Comments on: Apple and the China riots

By: huxley

huxley — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 20:51:30 +0000

More on Apple’s China problem:
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Of all the conversations I’ve had this week with senior people who were once in charge of building Apple products in China, one comment stuck out: China is “not just a location. It was also an era.”

Note the past tense.

Worker protests in Zhengzhou have significantly disrupted the supply of iPhones and will cost Apple billions of dollars in holiday sales, according to analysts and news reports.

Obviously, the technology manufacturing ecosystem in China isn’t about to disappear. But the people who built their careers and fortunes relying on China’s emergence as a production powerhouse have come to accept that the system they built is now in decline.

The current videos of unrest — which include young workers scaling fences to escape “iPhone city,” where they were locked in during a COVID-19 outbreak — are becoming indelible images.

Nobody could have predicted Covid and the ripple effects that led to the current protests. But China’s global ambitions, which include possibly acting on its claims to Taiwan, have long been a risk factor for companies dependent on manufacturing there.

–“Apple’s Chinese dream is over”
https://www.semafor.com/article/11/30/2022/apples-chinese-dream-is-over
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Yes, I am aware SBF was one of Semafor’s early investors. It does not necessarily follow that everything Semafor writes must be wrong.

By: Miguel cervantes

Miguel cervantes — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 17:22:00 +0000

Other than give some guns to the muj how did china cripple The soviet union?

By: Abraxas

Abraxas — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:33:23 +0000

Nixon’s assumption was that the USSR would always remain a strong opponent of the US. His successors assumed that the US would always be the only superpower and could offshore production to other countries without losing ground economically. They both assumed that China would lag behind the West.

By: Christopher B

Christopher B — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 16:17:24 +0000

I see a couple of people have mentioned it already but I will add my vote that you’re implicating Nixon in a situation he did not create. Decoupling China from the (as it then existed) USSR was exactly the right move to make at that point in the Cold War. Remember that we were doing cultural exchanges and trade with the Soviet Union itself as well but these were almost always one-off deals and special exchanges that aimed to reduce tensions between our countries, not to somehow ‘democratize’ them. The claim that we could get China, along with similar later claims about Russia, to become more like the West through trade was a feature of the argument over including China in what had previously been exclusively pro-US/Western institutions like the WTO that occurred decades after Nixon opened up to China. I’m sure you can find people who objected to Nixon’s moves but I think the argument was far more over the strategic implications of trading and less about the expectation that China would become a democracy.

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:55:09 +0000

All fine and dandy…but one MIGHT want to take into account that the Semafor “news” org. is one of SBF’s pet charities….

(A “mere” factoid that came to light recently when Semafor tried to slander Musk over his supposed “negotiations” with SBF…in the matter of the twitter purchase and financing…IIRC)

By: Nonapod

Nonapod — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 15:49:14 +0000

This guy has a farily charitable take on Apple's China problems.

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 13:19:50 +0000

Allied,
.
The Apple II computer was really quite wonderful. I even wrote some machine level code for some graphics and I just had a working knowledge of BASIC but was able to quickly learn the Apple code. Then along came Mac as Apple’s response to HP and IBM Microsoft based machines. The great advancement was their introduction of GUI which really cemented their market share. What made me turn against Apple at that point was how they decided the user no longer should have access to basic functions….the attitude of “we know better” was so obvious. Their totalitarian attitude was starting to slip out, and has “progressed” ever since.

The now Apple/Android split is a great analog for the general society split.

By: Miguel cervantes

Miguel cervantes — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 13:15:30 +0000

Because the monolith then was IBM pillsburys 100 year mace seems persuasive we havent yet had a taiping rebellion although 2020 was a close run thing

By: Allied

Allied — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:34:33 +0000

I am well past old enough to remember Apple’s early days and their “1984” Super Bowl commericial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I) which was based on George Orwell’s book “1984”. Amazing how far a once great American company has fallen to be a toady to the ChiComs and they are only one of many to have done so.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:04:05 +0000

Not quite Art, prior to 1,2 &3 there is the most important factor that need to be added; the wholesale transfer of know how to China.

Do you fancy the ‘know how’ is unavailable in Latin America?