lkrupp

steven n. said:

lkrupp said:

mcdave said:

cgWerks said:

lkrupp said:

Global tech companies getting caught between the rock and a hard place of global politics. I wonder if Senator Wyden is willing to compensate Google and Apple for their loss of business should they be banned in Saudi Arabia because of his demands. What about Chinese and Russian demands for customer data to be stored in-country? Do you really think Huawei and Samsung would have any misgivings taking over the Saudi Arabian smartphone market because Apple is forced out? 

I guess it depends. If they are going to go down the road of caring about ethics (as they seem to in some cases), then it shouldn't be a matter of 'how much do good ethics impact our bottom line.' You do it because it's the right thing to do, not because it makes the most money.

On the other hand, I'd rather see a company getting into ethics have some kind of grounding and consistency. I haven't seen that from Apple, so maybe better they just don't play the game.

Those are our ethics not theirs.  Why should US companies be used as the pawns of colonisation?

Well, it’s not a matter of Western beliefs, culture and ethics. It’s a matter of human rights. Would you make the same comment if it were slavery that the Saudis were protecting instead of the oppression of women?  Hey, it’s their culture so let ‘em have slaves if they want? Who are we to object?

No, it truly is a matter of western beliefs and ethics. Lots of research on the topic. And we Antony talking about mass murder, slavery or mass beheadings. 

Okay, so the oppression of women is fine then because it’s their culture to oppress to women and treat them like property. Got it.

As I have made known before I am an AT&T retiree. I worked in a Central Office where all the hardware for this stuff lives. According to my former colleagues AT&T has decided the future lies in fixed wireless 5G and fiber to the home deployment is being wound down. But if AT&T does what Verizon is doing and makes fixed wireless 5G expensive and limited (namely $70/mo with a very small data cap) this is idiotic with a capital “I”.

carnegie said:

If the iPhone has an install base of 185 million in the U.S., a nation with a population of something like 330 million, that's incredible. I'm not sure I buy that, but I wouldn't say it's not possible.

Well, I would buy that. On a recent flight from St. Louis to Phoenix (Southwest Airlines) I saw nothing on that plane but iPhones and iPads and I looked real hard because I’m, like, a fanboy extraordinaire. Southwest now allows free messaging but it only works with with iOS Messages and WhatsApp. The setup was a little quirky (finding the TOS agreement to accept) so I asked a flight attendant for help. Her response was, and I quote, “I don't know much but I know how an iPhone works” as she pulled out her own iPhone.

If you belong to the “It’s my computer/phone/watch and I will damn well do what I want with it” crowd then that’s fine and dandy. Sell your Apple gear and buy something else. Otherwise live with it.

agilealtitude said:

It's all about money, money, money, and money.

Well, what would do if you found out your data was being stored on servers not based in the U.S? Would the U.S. government be within its rights to demand U.S. citizen’s data be stored on U.S. based servers? Why is it somehow nefarious for Russia and China to want their citizen’s data stored on servers within their borders? Yes, those two countries are not shining examples of freedom and human rights but the U.S. has its own issues with privacy, security and freedom. I harken back to the McCarthy years when J. Edgar Hoover had dossiers on just about everybody. Who’s to say the NSA isn’t doing the same things these days. It’s a lot easier to do digitally.