Back in the day, my international economics professor told me corporations will set up, and base their business out of the countries that they see as the most stable. Because of this, it scares me when I see headlines like this, even though it is only production. If anyone has a counterpoint to what he said, I am very interested in hearing it
I think that is giving CEO's and corporate boards way, way more credit for long term thinking than they deserve. Corporations base their business out of whatever gives them the best result over the time period when they expect to be involved. If it's a founder, that is a lifetime commitment, probably, unless the founder is intending to sell to a larger business. But in any other case, the CEO and all of the other high-ranking types are thinking about this year and next, for the most part.
So the persons pointless comment is no problem but my question is? Why? The commenter does not give any sign to why the size may be relevant so the only special thing about the sentence is the name of the company. As if that may be enough to kill the long and descriptive comment above. The second answer by someone else followed up on this bait.
The person’s comment is a reasonable, if low effort, comment. The exchange is “companies go to stable countries”, “no they go wherever short term profit leads”, and the comment says “Apple is too big not to think of long term stability”.
Which is a point, even if it’s not substantiated. Even if it’s not true it’s a reasonable claim to reply with.
Your question is a problem because it’s a fake-innocent question, with a veiled accusation of Apple being a special case. You’re not engaging with whether Apple could move often, or does or doesn’t look at the long term, or is too big to ignore the long term, instead you’ve taken a straw man “Apple is special” - which was never claimed - and not even argued that either way, just tried to set some trap for the unwary.
Yes. I wish I hadn't made the comment. I think it's just obvious that certain classes of products and companies that build them that have longer planning cycles
Maybe rossdavidh's comment was reasonable in general. But with Apple you have a long term CEO under essentially no pressure for succession. You have product cycles that are going to push two years. You have supply chains that are going to involve dozens or more firms. You have a premium luxury brand. There is so much working against the idea that Apple, specifically, is make short term decisions at the expense of the long term. Still, Apple is not special, per se. It's executing astonishingly well, but I'd expect other capex heavy companies (auto manufacturing, vertically integrated oil e&p, and other hardware-weighted electronics, among others) to approach similar classes of decisions with similar care.
Part of the reason I regret engaging is because this thread is pretty far off topic. This is a low volume product and it's going to an existing partner. It's a minor decision and say nothing about stability in the US or China. The only reason it's getting coverage is because it moves their only US manufacturing to Taiwan or Shanghai.
edit: rossdavidh - I think we're wading a bit too far into hypotheticals. Moving Mac Pro production to Quanex closer to their existing supply chain is not an example of the behavior you described (but I won't deny happens)
While I am not suggesting that Tim Cook is in imminent danger, the idea that an Apple CEO does not have to worry about the board yanking him if the numbers go bad is, given Apple's history, in need of some defending.
Again, I'm not saying Tim Cook's in danger. But, if Steve Jobs can get fired from Apple, and several CEOs have, I don't know why we would expect that he is immune if Apple stops being profitable. Which, granted, it shows no signs of.
Bueno de Mesquita makes a compelling case for modeling most corporations as dictatorships in The Dictator's Handbook. So as long as succession is planned at the Corp, then yes, I suppose monar hy would be the correct model.
But Apple is not a monarchy and the size of a company even protects a CEO in the western capitalism. A CEO of a startup may end up in debt and without a company if bad decisions are made. A CEO of a huge company will usually be let go with a sufficient good bye pay and an outlook for another job (or he blames somebody else and never leaves even if guilty).
Basing your business and basing your production are quite different. Apple has likely done the math on the cost of their relations with their manufacturer going belly up against the additional savings from having their production done in china.
I don't know that you could say Apple is based anywhere. Their offices are in the US, they have finances in Ireland (I think?), and their production is in China. They just put stuff where it's cheapest and drawdown is minimized in the event of a catastrophe. It's all thought out, I'm sure.
I'm not surprised. I figured when they announced the Mac Pro would be produced in the US it was a test with a low volume product with high margins. That experiment failed (on many fronts), so they're reverting back to what they do for the rest of their products. Tim Cook has been pretty explicit about why they do production in China and it's not just the cost.
Some interesting quotes (can be found in other accounts as well):
For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.
“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”
So, from what I've read, there is also the huge factor of being able to easily source parts, much easier than in the US, and also much easier to change a factory.
Thank you for pulling a source and some specifics!
I also remember Apple talking about expertise. The number of people experienced in running a large factory exist in the US, but at a much smaller number. Which means they're harder to hire and likely warrant a higher salary.
I also think people greatly over emphasize the role of assembly. I believe it's less than 10% of the cost of each phone. But, in light of all that, it was good to see attempts to onshore more of the production.
Far lower wages and fewer regulations seem to be much more important when it comes to production. As long as they do not want to move their headquarter I guess a little bit of instability and underdevelopment is actually desirable.
Apple has enough money in the bank at this point to not really care about what is or what isn't the most stable. They could make the worst decisions possible and it would take years before the consequences of their actions come back to bite them. While I'm sure they had genius analysts crunch and ultimately approve this move, the rules are different for them.
“IDEALLY”, said Jack Welch in 1998, when he was chief executive of General Electric, “you’d have every plant you own on a barge to move with currencies and changes in the economy.” Reality followed vision for Mr Welch, who was a pioneer of offshoring, setting up one of the first offshore service centres in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Delhi.
I think its more a matter of setting up in a country that's stable vs most stable. This is balanced out by the entire cost of doing business vs other stable countries they could have selected.
BA in finance here. There are many factors that companies weigh when choosing countries to base their manufacturing from, only one of which is "stability" although there are many dimensions to this as well. Availability of labor force, costs, proximity to markets for product(s), etc. also determine where a company might base manufacturing. In the case of China, companies also might choose to place part of their supply chain there b/c it encourages the Chinese middle class to purchase their products.
I guess it depends on how easy or hard is it for apple to move its production around. If it's easy, then stability isn't the concern here. There's probably lots of other factors too, so realistically it wouldn't boil down to "Oh, US must be less stable"
As you said its production going to china. When its their headquarters and management moving they go to Singapore and the like. So I think your professors theory holds out.
The US is talking about starting a war, had government shutdown issues recently, and has a president that is abrasive on foreign affairs. UK is dealing with brexit.
China may have the issue with HK recently, but to an outsider, they look more stable. Of course, something like Japan or Australia seems better, but China isn't a terrible choice.
I'm not saying China is unstable. My implication was that maybe these massive USA based corporations might see China as more stable for business continuity. I know production is totally different, and understand some of the reasons for moving it to China. While I do not imagine them leaving, what do you think would happen if America lost these massive, global corporations to their biggest rival?
No. Chinese people overthrew many kings and dictators far more oppressive than CCP in its long history. China is stable because CCP delivered economic results, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. So a stable but oppressive CCP gov has been tolerated so far.
It's now a dictatorship, with a single man ruling for life. The history of dictatorships shows, for fundamental reasons, stability in the short term and chaos in the medium.
(The fundamental reasons include not being able to back away from bad decisions, eliminating competent rivals, and as a result bumbling into crises that seem to escalate themselves.)
That’s a very ahistoric perspective. Many of the longest-lived and most successful empires throughput history have been monarchies and dictatorships. The current popularity of broadly democratic regimes is a very recent development in human history.
Even the US was very undemocratic for most of its history (remember when only white male landowners could vote?), and that didn’t stop its ascendancy to world superpower.
That’s less true the deeper you dig into history. Major political change doesn’t always make a big splash into history.
New leadership in a dictatorship often means a quiet realignment at the top. China tends to use the corruption excuse, but look at the upper leadership after such transitions and you find many new faces.
>It's now a dictatorship, with a single man ruling for life.
This is a cartoon take on China. Yes, China is led by a fairly Leninist party structure in nominal terms, but in terms of management China is relatively decentralised. Politically but in particular fiscally regional and local authorities manage day-to-day operations with significant leeway depending on the region, anything else would be unfeasible in a country with 1.4 billion people.
The bureaucratic nature of the Chinese state (which is really thousands of years old) makes comparisons to Western strongman dictatorships impossible. There's a reason the communist state has survived Mao, market reforms under Deng and now Xi, and it's not because it's run by some big brother figure who gets assassinated and then everything collapses.
> China is led by a fairly Leninist party structure in nominal terms
China's party structure was fine and decidedly non-dictatorial. Deng was not a dictator and neither was Hu Jintao. They did not, like Xi has, ensconce themselves as leaders for life [1].
Nothing much about the party structure has changed. Xi doesn't get any more power than he has right now simply because of a term limit removal. Given how opaque and complex the power distribution inside the communist party is, Xi could have feasibly governed with a marionette in place without changing the term limits at all, just like Putin in Russia while Medvedev was in office.
China was certainly much more dictatorial than any Western country before this change, and it isn't much more dictatorial now. Xi's extension of time in office isn't really related to governance as much as it is related to the problem of succession. With significant amounts of the old guard finally reaching retirement age, there is a fear of political instability in the party.
Xi doesn’t have more power because of the term limits removal. But the fact that he was able to get the term limits removed was a public display of the power he has accumulated.
And the way he has done that is by imprisoning and killing competitors to his power. The fact that he could even contemplate bringing the term limit up indicated that he was certain at that point that there was no one to compete with him within the party, who would protest the term limits removal.
The problem is that these types of regimes tend to preside over a system that's extremely stable, right up to the moment when it really really is not.
Batista's Cuba was very stable and friendly to foreign investment too, for instance. Then along came Castro, and suddenly not only was it not particularly stable, but lots of those foreign companies had all their holdings expropriated by the new government for having collaborated with their oppressor. Oops!
The difference being that China's culture, for the most part, is okay with the surveillance state. There's protests for sure, and places Hong Kong (an ex-British colony) are not okay with it, but most Chinese citizens are aware of the censorship and don't care.
I think what's happening more is that westerners are projecting their own culture and philosophies onto the population. Americans are especially passionate about free-speech and they assume that Chinese citizen's share that, hence all the doom prophesying like your comment.
> The difference being that China's culture, for the most part, is okay with the surveillance state.
If they weren't, how would you know? Do you honestly think anyone who isn't would be dumb enough to say so out loud, especially to a pollster or a foreigner?
Fair enough, it could be survivor bias, but the firewall is so easy to bypass with a VPN that it would most likely be more evident.
Anecdotally I spent half a year in China, and whenever I brought up the censorship with people who lived there, I got more than just a few responses where they rolled their eyes and said we (Americans) are obsessed with it, followed up with, "Who cares?"
My point wasn't entirely about survivorship bias. People in a surveillance state are going to be especially careful about what they say to people like foreigners and journalists, as those are people who are likely to be under even more close surveillance than are average citizens. So whatever you say to them is very likely going to be something you say in the hearing of the government, even if the person themselves does their best to keep your secret.
Your argument is not falsifiable then: If a citizen says something bad about the totalitarian government—he is true and the government is that evil; if something not that bad—he is oppressed and fearful so this is untrue and the government is that evil. I don’t mean totalitarian government isn’t evil at all, but this way of thinking would keep leading you to confusing opinions like “why hasn’t this government collapsed” or “we would be appreciated by most people if we overthrow their government” etc.
Many Chinese have gone from sharing a plate of meat with their family once a month to affording meat every day. In that context, surveillance (and minority concentration camps) feel irrelevant.
It's not just about censorship and surveillance. These are there to prevent people from finding out and doing something about other forms of oppression. So what you are saying is that Chinese people culturally don't care about govt oppression unless it's their turn?
Hmm, how can we really know the population is _okay_ with this? Seems like if things are working this is what the outward appearance would be. But the existence of all this social control means there must be some internal risk China sees.
After all, China is continually upgrading its surveillance and other means of social control. They're also committing cultural genocide in Xinjang despite the international media fallout. They must feel like there's some real threat worth fighting to do all this.
Also unlike the other top 8 or so world economies, China has had an internal revolution/civil war quite recently.
The only thing in your statement that provides evidence of instability is your arbitrary inclusion of the adjective "desperately" to describe China's actions.
All governments work towards stability in their own ways. I don't see desperation in Chinese strategy, but I do see a lot of energy.
You are free to use any word to describe it, you could also call it "expense." China is spending time and energy on suppressing dissent proportional to their fear of their own people. The CCP has decided that the risk of being deposed is high enough to justify the cost and effort required to implement all of those nightmarish schemes.
Not really. Lack of basic infrastructure still plagues vast parts of India. But yes, India is perhaps the most interesting consumer market outside of US and China. Interesting enough to set bases there
For years I've been very happy, productive, and at times stubbornly loyal on my Linux / Lenovo setup, but it seems that so many of my colleagues have embraced Mac that it's gotten harder and harder to not be on the bandwagon. I recently hit the point of deciding maybe I should just have a Mac, but I seem to have done so after Macbook Pros have passed their peak. I don't follow consumer hardware trends much, so what does HN think - is it now too late to be getting on the Macbook Pro Kool-Aid? Will other platforms make a comeback soon?
edit: I'm aware this article is about the desktops, but it seems to be part of a trend that Apple isn't that focused on the workstation-use-case anymore, and is pushing ever more into mobile.
There were basically three things that made Macbooks very appealing to developers before:
1) Very good hardware at a not-huge markup when compared apples-to-apples (haha) with Wintel hardware.
2) Unixy OS with outstanding Just Works but it's not your fault should it fail to Just Work, as in "ugh Tom's laptop won't connect to the projector again, because he insists on running Linux."
3) Excellent pick-up-and-go, thanks to a good, if not comprehensive, port selection, the best touchpad in the industry by a long shot and the only one I've ever used that doesn't make me start looking around the room for a mouse or feel like I need to keep one in my laptop bag, and battery life much better than the typical "get you from one outlet to another" of many (especially budget and midrange) Windows devices, while also being (yeah, yeah) thin and light. You could just grab your laptop and go, and be ready for most things, for most of a workday, no power cord, no mouse, no anything.
The 1st and 3rd of these have suffered a lot lately, with large price hikes putting them solidly back in the "LOL WUT?" pricing territory they periodically flirt with, and 3 thanks to #DongleLife making it pretty much impossible to plug anything "in the wild" into a Macbook at all without an adapter, and the keyboard going from good-enough to fairly-crappy. I'm hoping for fixes to some of the problems and for some of the "...and all those improvements, and we're also dropping the price $200!" announcements they did pretty regularly there for a while, because man, I still don't see any real competition for them out there, despite their missteps.
> the keyboard going from good-enough to fairly-crappy.
And don't forget the ginormous trackpad where your typing ends up in weird places because your palm or your wrist touched it unexpectedly. And forget it if you had the shift key pressed - very easy to have a large chunk of the document you're working on disappear making you wonder wtf just happened.
Related, I saw someone using their Apple Pencil with their writing hand hovering above the screen. They weren’t aware of palm rejection, thanks to crappy experiences from other devices and touch based stylus use.
I've never had the palm rejection work on my ipads, sadly, so I too have to use a stylus with my hand hovering, or else I get weird lines and mis-clicks on various UI elements.
The Apple Pencil generates its own signal separate from touch. A stylus does not. Palm rejection is basically ideal with an actual pencil, but not ideal with a touch stylus.
As someone who has used a number of Mac(book)s for years, I agree with this general (or a vocal minority's) consensus.
It's a beautiful machine: great OS, hardware integration is (mostly) top notch, and a lot of pro-grade hard/software for multimedia production are only available on the Mac.
And yet, the 2013 Macbook Pro (maxed out beyond recommended specs) is the last Apple-built computer I will buy. I recently built myself a PC that dual-boots macOS and Linux, and am looking at Thinkpads for my next laptop.
I don't know if "the tide" is moving to Linux, but at least I am, and being the most computer-savvy person in my social circle, I'm recommending everyone I know to not buy a Mac/book. It's probably the best computer in the market for that form factor, but the company has given the users too many reasons to move away.
Totally tangential rant here, but when I've had family or close friends (the kind who would come to me for free tech support and who I would generally indulge) ask me for recommendations, I've told them that I don't know Mac products well enough to recommend / recommend against them, but that if they get iOS or Macs, I simply won't be in a position to help them. Almost invariably they get the Apple device, need help, can't get it from Apple, and come back to me. Can't stand it. And if I ever have a glitch they'll say, "but Apple stuff just works..."
The only difference when they do choose the products you recommend (in my case it is Apple), they come to you first before even trying the manufacturer's support.
I don't mind that - I can almost always fix an Android or PC glitch myself. It's the look of disbelief when I tell them I have no idea if their iPad is supposed to do that or not, followed by, "but you're a techy person".
>2013 Macbook Pro is the last Apple-built computer I will buy
I had a 2013 and a 2015 at the same time (one for work, one personal) and the only difference was the Force Touch trackpad on the 2015. After using the 2013 for a while, I noticed my finger being sore, and I trace it back to trying to click anywhere (like the top of the trackpad) on the 2013 like I could on the 2015. It wouldn't work, so I'd push harder and end up hurting my finger.
Long story short, I'd much rather have a 2015 MBP than a 2013.
MacBook models until around 2009 had a physical button at the bottom of their trackpads. Imagine that it's still there -- use your thumb to click, and your fingers for everything else. I'm pretty sure that's what Apple intended users to do (until they made tap-to-click the default recently).
They need to fix a few things (mostly on the Macbook Pro) and drop their prices somewhat, which isn't a crazy thing to hope for since they did it pretty often not that long ago, sometimes even while announcing an upgrade. I still think their iOS device prices are fairly decent for what you get, but their Mac hardware pricing's gone way out of wack in the last 3ish years.
IMO The current MacBook design iteration has mostly been a disappointment. The hardware quality has materially worsened over the previous generation, with numerous reports of keyboard, screen, and speaker issues. They sacrificed far too much in order to achieve the thin form factor. The touchbar is also a terrible joke.
I’ve had two current-gen MBPs through work and both of them have completely convinced me against buying my own. They’re both so inferior to the design of the previous generation.
Your points are completely valid, I get your frustration. But you are comparing against previous generations of MacBooks. I would like to know your thoughts when comparing against e.g. a top tier ThinkPad running Windows or Linux.
I couldn’t use it long enough to unlearn using the trackpad as a crutch. Thinkpad trackpads are pretty terrible by comparison. I also hated trying to use windows and didn’t want to keep maintaining a Linux install, though that might have gotten better lately.
I am going to ride out my personal 2013 mbp until they fix the keyboards on the new machines. I have a new one at work, and each incremental fix still breaks after a while and I don’t think they have ironed it out. It’s a beautiful feeling machine and I want to love it. However, you can get everything else perfect and screw up the keyboard, and it doesn’t matter because I can’t get work done.
If they don’t get it right by the time my current MBP dies completely I guess I’ll see how far Linux has come. I’d suggest the same for you - even as an apple shareholder and former employee I can’t recommend a programmer buy a laptop with such an unreliable keyboard. But if they nail the keyboard in the next generation, absolutely hop aboard the bandwagon.
Pretty much it comes down to the flaky keyboards for me. USBC support is just getting better, the displays and trackpad are still best in class, and a lightweight aluminum unibody design is something I didn’t think I would miss but you absolutely do. The OS is widely supported by a community of other developers, and it is super easy to set up a productive development environment. And the OS is widely supported by hardware and software vendors too, so you don’t have to fight compatibility issues nearly as much as Linux.
The X1 Carbon has a really nice body, and a decent screen. The touchpad is still hot garbage, and I never really enjoyed using the nub, but overall they've come closer than anything I've used to unseating my MBP as a daily driver.
An apple trackpad isn’t just the hardware, it’s also the software integration. Plus, who wants to carry around an external trackpad for their machine? I’ll just cope with avoiding the trackpad if I switch back.
I can’t honestly give you that comparison because I’ve never used a thinkpad long enough to get to know it. I’ve been Mac-only for 8 years now, but I’m looking around to see if the community decides on a solid MBP replacement of my old MBP dies.
I think this depends a lot on what kind of laptop user you are. Are you someone who is always at a desk with a mouse and keyboard, or do you want to post up in a coffee shop with just your machine and no peripherals?
The macbook pro is vastly superior to any device for the later use case because the touchpad is so far ahead of anything else. The new keyboard on the other hand is a bit frustrating when coming back from my personal surface book.
There's this weird idea that the quality of Apple products has just always steadily increased over time until this most recent MacBook Pro.
If you've been using Macs long enough, you'll remember various iBook debacles, the horrific 2006 MacBook, the utterly bizarre 3rd gen iPod, and other past missteps.
They'll bounce back (even though I actually love the current MBPs).
I recently was frustrated with Apple because my past two Macbook Pros broke and they refused service on the known issues because I had missed the recall windows (one was brought in before there was a recall and after).
I was you 2 years ago. Now after experiencing failed keyboard, battery and overall poor performance in my MBP I'm back with linux on a thinkpad. I'm curious about Windows though.
A bit of advice: if you end up buying a macbook give it some time and don't move your whole life into the ecosystem. It's incredibly hard to move out. You can't just export all your photo albums, Things tasks, and so on.
I was about to. Then I heard quite a few of my colleagues who used Mac had endless keyboard problems and surffered from lack of function keys in the high end laptop which was a good 1000 dollars more expensive than similarly specced ThinkPad and stuck with using windows with tLinux layer. Maybe with Ive gone, they'll finally make a competitive laptop.
If you're open to Windows consider checking out the Razer Blade 15" laptop. I'm biased because I play video games but it's as nicely made as any computer apple ever made, with great hardware.
It does seem like Macbook Pros have been on the decline. But this new Mac Pro feels like Apple turning back to the workstation use case anymore, especially with a quad-GPU option. I'm hoping the departure of Jony Ive will turn the Macbook Pros back in the right direction.
To be fair what PC company does not have horror stories when it comes to customer service? The only exception I've personally experienced is Dell enterprise support, but that's a far reach from what any consumer will have.
In college, I worked at my school's IT helpdesk, and have bought Latitude and Vostro models ever since. Next Business Day support, no questions asked. You don't have to be part of a corporation to get that level of service. I had a busted heat sink on my cheap $500 vostro, and they sent a technician over to fix it.
That's true.
If I had an SV engineer salary I probably wouldn't think it too much.
But the cheapest MacBook Pro is a quarter of my yearly earnings, so right now I will choose what is cheaper to maintain.
Strictly when it comes to customer service? Maybe Razer?
Their prices are definitely horror inducing for some of their peripherals, otoh...but that’s probably applicable to a large part of the “gaming peripherals” market.
YMMV? I have the last generation blade laptop, and granted Ive only had two tickets opened with support but they were (at least in my experience) surprisingly fast and on the money with both experiences.
I didn’t want to speak for everyone so that’s why I posited the italicized “Maybe” because PC support is like throwing darts at a dart board.
If you go to the Razer subreddit, there's reasonable consensus that buying from the Microsoft Store, Best Buy, etc. is highly recommended for the extended warranty, which you will have a high chance of using if you regularly game on it.
Interesting. Both of my problems were hardware related (usb port and a power adapter), but I wouldn’t consider myself a “hardcore” gamer, I bought my Razer Blade to play a specific game (The Dishonored trilogy) at the time because I travelled quite often for work and had the disposable funds for it.
Maybe I got extremely lucky with my build, who knows.
Sucks to hear other people are having such a frustrating go at things. Price aside I’ve had a pleasant experience with Razer.
In my experience Razer is both good and bad - good because literally any issue you have with your laptop they will just offer to replace it, bad because the replacement can take 4+ weeks. I'm also slightly worried that it's literally impossible to buy any replacement parts from them, if the need ever arises. From companies like Dell or HP you can order literally any part, down to individual switches, if you know the part number.
I honestly think the China IP rip off is overblown, and this is coming from someone who works there often. Also, if open source software has demonstrated, sequestering IP behind patents is a hindrance to society.
And your critique about civil rights abuses could equally be leveled against the US itself. After all, we put several immigrant children in concentration camps on the daily because they just want to move to the US.
It could be argued that we've already given up so much manufacturing to foreign entities that trying to get it back is just too costly for most businesses to handle.
Chips are different because it costs more to reverse/reengineer them, but once engineered (or copied) for manufacturing, it's trivial to make more. Software and physical design is more difficult to control.
> I honestly think the China IP rip off is overblown, and this is coming from someone who works there often.
You wouldn't be the first person with real experience working in China making that point. From everything I've read the IP issue is way overblown. There are some high-profile cases but in general it seems to be used as a convenient cudgel for other purposes.
AFAICT the real issue working in China is that it's a communist country, heavily bureaucratic with byzantine and entirely unfamiliar legal systems and business networks that almost everybody else, including to a lesser degree other East Asian countries, find very challenging to navigate. Even corruption works differently there. Because it's a communist country power and influence flow in unexpected ways even when everything is above board.
The upshot is that even when criticisms about China are reasonable, they're kinda beside the point because they're not the principle reason companies find it difficult to operate there. Even when the Chinese government wholly cooperates with a reform measure--passes and earnestly applies a law--things invariably go sideways for outsiders.
The weakness Of rule of law is a common criticism raised against China, which is a huge reason foreign companies (and foreigners) have difficulties being in China.
And yet reading sites like China Law Blog, https://www.chinalawblog.com/, I don't get the impression that the rule of law is especially problematic, per se.
For example, AFAICT few people say that China doesn't take enforcement of trademark protections seriously. The procedures for redress and enforcement exist and applied fairly. But navigating the administrative state can be confusing and cause people to trip over the technicalities. Some of the stories I've read from the blog above detail situations where Chinese partners or workers used the legal system against foreigners in very surprising but arguably fair manners. Much like the U.S., if you want to protect your rights you really need to make sure to employ vigilant lawyers who can foresee potential problems.
The U.S. is large enough that there's been little pressure to address issues of regulatory and procedural uniformity relative to the rest of the world (e.g. civil law countries). China is similar in that regard. What's different is that China's systems are almost wholly unique and far more complex, whereas the legal systems for almost all Westernized nations, including Japan, have a pedigree that can be traced back to Western Europe, if not ancient Rome. China has been adopting American-style legal rules and norms for commercial law, including common law rules about case precedent. That helps further the rule of law and, more importantly, provides processes more familiar to foreigners, but it also adds yet another dimension of complexity.
To use communism as an example, again, consider that American tripartite system of government--legislative, administrative, judicial--can create substantial complexity relative to a small, autocratic state.[1] In China the Communist Party is another pillar of governance in addition to those other three, multiplying complexity. And China has a federal system much like that in America. So just because things are confusing and seemingly haphazard doesn't mean that they actually are. I mean, China has had a robust and effective administrative state for millennia. IMO much of the perception of China as chaotic and full of cheaters is self-serving. And to the extent it's correct, I think it says at least as much about the limitations the central government faces than about their lack of desire or will to do anything about it. If we don't appreciate that than we're simply going to frustrate ourselves with demands and expectations that are misinformed and unreasonable.
[1] For example, in the U.S. using a judicial judgment to induce a government agency to do or abstain from something can be challenging and expensive. We maintain especially rigid separation between the judiciary and executive for good reasons--reasons directly related to our conception and experience of rule of law--but that does not necessarily translate into efficiency or even consistency.
Good points, the other issue that I rarely see discussed is the fact that the communist party in china is not some monolithic entity that all try to carry out the orders of Xi.
Xi has tried very hard to stamp out any dissent via his "anti-corruption drive", but it still exists. There are various factions vying for power behind the scenes, some ally themselves with Xi, and some do not and are simply biding their time & waiting for Xi to screw up and "lose face".
>Also, your definition is quite different from the original definition of concentration camps,
You mean the ones the British used in the Boer wars?
And that's just the earliest ones I know of, I'm sure sequestering your enemies into tiny areas with inadequate resources is as old as society itself
You are confusing concentration camps and extermination camps. In Nazi Germany many but not all concentration camps were also extermination camps. Historians generally agree that US has now concentration camps in their original meaning.
Separating children from their parents into inhuman concentration camp is a crime against humanity.
I am not sure if this is a good move on Apple's part in the long term, both parties, Republicans & Democrats, have shown a lot of ire for China. I don't think this will go unpunished. But perhaps they believe that the Chinese market is vastly more valuable than the US and are willing to eat any cost the US may levy against it in the future.
If I were them I'd have just moved it to Vietnam or India.
Could you please link to any good self-contained material that covers the info on this advantage, for a layman like me? This sounds like a massive opportunity space.
To picture the manufacturing capabilities of the US: Image trying to bake a cake, except all the ingredients come with a 8 week lead time and the people with the mixer, measuring cups and ovens are all 200 miles minimum away from each other. Then imagine 2 days before the cake is supposed to be done, the chef asks to change one ingredient.
Well I was not going to buy one, the price jump from the previous Pro was not something I or many expected or appreciated.
I will get on my soap box again.
Apple needs to be out of China, not moving more manufacturing to that country. What will it take to get Apple to stand up for the rights of the oppressed in China or are they that wrapped up in dollars they no longer see the people component? For a country which struts around in Western countries about their rights and privacy position their continued and increasing production in China shows how much that stand of theirs is meaningless.
They stand for rights and privacy only when it does not interfere with their revenue stream
The Chinese gov may be massive and seem all encompassing but they don’t have an economic and financial administrative system yet comparable to the US (or Europe) which is involved in licensing and oversight of everything at multiple tiers of gov in the west, from who can be an interior designer (4yrs! of education is mandatory in some states) to who can cut hair. When China does have a system in place it can usually be bypassed by “financially partnering” with the local party officials. Which has allowed industry to flourish there, in spite of the sweeping sociopolitical controls and strong security posturing, which of course includes some of the downsides of lacking forward thinking administration with a strong industrial sector (environmental, long working hours, etc).
Just take the example of the whole process of opening a factory in the US, despite having the full support of the executive branch and some local governments, it has been an eye opening disaster for Foxconn. Any large factory opening in the US is a big deal and a laborious process that has to be greased by extensive tax breaks (to already wealthy companies) and other such nonsense (see Amazons whole HQ charade) to even happen.
So the improvements to the economic lives of the Chinese may have improved massively there are still lots of other areas it's straight-up authoritarian, or worse, its opaque what level of government is involved.Which in business is usually none until you’re making a lot of money, which can be skimmed. The good thing is with economic success comes improvements to education, healthcare quality, foreign travel, etc which improves the individual Chinese position in the world and hopefully can empower their home country to some brighter future.
It's often like that. If you think the government of Trump is responsible for America's progress let's chat. The point is that it is permissive enough.
I believe you are over-simplifying a very complicated argument, although perhaps HN is not the place for the full argument.
When I was young, I lived in nightly fear of China. I lived on a military base in the 1980s, and read conspiratorialist material my parents had in the house. One of my greatest fears was China's army of hundreds of millions of men. Today I don't fear China. I have a ten-year tourist visa for China and will be heading to Hong Kong next week.
I believe the difference is economic engagement. The economic interests of both America and China are too entangled now to imagine a military war between the two countries.
So on the one extreme is sanctions a la Iran or North Korea, and on the other extreme is the full unlimited economic engagement we have now. If the choices are that stark, I choose engagement every time.
The choice isn't that stark, though. One can still engage but with limits and conditions, right? It seems likely that even if Apple completely withdrew all manufacturing from China, or with even more difficulty and expense, completely withdrew all supply of raw materials, there would still be enough economic engagement between China and other companies to make open hostility unpalatable. But Apple is definitely one of the bigger companies doing business there, and they would have lost any influence there at all.
Right now Apple can say they've brought the standard of living for employees of factories which build Apple gear up quite a bit. Not to western standards, obviously, but far, far higher than they were. If Apple leaves, do those changes remain? Or do the standards drop back down to pre-Apple levels, sending people back into poverty and hardship? I don't know, do you?
Where would Apple send manufacturing next? They were producing the Mac Pro in the US, which I think is one of the largest reasons that platform has stagnated for years now. Do you have a suggestion of another country that provides the resources Apple needs while also providing a standard of living for every citizen that satisfies you? I mean, does the standard of living for every citizen of the US satisfy you?
Anyway, it's a complicated issue, and I'm not arguing that Apple shouldn't continue to do more, but I think disengagement is not the right move here, for Apple, for Chinese citizens, for anyone.
> I believe the difference is economic engagement. The economic interests of both America and China are too entangled now to imagine a military war between the two countries.
It's true that World War One didn't disprove Angell's specific argument (war is economically and socially irrational) but economic interests don't prevent them either.
Not sure we have. The chief executive just ignore the 1 then 2m walk due to the support of chinese comunust regime.
China is strong and cohesive enough the world should be afraid. Raising economically but totalitarian politically justify a strong arm and nasty approach. And any people struggled would be jailed. (Last noble prize winner plus nearly all human rights lawyers.)
Be afraid.
If you don’t you are playing fire with your children’s life. Macau -> HK -> Taiwan once done it will expand to asia. Good luck to humanity.
> And where do you get the fantasy of democracy or freedom in HK before 1997?
Just to respond to the point about democracy in Hong Kong.
It is written in the Basic Law (the constitution of Hong Kong) Article 45 that the Chief executive should be chosen by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee as an eventual goal.
So to a certain extent the demand for democracy is based on the constitution.
> What will it take to get Apple to stand up for the rights of the oppressed in China
Economically speaking, the standard of living for the average Chinese person has improved dramatically in recent decades, precisely because of foreign manufacturers locating operations there. Would you rather have the Chinese regime oppressing the people with their current level of wealth, or the same regime oppressing a people with 1% of their current wealth (e.g. North Korea)? Please note, I am in no way supporting the Chinese state or oppression of any kind. I'm merely saying that removing manufacturing from China would definitely have a negative impact on the people.
> They stand for rights and privacy only when it does not interfere with their revenue stream
Their "stand for rights and privacy" helps improve their revenue stream: it is marketing. Same story for any green initiatives, diversity initiatives, etc. It's all marketing to cast a positive corporate image with consumers.
Now for the flip side: if enough people raise a stink about Chinese manufacturing to the point that revenues begin to decline due to that fact, then the corporation will relocate its operations.
> Would you rather have the Chinese regime oppressing the people with their current level of wealth, or the same regime oppressing a people with 1% of their current wealth (e.g. North Korea)?
You hit the nail on the head. Every time someone brings up "human rights" as a reason to stop trading with China is just hiding behind a pretentious facade, and an obvious one at that. It's totally understandable to feel threatened by the rise of China, it's totally understandable to feel competitive pressure from a country that deploys many unfair strategies, but it's not ok to pretend to care about the "human rights" of a country's citizen while being absolutely ok devastating an economy of 1.4 billion people.
Someone on Reddit literally said because CCP doesn't respect human rights, we should send the country back to the middle age and cut off them completely from the rest of the world.
You know what, I bet even if China were a completely democratic country, there would still be many who hold extremely hostile/defensive attitude towards the them, for a myriad of reasons that I'm not going to spell out.
I'm not really sure it's Apples job to advocate for policies in a foreign country. They're a business, not a nation state. I think the extent to which privacy is valued is up for the Chinese to decide. Not really a fan of American companies engaging in corporate activism abroad.
Define "foreign" country in the context of a multinational corporation? I'm not sure I understand what the significance of that word is. Companies can and do attempt to sway political policies in their favor in whatever country they are operating in, regardless of where that company was founded.
Almost all people are employed by companies. If companies don’t advocate for human rights that means that almost noone will except for politicians and the unemployed.
We should expect more civil responsibility from companies since they have a strong influence over the time, speech, health, purchasing-power, and labor of nearly all citizens.
I think, in the long run, deep economic engagement with China will change it for the better, not economic withdrawal. If you care about the people of China I think this is a positive (albeit, a drop in the bucket).
Not that they should just embrace or accept the worst trends of China -- that wouldn't help. But engage and apply pressure with the resulting leverage. Here's a link to Apple's self-reported efforts in this area (it seems sincere to me, though I don't have any special insight into this): https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2...
This is nearly a tautology. Economic engagement with the rest of the world is obviously good for any single country (especially when you're essentially cherrypicking the rules you follow while the rest of the world is mostly compliant). But if that country is poised to become the next superpower and its leaders are the modern day analogue of imperial Japan or the USSR, that economic engagement is probably not good for the rest of the world (in the long-term).
> They stand for rights and privacy only when it does not interfere with their revenue stream.
I understand the sentiment, but it's a nonstarter. A company that prioritizes human rights at the expense of profit, is a company that has no chance of survival in our political or economic environment, regardless of whether it's in China or the US. The corporate incentives are not fully aligned with the long term interests of humanity. That's why we see companies supporting LGBTQ rights and immigration, but fight to their teeth to prevent labor laws and unions.
This is a painfully oblivious statement. Have you been under a rock for the past 100 years? Corporations put profits in front of human rights CONSTANTLY, often with the grudging acceptance of the majority of the populace and a blind eye from governments.
In fact, I think it would be very difficult to name even 30 companies in Forbes Top 100 list that someone would be hard pressed to find no examples of running afoul of basic human rights.
EDIT: I haven't been downvoted or anything, but after rereading my post, it sounded a bit forward. Not attacking you personally, I just found this to be an alarmingly weak argument.
I ignore your first paragraph since it sounds hostile.
As for the rest, obviously, free market has a self-correcting mechanism. Corporations need consumers so they cannot simply "run afoul of basic human rights" as you said or they get a pushback from the populace. But at the same time, western companies send their manufacturing to Asia due to lower costs despite the lax labor and environmental regulations in those countries. I'm not sure what is controversial about what I said.
I didn't say it was controversial, I think your statement that companies not having any chance of surviving due to stepping on human rights issues is flatly and verifiably wrong. That's evidenced by my second point that the vast majority of the most powerful corporations on Earth can and do infringe on said rights, and have done so for quite some time.
> But at the same time, western companies send their manufacturing to Asia due to lower costs despite the lax labor and environmental regulations in those countries.
Consumers have proven that they are willing to let such things slide to maintain their own convenience time and time again, your example included. I'm a staunch capitalist, but I also recognize that the market will only correct when the offense makes people uncomfortable enough to take action and stop partaking in a given product or service.
And again, not hostile to you. Only hostile to your argument. I'd be happy if you had an argument that could change my mind, as my own view is quite cynical, and not something I find comfort in in the least.
> A company that prioritizes human rights at the expense of profit, is a company that has no chance of survival in our political or economic environment
> Corporations need consumers so they cannot simply "run afoul of basic human rights"
>>Consumers have proven that they are willing to let such things slide to maintain their own convenience time and time again, your example included.
The bottom statement is incompatible with the first two. You state that companies will not survive if they do such things. You back that up saying that consumers are them mechanism that keeps them from surviving. My statement directly refutes that.
Also, if you don't mind, could you make a record of what was edited in the original post? Ninja edits aren't usually looked on well here on HN.
I'm saying you are right or wrong but let me ask you this. Have you divested yourself (401K, IRA, etc.) completely from Apple? Their margin comes exclusively from making these things as economically as possible. Or are you willing to pay $2K for your next iPhone so the stock can keep growing at such a high rate? All of our actions have consequences too.
It may not even be possible to manufacture electronics at Apple’s scale outside of Shenzhen. The Mac Pro is one thing, but moving all of Apple including iPhone out of China could be functionally impossible.
What it will take is for the US to start prioritizing human rights, at all? I mean, they're currently running concentration camps for children at the Mexican border, in their own country.
It would be a bit rich if they start telling other countries what to do regarding human rights before fixing their own issues.
It probably explains the at least $4,000 markup between the cost of the hardware and the final price. They've gotta pay those tariffs and pass the losses onto consumers who don't care about spending $6,000 for an 8-core CPU, 32gb of ECC ram, an R580X and 256 SSD.
You'd have to be drinking a lot of fucking Kool Aid as any sort of creative professional to think MacOS is worth that premium above alternative tools in either Linux or Windows 10.
Apple deciding to move production to an economically hostile country and shutter more American jobs only adds injury to insult.
In professional environments the price of a computer is so minimal it doesn’t really matter. If someone is being paid even $100K a year then the extra $4,000 for a computer they’ll have for probably 4 years is a rounding error.
Have that attitude about your purchases for 10 years, wasting at least $4000 a year, and you've wasted $40000. That's significant even if you do make $100k.
in 10 years that's a $1m. Even if you bought a mac pro every year that's not particularly significant. Of course, it is a lot of money by itself and if you are smart about it you can save a lot, but the value is there for other people in not building a custom PC with cooling.
To put the markup into more concrete terms, here's a sample Windows laptop I quickly found around $1000 (the Prime price, normal price is apparently $1400). [0] I'll compare it to the cheapest MBP at $1300. [1]
I wish HN markdown had tables.
15.6" 3840 x 2160 vs 13.3" 2560x1600
i7-7700 vs unspecified i5
16GB RAM vs 8GB RAM
GTX 1050 vs Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640
256GB SSD+1TB HDD vs 256GB SSD ($800 upcharge for a 1TB SSD on the MBP when in reality a 1TB SSD costs $100)
Numpad and usb-A ports, HDMI vs no numpad and usb-c only (no ethernet on either but I didn't look very hard to find this listing)
And some have an affinity for Mac OS (I don't understand it at all) but on the Windows one you'll be able to easily run any game you want and have a much broader software catalog to choose from in general.
> on the Windows one you'll be able to easily run any game you want and have a much broader software catalog to choose from in general.
The main difference is that macOSX for the most part isn't adware. I still prefer MATE but if linux not your thing for some silly reason it's really the only other viable option.
Edit: Also that laptop is 2lbs heavier than the 13 inch and 1lb heavier than the 15. Not that I'd buy a 15 in. mbp with my own money in any case but they are nice.
What do you mean, like OSX doesn't show you ads natively? Nothing comparable to seeing app suggestions in the Windows store tiles? Nothing Windows 10 has done to me so far has bothered me. Candy Crush ad in the games tiles in the start menu doesn't bother me.
Unless you mean susceptibility to malware. There's definitely malware that gets onto OSX and it can be harder to remove than on Windows.
Err that's the entry level cut to the bone product to make it look not to expensive for journalists who have brought into the mac eco system at the lower level.
For high end workstations which is the pros market a realistic spec will be a lot more for example back in 99 when I was working with built to the hilt pc in todays money it would be over $10k - and real workstations like Silicon graphics cost a LOT LOT more
In the specific case of the new Mac Pro, I don’t really think there’s much IP to “rip off”: it’s a fairly ordinary PC in an unusual case running a pro portray OS that has been made to run on non-proprietary hardware for more than a decadeS. There’s not much that can be ‘ripped off’ that couldn’t be inferred from the year down of a single unit, and not much of value, honestly. They’re almost all off-the-shelf components and those that aren’t are already incorporated in other SKUs already produced on the mainland (such as the iMac Pro).
I wonder how significant the cost differences are for Apple with this move, especially since they mention previously manufacturing in the US and that many components are sourced in the US. How high will the margins be on these devices??
Apple previously (years ago) spoke about the importance of the supply chain, not price as the reason to mfg in China. Steve Jobs gave an example that if you needed to change the design to use a different type of screw then you'd have several manufacturers nearby that you could source from. That's just not possible in the US.
Further to this point, there is this story from earlier in the year regarding the problems Apple had just sourcing screws for the 2013 Mac Pro (trash can) in the USA:
"He made do with his new machines, although he could not make the exact screws Apple wanted. His company delivered 28,000 screws over 22 trips. Mr. Melo often made the one-hour drive himself in his Lexus sedan."
Not necessarily. A lot of know-how in many Western nations has died out over the last decades of off-shoring, and factories have long ago closed shop. You'd have to do a start from absolute zero and that needs more money, way way more money, than the US can afford.
I would suggest that any professional scenario that uses macOS for client-driven computationally intensive tasks (rendering video being the obvious example), the new Pro will be a no-brainer. Huge step up in maximum CPU/GPU throughput.
Apple is desperate to keep profits flowing while the iPhone and iPad stagnate in sales performance. Services is on the rise; but not fast enough.
So they are being absolutely militant to squeeze any and all profit out of the supply chain they can regardless of what that means.
We know countless US and EU based suppliers who have been replaced by cheaper equivalents in this pursuit of profit. In some cases Apple has even been complicit by helping lower cost vendors improve to displace higher cost US based ones.
Without government trade restrictions this is a logical thing to do when under profit pressures.
The Mac Pro decision was clearly similar. Save a couple % on a 6K machines production costs is all that matters.
Apple and Samsung already exploit slave labor indirectly throughout the entire supply chain from sulphur mining, rare earth elements mining in the ocean and final assembly. Depending on China might be a stupid move if it suddenly decides to enact sanctions to harm the US economically... it would be a huge hit domestically but it might be necessary for a pretext to war (if foreign relations policies change).
I am sorry that US lost some jobs. And some are making a few thousands less than before. But the world is developing, and things are cheaper. Not only life in developed world is getting better, developing world is seeing more jobs. I am sorry that developed world is not winning all because of foul play by players lagging behind and trying to catch up.
Faribault Mill makes nice (but expensive) wool and cotton blankets. I think part of the reason they are still around is that they have (or certainly had) a fairly large military contract.
> Do the workers in China make more and get benefits?
No. Minimum wage in cities like Shanghai is 20 yuan ($2.91). They get poor benefits. But the worst part is the lack of safety regulations that reduces cost at the expense of worker safety.
Anyone have a good resource of backdoor / spy / sketchy China computer manufacturing things?
I always see info about the Huawei scandal for example, and I would love to read a great write up of more specific technical details of things going on
But, you'll have an easier time finding out what companies who sell services related to supply chain integrity protection and counterfeit detection. Googling about those topics and companies like Harris Corp are good places to start. If you look at what these companies do, you should be able to infer what they are protecting against.
From what I gather, the usual threat for this sort of compromise is that adversaries in the supply chain or channel either provide or inject bogus parts or equipment. This may be done for spying purposes, but most often are just ways to make a little extra money.
The alleged difference with a state-owned entity like Huawei is that the "trusted" supply chain itself is doing untrustworthy things.
Depending on how you define it, I don't think Huawei is technically "state-owned", but because "communism" technically all business are owned by the PRC?
According to the NY Times, Huawei is owned by a holding company, which is in turn 1% owned by the CEO and 99% by the company's employee union, which is an affiliate of the Shenzhen Government Employee union.
But the union has no control, other than after-work social activity.
It's about as complex and weird as a situation can get. Spies hide in complexity.
I have a feeling the majority of this research is conducted by Five Eyes military counter-intelligence branches (ripping it out of the hands of whoever was on the trail before), with the resulting reports passed around in redacted form to those who need to know (e.g. the manufacturers, suppliers, investors, etc.) but not generally bubbling up to the public, except through backchannels (like my friend in the Navy who warned me ten years ago to avoid buying anything with Huawei chips in it, saying he couldn’t get into the details.)
If the current approach is more of the same, we’ll see these reports declassified in 30 years or so, when China is (in one way or another) no longer the same looming threat it is today.
I suspect any modified hardware would be targeted, not every single computer. You probably shouldn't order a computer online if this is your threat model, and instead pay for one off the shelf.
If a state actor is sufficiently motivated, even in a physical purchase, your computer will just get switched out for a bugged one at the cashier.
Common OPSEC practice re: buying hardware (or anything you don’t want your name associated with, really), is to pay an unaffiliated proxy to buy it for you.
>your computer will just get switched out for a bugged one at the cashier.
I doubt it. How would they swap it in time if you drove to a random Best buy, picked out a laptop (I think they still keep them in locked cages on the show floor), and kept eyes on it until checkout? Nevermind that they'll need surveillance on you 24/7 and have the exact model ready to go (or be able to plant the bug within minutes) to pull this off. It's much more feasible to only bug delivered/ordered equipment.
It seems really implausible to pull off without making a scene with a bunch of retail workers thinking you're trying to pull off some kind of scam/fraud.
Didn't the "ripping off" gave us the value brands such as OnePlus, Xiaomi, and even Huawei at the beginning of their phone business? So I'd say it's a good thing.
"More than 80% of the workers working across three assembly lines were contract employees paid minimum wage for eight-hour workday...when their shift ended, many walked off the job, he said—even if the lines were still running."
Of course they did, that's what anyone in that situation would do surely? Are they supposed to work for below minimum wage because the company can't organise shift changeover properly?
No -- well, it depends, and that's a false dichotomy.
I work until the job is done (or I'm cut) and the workplace is safe. It's the employer's responsibility to pay me at least the legal minimum wage for hours worked. If that means I'm going into OT because they can't organize shift changes properly, that's their problem.
There are usually also legal or contractual requirements for breaks, so I'd be prepared to say "I'm walking away this minute -- unless you want to pay meal penalty?" (I've said that once or twice, and the response has always been "Go, take an hour!") Texas doesn't seem to have any laws requiring worker breaks (wow), and the article doesn't mention if they have a union, but Texas law does apparently require at least a 1.5x pay rate for any hours beyond 40/wk.
Depending on their contract, either they should walk away as they do, or they should keep working until relieved and get paid for OT. Nobody is suggesting they should do extra unpaid work.
>I work until the job is done (or I'm cut) and the workplace is safe. It's the employer's responsibility to pay me at least the legal minimum wage for hours worked. If that means I'm going into OT because they can't organize shift changes properly, that's their problem.
My experience working in factories as a young man was that employers hawked over time cards obsessively and threatened to fire you for a first or second time offense if you went into OT.
> If that means I'm going into OT because they can't organize shift changes properly, that's their problem.
If I'm a minimum-wage contract worker, I might have another job to go to after this one and I can't work OT. I need to go home, feed my children perhaps, and then get them to bed before my night shift at Food Co. or my evening English lessons.
If you're paying minimum wage, and not hiring your workers full time, you can't automatically expect your hires to just "stick around" for overtime.
Also, many employers do not let employees take overtime period because in some places once a contractor passes over XX hours per week, they are entitled to benefits.
Funny, when i see "designed in california" i think "warm all year round, so that's why my iphone shuts down when i take it out in the -20 C winter air".
They should try to design in more places with varying climates. And considering the shitty mbpro keyboard, they should also try taking their laptops shudder outside to see how they work in a dusty environment.
I was wrong. They estimated only about $8 of the $240 manufacturing cost of an iPhone goes to China.
Edit x2: I remember why I misremembered the number. I had taken a worst case scenario and assumed that the entire unidentified $21 went to China. It then adds up to $30.
Yes, but still the "DESIGNED IN CALIFORNIA" is meant to counteract the "Made In" designation (which is a legal requirement) beneath it. Perhaps we need labeling which says what country gets most of the money!
The article reveals that the people working the Mac Pro assembly line in Texas where paid the minimum wage which in Texas is currently $7.25 an hour. When the plant closes, those guys can apply to any fast food place in Austin, and make the same money.
According to the article, demand for the Mac Pro tapered off years ago, and they were down to "a skeleton crew". The original plant opening had some kind of tax deal for "up to 500 jobs", so even at peak it was not making a huge difference. Texas supposedly has a 3.8% unemployment rate right now, so there is apparently a lot of work available. I like Apple, but assembling the Mac Pro in Texas was overrated.
Yeah, I was going to say, they should go to where ever the local Amazon fulfillment center is. Those places are always hiring and start at $15 an hour.
Working at an Amazon fulfillment center is not for the faint of heart. There's a reason they're always hiring. The physical requirements of the job are easy to overlook.
Back when I worked at NeXT we created a lights-out factory in Fremont, CA and then closed it. Steve said that we were moving it offshore to be closer to where the parts were manufactured. At the same time, I was told by some employees who worked on creating the automated factory that the real reason for moving it was completely different. They told me that the goal was to sell it to a group of Executives who could then charge the company for manufacturing the machines and avoid US taxes by sending the money offshore as a business expense. It was sold to a group of Executives so that they could avoid any one Executive being technically in "control" of the offshore. I was also told that the group of Executives included theoretical "competitors", and they traded "favors" for shared ownership.
I can't confirm any of this - but it is consistent with other things done to avoid taxes. (Steve was once successfully prosecuted for avoiding taxes using an offshore. After that, he got better accountants to make sure his tax dodges could withstand legal scrutiny.)
That request is still in effect. I don't have any reason to doubt you, but the stories are so grandiose and inflammatory (and similar) that we need to apply at least a little burden of proof.
In the short term, moving to China is always the right move, the labor is cheaper, the regulation is lighter, the market is gigantic and the middle class is growing every day.
In the long term, I believe we are mortgaging our future. Not only is China ripping off IP but companies like Apple who try to be "woke" have no buisness advocating for equality at home while doing buisness with a nation that has imprisoned thousands of religious minorities in re-education camps.
America's approach to China is that of an overconfident fiancee who thinks once they're married they will change their partners ways. It rarely works out.
Although it's at least not an inflammatory swipe, this comment falls on the side of generic political and nationalistic battle. Please don't take HN threads on such tangents. Once internet comments degenerate to arguing the merits and demerits of entire countries, we're certain to have repetitive, predictable, and eventually nasty discussion. On HN we're trying to avoid all that. The subthread below is an example, and such things get worse as they get larger.
Here are two heuristics to keep in mind: if it's generic, it's likely to be predictable; if it's predictable, it's uninteresting.
> Not only is China ripping off IP but companies like Apple who try to be "woke" have no buisness advocating for equality at home while doing buisness with a nation that has imprisoned thousands of religious minorities in re-education camps.
First of all: You are not wrong.
But similar things can be said about USA. USA steals a lot of stuff too. But of course the American press won't tell you about that. Or if they mention it, they will put phrase it like "America liberated the population of Irak (insert any country here) from the dictarship".
But the press on other countries could say different things about the USA:
"Not only is USA has a long history of creating coup-d'etat in foreign countries (e.g: South America), and installing governments that favor their policy and killing thousands of innocent people to achieve that. But also is known to create false evidence to invade countries to steal their oil and killing thousands of innocent people, again. And recently it has been proved that the USA spied on their allies to..."
I don't want to put in a way that the USA is "bad" or China "good", or vice-versa.
But the important thing here is: critical thinking. Don't buy what the press tells you.
Is China "bad" ? Who is telling you that China is "bad" ? Does the person that is telling you that China is "bad" gain something from it? Is that person any better than China?
Companies are driven to make money. Otherwise they would be an NGO, and not a company.
To be clear, I am many times more critical of my own government and the history of this nation than I ever can be of a foreign nation. My user name is specifically a reference to civil war era promises to freed slaves that were broken and the legacy of reconstruction.
That being said, just because my government does it doesn't mean that I can't call a spade a spade when I see it. What the Chinese government is doing in Xianjiang should be one of the highest international issues right now, unfortunately due to corporate interests China is receiving minimal pressure on the issue.
Sure, you can call out their malfeasance, treachery, outright shenanigans, whatever, but is it appropriate to get upset about it when your own side is just as treacherous?
I’m starting to reach the point where, short of outright killing people, I just don’t care because my country of residence is just as bad as the “bad” guys. Worse, nothing will really ever change that.
Trust me, I'm an equal opportunity critic when it comes to human rights. In the same breath that I condemn the Chinese government for it's actions in Xianjiang I condemn the current administration for locking up children at our border.
Life is too grey to silence yourself on issues you care strongly about.
No, I think it's a very telling thing that there are people out there who comment authoritatively about a place whose name they can't even spell. There are multiple examples in this thread.
If you're comparing Xianjiang and what's happening at the border then this is not eve remotely 'equal opportunity' criticism - it's classical Chinese moral relativism.
In Xianjiang people are being rounded up for their religion or ethnicity, thrown into concentration camps, made 'non-persons', tortured, killed, if they die on trumped up charges their organs are harvested. It's Nazi-Germany level stuff.
The US is not 'putting children in prison' - the US (was previously) holding people who are trying to enter the country due literally to the prosperity of the nation. They are well treated and are free to leave any time.
Now that the rule has been discarded, migrants bring their children specifically on the dangerous journey because they know if they bring their kids, they don't have to go into detention.
This year there there has been a massive upswing in illegal migration precisely because migrants now know the golden legal loophole: bring a child - and they won't have to be held, they can immediately enter the country. And of course, the irony of the fact these people are desperately trying to get in to the country should not be lost on anyone making morally relative claims comparing that situation to Xianjiang.
The China stuff aside, I wish I had time to address all of the points made in this comment in full. Frankly it's a severely misleading explanation that edges very close to misinformation.
Quoting the grandparent comment exactly, the US is in fact "locking up children". They are also not "free to leave". Most detainees are required to wait for their hearing. In addition, no rule has been discarded. The push for zero-tolerance policy at the border led to family separation, and is precisely what's happening to these people, which makes this "golden rule" completely bunk. Further, illegal immigration isn't even as high now as it was in 2014.
This is not even taking into account the issue with illegal immigration and seeking asylum being a criminal issue, the fact that people within the US are being deported, not just those attempting to come in the southern border, and lastly, the reasons why people are fleeing these countries as well as the historical context and the US's role in that.
> This is not even taking into account the issue with illegal immigration and seeking asylum being a criminal issue, the fact that people within the US are being deported, not just those attempting to come in the southern border, and lastly, the reasons why people are fleeing these countries as well as the historical context and the US's role in that.
The difference is that the are people in the US calling out and protesting the horrors occurring and those protesters do not wind up with their organs harvested.
This is kind of a big deal and highlights the differences between the US and China.
China is carrying out forced organ donation at the moment on their prisoners. At what point will China become "bad" for you ? At the point, they start mass-murdering their 'un-desirables' in gas camps and harvesting their bodies ?
There is utterly no equivalence in comparing the USA and China wrt human rights. Any single, incident in the USA gets extra-ordinary media attention. A million incidents in China are buried under the carpet.
china would need to step up their game if they want to reach US numbers. Killing millions by invading or instigating overthrows and torturing people to death (either directly or indirectly) isn’t exactly „good“ in my book.
>But of course the American press won't tell you about that.
Are you seriously saying American media didn't report on the bad stuff that happened during the Iraq war? I know google is likely banned where you are but...
>I don't want to put in a way that the USA is "bad" or China "good", or vice-versa.
The agenda here is quite transparent....Sure we run concentration camps for muslims in Xinjiang but we all do bad stuff so let's not talk about it...
That was a really long way of not explaining what the US steals, in terms of IP, from other countries.
It was also a pretty lengthy way to mascarade the damning false equivalence. China is, undoubtely, worse, in terms of human rights and development. No, the US is not the best. China is far worse.
That's factually incorrect. The United States has the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits the US from providing information or resources to American companies obtained from intelligence collection activities.
See Why We Spy on Our Allies
R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former Director of Central Intelligence.
"USA steals a lot of stuff too. But of course the American press won't tell you about that. Or if they mention it, they will put phrase it like "America liberated the population of Irak "
This is complete rubbish.
The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level, where China is.
Second - geopolitical issues have nothing to do with theft of IP, and usually not even resources (at least not in Central America).
'Central American countries' or 'Iraq' definitely have nothing to offer the US or anyone else in terms of the kind of IP theft one might be concerned about in China.
America did not 'steal' anything from Iraq - their Oil is their own, they receive 100% of the revenue, not only that, they are free to partner with any company they use, in fact, they ended up going with entities like Total (France), Statoil (Russia) etc. instead of US companies. (I guess as a 'thanks' for the fact they are now free to do as they please, and the Oil belongs to the people of Iraq instead of Saddam Co.)
"China is bad" because they steal IP, there is no rule of law, there is widespread corruption, pollution, there is total control of the people by the state and people dissapear of the street for no reason.
Literally, as we speak, China is incarcerating 100's of thousands, possibly millions of people due to their ethnicity or religion, and harvesting their organs as they are killed on trumped up charges. [1]
When we use the term 'Nazi' or 'concentration camps', usually it's hyperbole - but it's not: we now have a major power rounding up people by the millions due to ethnicity and culling their organs. This is actualy Nazi level stuff.
The level of moral relativism implied here is repulsive.
The most poplular examples are probably German Enercon and Dutch Airbus, but our own Belgian Lernout & Hauspie was also targeted by something you are in complete denial of.
It's Europe here, we're supposed to be allies, no? So why is your government literally stealing business using industrial espionage? That's like sleeping with your best friends wife.
So yeah, get your facts straight please.
"No I didn't sleep with your wife, I would never do such a thing! But THAT guy, THAT guy does it!"
I have no clue what level of industrial espionage takes place in the US or China but the fact that it _has_ occurred in both places does not speak to the frequency and severity that these types of actions are taken. All your examples could be true and still the Chinese govt. could be orders of magnitude worse.
To me all of this is nearly irrelevant to OP's original point which was taking an American company's manufacturing to China is a risk. I don't think OP was implicitly making the claim that moving a Chinese company's manufacturing to the US is less of a risk. That seems to be the tangent that the comment thread has taken but it was not part of the original comment. I think there is more of a risk that the Chinese government will steal the IP from Apple in China than the US government will steal the IP from Apple in the US.
I was reacting to this statement: "The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level", which is obviously false. I wanted to rectify that.
We'e asked you repeatedly to stop using HN for political and ideological flamewar. Instead, you've done more and more of it. That's a serious abuse of this site, because such flamewars actually destroy this place for thoughtful and curious conversation, its raison d'etre. Since you've ignored our attempts to get you to use HN as intended, I've banned this account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. But please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
Nazi level stuff？ really? 100 of thousands, that’s close to how many people died in Iraq now. Why don’t we just start World War III is you all think it is really Nazi stuff.
So they will soon be rich like the Saudis in the near future ?
You are kidding right ? This is what your medias are telling you ? Do you know what lead to the refugee crisis and other IS* organizations in the middle east ? The Banana Republics in South America ?
Why is Saudi a saint while other nations in middle east are bad actors ?
The rhetoric on China sounds like sour grapes to me.
I wonder why you aren't down voted for crying out loud that the emperor's nude. I try to see the multiple facets of a story rather than trusting medias be it wester or eastern. How many will bother to see what CNN, RT, BBC, AlJazeera and the likes of it are saying about the same story ?
When China invests in Africa, why is it a bad thing when many countries in Africa are suffering from Françafrique ?
I work for one of the large companies whose product or services you probably use every day, maybe even multiple times a day.
One of the top people in my company has stated concretely to his leadership team that he doesn’t “give a fuck” about existing employees’ mental health or burning out. As long as we keep recruiting and maintain butts in seats, it doesn’t matter.
This person is responsible for a massive chunk of this company. He’s not some isolated irrelevant person.
For someone who doesn’t care about his own employees, I seriously doubt they care about China’s human rights record. It’s not that they think China is a bad spouse who will change their ways - IMO at least given my company, that analogy is wrong. They just don’t care.
Today's major publicly traded companies have one allegiance and that is creating shareholder value aka profit. So if the company doesn't give an eff about employees in the US, why would they care about supplier ethics or the treatment of workers in China.
My current company is the same way. They will pay lip service via HR that they care about their people but in reality, the management decisions show they do not care at all.
All that matters is delivering value to the board and shareholders.
It's unavoidable that USA loses its hegemony. It might be market, military or natural forces, but the balance of power always changes. China's star is rising for now, tomorrow it will be someone else's. Moral merit has nothing to do with this.
If you believe USA has better human rights record, think again. Just read about how this country treats its black citizens.
Let me mention the Vietnam war, for which most HN readers are probably familiar with. I was in the War Remnants Museum in Saigon and here is what I saw.
In one photo, taken by US journalist, a Viet Cong was being held on the ground by American GIs, a rag is placed over the man's face and water is poured over it, making breathing impossible. That's called water torture. And that was 1968.
So because a few individuals did something against the code of fighting conduct in 1968, a nation can run mass-incarceration camps and carry out forced organ harvesting for millions in 2019 ?
Let me mention that th current Chinese regime is comparable to a regime of an European country in 1943. If we're talking about what happened 50 years ago, we can talk what happened 75 years ago as well.
Who is "we"? I thought the Hacker News community was international?
> with a nation that has imprisoned thousands of religious minorities in re-education camps
Right now the US has children, separated from their parents at the border, caged up in chain link fences like animals. I agree the US does win over China when it comes to human rights overall, but I don't think Americans are in a good position to be talking about human rights abuses at this exact point in history.
I am not personally attacking you. You made some reasonable points. I am suggesting that if you view the US from afar, like you are viewing China from afar, there might be some useful information there.
If USA is having a good relationship with Saudi Arabia which is not even really giving women rights and only recently allowed women to drive then you know USA don't care.
There is next to none long term thinking by the American govt or corporations, period. That’s expected from publicly traded companies, and when those companies run the country too, well...
It's clear that globalization has some nasty side effects. Yes, there were people sounding these alarms back in the 90's. Did we heed them? No. I thought it was a little shrill. Now? I'm convinced that globalization has done some powerful good in the world, but it has also done some serious damage.
The entire tilt to the right is the reaction to globalization. The Daily podcast (NYT) had a week-long series going to various EU countries and talking with people on the ground. It was eye opening, to say the least. I highly recommend it.
Please stop using HN for nationalistic battle. It doesn't matter which country you do or don't like—it leads to degenerate discussion and we don't want that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20277723 was especially bad.
While civil rights deriving from the principle of awesomeness sounds like a totally rad way to run a society, in truth that is not the premise of America's First Amendment.
Woke is shorthand for awoken, or awakening. It's generally used to signify an agreement (or at least understanding) of left leaning perspectives on civil rights.
Personally, despite my beliefs, I am not comfortable with corporations co-opting movements like LGBTQ pride on one hand (how many rainbow branded beer bottles have you seen this month?) and advocating policies that are diametrically opposed with the other.
>Personally, despite my beliefs, I am not comfortable with corporations co-opting movements like LGBTQ pride on one hand (how many rainbow branded beer bottles have you seen this month?) and advocating policies that are diametrically opposed with the other.
Yeah, this reminds me of when I went to the DC Pride parade last year and saw a bunch of floats and participants from various corporations: banks, airlines, etc. I'm all for accepting LGBT people, but the corporate-ness of the festivities really disturbed me. What's next, a Million Man march sponsored by Nike, or a women's march sponsored by Johnson&Johnson? I don't remember MLK needing corporate sponsorship when he did his marches.
This isn't about politics, it is about how the world economy is going to work and to what degree countries specialize versus protect certain industries IMO :)
Post WW2 there was a big movement to integrate world economies under the belief that countries don't go to war against their economic partners. I must admit I am a huge believer in this.
Now, under the leadership of the 80s and 90s, on both sides of the aisle this went too far and the USA probably needed to add some protection to its domestic labor market. IMO the EU navigated that better, but culturally they have always been less merc.
Anyway, this is where we are at, we now have people in power questioning that....
My worry is that that we will untangle this fantastic system, rather than tangle but in a smarter way and provide better domestic protections.
I would define it simply as a buzz word that silly people use to try to express a unique awareness and deeper understanding that no-one else can have of more liberal issues (racial, LBGTQ, social condition, etc...)
It should be noted that it seems to have had a remarkably short lifespan between hitting the mainstream and being widely used to mock the people who use it unironically. For context to this observation, my bias is that I think its straightforward meaning is mainly for confrontational moral grandstanders to signal their blue-tribe affiliation.
>but companies like Apple who try to be "woke" have no buisness advocating for equality at home while doing buisness with a nation that has imprisoned thousands of religious minorities in re-education camps.
How is that worse than doing business in a nation that has imprisoned thousands of impoverished migrants in concentration camps and has forcibly separated children from their families, to the point where many of them have never been reunited?
At least in China, the facilities for large-scale manufacturing all exist there. You need some tiny screws to build your laptop? No problem, there's a company in the same city that makes them by the millions; in America, you have to contract with some machine shop to make them for a fortune and you can't get the quantity you need for large-scale manufacturing.[1]
Please don't take HN threads even further into political or ideological flamewar. It doesn't help; it just makes this place even worse.
If a comment is egregious, flag it (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). In particularly bad cases you can email hn@ycombinator.com so we'll see it sooner. But remember that the guidelines ask: ""Don't feed egregious comments by replying.".
I invite you to Dachau if you want a tour there. Dachau never was a formal extermination camp, but it was the concentration camp after which all other concentration camps were modeled and then modified. Maybe after a tour there you learn to be quiet about things you don't understand.
Please don't cross into personal attack. If someone is wrong and you know more, sharing some of what you know might help us all learn something. Just putting down their lack of knowledge only makes this place worse.
Hey guess who's Polish (sorry to burst your bubble there my German friend)? Has spent large amounts of time researching the atrocities of the Holocaust? And has been to Auschwitz (I guess they wanted to keep the fumes of the human corpses outside of their homeland.)
"Concentration camps" predate the Nazis by centuries, and post-date them as well.
You're mistaking concentration camps in general with the smaller subset of industrialized death camps in specific that we associate with the Holocaust.
