davidw

GeorgeBMac said:

bageljoey said:

GeorgeBMac said:

I'm not getting this:   If they were "refurbished" Apple screens (although I'm not sure how one refurbishes a screen), how are they "Counterfeit"? 

Counterfeit:   "a fraudulent imitation of something else; a forgery."

And, why would they obscure or remove the Apple branding -- which would, if anything, add value.

If I’m reading this correctly, the repair shop bought genuine Apple parts but not from a licensed seller—at least not licensed to sell to them. To hide that they were not bought legally (and with Apple backing) they had to remove marks identifying the parts as genuine Apple parts. 

It doesn’t seem to say, but Here is a theory: perhaps the Chinese factory had some screens that didn’t meet Apple’s quality control standards. Instead of destroying them, they sold them on a sort of black market for spare Apple parts. 

Yeh, that makes sense.

it's not that they were in any way counterfeit (at least not in the normal use of the term) but were sold outside of regular, authorized channels -- which then made selling them as legitimate Apple products legally shaky or downright illegal.

But, there's no reason to think they were inferior rejects -- although that is certainly possible.   The factory where they were made could have been selling off "excess stock" or they could have been salvaged from phones that either didn't pass inspection or were stolen.  There are multiple possibilities.

Perhaps an analogy is myself:   I bought a used Apple SSD and installed it in a 2017 MacBook Air.   If Apple knew, they would not approve.   But otherwise, it is totally, completely legitimate and up to both specs and standards.

"it's not that they were in any way counterfeit (at least not in the normal use of the term) but were sold outside of regular, authorized channels -- which then made selling them as legitimate Apple products legally shaky or downright illegal."

It's more than that. One can not re-brand another product, as their own or someone else's. In other words, this repair shop can not re-brand Apple products as some other off brand or their own. This falls under "reverse passing off". Where "passing off" is slapping someone else trademark on another, usually inferior, product, "reversing passing off" is the removal of someone else trademark on a product and passing it off as your own or a no name brand (white label). 

Right now, an iPhone 6 LCD assembly cost less than $20 on eBay, but they are not sold as an Apple branded LCD. Even if the company that makes them might be the same company that makes the LCD's for Apple, they are sold as Apple compatible parts. The buyers knows that chances are, these LCD's are not as good as the LCD's made for Apple, with the Apple trademark, but will buy them because they are 1/5 the price of an Apple branded  LCD and 1/2 the price of a used Apple branded LCD. 

Now suppose this repair shop was able to purchase real Apple branded iPhone 6  LCD's at a great discount, from a grey market source that obscures the Apple trademark to make the transaction less illegal. Even if the repair shop did not advertise that the LCD's they used to repair iPhones  were made by Apple, they can not sell them as not being made by Apple, that would be "reverse passing off".

This shop might have been able to charge more for repair work using these screens, than using the non Apple branded eBay LCD's because they are a much higher quality screen and people that knows the difference would be wiling to pay more for their repair work. Even if they were never told that the LCD's are real Apple LCD's. The shop ends up making more profits than if they were to buy and use the eBay LCD's for their repairs. Word of mouth would be that this shop was using Apple quality LCD's for their repair work, at half the price of an Apple branded LCD. Even if the shop were not to mark up the price of the Apple branded LCD's they purchased, (with the Apple trademarked removed), they still benefit from being able to charge more for the repair work with these LCD's, because people are willing to pay more because of what they think are high quality non Apple branded LCD's being used. The shop was taking advantage of Apple quality product, without giving credit to or paying, Apple.  

gmgravytrain said:

While I'm not complaining about the share gains I have received from Apple since 2004, I'd just like to point out that Apple's dividends are only 1% and that seems rather low from a company always talking about cash neutrality. Even Microsoft is giving out higher dividends than Apple and has to give out about 3B more shares worth than Apple every quarter. If buying back shares are really helping shareholders, then that's fine but you look at Boeing and although it's struggling, that company gives out far higher dividends than cash-flow king Apple. I would think Apple could afford to give out a $1 a share in dividends than just $0.77. That would keep me flush every quarter as a senior citizen without having to touch my social security check

If Apple doesn't want to give out a higher dividend then why don't they acquire a cloud computing business since Wall Street claims the CLOUD has unlimited growth potential and they endlessly praise every company that has a cloud service such as Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. Those companies get such fat P/Es based on their cloud services while Apple only gets criticism about falling iPhone sales.

To be fair, the current dividend of $3.08 per share was issued when AAPL was closer to $200 a share in March of 2019. Which translates to about 1.5%. Which is not great but also not bad at all.

 If you were to look at AAPL 5 past dividend payout at the the time they announced the increase in dividend, during the 2nd quarter report after March, the payout was

 2015           $2.08 with AAPL at about $124/share and 1.7%

 2016           $2.28 with AAPL at about $108/share and 2.4%

2017            $2.52 with AAPL at about $143/share and 1.6%

2018            $2.92 with AAPL at about $167/share and 1.5%

2019            $3.08 with AAPL at about $190/share and 1.6%

 It is only now with AAPL over $300 a share, that the 2019 dividend payout has dropped to 1%. But Apple only raises its dividend once a year, during the 2nd quarter earnings report. So we will have to wait until after March to see how much Apple will increase the dividend by. If Apple were to keep their average of about 1.6% and AAPL were to remain above $300 a share, then the dividend should increase to about $4.50 a share after this March. AAPL share price has risen more than 50%, since the last increase in March of 2019 and hopefully the dividend payout will do the same, to maintain a 1.5% dividend at the time of increase.

 And hopefully, by March of 2021, the newly 2020 increased dividend to keep it at 1.5%, will once again be less than 1% of AAPL new share price.

harry wild said:

All these Silicon Valley firms just do not like doing anything to help their country!  But that the way they feel!

That's not how I see it. Apple do not need government defense contract money for RD. Apple can afford to do all the RD themselves. This way, the government can not claim the technology for themselves or limit Apple use of the technology, that Apple developed.

 If Apple worked on a project for the US Dept. of Defense, that is partly or wholly funded by the US Dept. of Defense, who owns the technology developed under that deal? I imagine that if the technology proves highly useful, that the government can limit Apple use of the technology in their own products, as government money was used to help develop it.

 But if Apple develops the technology on their own, with their own money, the Dept. of Defense can always later pay Apple, for the use of that technology and won't be able tell Apple that they can't use the technology for their own products.

 Just because Apple halted work with the US Dept. of Defense project, it doesn't mean that Apple is no longer going to work on the technology for their own use.

 But I don't blame smaller tech companies for working with the US Dept. of Defense on developing new technology, that they otherwise could not afford to develop on their own.

jd_in_sb said:

Flash had its day. It was revolutionary but ultimately just an interim step to HTML5. Now if we could just get rid of JavaScript...

Nooooooooooooooo!

With Safari and the Developer menu on the top menu bar, javascript can be easily disabled with a just a few clicks ( or a user programed key stroke). This makes it easy to view a lot of websites, without loading any of their ads, pop ups and videos. It works better than any ad blockers and even gets rid of those pop ups that prevents you from reading the articles, unless you disable your ad blockers or whitelist the site.

Of course javascript can not be disabled for all the sites I visit but many of the news sites where I just want to read an article to two, without all their annoying pop ups and ads, just disabling javascript is the easiest way to get rid of those ads. Plus doing so, my old MacBook with a core2duo feels like it has an i7 chip in it and without my fan going into high speed on certain sites. It's the same with my 2nd generation iPad. I can easily disable javascript in the Safari setting and the iPad feels like one of the newer ones, when visiting websites that mainly uses javascript for ads. 

Now this is from a consumer using the internet point of view and not that of a developer or software engineer, where there might be other issues with javascript.   

Fred257 said:

davidw said:

Fred257 said:

Apple is helping criminals.  Why?

The same can be said about the US Constitution. Criminals also has protection under the US Constitution, that prevents the government from abusing its powers. It's the price paid, to ensure that everyone is protected from a government that is capable of abusing its powers.

With Apple, the only way they can help protect the private data of all their iPhone (and iPad) customers, is to not create a backdoor that the government can use to get into criminals locked iPhones. After all, if we never have to worry about the government abusing its powers, we would not need the US Constitution.

This is about having a warrant.  Nothing more 

A warrant only requires Apple to turn over all the info requested, that is in Apple's possession and they have access to. And Apple has done that.

The iPhones that the FBI wants the info from, are not in Apple"s possession. Apple are not the owners of those iPhones. Apple do not have the info that are encrypted inside those iPhones. Apple do not have the passcode needed to access the info in those iPhones. A search warrant requesting that the info inside those iPhones be turned over, is served to the owners of the iPhones, not to the maker of the iPhones. How can a search warrant require Apple to turn over information they are not in possession of? 

What the FBI have is a court order ordering Apple to unlock the iPhone. This is far from having a warrant. It's something that Apple can't do, without attempting to write new software to try to hack into the iPhone. 

It's like if you are a landlord and your tenant changed the lock and never gave you a key. Law enforcement can show you a warrant to search the property but if you don't have the key, all you can do is allow the police to break in, any way they want. The police should hire their own locksmith and not require you to pick the lock. The police should provide their own axe to breakdown the door and not require you to supply them with one. 

And since iPhones in question are evidence, the FBI will not allow Apple to have access to the iPhone that needs to be unlocked. So Apple has to show the FBI that any software they might develop to hack into an iPhone, can be use to unlock a similar iPhone first, without destroying the data inside it. The FBI will not allow Apple to use any software that has not been proven, on the iPhones that are evidence.

And the FBI must make sure that the data in the iPhone is not altered in any way, in case the info in the iPhone has to be used as evidence in court. This means that the FBI forensic team must know exactly how Apple software was used to gain access to the iPhone, so they can testify in court that there's no possibility that the data has been altered in the process. Otherwise, any info gotten using the software, might be considered tainted and not admissible in court.