daven

I can see Apple's point of view. A customer takes apart their computer and wrecks it in the process. Other than the obvious breakage, you don't know what else is broken or compromised. If you fix the obvious and something else is broken or compromised and the problem doesn't show up until after it has been back in service for a while, the customer will blame Apple for not fixing it completely.

Well since Trump got in office again my retirement investments have dropped over 20% so it looks like I’ll pay 20% less in taxes when I make my withdrawals. By the way, why doesn’t Trump make his swag in the USA? His shoes are made in Vietnam and his Bibles in China. Really? We don’t have print shops. In the USA? Sad that small government Republicans are all for micromanaging individual companies such as America’s largest taxpayer Apple.

All-Purpose Guru said:

The problem with building a plant in Texas is that pretty much ALL the infrastructure needed to SUPPLY that plant is in China, and that infrastructure would cost billions and billions of dollars to bring here, and isn't even part of Apple.  Even the trashcan Mac Pro currently built in Texas is built of subassemblies and parts made overseas.

There was a story a while back about how even the precision SCREWS needed to assemble the iPhone can't be made in the US any more and would have to be sourced from China or elsewhere.

Trump is a real estate mogul.  He has NO idea how manufacturing actually works.

As I recall, it was screws for the 'trash can' Mac Pro. The found one company in California that made the screws (special order I think) and a guy from the assembly plant drove his station wagon to pick up the first load of them. We do need to bring manufacturing back to the USA but in an intelligent way. I was watching a PBS show a year or so ago about manufacturing in the USA over the decades. We actually make more stuff here than we did in the 1980s but lost jobs in the process. Most of the job loss was because of automation though. A good case study is to look at the automobile industry. We make a lot more cars with a lot fewer people.

crowley said:

geekmee said:

I think the tinkering days are over, as a requirement to use computers… or the non-tinkering market has grown, to make tinkers insignificant.

When were tinkerers last significant?  The days when computer companies operated out of garages have been gone for decades.  That doesn't mean it isn't a fun hobby, or entertaining to show what a 3D printer plus a bit of talent and determination can result in.

Amazing how time flies. When I got out of college and worked as a post graduate student intern at an Air Force base, I got all the computer grunt jobs because I had an engineering degree and some programming background. We ordered some PCs for the office and they came in… in pieces. You had to install the extra memory chips (individual chips) above the base ram, the hard drive, the drive cables, and the operating system and software. 

I guess Foxcon won't be building a factory in Wisconsin after all.

I can see how having dedicated silicon for matrix operations will benefit photography and video production. Multiple cameras give you different samples of points in space. If two cameras read the same point differently you have to have to choose which sample is correct, average the two data values, or have some algorithm determining some intermediate value for that point. For three cameras, if two of the cameras agree, the true value is likely the value the two cameras agreed on. However, when you have multiple cameras you also have different view points and have to calculate how the points correlate. When you do that you use matrices with sine and cosine values and almost all the time you don't have a direct correlation. A point in one camera is almost always corresponds to a point between other pixel points in the second camera so you have to sample the surrounding points and calculate what the value of the corresponding point in the second image would be if it were sampled. It can get computationally expensive to do that and having dedicated silicon may make it practical. Having three cameras adds to the complexity but also adds to the amount of data you have to make sure you have the value of the pixel correct.

It really is amazing how far digital photography has come in twenty years.

So scared of making a mistake that management let the lead Apple had wither. Embarrassing.

crowley said:

Would be great if Senators and the President would lead the way and also put their personal finances on the line for the decisions that they make.

But they do. Just look at their insider trading activity. 

Thanks for the honest article. Seriously.

CheeseFreeze said:

cessnapaul said:

"we love developers" as long as we get a 30% cut.

Just because Karl Benz invented the automobile doesn't mean he gets a cut of every toll road.

Saying Apple deserves a 30% cut of all digital goods because they built the platform is like saying a mall owner deserves a percentage of everything sold in every store, forever, even after the store builds its own loyal customer base and no longer relies on foot traffic.

Sure, Apple built the “mall” - the App Store - and they deserve fair rent for access and discovery. But when Apple blocks tenants from even telling customers that cheaper options exist outside the mall, or forces them to use Apple’s own checkout system, it stops being about fair business and becomes about control.

The real issue isn’t whether Apple should earn money - they already do, handsomely. It’s that they’ve positioned themselves as landlord, tax authority, and competitor all at once. Epic’s win doesn’t mean developers escape costs - it just means they can finally choose how to run their businesses. That’s not freeloading. That’s competition.

And let’s be honest: a free economy isn’t absolute. It needs guardrails. When two companies are the app economy, protecting free markets requires regulation - not just to stop abuse, but to keep the system open for the next generation of creators.

So you are saying I can set up my product booth in Walmart and let people buy my product on the spot directly from me or go outside and pay there without Walmart getting a cut or being able to object. Likewise, if I’m a developer of third party add ons to Epic’s games, they need to host and let me sell my add ons on their website without a cut of my sales.