dysamoria

DAalseth said:

This is a classic example of the Streisand Effect. I, and I suspect a lot of other people would not have even been aware of the film, or given a damn about it. But now I kinda want to go see what all the fuss is about.

I’m personally very cautious about seeing anything that claims to be historical and “based on true events”, unless it’s a straight documentary. After hearing about this one, I’m even more certain of that stance with this film. 

georgie01 said:

It’s gotten to the point nowadays that people will routinely argue their own perspectives until they’re blue in the face, not having enough discernment to know whether it’s even true or not—a good argument is all that’s needed. We love ourselves so much that our feelings about things are better than truth.

So it’s impossible to have confidence in who has the correct message about this.

You probably could have gotten by with the second statement, only, and skipped the first.

StrangeDays said:

dysamoria said:

As a person who cares a lot about these issues, I was at first totally impressed by this recycling robot stuff at Apple. I love robots and I love the notion of reclaiming materials.

However, as a person who really does care a lot about these issues (and therefore pays attention to the finer details), I realized Apple’s robots are indeed largely a publicity thing.

Apple are not the good guys here. They just market themselves as the good guys, and we believe them, because the marketing is powerful and because they do some good things. However, Apple don’t do most of the good things they could and should be doing. They fall well below the image they seem to be buying with marketing.

There’s so much waste by Apple:

• Apple sells short-life products, per their own efforts to get us to buy new things as rapidly as possible. They intentionally and arbitrarily abandon software updates on older devices (Snow Leopard is proof that a new version of an OS can be more compact and more efficient than all of its predecessors, and Apple hasn’t repeated that since, because Snow Leopard was merely the side-benefit of developing iOS). Apple are one of the typical cases of computer industry efforts at focusing only on selling new products, not on making existing ones continue to operate effectively. OS “Upgrades” are tools to sell more product, not improvements to the existing products.

• Apple has environmentally-horrible packaging. Their luxurious packaging uses too many (and wastes new) materials. They present PR that’s basically about subsidizing the logging industry, rather than using post-consumer paper. They use needless piles of non-recyclable plastic films (while technically recyclable, there’s almost zero infrastructure for plastic film recycling in the USA, because of capitalism) to wrap products and accessories.

• Apple’s products are designed-as-disposable. Yes, that’s what you’re making when you sell products that depend on sealed-in rechargeable batteries, which are inaccessible to customer replacement (even making it impossible to replace without literally rebuilding and refurbishing the product with some brand new materials). This is especially egregious in products that don’t need to be wireless! It’s not just batteries, though: the non-modular, and inaccessible nature of their products means that any failure of any kind means a likely monolithic replacement if not a replacement of the entire device. There is proof that fewer connectors and joints results in better reliability, but the environmental impact here of disposable electronics is worth backing off a bit on the monolithic design.

• IFixit (yes I know people here despise them, but they make relevant points we need to consider about Apple’s environmental impact), recently wrote about iPhones/iPads being shredded or disassembled instead of being resold for second-hand ownership due to activation lock. Macs with T2 chips are in line for the same treatment. This is a problem. We cannot trash the environment for the sake of absolutist data security. I know you guys malign iFixIt as having self-interest in the second-hand market, but this is still a relevant issue. Manufacturing new devices serves Apple, while second-hand ownership does not. Manufacturing new products to sell to customers uses far more more materials and energy than does the reuse of existing, intact products.

Some of the problem is the culture of waste in the USA. It’s not just the obsession with having new gadgets; we barely recycle anything anymore. I don’t just mean people are lazy jerks about recycling (my neighbor is a perfect example of that). As a nation, we literally do not have recycling systems in place for most materials. Incinerator-selling corporations are actively competing against recycling systems. The collected materials aren’t going anywhere now that China has decided to stop taking our single-stream waste (basically the recyclable materials were useless the way we collect and ship them out; it’s entirely our own fault). The recycling we were doing was minimal even before that. Most plastics don’t get reused. Recyclers don’t want them because buyers of these plastics aren’t interested in most of the types of plastic going through the system (and manufacturers are a huge part of the problem by choosing the cheapest and least recyclable materials for packaging). The incinerators want to burn it, as it makes “great fuel” to keep incinerators burning (“waste to energy” is a propaganda meme; it’s just waste, and it’s incredibly damaging to the environment).

Our recycling efforts have sucked due to capitalist laziness and greed in the actual recycling business, and, yes, also because of citizens not giving a damn... But Apple, and every other manufacturer (and most businesses that have any kind of consumables), does far more damage in this regard than individual citizens. The sheer scale of waste put out by businesses (who aren’t usually required by their regional governments to do recycling at all, when the citizens areexpected to) far eclipses the waste put out by individuals.

Ad Council propaganda on recycling and “good for the planet” activities is always aimed at individual citizens. That’s how the Ad Council protects corporations from responsibility; that’s what they exist for: propaganda. It literally was founded as a propaganda department; it used to be called “The War Council”. Despite their PR efforts, reality stays the same: the largest abuses of the environment, and the actual places that could make the most impact in halting our environmental destruction, are at the corporate level.

Apple are not just an example of this; Apple are a major part of the problem.

If this feel-good PR (disassembly robots, data centers powered by batteries and carbon offset credits, etc) leaves you content, you’re not paying enough attention. You are allowed to like Apple and Apple products if they make your life better in some way, but you really ought to be demanding more from them on environmental issues than expensive PR.

TLDR most of your uninformed rant, but your bolded sentences are full of shit.

- Apple's devices have the longest useful lifespans in the biz, which is why they have the highest resale value. My old devices become hand-me-downs for years.

- Their packaging is the best I've ever seen and is basically just cardboard and highly recyclable (seriously what's wrong with you?).

- Not readily user-serviceable isn't the same disposable -- I've both done my own repairs, and brought them in for repairs. And when finally shot, drop them off (or send them back for free) to be recycled.

- And your last paragraph -- nuts. If you believe Apple's comprehensive, industry-leading policies and actions on environmental concerns are just PR, then you haven't been paying attention.

Have Apple eliminated all the unnecessary packaging I’ve seen in every Apple product I’ve ever bought? The plastic film especially? Because like I said, it’s new materials and plastic film is not generally recycled. Can you explain to me why it’s not a valid criticism to point out that Apple use unnecessary plastic films and new materials for packaging instead of post-consumer materials? The whole point of my dissertation was that WE AS A COUNTRY ARE NOT RECYCLING. It doesn’t matter if some of Apple’s packaging is “highly recyclable”.

You’re being defensive instead of really absorbing the details here. YOU are the uniformed. You couldn’t even notice where I said Apple does do good things. All you saw is criticism and you refuse to examine it.

Am I the only one that read his quotes in a Joe Pesci voice?

Let me see if I understand this:

 The streaming companies, in order to make more (any?) money, want to sidestep the problem of paying licensing to the record companies for all the content they own, right...?

They want their own content ownership, which they think will come from amongst all the unsigned independent artists, so they can have “original” content on their streaming services...?

In effect, the streaming companies want to become “recording” companies, and basically repeat the whole cycle of the recording industry having a say as to what artists make and how it’s marketed...?

Is that what Iovine is saying?

I don’t know where he gets off saying that it’s a great time to be a musician. It’s a great time to be a person that wants to make music (because the tools are plentiful and even free), but this is the opposite of a good time to expect to earn an income off of being a musician.

There’s just no money in it. Even live performers struggle to make an income, and they put out way more work just for the little they make (travel, lodging, marketing, practice, maintaining a live band, maintenance of equipment and vehicles, etc).

There are countless artists who make great stuff, but they have zero exposure to an audience that wants their work. This is despite the claim of full and direct access to the world.

Iovine sounds like yet another lucky entrepreneur who thinks the examples of success he’s been surrounded by are proof of how it can work for everyone and anyone (survivorship bias).

The music software and hardware business really lives off of the money coming from hobbyists, not paid musicians or studios. The stats collected by developers have indicated as such. The number of hobbyists far surpasses the number of people making a living off of making music (and the corporations make the bulk of the money possible, all on licensing of content).

There’s no access point for the average artist. No path to having an income because there’s more than enough content available and the average artist doesn’t have the marketing might of a corporation (which they waste on 100% owned manufactured content, instead of finding interesting artists out in the world).

Half of my own music library is music that was OFFERED for free online by the musicians that made it, and mostly because they saw no way to make money with it. They wanted someone to at least hear it, so they gave it away.

I struggle constantly with getting myself to work on my music simply because of the reality that it will never provide me with any financial income. There’s no audience. The music business (and our dying economy & culture) have seen to that. People don’t even really value music much at all.

Music is not a rare commodity. With all the commercially manufactured music constantly being pushed out on the radio, malls, restaurants, TV, and every other place with speakers, music is not a compelling item to seek out. Music has become homogenous, and the culture does not value uniqueness. They’re taught not to, by popular culture manipulators (ie marketing).

Blah blah blah, who cares. I’m just one of thousands of artists who will permanently be stuck without an audience for, or an income from their art, struggling to afford just barely subsisting in my life, let alone being able to afford BEING a musician.

It is NOT a good time to be an artist.

Last comment: Visual artists are in the same spot. 

Will we the users still be able to run anything we like, so long as we go into System Preferences and choose “open anyway”?