6502

Quite bold of him setting a $130/share price target when Apple currently trades at $133/share.

Back in the late 90's my broker recommended I sell few shares of Apple that I bought in high school. I didn't and today that $5000 investment is worth $480k. Never used or listened to a broker since.

lkrupp said:

22july2013 said:

I see Apple is moving up, from doing business with a country that gets 2.26 (out of 10) on the democracy index (China) to a country that gets 3.06 (Viet Nam). I would much rather see Apple do its business in a higher scoring country, perhaps India (6.90) or Brazil (6.86.) I guess Apple's core values don't include freedom or democracy or human rights. Well, at least they aren't doing business with North Korea (1.08), or Saudi Arabia (1.93). I guess Apple wouldn't do business with Saudi Arabia because Apple has strong LGBTQ values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index <--

By the way, on environmental indexes, Viet Nam is near the bottom. Although India is even closer to the bottom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Performance_Index <--

Well, since those who squawk about human rights and the environment don’t seem wiling to pay higher prices for goods made in countries they approve of, I don’t think their opinions matter much. Do those people check the labels for point of manufacture when buying clothing? Do they buy USA made clothing online and pay 25% more for them? I sincerely doubt it. Oh wait, those same people also think the USA is a cesspool human rights abuses, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, bigotry, misogyny, etc so I guess it’s a wash.

Perhaps it could come out of Apple's $60B annual profit? Or, maybe the millions it pays in executive bonuses? But, sure, let's have the guy making $30k/yr make up the difference.

I don't know much about this, but something that's similar and less expensive, I've been playing around with Open Media Vault on a raspberry pi and it works quite well.

I've stopped using Safari on my iMac because of the lack of extensions. A lot of the ones that used to work, like wikiwand, no longer do. Plus, I've encountered a few web pages that I use regularly that just don't render right in Safari but are fine in Chrome.

rotateleftbyte said:

It is not just Apple that is losing key skills. Almost all Engineering and Tech companies who contract out work are doing the same.

Outsourcing to cheaper locations might be good for the beancounters (note... their jobs hardly ever go overseas) but the skills drain is immense.

It happened to me twice. The last time I refused to train my Indian replacements. They had two people just to do my job.

The experiences of the first episode made me think long and hard about training people who really didn't care about the job and who were unable to ask relevant or hard questions for fear of losing face with their boss.

I have warned my grandchildren away from going into the IT business as there is no future for it in the west.

Exactly right. And, it is not just computer tech and IT. I'm a chemist and work for a smaller company ($0.7B market cap) that does internal R&D and also contract R&D for all the large pharma companies (worldwide). None of these pharma companies do any chemistry any more; it is all contracted out to china (Wuxi) and India. They literally have giant buildings filled with thousands of low paid chemists that are way cheaper than using domestic talent, even if that means risking IP. It is so competitive to be a Western chemist today that you need a BS (4-5 yrs), PhD (5-6 yrs) and several post-docs (each one is 2-3 yrs) just to have any hope of being hired in the US or Europe. You basically need more training than an MD. There is zero security no matter how good you are. And, most western chemists quickly pivot to project management and are no longer in the lab. I'd say most of the high paying jobs in the US/Europe are in finance, project management, alliance management, logistics, MBA-related, etc..., not in hard skills. Sad really what we've become.