crammer on CNBC. When Crammer said you are like Steve Jobs. AND she replied, there is no other Steve Jobs. So, if someone wants to make movie or write books than it better understand about the greatness of Steve Jobs before making story with spices to just make money. So, when Tim Cook who knows Steve Jobs so closely for years make remark than it has more substance than someone focus on making money on person he knows from bits and pieces.
You know what, I think that Tim Cook and I probably both went a little too far," Sorkin commented to E! News. "And I apologize to Tim Cook. I hope when he sees the movie, he enjoys it as much as I enjoy his products."
This is not an apology.
It's an attempt to admit fault while pointing the finger at the other party in order to keep things even. Forced sharing of blame. Transparent buffoonery.
Trash talk isn't productive, even if Sorkin did have a couple of points. While it's easy to delve into word parsing and point out that Cook didn't specifically mention the upcoming Steve Jobs movie, he did broadly disparage media coverage about Jobs... even without having viewed or read some of the material in question.
It just seems like Tim Cook is a little too protective of Jobs' legacy. Case in point is that Apple executives went out of their way to poo-poo on Walter Isaacson's authorized biography... Jobs himself was completely on board with putting his history on display, warts and all. And considering that he continues to be such a fascinating public figure, I don't think it's a terrible disservice to publish new details about his life, even if some of the material is less than flattering (I take issue with inaccuracies, of course). At this point, regardless of whatever may or may not be said of the man he'll always be revered as an icon of American ingenuity and a very important figure in the computer industry, and nothing can change that.
Anyway... the use of the word "opportunistic" comes off as unnecessarily cynical to me. Sorkin apologized, and obviously doesn't want to stir up controversy; but I think Cook would do just as well to ease off of his defensiveness of Jobs.
Apple's executives were unhappy with Walter Isaacson's book because it was shallow, made shakey judgments on some of Jobs decisions, and was poorly written. He had full access to Jobs and he didn't write anything most Apple fans didn't already know. I was disappointed after reading the book because I didn't learn anything I hadn't already known.
Cook and others likely felt Jobs would have been highly disappointed with the end result of the book not because it exposed some of Job's faults but because it simply was a poor product.
Further there is nothing wrong with defending your dead friends reputation and legacy. To Cook and company Jobs was a real person they cared about. That is what they should do.
I offer a genuine opinion based on the facts that i know, and i just googled them to confirm and i am right.
Just because apple was targeted as the largest company using child and poor labor standards does not excuse it from involving itself in those practices. Period.
People buy food from america because we can and do grow the most of it, other countries do not have the weather or soil to sustain fod growth. That is why they buy from us and that is what triggers a lot of global trade, not having the raw resources. Apple has paid billions to invest in training and infrastructure to manufacture in china, it could have done the same here, but wants to avoid wage costs. Minimum wage in america is proven to force people to live in poverty, so you can imagine how even less wages for chinese hurts those workers.
Apparently you can only write comments if you praise apple to its core and have nothing but manufactured blind praise.
Apple does some great work but is not perfect.
You know nothing of what you speak.
Regarding yours and the seemingly never-ending comments about why Apple products aren't (or can't be) manufactured in the US, it's a matter of economics - macroeconomics. It's a matter of scale, workforce demographics, and global socio-economic forces at work here and even Apple with its $100+ billion in cash can't fight these things.
The uninformed like to point out that Apple (and other multinational corps) is using "slave labor" to make mega-profits but then who isn't using cheap Asian manual labor? Also, the final assembly portion of building an iDevice makes up a small percentage of the overall cost. The main factor here is that virtually all of the components (from semiconductors to displays to PCB's to screws) that go into the iDevices a d every other electronic device are also fabricated and manufactured in Asia.
The whole supply chain infrastructure for electronics manufacturing is already well-entrenched in Asia and has been so for a long, long time. All Apple could do in the US is import virtually every little part that goes in the iDevices from an army of suppliers in Asia and do menial assembly, cleaning and packing operations somewhere in the US. And where would that be?
Apple would need tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers doing the most mind-numbingly boring and repetitive work for 10~12 hours a day (with overtime pay, of course). And these workers will need to move fast with machine-like precision and military-like discipline. Did you notice that virtually all the workers at Foxconn looked to be in their late-teens or early-20's? Do any of our graduating high school students seem like they'd be interested in working at an assembly plant like that? Surely, they'd prefer to flip burgers or sell basketball shoes at the local mall for some weekend party money.
But even if there were supposedly-"willing" workers, what metropolis or geographic area would provide tens or hundreds of thousands of people willing to be human robots? Then there's the problem of finding enough mid-level industrial and manufacturing engineers and managers to run such an operation. Consumer electronics manufacturing essentially does not exist in the US so Apple would literally have to start from scratch in finding and training such workers all around the country and then move them to the location of final assembly to manage such a huge operation.
What I'm basically saying here is that it's just not going to happen. There are many good reasons why consumer electronics manufacturing on such a massive scale developed in east Asia. First off, there's the sheer size and density of population in countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. Second, the workers are relatively well-educated (especially in math) and, generally speaking, very disciplined, diligent and productive. Third, there's the shifting demographics of huge numbers of migrant workers (more than the population of the US itself) who are willing (even desperate) to work in such factories to escape the unimaginable poverties in inland China. Fourth, the development and manufacturing of key components such as semiconductors and flat-panel displays has been the domain of east Asia (Japanese and Korean electronic conglomerates) for decades now. Everything for electronics manufacturing is not merely established there, but deeply entrenched. (You say food is grown here in the U.S. because it's cheap, well, that's exactly my point. Manufacturing is cheap in Asia. And those people have just as much right to work as any American. You need to stop thinking our citizens are somehow more deserving of those jobs, of any job; it's a global economy).
What would be the purpose of trying to uproot that to manufacture much more expensively in the US to provide jobs that most people here can't imagine doing? It's not just the labor. It's the overhead, the capital investment, all the byzantine regulations and tax laws, etc. that Apple (or any other would-be mass-scale electronics manufacturer) would have to contend with in the US. Apple setting up manufacturing (more accurately - final assembly) in the US *now* would be one of the most laughable business follies of all time.
There is really nothing here to even have a debate. But who knows? Perhaps a decade or two from now, mass demographic and socio-economic movements and trends around the world as well as new manufacturing and assembly technologies that we can't even imagine right now will somehow make it more attractive to manufacture electronic and technology goods in the US. But right now certainly isn't the time. East Asia will remain the epicenter of consumer electronics manufacturing for the foreseeable future.
Apple is about ideas, design, engineering, procurement/operations, marketing, providing content, cunration of its ecosystem, and customer service and the front-to-end coordination and the most proficient execution of all of these disciplines with a singular vision. When you think about it, that's really what America itself as an industry and economy should be all about.
Comments
And you've never in your entire life said anything rash before? It was a off the cuff irrational comment that ultimately should of not been said but was in an exaggerated sense. Relax a little.
It's the plague of our age. People who wrong another always say both are wrong. In reality no. It's just you. Lol
Sorkin. Dude. Speak for yourself
"You know what, I think that Tim Cook and I probably both went a little too far," Sorkin commented to E! News.
S'okay Aaron. Drama is your business. We understand.
You don't have to imagine to know the cost of living in the two countries is vastly different. You should really quit while you are behind.
Im an apple fan and just because he said something that had some assumptions facts does not mean that im going to boycott a artful movie about steve jobs. Critics are loving it and apparently fasbender did fantastic for the role.
That being said, apple has been publicly called out for low wage child labor and only after being called out and receiving bad press did apple change its policies, create policies and enforce policies. There are still questionable labor practices, and it is still VERY opportunistic to employe chinese to build apple products instead of manufacturing in america, because the wages per hour are so low there. And most of them are still in poverty/ live much lesser lives than low wage workers in the usa. We have labor and wage laws to protect humans rights to life happiness and prosperity. Apple wants to avoid those human rights and be opportunistic by cutting labor costs knowing it affects people in the same economic ways.
Apple also continues to do very little about memory capacity, ram, processor speeds until this very fall. Yet apple charges 700-1000% of the devices actual costs. That is why apple is sitting on over 150 billion in cash. Because its leaders are opportunistic.
Apple charges 30% of music, videos, movies, books, and app downloads. Apple rakes in billions for work it did not do. The cost of running and maintaining the app store would be roughly around 1.5-2.5% of app revenues. But apple takes from other peoples work anyways because they simply can. Because apple is opportunistic.
Apple raised its pricing for insurance on its devices. Even though prices per part were already broken down plus average labor costs to replace a iphone part, and applecare plus the fix fee are generally 600% more than it actually costs apple for the part and labor. Therefore apple is raising insurance on applecare out of opportunism.
Doing good business is great. Profiting is great. But taking from people just because you can, because you developed an ecosystem that surrounds peoples lives is just greedy opportunism.
Here's a list of Foxconn's current clients:
Acer
Amazon
Apple
Blackberry
Cisco
Dell
Google
Hewlett Packard
Huawei
Microsoft
Motorola
InFocus
Nintendo
Nokia
Sony
Toshiba
Xiaomi
Vizio
You appear to be correct.
This very, very obviously appears to be a problem that only Apple needs to address. Good on you for only calling them out.
I look forward to seeing the result of an American company telling the Chinese how to do business in China.
I saw the trailer and almost puked. Every word spoken was west-wing shite.
Don't know why he apologized, he was spot on.
Maybe because he's not spot on and you're wrong?
Sorkin's remarks might have been more over the top, but Tim Cook did shoot first, and without any good reason. He didn't say this about Walter Isaacson. Seriously people, use a little more judgement than just this Crips vs Bloods mentality.
Without good reason? Why do people open their mouth when they don't have a clue. I'll give you a hint: Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine
I'll even give you a link to educate yourself, why TC did shoot first.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/04/kim-gibney-jobs
I know where he went too far but where did Tim Cook go too far?
Tim Cook went too far because he dared express a point of view that disagrees with the anti-Apple trolls' worldview.
Sorkin is an uncreative writer whose drama-queen approach to steve jobs will flop, because so much of the story is already known. He will not be able to pass off his ridiculously over-dramatic nonsense in this context.
I saw the trailer and almost puked. Every word spoken was west-wing shite.
Now now. This will only make the contrarians post more of Sorkin's IMDB resume, as if.
Why are you defending a multinational, which is perfectly capable of handling itself? It's very childish.
Please remember to post this exact same sentiment the next time a Google-licker defends Google in the forums.
Now now. This will only make the contrarians post more of Sorkin's IMDB resume, as if.
LOL, good point.
Also, I don't care if Sorkin intended to make money on the film or not, he did and it probably will (enough to cover the cost to film...I don't know) and to say that he took a paycut to get this thing done is disingenous at best. If he said he went from $5 million down to $50,000 I'd say ok...THATS a paycut. Still a boatload of money to most people...and more than those poor Chinese kids will ever see in their lifetime...only making 17 cents an hour. Tsk tsk.
Shut up, do movies and get over yourself.
So, when Tim Cook who knows Steve Jobs so closely for years make remark than it has more substance than someone focus on making money on person he knows from bits and pieces.
This is not an apology.
It's an attempt to admit fault while pointing the finger at the other party in order to keep things even. Forced sharing of blame. Transparent buffoonery.
Apple's executives were unhappy with Walter Isaacson's book because it was shallow, made shakey judgments on some of Jobs decisions, and was poorly written. He had full access to Jobs and he didn't write anything most Apple fans didn't already know. I was disappointed after reading the book because I didn't learn anything I hadn't already known.
Cook and others likely felt Jobs would have been highly disappointed with the end result of the book not because it exposed some of Job's faults but because it simply was a poor product.
Further there is nothing wrong with defending your dead friends reputation and legacy. To Cook and company Jobs was a real person they cared about. That is what they should do.
You know nothing of what you speak.
Regarding yours and the seemingly never-ending comments about why Apple products aren't (or can't be) manufactured in the US, it's a matter of economics - macroeconomics. It's a matter of scale, workforce demographics, and global socio-economic forces at work here and even Apple with its $100+ billion in cash can't fight these things.
The uninformed like to point out that Apple (and other multinational corps) is using "slave labor" to make mega-profits but then who isn't using cheap Asian manual labor? Also, the final assembly portion of building an iDevice makes up a small percentage of the overall cost. The main factor here is that virtually all of the components (from semiconductors to displays to PCB's to screws) that go into the iDevices a d every other electronic device are also fabricated and manufactured in Asia.
The whole supply chain infrastructure for electronics manufacturing is already well-entrenched in Asia and has been so for a long, long time. All Apple could do in the US is import virtually every little part that goes in the iDevices from an army of suppliers in Asia and do menial assembly, cleaning and packing operations somewhere in the US. And where would that be?
Apple would need tens or even hundreds of thousands of workers doing the most mind-numbingly boring and repetitive work for 10~12 hours a day (with overtime pay, of course). And these workers will need to move fast with machine-like precision and military-like discipline. Did you notice that virtually all the workers at Foxconn looked to be in their late-teens or early-20's? Do any of our graduating high school students seem like they'd be interested in working at an assembly plant like that? Surely, they'd prefer to flip burgers or sell basketball shoes at the local mall for some weekend party money.
But even if there were supposedly-"willing" workers, what metropolis or geographic area would provide tens or hundreds of thousands of people willing to be human robots? Then there's the problem of finding enough mid-level industrial and manufacturing engineers and managers to run such an operation. Consumer electronics manufacturing essentially does not exist in the US so Apple would literally have to start from scratch in finding and training such workers all around the country and then move them to the location of final assembly to manage such a huge operation.
What I'm basically saying here is that it's just not going to happen. There are many good reasons why consumer electronics manufacturing on such a massive scale developed in east Asia. First off, there's the sheer size and density of population in countries like Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China. Second, the workers are relatively well-educated (especially in math) and, generally speaking, very disciplined, diligent and productive. Third, there's the shifting demographics of huge numbers of migrant workers (more than the population of the US itself) who are willing (even desperate) to work in such factories to escape the unimaginable poverties in inland China. Fourth, the development and manufacturing of key components such as semiconductors and flat-panel displays has been the domain of east Asia (Japanese and Korean electronic conglomerates) for decades now. Everything for electronics manufacturing is not merely established there, but deeply entrenched. (You say food is grown here in the U.S. because it's cheap, well, that's exactly my point. Manufacturing is cheap in Asia. And those people have just as much right to work as any American. You need to stop thinking our citizens are somehow more deserving of those jobs, of any job; it's a global economy).
What would be the purpose of trying to uproot that to manufacture much more expensively in the US to provide jobs that most people here can't imagine doing? It's not just the labor. It's the overhead, the capital investment, all the byzantine regulations and tax laws, etc. that Apple (or any other would-be mass-scale electronics manufacturer) would have to contend with in the US. Apple setting up manufacturing (more accurately - final assembly) in the US *now* would be one of the most laughable business follies of all time.
There is really nothing here to even have a debate. But who knows? Perhaps a decade or two from now, mass demographic and socio-economic movements and trends around the world as well as new manufacturing and assembly technologies that we can't even imagine right now will somehow make it more attractive to manufacture electronic and technology goods in the US. But right now certainly isn't the time. East Asia will remain the epicenter of consumer electronics manufacturing for the foreseeable future.
Apple is about ideas, design, engineering, procurement/operations, marketing, providing content, cunration of its ecosystem, and customer service and the front-to-end coordination and the most proficient execution of all of these disciplines with a singular vision. When you think about it, that's really what America itself as an industry and economy should be all about.
You fanboys are pathetic.