cgWerks

nunzy said:
Free speech is great until it reduces potential profits. Apple is not some sort of do-gooder organization. They are a business.

Except for when their "do-gooding" happens to align with the personal beliefs of the leadership or they think they can gain some virtue-signaling brownie-points.

AppleInsider said:
Apple lauds itself as a bastion of free speech and free expression ...

They do? They have stood up for privacy, but I can't recall them making stands on free speech and expression... kind of the opposite if you think of certain controversial political and social issues, it seems to me.

nunzy said:

mike54 said:

I'm hoping they will say something about the mac mini. Apple needs to put out a reasonably priced headless mac. I don't don't care if its mini, any size will do.

The market for that would be way too small. iMac produces more revenue and likely makes higher margins.

What makes you think the market for that would be too small?

tallest skil said:
Oh, you’re Canadian! Now I know not to say certain things to you, because you don’t have freedom of speech and just reading them will get you into trouble. Or maybe just AI banned from the Canadian Internet.

Heh, well I'm actually a US citizen living in Canada (permanent residency). Soon we can become Canadian citizens, and I'll pay more attention to the politics here. But, yes, freedom of speech is more or less hanging on whims at this point. Given the 'living document' postmodern interpretation baloney going on these days with the US Constitution and activist judges, I doubt you're really all that far behind. The USA has a better foundation for human rights, but not if the Constitution isn't worth the paper it is written on.

Canada, England, EU, etc. have some nice language flourishes in their human rights declarations, but they aren't based on any substance like the US.

nht said:

My problem with libertarians is the same I have with liberals. Both are idealists that are unable to accept that when their utopia has been implemented in the real world it has been a disaster for everyone but the elites that profited whether it was the rail barons of the US west or Stalin and Russia.

No system is going to work, because... human nature. But, it is more a question of which system works best given that reality. The problem is when these systems start getting too pure of a 'science' and forget that. Capitalism is a great example of this.

blastdoor said:
And yet, despite that clearly being a very motivated statement, it wasn't exactly wrong either and it certainly applies today even more than back then. Apple is much more the "Sony of computers" than the "serious computer company" (by "Sony", I mean the positive 1980s version, not the lame 2000s version).  

Yeah, the whole power-user/consumer thing aside (as I think that's a bit irrelevant), Sony was THE company back then. My initial education was in electronics engineering, and everyone wanted to work at Sony, the way people want to work at Apple, Google, FB, etc. today. It wasn't because they were a consumer electronics giant, but because they made the best stuff (best quality, best designs, innovative stuff, etc.).

Sony is still around, but they are pretty marginalized now, aside from maybe the PlayStation and cameras. That's more the future I see for Apple if they don't keep product quality, design, innovation as number 1 priority.

If I recall, Sony went through a similar transition where the products cheapened out to hit higher numbers of consumer base, and eventually, they weren't see as all that great of stuff anymore (or at least not enough better). The brand-name eroded and the fall followed. Aside from a few verticals, no one really sees Sony like they once did. Other competition came in and made Sony just a choice among many.