hammeroftruth

MFi needs better policing. There are a lot of Chinese companies that are licensees who have affiliates that make and sell the products. Many of them you see on Amazon and Groupon and most are utter crap.

I did buy a 10' cable, had it plugged into a 12 watt iPad charger and while unplugged from my iPhone, the lightning end melted. All of the packaging showed MFi, the retailer also told me that they were a legitimate MFi manufacturer but I didn't trust them and returned the cable. 

I dont know if Apple tests actual products "in the wild" that claim to be MFi and shut down the counterfeit ones. 

rogerramjet said:

You have literally no proof that AirPods and HomePod technology was borne out the Beats purchase. It's pure conjecture; Apple typically is developing technology for many years before it sees the light of day, and suggesting that they didn't have a capable audio team before Beats came on board is rubbish. It's also worth noting that many audiophiles and tech reviewers have/had/and do pan Beats products for average or middling audio quality when compared to other brands. This article is simply conjecture and seems to be another DED Apple love fest.

Amen!!

in reality, Pre Apple Beats hardware blows. Just ask anyone who bought Powerbeats, watched them break or fall apart and have Apple ship them to their repair facility in Elk Grove. They end up replacing them and then they do it all over again in 3 months. 

Apple could give 2 turds for Beats hardware. They wanted the streaming music and Jimmy Lovine. That is what was worth 3 bill to Tim, not the overpriced pos hardware. 

Now that Apple is making Beats hardware, some of the newer stuff is much better quality (Beats X). They didn't have to buy Beats to make it though, they could have made it without the Beats name. 

Airpods have no distinguishable attributes that they ever came from any Beats DNA. Same for the Homepod. Beats external speakers have always been crap. That's why they didn't sell very well. Heck Apple throws in a pair of $300 headphones every summer if you buy your college kid a new Mac. You don't see them doing that with any Apple audio products. 

Sorry DED, I have read and enjoyed your articles since the old RD days, but this time your points don't add up. 

vesalius said:

AppleInsider 

On a more personal note, Forstall revealed Jobs saved his life in the early 2000s. Around 2004, Forstall contracted a stomach virus from his children. The ailment turned into a much more serious condition that had Forstall constantly vomiting. Over the course of two months, the executive lost some 60 pounds and was hospitalized, with medical staff forced to feed him through a tube.

During the ordeal Jobs would call on a daily basis, checking in and offering non-traditional health advice.

"And one night at about 10 o'clock at night -- this is now months into it -- Steve calls and says, 'I have the best acupuncturist in the world and I'm going to bring her to you tonight and she's going to fix you," Forstall said.

The unconventional treatment worked.

From what I know, This faith is unconventional medicine would unfortunately ultimately contribute to Jobs death. He pursued non-traditional medical treatments for his pancreatic cancer, which was not the aggressive death sentence type until it was too late for traditional medicine to treat it effectively. 

One of Steve's Doctors who treated him, actually wrote an article explaining while his own treatments were unconventional, the outcome wouldn't have changed much due to the aggressiveness of his cancer. He surmised that Steve was exposed to chemicals that cause cancer during his early days working with printed circuit boards. The chemicals that were used to clean them were very caustic and later on were found to cause cancer. This is where the Dr. thought Steve contracted it. By the time it metastasized to his organs, it was too late. 
If it was caught many many years prior he might have had a better chance of surviving. 

Im sorry I don't have the link anymore, but it was a sad read. 

slurpy said:

Wait, but I thought that Apple invented slave labor, that they have "child labor camps" in China, that if I buy an Apple product I'm actively supporting slavery, that Apple can single-handed change global manufacturing dynamics if it wishes to, and that the best thing would be if Apple were to close down all manufacturing and leave these workers jobless, at which point they will obviously go purchase a villa and live in luxury, instead of starving to death. The despicable ignorance and lies and discussing Apple's manufacturing disgusts me. The most pathetic part is that is often comes from Android fanatics who have no problem using products created under much, much worse conditions. The worst kind of hypocrisy, the kind that pretends to be altruism.

To be fair, the conditions for workers were awful before with any manufacturer who used Foxconn. When the issues were brought to Apple's attention, at first they didn't believe it. It sounded like something made up. It was only after a local man took pictures and videos and gave them to Apple, then they did something. This was after Foxconn had lied about workers conditions, and what happens to all those caustic dangerous chemicals when they need to be disposed of.  Apple was very upset when they saw that and fired a lot of employees and contractors and created their own investigative team. They have bumped heads with Foxconn and the government about workers conditions and compensation. 

The problem is other companies who use Foxconn do not care. Dell, HP, Microsoft, Sony, Toshiba, etc all know the same thing but are staying quiet. Why? Because they don't want to pay more to have their products made. They would rather have conditions remain the same. 

You are living in an age where China is experiencing its Industrial Age. We went thru it and it took a long time for us to have safe working conditions and fair compensation compared to then. With the culture in China it might take much, much longer for them to evolve and it might end up costing us more to pay for products made there. 

The problem is Apple secures the wrong things. The ones who control secrecy are hiding their incompetence and not protecting the things that made Apple exciting, the product chain. 

There has been a big exodus over the past few years of talent that made Apple great. The ones who filled their shoes are very lacking in talent. Anybody who works there and uses their internal software knows that's true.  Too many idiots hired from EA and other places have clogged the command chain with people who don't know what they are doing and they use secrecy to cover it up.

You might remember Scott Forestall was used as a scapegoat for the Maps disaster. Problem was, he wasn't the only one who knew there were problems. He just wasn't liked by Cook, Ive and Federighi, so they used secrecy to get rid of him.

Apple now uses secrecy as a weapon internally to weed out people they don't like and not to protect their products. If they did BGR and Sonny Dickson would have harder jobs.