Geek Bravado

The blown hard arrogance of Parallax Abstraction.

Tag Archives: electronics

The Worries of An Apple Led Post-PC World

4 Comments Posted by on March 8, 2012

So the iPad 3 was announced yesterday (yes I know it’s just called the iPad but it’s the 3rd one so it’s the iPad 3) and as usual, the press tripped over themselves to give them free PR. The mainstream news media which wouldn’t give any other tech launch more than a cursory mention practically live blogged the event and well, the fanboy driven tech press did what it always does with Apple launches, gush like teen girls at a boy band concert, much like the legion of practically religious level Apple enthusiasts who clogged my Twitter feed during the reveal. It’s still gross and in the press’ case, the opposite of journalism but it’s also par for the course now and my getting mad about it is pointless. Truthfully, I was paying closer attention than I usually would because my girlfriend and I were strongly considering splitting the purchase of an iPad 3. She wants it to surf and do e-mail easily when she travels for work and I want it to see if it’s possible for iOS games to hook me in (which they haven’t to this point). Something unexpected happened after work that may result in us moving soon and thus delaying that money being spent for a while but we’ll see.

Among all the gushing comes the usual talking points about the “post-PC world” tablets are supposedly ushering in, points Apple themselves trumpet whenever they can. They are quick to point out that the term doesn’t mean the end of traditional computers (an area where they still make a lot of money) but it does mean a reversal of the current roles where the desktop or laptop is a person’s primary means of computing and the tablet complements that. Tablets don’t really fit in with how I do my day-to-day computing, mostly because I am usually either at home or the office, type at a blistering speed an on-screen keyboard simply can’t keep up with and I’m used to a heavy multitasking environment where I can do and monitor several things at once. You put two copies of myself on a couch with stuff to do and the version of me using my HP ProBook will leave the tablet version of me in the dust. However, I’ll be the first to admit that the way in which I use a computer now is not at all mainstream and this is most certainly a vision based around the mainstream. If my girlfriend and my Mom found themselves using a tablet first and foremost, that’s cool by me as long as I can still have my laptop and gaming desktop too.

Tablets require less material to make, can arguably be priced to be much more accessible than traditional computers (though Apple is trying their damndest to avoid this), can be carried around as easily as a pad of paper and can do most day-to-day computing tasks without even breaking a sweat. I’m not denying the benefits of the “post-PC” world and many elements of it I will welcome. What I do have many concerns with is Apple being the leaders of this world. The original iPad kind of came from nowhere and virtually everyone trying to compete with it has been stumbling over themselves to catch up, while also thinking they can charge similar prices for devices that are simply inferior. As tablets go the iPad is virtually unchallenged and barring some major missteps by Apple or a roaring comeback into the space from Microsoft (whose missteps with Windows 8 will be the subject of a future post), it stands to be that way for the foreseeable future. And this is not good for anyone.

Having a single dominant player in any market is a bad thing because it discourages innovation and leads to higher prices because of reduced competition. One need look no further than when Microsoft Windows was basically your only real choice for a desktop operating system. Poor performance, gaping security flaws, massive product delays, tiny incremental updates and bullying of OEMs were all the orders of the day back then. Apple is still a distant minority in the traditional computing space but they gain ground on Windows every day and the iPad led post-PC world could put the writing on the wall for Microsoft’s key rainmaker. When Apple put their feet to the fire, what we ended up with was Windows 7, arguably the most polished and solid version of Windows ever and a product which I happily use every day and firmly believe is superior to Mac OS. However, even when Microsoft Windows was at its flattest and most stationary, there were a number of key differences of PCs compared to Macs which Microsoft embraced and still does to this day. Apple does not share these values and should they become the dominant player in the market, their continued adherence to them doesn’t do good for the future advancement of computing. Here are some examples of what I mean:

  • Apple likes closed platforms: The original incarnation of iOS didn’t allow third party applications of any kind. This was the way Steve Jobs wanted it because he believed these external influences destabilised the user’s experience and he was right, they do. But after screaming demand from users (and Android right around the corner who embraced third party software), he relented and it was arguably the smartest thing Apple ever did. Apple nonetheless still holds the keys to the kingdom and while they’ll let anyone write apps for iOS, you have to get their permission to make it available and they can refuse you for any reason, including for things like making an app that’s better than one of their stock ones or making a game that raises awareness of their supplier’s factory conditions. The biggest innovations have come from people breaking the mould and disrupting trends with new things. You know, exactly like iOS did. On Windows, you could write any program you wanted and put it out there with permission from no one. In an Apple post-PC world, only one entity has control of what you get access to and they have an agenda that doesn’t always favour innovation. That only benefits them, not the innovators and not the users.
  • Apple hates user choice: Want an iPad? There’s three different memory sizes and you can have it with cellular capability or not. Want an iPhone? There’s 3 of them and they aren’t expandable. Want an iMac? There’s 4 of them. A MacBook? 8. Want a gaming system? Sorry, there isn’t one. Don’t care so much about having a lot of disk space but want a faster CPU? Can’t do that, you pick a template. Want a desktop PC but also use your own monitor setup? You can only do that with a Mac Pro that starts at $2,600. And since the Mac and iOS aren’t open platforms where you have different manufacturers offering different products and competing on price (someone tried to do this with Mac OS and Apple destroyed them for it), you either go with their options at their prices or stay out. For your average mainstream end user, this probably isn’t a big deal but the enthusiast and professional markets are massive and growing and Apple doesn’t care about those. With Windows PCs, you have all the choice you could ever want from a bare bones netbook to an $8,000 gaming rig that will dim the lights on your whole block. There’s something for everyone and it’s easy to find something that will do what you want for the price you’re willing to pay. Which brings me to the next point.
  • Apple products are purposefully overpriced: This is less of a problem than it used to be but it is simple fact that at least when it comes to desktop and laptop computers, Apple products cost substantially more relative to the technical capabilities you’re getting. You show me an iMac and I will show you a PC with similar specs that costs way less. Apple makes something like $200+ on every iPad sold from day one, an utterly obscene profit margin by modern tech industry standards. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a company charging what the market will pay and at least right now, Apple has managed to convince many people that paying hundreds more than a similarly speced competitor’s product makes economic sense. However, the only reason they’re able to do this is again because they have no competition in their space. Yes, we do still have Windows PCs that are fiercely competing on price but remember, we’re talking in the context of a post-PC world where tablets are the de facto standard. Right now, inferior Android tablets are going on sale for the same $500 price as the iPad because Apple has wrongly got it into the heads of the mainstream public that any tablet under that price isn’t worth considering. If we enter a post-PC world that Apple largely controls, the cost of computing will go up substantially, making it harder for less wealthy people to get into and thus, reducing the number of people using what is now a fundamental part of everyday life. Competition is key to lower prices, innovation and accessibility and with Apple running things, there would be no such competition.
  • Apple believes they still own the products you buy: If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod and want to load media or apps on it, you do it through iTunes. Period. A Mac App Store is already available and many believe software on Mac OS will eventually go the same way. On Android, there are multiple app stores that compete to offer the best products and prices and on Windows, you can get software in literally thousands of different ways to suit your preference. On iOS, there is no such thing unless you jailbreak your device (which of course voids the warranty and locks you out of future updates). Apple claims this is in the interest of making sure the user experience is always seamless and reliable but that’s a thin smokescreen. In reality, it’s structured this way to make sure anything you do with that device has to be approved by and more importantly, purchased through them. Apple takes a substantial cut of every single thing sold through iTunes and as with hardware, it’s not in their interest to let you shop elsewhere where they can’t control the experience and more importantly, their slice of the action. So after paying a minimum of $500 for your new iPad, Apple still believes they have the right to tell you how to use it and if you don’t agree, you don’t get to play in their sandbox. This is incredibly arrogant and despite what their carefully curated marketing tells you, this isn’t about ensuring a great experience for you but about how much they steer you into exclusively giving them more money, even after you’ve already given them a lot of it. In other words, they still believe they have a right to control your device, even after you’ve paid for it. As anyone who has used Windows 7 on a capable PC will say, you can have an open platform with choice and still have a rock solid, pleasing experience. You don’t have to wall it up for things to work well.
  • Apple is becoming a patent troll: There’s no denying that at least right now, Android based tablet competitors can’t hold a candle to the iPad. Frankly, Google and their partners need to get their act together and fast because every month they don’t bring out an iPad killer, more Android loyalists get fed up with waiting and go to the Apple camp. Windows 8 is also a long way off and we have no idea how that’s going to go. Beyond that though, there is another darker reason for this. Apple has been on a patent bender for the last several years, locking down everything they can and threatening Android partners with potentially bank-breaking lawsuits. They are already locked in many such fights across Europe. One of the main reasons Google bought Motorola Mobility for billions of dollars a while back was just to lock up their patent portfolio in order to use it to stare down Apple. Yes, lots of companies are doing this and yes, much of this is a result of an American patent system that’s broken to the point of absurdity. I don’t deny that but one also can’t deny that Apple is a company with $100 billion in cash with no end in sight, they don’t need the money and patents aren’t like trademarks, you don’t lose them if you just sit on them and don’t sue everyone. They’re doing this to bleed their competitors dry and trying to stop other, potentially better devices from entering the market alongside theirs. This isn’t an innovating marketplace of ideas, this is Apple trying to use their massive cash reserves to bully out anyone who can mount a threat to them. If they truly stand behind their products, then they should be able to stand on their own and if someone uses a slightly similar case design or the magnetic charging connector, they should have nothing to worry about if their stuff is still better. Using the courts to stop competition is manipulating the market and that doesn’t serve consumers.

You’ll notice one common theme in all those points: Choice or in Apple’s case, lack thereof. Everything Apple has built their impressive and continuing success on is based around restraining user choices which keeps prices high and ultimately, limits innovation only to their own and the ones they permit. So far this strategy seems to be working for them and probably will as long as they can string out the fashion trend that’s fuelling their current growth. But competition is what made the PC strong and it was a need to compete in new and creative ways that made Apple invent iOS and all its associated devices in the first place. Now that they are ruling the roost (at least as far as tablets go), their objective is about shrinking the scope of choice down and that’s something that only benefits them, not the customers and not the high-tech industry as a whole. Microsoft was accused, tried and heavily fined and regulated in Europe and almost in the US for doing far less nefarious things than that what I listed above. They were considered an evil predator but Apple does the same and in some cases worse and is considered a pioneering innovator.

Is a company who does all of what I’ve written and more the one you want having dominance of the post-PC world? I don’t know if I am. If you’re a hardcore Apple fan, you’ve likely blown off what I’ve written as me just being another hater who dislikes the top dog and that’s not what I am. Keep in mind, I almost bought an iPad 3 today and the only reason I didn’t was because of an unexpected event that should it not pan out, will have me considering the purchase again. I don’t want to see Apple fail, I just don’t want to see them being the only ones who have a say in the post-PC future.

Apple has done one thing exceedingly well: They took a very bloated, arrogant and stagnant high-tech industry and shoved a massive wad of humble pie in its face, almost overnight. That’s damn impressive and the shake up is exactly what the industry needed. I thank them for bringing about that change. However, I believe the tides have changed too quickly and even when they were almost down and out, Apple and their devoted fans were still incredibly arrogant. If they control the post-PC world, the same problems we faced before could be faced again, only with a different company at the top and no one in a position to challenge them. That’s bad for the industry, bad for consumers and bad for innovation. I truly hope that some of Apple’s competitors who are still scrambling to find their feet manage to do so and mount a proper fight. And I really hope that as consumers get more tech savvy, that they start to realise that Apple is supposed to work for them, not the other way around.

The post-PC world has the potential to be awesome and revolutionary but for it to realise its full potential, user choice must be at the forefront of it. In their current form, that’s not what Apple wants.

Business, Computers, Mobile Phones, Predictions, Tablets, Technology , , , , , ,

Apple Can Do Better for Chinese Workers

1 Comment Posted by on January 13, 2012

With surprisingly coincidental timing, Apple today released a statement about working conditions in the Chinese factories they employ that has nothing to do with the recent This American Life story, honest. They’ve announced that they will now produce a continually updated list of all the suppliers they do business with and they have put an independent, non-profit organisation in charge of conducting audits of the factories. Sounds like good progress right? Well, not really. While it does seem like Apple is trying to take this issue more seriously, there’s a few problems:

  • The list simply shows a bunch of company names, it doesn’t list what factories they are using or even what cities or countries they are in. Saying you buy services from Foxconn is all well and good but it’s a company with nearly a million employees all over the world.
  • This Fair Labour Association they’ve appointed to do the audits has only worked with the clothing industry. One would presume they will read up on the high tech industry and the specific manufacturing challenges it has but was there no one with actual experience in the field they could turn to?
  • They claim the audits will be unannounced but these companies have ears everywhere and many of the audits where they “fix” the results are also supposedly unannounced. They did not address how they will overcome this challenge.
  • Neither the auditors nor Apple themselves will release which factories are checked, who owns them or which ones are found in violation of standards and how. The only way we will find out if Apple has stopped dealing with a supplier is if their name disappears from the list and we will never know the reason.
  • The audits will only cover 5% of the factories Apple deals with.

I bolded that last point because it’s by far the most important one. This organisation, contracted by the world’s most valuable company will be auditing a percentage of Apple factories so low that it is within the statistical margin of error for most scientific surveys. Could this possibly be any more limp an attempt at dealing with this problem? I understand that as a non-profit, the Fair Labour Association probably doesn’t have a Foxconn sized workforce and that Apple can’t give them the funding to hire more staff without potentially contaminating their results. Nonetheless, audits this small make the whole process look like a public relations gesture more than a meaningful attempt to improve anything. I’m sure this will silence some of their critics and the Apple cultists both in the press and the public at large will show that this is them owning up to the problem and cracking down on worker abuse. In reality, this appears to me to be little more than a smokescreen and an attempt to rile up their fanbase to drown out those trying to expose a serious problem.

I’m not naive and I know that working conditions in Chinese factories is not a problem Apple created, nor are they the only or by far the worst offender. Part of the reason why we hear about this so much is indeed because their products are so hot right now and get a lot of attention. Foxconn has many customers and was run this way long before Apple became their biggest one. I single them out here partially because the published stories are about the factories where Apple products are made but also for another reason.

With their historic combination of simultaneously being the world’s most valuable company who has massive margins relative to their competitors and their uniquely rabid and growing fanbase, no one on Earth is in a better position to draw attention to this issue and affect change than Apple is. For better or worse, almost all their competitors are in a constant struggle to just keep up with, if not surpass many of their innovations. If Apple came out tomorrow and said “We’re going to make a little bit less on each product we sell in order to ensure our Chinese partners pay their workers fairly and treat them with respect.”, that would start a wave in the tech industry and their competitors could be forced to make similar commitments, lest they look like cold uncaring corporate monsters which less face it, they all are anyway. Imagine if they also did something like give a free iPad to everyone who works on Apple assembly lines. According to Mike Daisey’s story, most of the people who build them have never even seen them turned on. If they suddenly got to experience the end result of their hard work and were told “This makes millions of people happy and we want you to have one for free because you’re a part of that.”, I think that would do wonders for morale by making them feel even a little bit of appreciation. With Apple’s profits, it would cost them virtually nothing to do this.

Many people in the world see Apple as the gold standard for technology and indeed how to run a company in general. I think it’s their responsibility to uphold the standard they set for themselves in everything they do, not just the things their consumers can easily see. They have a great opportunity here to make the world better for everyone. There will be some investment involved but frankly, they can afford it and the potential benefits could outweigh that. All we have now is a half-hearted attempt to look like they care when in reality, they’re just waiting out the news cycle Mike Daisey and This American Life created. It’s clear you consider yourselves better than this Apple, start acting like it. I think you owe the workers that much.

Business, Computers, Mobile Phones, Politics, Tablets, Technology , , , , , ,

Amazing This American Life Story On Chinese Manufacturing Conditions

3 Comments Posted by on January 9, 2012

My preferred content to listen to at work is podcasts and as always, I start my week’s rotation off with the always fantastic This American Life from NPR. If you haven’t listened to this podcast, it’s a fantastic show where they choose a theme of the week (some specific, some often quite abstract) and a bunch of seasoned storytellers, authors and journalists tell a bunch of varied tales on that theme. Rarely can a show take subjects I would otherwise not be interested in and make them truly fascinating. In particular, this week’s episode entitled Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory is one I think every Apple user–or really anyone who regularly buys electronics in general–should listen to.

Mike Daisey is a professional storyteller–and man, is he ever good at it–who is also an amateur tech enthusiast. He loves technology in general and in particular, Apple products. He is actually a self-confessed Apple fanboy, something I appreciate as owning your fanboyism is something I really think more people need to do more of (hinty hint the staff of Tested.com). One day, he read a story about an iPhone that left a factory in China with a bunch of photos still on it. All phones with cameras get test photos taken in the factory and they are usually wiped before the phone is sent out. The photos didn’t really show anything of interest but it made Mr. Daisey realise that he’d never really spent any time thinking about where his technological toys come from or what it’s like for the people who build them. What follows is an amazing tale in which he goes to Shenzhen, China and ends up finding out just how bad things are there. We’ve heard stories in the press before about poor conditions at Chinese factories but what Mr. Daisey finds is truly disturbing

I don’t plan to spoil the rest of the episode as I think everyone should listen to it in full. We’ve seen the occasional story in the press about horrendous conditions in these factories but the one consistent theme through them all is that things don’t seem to be improving to any meaningful degree and the companies that hire these Chinese factories really don’t care that much. Apple claims to be doing audits of their partners and ensuring that certain conditions are met but aside from the factories constantly gaming the audits, conditions don’t seem to be improving much and Apple (nor anyone else) seems to be doing anything to fix these problems. For a company that makes such massive profits on the products they sell compared to the rest of the computer industry, they have even less of an excuse to be so lackadaisical about how the people who actually make them are treated. No one has an excuse for this though.

I’ve known about this type of thing before and it does give me pause when I’m thinking what brands of products to buy for myself as I too am a big tech enthusiast. The reality is, this is a consequence of a culture that has been conditioned to expect to buy technology for about half or less the price that it really should cost. People feel bad about 13 year-olds being exposed to neuro-toxins when building their iPad but if the alternative is paying $1,000 for it (and most likely not being able to afford it as a result), it’s easy to rationalise your worries away. I’m not saying we should all stop buying electronics until China becomes a democratic utopia but I think it’s important that we at least consider where the things we enjoy start out before ending up in our hands. Seriously, take an hour and give this show a listen, it’s something every lover of technology needs to listen to.

Business, Computers, Mobile Phones, Politics, Tablets, Technology , , , , , ,

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