Wow, don’t think I’ve seen Apple issue a PR like this before. No doubt Apple’s considering now more than ever to continue to diversify their supply chain. China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach.
> - Foxconn workers have to walk on highways for hundreds of miles with their luggage to go back home
For anyone wondering why: It it because they are labeled as COVID close contact by health code system, so they cannot take public transport system even they have enough money.
In India's case it was logistics issue. Initial decision was to keep migrant workers in place and provide them with daily necessities free. Some state govts didn't play ball and cut off electricity and rations. After that it took some time for central and various state govts to run special trains to the people. And it's not thousands of kms, 10s of kms.
how is protecting others from a still-deadly pandemic anything remotely like genetic-engineering of Uebermensch and social stratification? people aren't shunned for life because they got coronavirus, they are quarantined until they test negative again
It’s mostly about protecting from a pandemic. China doesn’t have enough completed vaccinations for them to let it rip even if they wanted to, nor was their vaccine as good as ours.
And of course, just because you think long covid isn’t worth the risk doesn’t mean they agree.
That's an interesting channel, though I've personally found it problematic. Nearly all its videos are very strongly negative on China. That makes me wonder do they have an agenda and are they twisting the truth in some cases? Would be great to get any insight on this.
Are they twisting the truth? It is difficult to say without corroborated information that poses an alternate read of the facts.
Is it cherry picking information? Almost certainly.
If you trust the translation in the voice overs or subtitles and the sources of the videos themselves, there is still a lot of material there.
Spotlight on China is another that has news about China's economics / industry / politics for outside of China consumption that doesn't appear to be state media.
It looks very disturbing to see them hauling their luggage (why do they have luggage at their place of employment?) out of something that I can only interpret to look like a prison.
Important note for anyone that doesn't already know, migrant in this context refers to internal migration from far off home towns as opposed to "immigrant" in the context of temporary farm labour migrant workers migrating in from another country where such work forms part of their visa arrangements (Australia's migrant worker visas, pick some fruit, do some backpacking) or is part of seasonal regional migration over the border such as parts of the USA where Mexican workers legally migrate on short temporary work visas during farm's harvest seasons.
Yes, but not ones where you're fenced in with barbed wire and can't leave.
I thought the concept of company towns was more financial and economic slavery, eg your company gives you a mortgage to a buy a house from the company, all near work so you can work long hours, and you're essentially an indentured servant.
But this is actual slavery, these people are literally locked in and can't leave except by crawling over barbed wire fences.
I live in a multi-apartment house. When COVID started, one of tenants was found COVID-positive. Our entire house was locked by authorities for two weeks. It was forbidden to leave it, there was car with policeman and barricades. The only way to get food was to order it with online delivery.
A closer analogy would be to an oilfield "man camp" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGg57r9wK0) — temporary housing for a bunch of people who have signed up to do a few months' stint of work in a job that requires them to be in the middle of nowhere to do that job (because that's inherent to the nature of the job.) They're a lot like military encampments, actually.
The real question is why these factories are built in the middle of nowhere. There's no clear need for it; no reason they couldn't just be built in cities. They're not heavy industrial polluters or anything that would make people not want them in city limits.
The bad part of company towns was that they didn’t pay you in normally accepted currency. It’s not the part where they gave you housing.
Japanese companies also own worker housing, sometimes even owning the CEO’s house (as a way of making his wages look lower). Some of them are also abusive, doesn’t mean they all are.
It's due to China's Hukou system, a type of caste system, due to which rural workers can't obtain any govt benefits or even housing in cities. This leads to this kind of worker dorm situation.
I don't see any problem here as long as workers get freely to choose whether they want to live in factory dorms or in any other arrangements they can afford. Clearly such choice is available to them and there are numerous reports online that young workers are increasing choosing not to live in factory dorms. e.g. the following report talks about young female workers usually choose to move out of the factory dorm when they got boyfriends.
Other than the annual university entrance exam and buying properties, Hukou is no longer enforced. The real difference only exists for tier-1 mega cities like Beijing and Shanghai, 97% Chinese don't live there.
Of course they'd "choose" to move out as soon as they finally can, if they get on with a local who has residence. Otherwise the only alternative is more or less going home to their parents.
This is super bad news for Apple — Zengzhou having a massive lockdown will scare away workers for a while unless they promise to pay big jumps in salary to come back I would imagine.. Apple shifting tons of production to India is super bad news for China and this is definitely going to accelerate it. Zhengzhou is Uber important to apple’s iPhone production.. so my guess is that Foxconn production is essentially zero right now and will be for a month before lines get back up to speed.. (lockdown is supposed to be 7 days) but these production lines are massive, so could impact production for an extended period if workers are nervous to come back. Likely could cost Apple tens of billions in revenue..
Interestingly, this does not affect iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. Either the production lines for them are not affected (yet) or Apple have plenty of inventory for the holiday season.
I just ordered a M2 Macbook Air and apparently they ship those directly out of China. It's already cleared customs in Zhengzhou according to tracking, which would indicate they make those there and have no issues fulfilling orders currently.
> ...which would indicate they make those there and have no issues fulfilling orders currently.
Based on FY22 total net sales[1], the entire Mac category accounted for 10.2%, whereas iPhone category accounted for 52.1%.
In other words, if iPhone production volume were reduced by just -10% of FY22 levels going into the holidays, that would be equivalent to half of Mac revenue!
The press release was making forward-looking statements so you may be correct, but this thought experiment suggests that even if they were experiencing Mac throughput issues, it's almost irrelevant if the same facility is being shared with iPhone production.
The Apple Store near me told me that the 14 Plus sold less than even the 13 Mini. Which is kind of wild to me, I thought most wanted bigger phones and huge batteries, which is why the Mini line was killed. I say that as someone who thinks the 13 Mini is the best phone I’ve ever owned, but I always figured it was niche compared to huge phones
Yeah the 13 mini is a pretty excellent form factor. It fits in most hands, pockets, and slots in bags. It’s even small enough to toss in a suit jacket without being visible or causing the jacket to sag.
Fits in most hands, sure, but I never understood this "fits in pockets" obsession - tons of similar comments for all kinds of gadgets, when even a 2x version would fit any normal pocket (on a jeans say, or a coat) just fine.
Surely you've seen people who put their phone and wallet on a table before sitting down, because they can't comfortably sit with them in their pockets?
Mens' clothes have adapted significantly over the past 15 years to accommodate growing devices - it's just happened slowly enough that it's hard to notice.
Modern jeans are made with deeper front pockets; and a lot of sportswear has added/redesigned pockets. I have running clothes from 20 years ago with nothing but a space for some keys, and others with only shallow pockets with no button or zip - hardly suitable for carrying a $1000 phone! Modern running clothes often add a large, zipped, sweat-proof pocket specifically designed for carrying a phone.
People's experience of this will vary with their style preferences, naturally - nothing modern exceeds the pockets on a 1990s pair of cargo pants or JCNO jeans! And if you update your clothes regularly, your entire wardrobe might have gained large pockets without you noticing.
>Surely you've seen people who put their phone and wallet on a table before sitting down, because they can't comfortably sit with them in their pockets?
Yes, never understood them either. It's no issue to sit with a phone and wallet in the pocket/backpockets. This is more of a The Princess and the Pea-style issue than a real problem....
You may want to look at it from a non male perspective: for smaller people and tighter trousers or small exterior pockets on skirts and other clothing the smaller (mini) version often just fits and is one comfortable to wear even with regular movement (think of very tight stretching jeans).
I don't know, I have pretty normal guys' levi's jeans (model 514), waist size 30, length 32. The jeans fit comfortably, they're not painted on.
My iphone 7 fits ok-ish in my front pokets if I stand but I have to adjust it and pull it down when I want to sit. It's the main reason why I was looking at the 13 mini as opposed to the regular.
I find that the 13 mini is about the largest thing that is comfortable in my pocket while sitting or on a bike.
As for a coat/suit jacket I can always tell when someone has a large phone in their suit jacket pocket. If you care about that sort of thing it really ruins the line and drape of the jacket.
You want to put it in the pocket and be able to move freely after that. It worked for me with Nokia 3310, it does not work the same with any modern phone.
I was interested in the 14+ for a family member, but the pricing is awful. I'd rather go up to the 14 Pro or look into the 13 series (same phone for less).
Almost everyone I know having a big Iphone bought it because it was the most expensive one. No one does it because they like to hold a mini TV. I may be biased, but I have a wide sample.
When you can get an iPhone 13 Pro for almost the same price but it is objectively better (or alternatively get an iPhone 13 on clearance, which is almost the same device) it isn’t hard to see why the regular 14 isn’t selling amongst people who are upgrading early in the release cycle and are therefore more likely to be enthusiasts.
Than the iPhone 14 (non-Pro)? It has a brighter screen which runs at 120Hz (not 60) and it has the additional telephoto lens (and LiDAR, though I don't think there's any use for that still). I also think it looks nicer, but that's a personal preference.
Because Apple didn't upgrade the CPU in the non-pro this year the iPhone 13 Pro is still the better device.
1. Workers only get food if they show up for their shift. If they are sick and don't work, there is no place to get food in the Foxconn campus. Due to the lockdown, the workers can't order food delivered online if sick.
2. When local governments force people to quarantine, they are supposed to provide basic meals. However, it seems most workers who were quarantined recently did not receive any food or water for days because the local government expected Foxconn to provide it instead.
3. Someone made a viral video suggesting everyone who was quarantined in a dormitory room died of a new deadly disease.
This is a consequence of China’s zero-Covid policy. Nationally, the instruction is to eliminate outbreaks, even of new and milder variants. Leading up to the party congress local authorities appear to have reported inaccurately low numbers to avoid bad news for the leadership. Now, after the congress, the task is to quickly eliminate outbreaks to avoid the need for even harsher measures like full-city lockdowns like seen in Shanghai earlier this year. Additionally China has spent the past three years telling its population that the rest of the world has been irresponsibly murdering its citizens by adopting a “live with Covid” policy.
So when rumors of a possible lockdown of the factory or its economic zone started spreading, employees fled either because they feared an outbreak or because they didn’t want to get locked in there for an indeterminate period of time.
What have you heard about it? I find it hard to assess with the currently available information (and, apparently, so does the world given the huge disparities in politics).
Long covid is real and scary. So are cancer, heart attacks and car crashes, but it would be a really bad idea to skip a cost/benefit analysis of the possible counter measures available at societal level because of that.
The best estimate I found was from May of this year. At the time they estimated somewhere between 7.7 and 23 million cases of long Covid in the US.
Compare that with 1.6 million people getting a cancer diagnosis every year, about 40 thousand traffic fatalities and 2.2 million injured in traffic accidents.
Some of the worst kind of long covid is neurological. I and others I know had non-trivial (10-25%) cognitive deficit for multiple months after covid. For some reason, I also experienced the same after receiving my latest bivalent booster, but for a much shorter period of time (1-2 weeks instead of 12).
There has been relatively little in the media about the cognitive/neurological costs of covid to our society. If you get covid and your "sickness" is over in a week or two and you go back to work but you've had 15 points knocked off your IQ for half a year, what is the true cost of that to an entire civilization when scaled up to the whole planet?
Given the choice between having had covid and living under an authoritarian regime for the last three years, I'd have chosen the latter.
> what is the true cost of that to an entire civilization when scaled up to the whole planet?
What indeed? It's not 0. It's not infinite. But the cost of trying to reduce covid (and hence long covid) cases to 0 is infinite. It's a hard problem and entirely unclear where we should draw the line.
I truly do hope you (and all other affected) will get better.
> it would be a really bad idea to skip a cost/benefit analysis
Western leaders aren't doing any cost/benefit analysis at all - except to their political career.
We have a range of very low-cost, technological measures avaliable. For exampme upgrading schools with proper ventillation. We have scientific studies that show this would reduce likelihood of infection for everythint, from COVID to common cold. It would reduce CO2 concentrations in classrooms and help children be more alert and awake. There has been zero budget allocated to them.
In London I have seen UV sterilisation installed on handrails of the escalators, and ROI on that will be mostly zero.
Long Covid should be taken very seriously, but my understanding is that it is milder and less prevalent among the vaccinated. I don’t know if the hard figures “justify” something like a zero-Covid policy
You are free to hole up. Does not mean the rest must do the same. We have already fucked up the economy and health care. This kill people too. Enough already
In your dreams. In practice our lives are routinely traded for money. Simple example - government would pay for so many heart surgeries per year. Did not fit in current quota - wait. If you die meanwhile - nobody gives a shit. Corporate example - Google "ford pinto trading lives for money".
I have immuno-compromised and elderly family. They have to visit the post office, the passport office, the insurance, etc.
Every time they do, people are refusing to wear a simple mask and are putting them at risk. There is always a guy that is obviously ill and is coughing all over the place.
Like if you go to a nightclub ill, whatever, everyone is there by choice. But visiting a government establishments is a legal obligation.
Why is it that if you go into my house uninvited, fall onto a ditch and break your leg, I could be held responsible, but if I cought at your face on purpose to infect you, noone is at fault.
Why is it at least not a social norm to kick out sick and unmasked people from public institutions?
>"Why is it that if you go into my house uninvited, fall onto a ditch and break your leg, I could be held responsible?"
Because we have some really fucked up laws that should not exist. Go argue with the government
>"Why is it at least not a social norm to kick out sick and unmasked people from public institutions?"
Because The Socium does not want to have this norm. Might be unfair to some but who says the life is. As for your particular case - it is better if we try to build society where we do not need to go to a fucking passport office.
I think if it isn’t now it will be in China. It wouldn’t surprise me if this was a retaliatory move for the recent chip ban. No evidence of that whatsoever, pure speculation.
The policy in China is 1-2 years behind. Everyone else has realized that with Omicron a zero Covid policy is no longer feasible (and, where vaccination rates are high, not needed either), but that hasn't yet gotten through to Xi (or it has, but he thinks reversing the policy will somehow cause him to "lose face").
Expectations, I'd bet. During peak covid, everything was a bit like this - but now the perception is closer to "business as usual, with economic headwinds".
"Zhengzhou, China. The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity. As we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we are prioritizing the health and safety of the workers in our supply chain."
From different news outlets and youtube channels that cover china's zero covid policy I feel the statement above referring to the health and safety of the Foxconn workers is pure PR puff.
I really like this youtube channel call China Insights witch gives some decent information on this exact Foxconn issues and how the workers are fleeing the lock-down.
> China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach
I imagine it's politically difficult. If they open the floodgates, it's going to be worse than for most other countries because they haven't had a chance to build natural immunity from exposure, only from vaccines. And any wave of infections is going to be seen as a failure of zero-covid, making the hardships of it meaningless; a failure of the party.
I'm not sure how they are going to get out of it without letting some heads roll. Maybe a wonder vaccine that will make all of China immune.
It's more about saving face. China has being beating the drum for 3 years that it's covid policy has been successful and it should be the poster child of covid response and every other country is wrong and sucks.
If they end zero-covid policy it's admitting they were wrong and that its failed.
On the flip side their covid vaccine has also being a failure.
> On the flip side their covid vaccine has also being a failure.
I think this is the bigger one -- studies indicate it's not nearly as effective as the western (mRNA) Covid shots, but China refuses to use the western shots. If they open the floodgates and (to absolutely no one's surprise) death rates spike, it proves that the Chinese shot was indeed mostly useless.
I do think that their covid policy (though not the way it was implemented) was the right way to go in the first two years. But with Omicron, the game has changed, as it is extremely contagious.
Implementing strict hygiene precautions is still important - especially in dense populated regions and at work places with close contact. But this isolation at all costs and without taking proper care for the isolated, is just a disaster. Especially, if it can only slow down the spread, but no longer contain it.
Exactly. And somewhere in 2021 many countries shifted to something that could be described as controlled exposure, weakening measures and causing more people to be exposed (whether vaccinated or not), at a level the health care system could cope with. Of course it was unfashionable to describe it like that, but the effect was a population better capable of dealing with it.
The Chinese vaccine is pretty good, so their population is already well protected, assuming they have been vaccinating everyone as thoroughly as they have been locking them down…
I think one problem in China is that old people have resisted being vaccinated because they don’t trust the authorities. And old people are obviously the most at risk of dying or being seriously ill. It’s a made in China problem, for sure.
A Chinese post-doc came to join my group 1 year into the pandemic. He took an antibody test, which should have shown antibodies due to his 2 doses of Sinovax.
Nada.
The first thing he after he arrived in the US was to get vaccinated.
It is a chicken and egg problem. When you have no COVID cases, the risk of taking a vaccine for older people (its side effect) may outweigh the benefits. However, once it cannot contain COVID cases anymore, the benefits/costs calculation will change drastically and they cannot get vaccinated fast enough then. It is a dilemma that the China government needs to resolve, there is no way they can continue with this zero COVID policy forever.
Why does it not? The ethics of forced vaccination notwithstanding, if China is okay with using its authoritarian rule to impose massive lockdowns repeatedly, surely it'd be comfortable using its power to force vaccination?
My first thought was that it’s shocking to see an announcement like this on a Sunday. Then I realized they might be hoping the news gets buried. But with the election on Tuesday, I think that would have happened either way!
I’ve heard that, but isn’t that assuming the news will be released on a weekday? I can’t remember the last time a corporate press release went out on a Sunday.
Yes, if Apple wanted to bury, a Friday afternoon release would have been in order.
More likely these are new developments and Apple just heard of them relatively recently, keeping in mind that it's already Monday morning in China.
This is also quite likely retaliation from China for Biden's latest trade war actions. Apple, is after all, one of two major US companies whose share price has not been turned into rubble. Doing this days before Midterms, knowing how desperate the Democrats are, is perfect timing. If Apple's share price falls drastically, it will be headline news and will likely also materially impact most indexes.
What's the other major US company whose share price hasn't been rubble-ized? Why Tesla of course. And their biggest and - most likely - only profitable factory is in China.
Hasn't been rubble-ized? TSLA's at $227 from a high of almost $400 this year, so I'm no sure what you mean. And given the shutdowns, it seems to me that Tesla's China factory would be the unprofitable one.
Back in late April/early May I was doing some travel and realized I had totally forgotten my 96 W charger for my work Macbook Pro at home. "Well," I thought, "no fun to spend my own cash on a new charger, but better than the disaster of losing capacity to work while traveling, guess I'll just pop into an Apple Store and pick one up."
They didn't have one. OK, I asked -- did they know anyone who did? "No clue, you might want to call Apple Support."
Doing so revealed that there were none of these available anywhere, and the schedule on which they were projected to be available was early July.
Fortunately, I had two fallbacks:
(1) I was traveling in metro LA, which meant that I could check craigslist or FB marketplace or whatever and maybe a handful of 15mm Angelinos would have something up for sale.
(2) The MBP charged via USB-C so presumably I could find anything that could deliver 96W or thereabouts and use it.
Option #1 panned out, but it was still a flashbulb moment for me indicating that we're not exactly in familiar territory economically. It isn't just consumption goods that are sometimes scarce, this was a key piece of equipment the lack of which might have interrupted my productive capacity entirely or forced the cost/adaptation of entirely new substitutes.
One thing about USB-C PD is that you don't need the 96W charger or even an Apple charger to charge your MacBook. While you may miss out on "fast charging" at maximum speed, any USB PD compatible charger will charge your MacBook at the fastest speeds available based on compatibility, automatically.
Anker chargers work fairly reliably, are more easily available than Apple chargers (on Amazon etc.) and there are several options for 100W+ PD available.
Unless this changed on newer MacBook, you don't even need USB PD. Even an old school A-to-C cable will work. Granted that's never something I'd want to use since it's incredibly slow, but it was a good backup the time I forgot to pack my 60w Gan charger. IIRC I only got the battery up to about 50% after charging overnight.
Yes, exactly. I know people love to hate on USBC but PD is generally excellent. I've often been in a case where I don't have my macbook charger but my 18W PD phone charger can keep my macbook going (and actually charge it quite slowly overnight).
One time I had my macbook pro plugged in, and was confused why it was (very slowly) still draining energy
An hour or so later I realized I was accidentally using my girlfriend's macbook air charging brick. It couldn't keep up, but it was supplying as much energy as it was able to
I buy my colleagues two charges: one for portable use, and one that is tidied neatly behind their desk.
Since Apple has supported USB-C charging, I buy generic chargers with a cord-brick-cord arrangement, as these are much easier to hide in the cable tray of the desk. They're also about a third of the price, and have proper cable grommets so they last longer.
Depending on the workload and model of computer, 96W can absolutely be required, and a lower wattage inadequate. The new PD spec allows for up to 240w, with special cables required.
> 96W of drain will use up the maximum-size laptop battery in a single hour. It's not necessary.
When I work in blender, especially in larger scenes, it's necessary. When I play games, it's necessary. When I run a long build in Unity, with a render pipeline stage, and the fans kick on, and I'm maxing out my laptop running 120w+, it's not even adequate.
There's a reason the new PD spec goes up to 240w (2.5x 96w), and it's not because they felt like it - playing games absolutely is a workload that requires it.
It's not necessary, for you. For those of us who do more than edit text files, it's extremely necessary.
You don’t need anywhere near the full wattage, you will just charge slower. I frequently get by with a 60W charger, and I’ve even charged with the USB ports in my car which I think are 30W max.
I travel with a tiny 15W GaN charger, only slightly bigger than my thumb.
I don't know what you do with your MBP, but for 15W charges up overnight and holds battery level or even slowly charges while being used. If you're transcoding something or gaming perhaps you could get it to slowly discharge.
There are tons of things that cause my MBP to burn through power. Slack is the most obvious. Then, you have Chrome that will sometimes fire update some high rendering page.
The most sure fire way to kill the battery is fire up an IDE and do any sort of software development. Introspection, compilation, specs, etc all take up a bunch of battery.
With that being said, you certainly don't need 100W for a laptop. In fact, I'm not even sure my Mac can cool itself appropriately with high CPU usage and 50W of power.
Most people could get through a full day with a 15W charger. Laptop might be nearly dead at the end of the day, but 15W will fill it back up over night.
Anecdotal, but my M1 Max seems to drain battery very slowly with my daily development with all kinds of things running. Firefox, Brave, Slack, VSCode, Mail, docker containers, etc. It's pretty amazing how long they last.
The other day I even accidentally left Factorio running because I got distracted getting my kid ready for school, and I hadn't noticed until a few hours later in a meeting when I heard the technology research sound. It was not plugged in the entire time, and I still had at least half the battery life.
Other industries that depend on manufactured goods (not electronics) have been feeling this for a while.
Tried buying HVAC supplies recently? Flex duct has been very difficult to get for the past year, as have many other supplies and of course, the HVAC units themselves. I think Mitsubishi is still quoting next year for many of their products. Some areas even relaxed their energy codes (e.g. allowing R6 duct instead of R8) because of the shortages.
In April 2020 I was in Mexico City, and needed to get a new Apple 30W charger for my M1 Air. After scouring a ton of local tech shops to not avail^, I finally trekked to the official flagship Apple store. And they had exactly ONE in stock.
It completely surprised me that even the official store serving a city of millions had such a limited inventory. And it's not even like it's an esoteric product, the 30W comes standard with all new Air laptops!
(They did say they get shipments from the US daily and could have one delivered the following day if they happened to be out, but I wanted to avoid another hr+ trek that way if possible. I've heard of JIT inventory managememt, but to keep it THAT thin at such a major retail location really blew me away!)
^Some had lower wattage Apple chargers, but not a single one had 30W or above.
One of the unique features of MacBook devices, is that as of the 2019 16", they can charge off of as little as 5V. I have powered mine from a power bank and cable that did not support "fast charging" (I think it topped out at 2-3A) and the computer charged just fine off it, albeit exceptionally slowly and barely at all when running.
If you are curious about what works with what, there is a YouTube channel called ChargerLab that tests different devices plugged into different chargers.
Yes, you can get by on significantly less power if you can charge it while the lid is closed. It might just run on the USB-C power with the lid open, and say "not charging" but when the lid is closed it will start to fill up the battery to capacity.
Unless you have very stressful workloads, you should be able to use the laptop normally with a lower capacity power brick. It will just charge slowly or not at all. Absolute worst case you can close the lid to charge it.
I ordered a MacBook Pro charger August 2, and didn't receive it until October 13.
Luckily, I was just buying a spare, so I didn't need it urgently. But when shopping for anything these days, if I see it, I get it because it may not be available tomorrow, and may take weeks to arrive.
Heck, I ordered a Target gift card last week to give a a gift, and it's not expected to arrive until just before Thanksgiving. And it's just a gift card!
I don't get it, other than the Apple-y-ness of it all? Maybe that's not important but ... ?
Every single thing I own and need to function on a daily basis (other than my immersion water boiler for otg-espresso) operates on USB. Preferably type-c, but plenty of things still need a USB-A-to-C in the mix because resistors are hard, I guess.
Also, open hardware hackers,, my trimmer and touthbrush are basically internally identical. An we please make these inter hangeable?
Using a "thin-client" laptop with cheap default
-cafe alliances d chesap ones means I can live out of a bag, using redundant chargers - either a tiny 45w charger that literally fits in my bu^H^H pocket, or charge my laptop, phone and Ledger using a 100W charger that is barely more than double the physical-size of the smaller charger.
My personal MacBook, personal Lenovo, and my work Dell all have (finally) USB-C
I only need one power cord, one dock, one USB-C monitor, for all of them. It's great.
My phone uses Lightning but I don't really mind. I have so many Lightning cables and USB ports in my computers and docks and outlets and powerstrips...
tangentially, I did a lot of travel this past summer
a lot of cities and towns are just not back, at all. they’re trying to have a bustling life but many local staples are closed, shuttered, resources strained. Opening hours just wrong and unknown, current existence of the place also unknown.
US, around Europe
kinda too bad. but yes unfamiliar territory economically
I run my 16" Pro (M1 ultra) on a 35w power delivery from my monitor daily - its plenty even under a fair bit of workload. The 95w is only used in extreme circumstances. Even compiling and light video editing isn't going to use enough to need anything more than 60w.
Probably an M1 Max -- afaik the Ultra is only for Mac Studio desktops.
I use a Gigabyte M28U monitor, which has 16W of charge. Pathetically low, but as long as I'm not compiling anything or running any especially heavy processes, it keeps my battery from draining! Clamshell results in a slow charge.
Apple stores and authorized resellers haven't had high-watt chargers for very, very long time all over the world. I expect it's not a priority since only legacy laptops use them, but it sucks big time because I have one.
Part of the problem is that there are at least three different mag-safe connectors, as I recently found out. Had to order an old one recently and took a week or two to arrive.
I bought an iPhone 14 Pro with the thought “this needs to last me a couple of years.”
It’s not the color I wanted per se, but my old phone wasn’t working well for my needs and I figured continued supply chain issues would linger for awhile.
It’s only a matter a time before Apple starts making hardware closer to home en masse. Home, of course, being “not just in China.”
I read that if they did this today, it wouldn't make a difference, it's too late to recover from now, mathematical impossibility.
The majority of their population is beyond the child bearing age so it's downhill from here no matter what policies they put in place, there's going to be a major population crash for them in the next 30 years.
Since we're talking about an amoral baby making law, the age bracket 16-36 is more realistic. Doesn't change much in terms of population, but also doesn't explain how it will be enforced.
However this is just the beginning. After that, assuming worst case labour practices, you have another 10-15 years of supporting increasingly expensive unproductive citizens before they can even start to pay back the costs on society they incurred by being born. It's a long slow road...
As usual Neal Stephenson was ahead of the game. The plot to duplicate "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" is facilitated by Confucians needing educational materials for vast numbers of girls (maybe clones?) being raised on nursery ships.
So roughly 20 years from now, after taking on a country-wide new baby-boom's worth of problems, they can use the fresh faces to resolve the problems they're facing today.
How the one child policy was allowed to happen is a mystery to me - surely someone saw this coming?
We need to accept this and start immediately facing it head on. I'm talking a 5 Trillion Dollar investment into manufacturing in the US. Set a goal of 5 years. After that 5 years we cease any and all import from China and countries beholden to them.
While extracting and exporting every ounce of oil the US has. The profit made goes into Nuclear and Renewable Energy.
Next we Annex Canada and Mexico to further build out US infrastructure. We will dub this the Nation of North America.
Apple already makes the hardware closer to home for some parts while others come from everywhere other than China. The iPhone isn’t made in China. It’s assembled in China.
Is Apple going to really start moving out of China? So for only 2% of iPhones are assembled out of China and only one factory in Vietnam is being build.
Forecasts are that China wants to forcibly reclaim Taiwan much sooner than anticipated. And maybe they are confident that China wouldn't retaliate against them but surely that's not a risk worth taking.
Foxconn has been asked to ramp up production in India but not sure if you would call it a success or not.
One of the reasons Shenzhen is iPhone assembly city is because there are so many little ancillary providers around for all the surface mount components that are common on PCBs.
If I'm running a PCB assembly line and my primary supplier of surface mount capacitors is the only guy within 50 miles, where do I get replacements from if something happens like there's a fire in his factory and it goes offline? In Shenzhen you go to the next guy down the street who's selling the exact same part.
So instead of being down for three days while finding a way to get an additional supplies airlifted in you can have probably have another supplier up and going before you run out of what's left in the lean manufacturing pipeline.
Before making the move to any labor market concerns like those have to be addressed or at least the risks mitigated. That takes time and costs serious money. As the SMT industry ramps up in more locations it'll be easier to diversify assembly locations.
Building diy devices with microcontrollers feels like a microcosm of this. Months of designing and coding and in the end you get hung up on some dumb connector that takes a month to ship. If I had an Aliexpress warehouse down the street I would be located there too.
Infrastructure and supply chain quality in China are on a completely different level to other developing countries. It's not really easy to break this coupling unless you're willing to make significant investments to partners in the new country. Samsung was forced to do that for Vietnam largely due to political instability. Now it's Apple's turn but it'll take several years to ramp up.
It takes a decade to build up a supply chain for complex electronics products. Even though Apple, Foxconn, Wistron have started building in India, it's going to be a while before it's able to service the capacity that China is at and even longer before margins (both quality and profit) are up to where they are with their Chinese lines (which are more like city sized factories with tons of supporting infrastructure).
Yeah, Samsung somewhat recently started assembling phones in India, but they are a lot lower build quality compared to their Vietnamese or SK made units. Probably within a year or two India factory will catch up on quality, but unlike Samsung (who have a lot of budget models) Apple can't afford to ship internationally bad quality iPhones for a couple of years.
There is also this thing that working in Foxconn factories is apparently very though. And pushing the problem to third-parties seems to be very convenient in terms of reputation and salaries/contract.
Isn't the biggest problem with iPhone production that the volume is so high that very few places aside from China have the requisite number of engineers to build such a plant?
Remember hearing about Detroit back in the day? Where the transmission was made down the street from the auto factory. You probably didn't need to go more than 20 miles from the auto factory in Detroit to get 90% of the car parts. If one supplier had a problem, you'd just go to another that was only slightly more distant.
Shenzen is like that. Everything you need for electronics manufacturing of nearly anything is located in the city. This means that if part of the supply chain is disrupted in normal times, you could go get the same part from somewhere else not far away.
So, here's the problem that Anyone building an iPhone would have - where do you get the capacitors on the board from? how much lead time do you need to keep the supply going? What happens if the supplier isn't able to send them? How big of an industrial base do you need to make all the parts and how distributed is that industrial base?
But the iPhones aren't assembled anywhere near Shenzen? The article mentions Zhengzhou which is about halfway up China (where Shenzen is at the southern edge).
Possibly because they've got a former CFO running the company which causes a myopic view towards profit rather than interesting hardware development. The age of apple dropping new product idea after new product idea is long past.
A finance-oriented CEO that is concerned with profits should be more concerned with instability and risk, compared to a product oriented CEO who would be concerned about the next hot thing.
They are also moving into India. I would expect they're very happy to encourage protectionist laws encouraging/requiring them to build phones in countries they sell to. It allows them to tell their Chinese partners that they have no choice in moving some manufacturing away.
I guarantee you the US government is currently having backroom conversations with various companies that go, "if/when China invades Taiwan, we're cutting off all trade and we're not going to wait for you to be ready". It will probably be advantageous to be one of the ones already safely decoupled by the time this happens.
Diversifying a supply chain is not so easy. Takes tooling, JiT/Sequencing of parts, etc. Apple is going to have to invest (subsidize) to build it up from scratch.
And frankly I don't see Pegatron, Wistron, and Foxconn being too eager to do this. I've heard they're already dragging their feet.
An investment is expected to yield a financial return. You subsidise something fully willing to incur financial losses because you are pursuing non-financial goals (such as greener energy, jobs, ...).
not at all, some subsidies are humanitarian, or purely political.
If you have deeper pockets, you could subsidise your products to bancrupt competitors, a technique called dumping.
EU subsidised renewables to enable renewable tech development - a worthy goal, but not an investment. UK founded the Green Investment bank, it did actual investment into R&D and construction. Same goal, but one us subsidy, one is investment.
US corn subsidies no longer make any sense - but cannot be removed because it would piss off a major voting block. If you were to su sidise farming from scratch, you would at least pick a variety of plants to make a balanced meal nutritionally
> not at all, some subsidies are humanitarian, or purely political.
Considering that we’re talking about Apple subsidizing factories to diversify its supply chain, do you think we’re talking about humanitarian and political subsidies at all? I’m sorry but it seems that people are deliberately being obtuse here.
Serious question: is COVID-19 still a thing? From wherever on Earth and whoever I see, life is completely back to normal though I have no friends in China.
14 day quarantine in a state hotel, you're not allowed to leave the room. A further 7 day quarantine in another hotel though you're allowed to leave for work. Crazy.
You just described the best case scenario. It is also possible that whatever city you visit you could have a Covid lockdown of indeterminate length due to the insane zero Covid policy.
This is kind of fascinating. I’m not a Covid denier or anything along those lines, but a zero covid policy at this point (widely available vaccinations, clear endemic status) just seems like a crazy policy. Like maybe the craziest thing I’ve heard of from modern China
Why is it crazy? It’s not endemic in China, and even if everybody in China were fully vaccinated, getting to endemic state would result in millions dead. Covid is still dangerous in aggregate, even with a vaccine. There’s 1.4 billion people in China; even a tiny fraction of them dying of Covid would be a huge death toll. And that’s not counting the permanent disabilities resulting from long Covid.
What’s crazy is this idea that just because the rest of the world has given up on stopping Covid, that China should just let it rip. That would be devastating to China, why would they do that? Even if you don’t care about the death and disability, it doesn’t make economic sense. Temporary targeted lockdowns are less damaging to the Chinese economy in both the short and long term than rampant death and disability.
But people in China are getting on with life. Lockdowns are the exception, not the rule.
You’re also ignoring the millions of people that would die or become disabled. That’s not “getting on with life”, that’s the opposite.
> The people of the world overwhelmingly voted to get back to life even though COVID hasn't gone away.
No they didn’t. Those were decisions governments made, there was no vote. They were also decisions made after Covid became endemic in those countries. The consequences for China to let it rip when hardly anybody in China has had Covid are entirely different to the consequences for other countries to let it rip when it’s already endemic. China isn’t in that position so why would they make decisions as if they were when the consequences are so different?
Note that not all deaths are equal economically. The vast majority will be bedridden people on their last legs being pushed over the edge due to covid.
These people have a negative impact on the economy.
You might be right, but, the perspective you're describing basically advocates disregarding the lives of those at risk of a COVID death in favor of making more money.
How much does a life cost? In the rest of the world that basically failed to contain the virus, it wasn't a question to begin with, since lockdowns didn't really work. China was somewhat successful in its lockdowns because it had ways to enforce the admittedly draconian measures -- so, how much does a life cost?
> The vast majority will be bedridden people on their last legs
Do you have a citation for that? There’s a big jump in mortality at age 50+, but that’s not the same thing as “the vast majority are bedridden people on their last legs”.
Also, death is only part of the problem. Long Covid affects people of all ages. A typical twenty-something factory worker might not die of Covid, but that doesn’t mean long Covid can’t make them economically inactive.
Once you have the population vaccinated [1], you either make the measures permanent, or you drop them. I don't think a state of affairs is sustainable in which travel is severely restricted, borders are closed, and anytime a case flares up somewhere, the city shuts down for two weeks.
So what's the criterion for an exit from Zero COVID?
[1] and China is at around 90% vaccination. They might not be good vaccinations, though. But assume, for the sake of the argument, it had the population vaccinated as well as possible.
It only makes sense if they have overloaded medical systems or they expect outcomes to improve. Maybe they are waiting for their Chinese developed MRNA vaccine or better access to Paxlovid?
The Chinese government lobbied HARD against the western RNA vaccines in the beginning.
Their own vaccine didn't work with the newer variants, RNA stuff worked.
It was too late to undo the lobbying they did in the first place. Now lockdowns are their only option to stop a pandemic. On the other hand the lockdowns are so strict that people are dying because of them (no food, medicine, etc. Doors physically welded shut)
Everything I have seen and read would seem to indicate that China's Government is drunk on the extra power and control their "Zero-COVID" policy gives them; they don't seem keen on giving that power up.
Its important to note: China was extremely late to the mRNA vaccine game. The vast majority of their population was vaccinated with traditional inactive virus vaccines, which have been observed to be less effective than mRNA. Their mRNA vaccine, Walvax's ARCoV, is still in phase 3 trials.
They're among the oldest populations in the world; using outdated vaccine technology; on a population that's the most dense in the world; and a governmental culture of understating statistics to make the party look good.
In the US 360 people die each day from COVID, about three times more than a significant flu season. For them and their family it’s still a thing I suppose. But given the low vaccination rates in China and the low natural immunity it’s necessarily a thing.
I don’t know how they exit their zero COVID policy. Given how draconian they are in other respects I’m surprised it’s so hands off with respect to vaccination.
You need to be vaccinated to travel to many places still, and given how many people are opposed to vaccinations, their passport doesn't have the power it used to.
There's a patchwork of masking policies, which I've recently read are applied as arbitrarily as "you must apply your mask mid-flight when the airplane crosses over the international border of your destination to adhere to local covid policy" (this was for a large country in Asia).
Even in California there's still Covid Opening Instruction sheets pasted to all the doors. I even saw a new "please maintain 6 feet distance from others" sign in the grocery store today. It feels this modern parallel to abandoned soviet theme parks. Weird covid-era policies just there lurking from some eerie event in the past.
Here in Germany people still freak out about it, you still need masks on public transport for example. You had to wear them during air travel as well, at least up until around a month ago when someone leaked a photo of government officials maskless in an airplane so this rule is no longer enforced. :-))
With a mask mandate for public transport as the only mass-wide measure, which is not even followed nor enforced too much, I strongly disagree with your wording, that people freak out about it. (Not even arguing about the pro and cons of this measure, but the benefits of it are actually quite evident).
Also your claim that rules are not enforced because of a "leaked photo of a government official" lacks any reasoning and evidence.
Yeah I mean just imagine the horror if you allowed people to take a train without a mask. It would be like literally all the other countries in the EU. Isn't that horrific? I can't even imagine it. Thank God for the mask mandates, the benefits are evident!
The tone of your comment as well as the logic of your argument is so personal and unobjective, my interest in answering is very low.
Nobody was talking about horror. This is a very unobtrusive measure that is proven to be effective - not only against covid - that also protects vulnerable people that use public infrastructure.
The benefit of masks is so evident, I don't even want to point to singular sources, so here you can see an overview: https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=masks+covid .
And to your second point, the logic of drawing conclusions from correlations is simply conspiracy level, no more.
I'm in the United States and we still have people testing positive where I work. Unfortunately, the US handled COVID rather poorly and it's had lasting consequences for those who work in the country.
The so called "zero-covid policy" in China has already failed, in practice, though the party would never admit their failure. Now they identify thousands of new cases daily in almost all states.
A lot of tragedies happened during massive, brutal lockdown across the whole country. People are not getting paid, facing mental health difficulties, even food shortages when they are forced to stay at home. No COVID deaths, but a lot deceased. Chinese state media will not cover these. It's somewhat saddening that people get to know all these only when Apple cannot supply enough iPhones.
most of the coverage is meant to drive hysteria about the looming iPhone shortage, there’s little care for the covid situation on the ground in China contributing to the problem.
Apple stories get clicks, but there will be virtually no research on how China’s zero covid policy is the root cause, as it will be deemed “negative sentiment” which will get less CPM, or their content may even get demonetized. Modern “tech news” is a joke.
Xi's obsession with "zero-covid" will continue to lead to things like this, and will seriously wreck their attractiveness as a manufacturing hub for the world over time.
I'm curious how many deaths would be acceptable to you, if you were the leader? China would probably see tens of millions of deaths minimum if they had the laize-faire approach some western nations have taken.
That being said it's not really clear what their exit plan is for zero-covid, as it cannot be sustained indefinitely.
Every minute 120 people die on Earth. What is your acceptable limit? Sweden took relaxed approach to covid and had slight bump in excess deaths, less than US with lockdowns.
Not sure what the death rate has to do with anything in the context of zero Covid. Are you implying the deaths are ok? Personally I think we should lower the number.
Or is the idea that since people are going to die anyways there’s no need to try to save them?
The CCP doesn’t care about people dying. If it did you wouldn’t have stories of people starving to death, suicide, 3 years old suffocating, children being separated from families, animals beaten to death, etc.
What it cares about is saving face and how it appears on the world stage.
Though I won’t disagree that there is a political element to it, I do believe China wants to minimize deaths (not exclusively).
Furthermore if you look at the number of physicians and hospitals, particularly in rural China, it’s clear they wouldn’t be able to effectively vaccinate nor treat the sick anyway.
Again, I do not believe zero Covid is a strategy that can be sustained, but I think for China it made sense for some period of time (though personally I think that time has passed).
I think alot of the people of China want to prevent/minimize deaths. There's a LOT of good people in China. During the Shanghai lockdowns when the governments were not giving out food and were locking people inside, there were people sneaking around delivering food to apartments. They do look out for each other.
But the CCP has a long history of just sweeping stuff under the rug unless it gets too hot to handle and does the bare minimum to make it go away.
I wish China was more open, if it was more willing to share information and accept help they may have a better vaccine, more people vaccinated, and more willing to drop zero covid policy while opening up knowing people will get sick but hospitals wont be overrun.
Here in Taiwan people are more or less going back to business as usual, everyone is vaccinated and while there's alot of covid cases now, hospitals are not overrun.
What do you think an economy is? Its the amount if human production. Its mostly used on things people want and a good portion is used to make people's lives longer, healthier or happier. An economic downturn kills tens of thousands.
the economic consequences of covid interventions will lead to many more deaths, easily hundreds of thousands if not millions since globally the most vulnerable depends on other countries for resources, etc
We're talking about deaths from disease, not deaths period, so again not sure how does has to do with anything. Should we stop medicine because people will die anyway?
It's about QALYs, not deaths. Lockdowns have a severe effect on QALYs, particularly mental health, to the point where if you're continuing lockdowns for years you're losing more QALYs to the lockdowns than the COVID.
To maybe prime the intuition pump, imagine a society that prohibits non-household interaction for 80 years. Do they save any lives? Nope, everyone dies in the end, aging is a thing. Is this place sufficiently worse to live in that 99% of people would rather lose a year of life than accept it? Yep.
Note that the direct shortening due to unvaccinated COVID is a few months.
The current variants are so much milder than, say, Delta, that I would think now is as good as time as any to significantly relax the lockdown requirements and let people deal with the illness the way they would anything else of similar severity.
We've gone through this though in the west already. Vaccines + milder strains. I would say that in Canada over the last 6 months or so some very large % of the population got Covid ( >50% ?) but because of vaccination and immunity the number of deaths was smaller than it's been in the early stages of the pandemic with severe restrictions (since no vaccines, less effective treatment options, original strain and Delta were a lot more severe).
Either China is dealing with another strain which doesn't seem super likely or their strategy defies logic. Maybe it's a way of suppressing political dissent. Who knows.
If China had the same Covid death rate as Canada, this would result in millions of Chinese deaths and even more disabled due to long Covid. Why does pursuing their strategy, that has worked extremely well for them so far, “defy logic”? Why are you reaching for a political dissent explanation when avoiding mass death and disability is a far more obvious and logical explanation?
You need to look at the current death rate when comparing with Canada. Which is fairly low. If you're actually looking at the numbers keep in mind the criteria is quite broad in terms of what counts as a Covid19 death (e.g. anyone that had a positive Covid test within 30 days of death even if the cause of death was not related). Nobody knows for sure what's the death rate right now.
That said you do need to have the population vaccinated with a good vaccine. So I do agree China could fare worse than Canada.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Canada pretty ended all and any measures at this point in time. There's a range of responses between lock down an entire city for one case and no restrictions at all.
Another piece of supporting evidence:
"Excess mortality fell nationally from the end of February and through the spring of 2022
From the end of February and through the spring of 2022, the weekly number of deaths in Canada fell generally within the range of what was expected had there been no pandemic. This same trend was observed in Ontario and Quebec, despite COVID-19 deaths in Quebec remaining high."
But... If your point is that Canada got here by taking a fairly large number of deaths, ~47k (+/-) for a population of 38M and China avoided most of that (assuming we can trust their data, questionable) ... then I'll concede you have some point, but still - unsustainable. A lot of Canada's deaths happened before we had vaccines and presumably with a higher % amongst unvaccinated populations after.
I think it was reasonable before vaccines existed and when we thought there was a chance of wiping COVID out. But it's endemic now and vaccines are readily available.
In a vaccinated population, are you still saving tens of millions of lives? And what's the cost of locking people down? Here in the US lockdowns were much less thorough and I think we'll still be paying the price for decades wrt mental health + child development.
Zero Covid is causing suffering and clear economic damage in itself which will also affect tens of millions of people. We've also seen no scientific evidence it works. There is clearly still covid circulating in China.
What would've been sensible for Xi is talking to and sharing information with the rest of the world and buying vaccines that work as well as those deployed in other countries.
Also, had he been more transparent about the origins of covid in the first place, we might all be ahead by now.
It made sense to lock everything down when we did not have an effective vaccine. Now we do. Why is Xi forcing lock downs instead of vaccinating people? Covid is endemic now just like flu or cold. It's never going away. His strategy just doesn't make sense anymore.
>Not that Chinese leadership cares about human suffering, of course.
They've lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Even if that number is exaggerated, its still going to be a lot. Nobody is a mind-reader, so regardless of whether any one person from CCP cares or not, the people who are benefited, certainly do care that they're no longer poor.
So is a million, I've never got this surprisingly common argument based on population size, would it be fine for a country of 100,000 to do nothing/would a hypothetical country 10x the size of China be reckless if it didn't act even more forcefully than they are? The human costs of lockdowns also scale with population after all.
No but they should be, if the regime were able to actually engage in useful dialogue and stop crapping on about Taiwan, they'd probably get access to better modern medicines. They can't because the only thing that is keeping them in power is fear and lies.
There is no way to do the experiment in an alternative universe, so everyone's opinion is equally valid. But nothing is permanent - covid or no-covid, and so no country will remain the worlds manufacturing hub forever.
According to WHO, China's Sinopharm COVID vaccine has "not yet been evaluated in the context of circulation of widespread variants of concern".
So maybe they don't have a choice and that letting COVID run through whilst everyone could be effectively unvaccinated would quickly overwhelm their health care system and lead to mass death.
Xi very much cares about political stability and it would be pretty toxic if China has all of these troubles whilst the rest of the world has moved on.
China could have bought vaccines from other makers. Sinopharm wasn't very effective to begin with ( https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin... has it at 79% compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines starting out in the mid 90% range).
Realizing that I am delving into speculation, this sounds more like the refinement of establishing a police state where one can use "someone you came in contact with tested positive for Covid" and shutting down large segments of a city and sending people to government quarantine camps than a desire for political stability.
As hard as it would be for China to build their own Silicon Valley and put Apple, Google and Microsoft out of business. People think that Chinese manufacturing is simply a bunch of low paid workers in factories performing repetitive tasks, and the whole thing could be easily replicated in the US if not for labor costs. In reality there is an entire ecosystem of complex supply chains, very high skilled workers and the most advanced industrial machinery on the planet making it what it is. We simply do not have the knowledge or IP to run these kinds of manufacturing operations at scale in the US, regardless of cost.
We recently placed an order for custom-built LiFePo4 batteries with various voltage and Ah ratings, including custom branding. For an entire order of 200 batteries, they assembled, packed, and shipped within 4 days.
A similar order would have taken about a month from Germany, at about twice the cost. Most of the US manufactures don't even take custom orders at our small scale.
We used to build a lot of stuff (and I'm sure we still do) in the west. The problem is costs. The workaround is automation (see Tesla e.g.).
I'm pretty sure that with a large enough investment Apple could make phones in the US for cheaper than they do in China (including the entire supply chain). The problem is big public companies live quarter to quarter.
There's definitely knowledge and IP to do this. I worked for a company that moved some manufacturing to China about 15 years ago. Everything about how to build the thing came from our engineers including redesigns based on materials/components that were more readily available in China. It would be no problem (but wouldn't make economic sense) to move production back here (Canada in this case) just as fast as it was moved to China (years ;) ).
It's not just about the depth (of which the Chinese has plenty) but also scale, cost of transport of inputs (which are all either made in Shenzhen already or available in quantity and stocked close by) access to skilled labor in the quantities needed, services to handle any layer of the chain at arms reach - need a board respun because components have dried up? Sure you can get guys in the US to do it but your board or assembly partner in Shenzhen can also just get it handled for you, pay the right amount of money and it can be done essentially tomorrow. There is also proximity to packaging and larger manufacturing, want to get a custom injection molded case or even some fancy CNC milled one? Yeah you can get that too, probably within 30-40mins by truck of where your boards are being made and your final assembly partner also.
I guess what I am getting at is that it's the only place on earth with such centralized infrastructure for making nearly anything, nothing is hard, nothing is far away, nothing is "not stocked here", it just makes for a much more convenient way to build products.
My experience "being there" was that I don't think you can replicate it easily. It has its own vibe, culture and way of Just Getting Shit Done that just feels unique.
These capabilities (not at that scale but still) were more common in more places in the 90's. Things like computers, phones, TVs, audio equipment, appliances, cars etc. etc. were not made in China back then. Definitely somewhat smaller scale though, there's a lot more consumers around these days.
Even today- I'm not in a real tech hub by any means but there are many injection molding places within a drive distance from me. There are also plenty of machine shops with CNCs. In the industrial area near where I live there are some major car parts manufacturers, they build yachts and more. Again, this isn't a major tech hub but you can probably make anything here, it's just gonna be very expensive.
I've heard a lot about Chinese manufacturing and I do get what you're saying. Yes it's pretty amazing today (which isn't just because of China's entrepreneurs, it's also western entrepreneurs helping create this ecosystem).
But I think it's not impossible to replicate. It wouldn't be the same, we can move things relatively easily in North America, we don't need one dense city that does everything with workers living in factories. But we do need a lot more automation to replace humans.
I've never seen manufacturing in China in person but I have seen large scale manufacturing in Taiwan. A lot of that was designed/built by western companies.
In terms of costs ofcourse they're lower when you pay people less, when the living conditions are worse, when there's no worker protection, environmental or health and safety requirements...
While I'm rambling ;) another thing that we need to consider is just making better quality goods that last longer. Then "cheap" is less of a factor.
> I'm not in a real tech hub by any means but there are many injection molding places within a drive distance from me
No matter where you live it almost certainly doesn't have anywhere close to the same density and variety of manufacturing hubs in China!
There's also the culture aspect, arguably more important. It can't be overstated. People get shit done in the order of minutes. We are talking as low as 30 minutes to go from factory to factory. There's a hustle and "get shit done" culture that simply isn't replicated in the West.
It's like asking, why does Silicon Valley exist in the Bay Area? Why can't it exist in Kansas, which also has people? - There's a unique culture and concentration of knowledge in the Bay Area. Offices for big tech companies are within minutes of each other, etc.
I think you are drastically underestimating both the density and the scale and overestimating how much "Westerners" are propping up or otherwise essential for it's function, sure there are lots of Westerner entrepreneurs there (myself included at one point) but the reality is both Mainland and HK entrepreneurs not only drastically outnumber us but they were also the ones kicking most of the home runs and might I say the braver more creative ones (contrary to Western harbored stereotypes).
I recommend you go and see for yourself. It's really something that is very difficult to comprehend until you see it in person.
> The problem is big public companies live quarter to quarter.
I think that's a bit of a myth. Apple should (and probably does) have the longterm view on this, I'd hope. And I'm pretty sure proper accounting would present the requisite massive investments in a light that shareholders do not disapprove of.
> I'm pretty sure that with a large enough investment Apple could make phones in the US for cheaper than they do in China (including the entire supply chain).
That I am not so sure. The infrastructure and resources available in China are tremendous.
What would it take to build a city that mirrors the auto manufacturing capabilities of Detroit in its classic car period?
Note that this isn't Ford, or GM that did it.. but rather Ford and GM and hundreds of smaller companies that supplied the raw materials to a company to make the parts that were used by companies that supplied the parts to the auto makers.
And so, yes, you could - but its not something that one company can do - or for that mater even has the competency to do for the same reason that Ford doesn't run steel mills.
I actually think the scale is the issue. It is just SO many phones and then subsequently, SO many parts. Without dropping any velocity in their ability to ship phones rebuilding a massive setup like what they have access to in China is not even limited by the money (probably by the technical know how)
Automotive bill of materials are far more extensive and requirement heavy (physical space/warehousing, subassembly integration and part sequencing, double checking firmware/electronic systems as the vehicle comes down the line) compared to consumer electronics.
Yes, TSMC 4nm is more complex from an electronics standpoint. But from a supply chain process standpoint, automotive is way more complex.
All of the best consumer electronic manufacturing sequencing and tooling is in China though, hence the problem we have today.
Tim Cook is a supply chain guy though, so I'm curious how he will approach and solve this problem.
There are just not enough unemployed, qualified people in the U.S. to staff a similar operation. Unless Apple radically improved automation, so that far fewer humans were needed, it would be impossible.
Only other option would be a huge surge of immigration into the U.S. and I don’t think even $1 trillion can buy that kind of policy shift.
3 or 4 weeks ago I was trying very hard to buy an iPhone 14 pro (purple no less) and it was down to trying to order for pickup every morning at ~6am. I got lucky one day, so did not have to wait for 6 weeks. I find it interesting that Apple is addressing this directly.
As someone who doesn't follow phones at all it's just so weird to me to see it up to 14 already.
I think I have a few 4s from years ago someone threw out, I guess useless now and should be discarded before battery burns apartment down, imagine how many millions of other dead devices out there.
Are they going to just keep rolling, someday "iphone 37" like firefox/chrome versions?
I honestly doubt that anything can help much, really. The less you have valuable trade ties with other nations regardless of their political system, the more everyone has an incentive to go to war with each other.
No place is perfect unless you are living in Utopian LaLa land or one has drunk too much KoolAid. There are problems which are being addressed by state / central governments.
In my home state of Kerala, there is plenty of Water and decent Hydel plants for power.So even the argument that you place is only tangentially accurate.
I mean, bestbuy has had plenty in stock around here so demand I’d say hasn’t been all that high. I thought about upgrading from the 13 pro before realizing how dumb that’d be.
Last month, I was pleasantly surprised that Apple was doing a next-day delivery of the new iPhones. Now, it has gone back to almost a month delay here in India.
What is the real status of covid in China? Is this just political thing or is it new strain? Are hospitals there overloaded? Government working off of the data? For rest of the world, covid seems to be just history.
There's a certain level of wealth where intelligence doesn't come into play. If a multi-millionaire wants their brand new toy right now, whether it's $2,400 or $1,400 or $4,000 is irrelevant.
What does China know about COVID-19 that the rest of us do not?
Why put in place such a severe policy of forced internment, in response to very few cases, when cheap and plentiful vaccines are available?
(Never mind that mRNA vaccines have never been approved for use in China, which is mind-boggling, given that they're proven to be safe and effective for preventing serious illness or death from COVID-19.)
In my opinion the reason is political, that is, I think zero-covid policy is a form of citizen control to prevent protests/insurrection against the accumulation of power by Xi, but also against the economic crumbling surrounding the collapse of their real estate market.
If you didn’t have any faith in the mechanisms you had to mitigate COVID-19 pharmaceutically, you would act in much the same manner.
Sinovac may just not be that good over time, or maybe it’s just a pride thing in which we have a political leader staking heroic, superhuman claims on a Zero-COVID strategy.
I think there are many factors. First, the Chinese healthcare system is much smaller than western healthcare systems. Combine that with a much larger population and a pandemic and you end up in a bad situation really fast. Secondly, they’ve refused the mRNA vaccines, which are significantly more effective than their home grown vaccine. Third, and possibly most importantly, Xi et al both inflated the danger of Covid in their communications to the public, and made zero Covid a point of national and personal pride for Xi. He would lose face if they turned back now.
Same, hah I was expecting it to have something like "warning this press release is known to cause cancer in the state of California" in its kitchen sink of legalese warnings.
While I’m sure everything in this PR is true, I’m also gonna take a moment to read between the lines. Apple will/should leverage this relatively unprecedented/innocuous statement to accelerate diversity in their supply chain.
With the US squeezing China with sanctions it is only a matter of time before China retaliates against Apple. Politically, reducing pressure on China in the US is not tenable in this climate. We’re in a one way ratchet and Apple needs to diversify away from China as quickly as possible. Covid lockdowns in China ultimately provide a fantastic opportunity and official/formal face saving measure for Apple (and all other US manufacturers) to establish alternate supply chains without openly antagonizing China.
Yet, somehow, you can buy iPhone 14 Pro in Russia, of all places, where Apple has officially suspended all sales, and it'll be delivered to you in an hour. No wait time at all.
The US Government wants average Russians and dissidents to be able to access foreign media through the Internet. Bricking electronics would be counterproductive.
Foxcoon has been modern slavery for long[1], in case anyone doesn't know. Workers are suffering from sexual harrasment as well as poor working conditions. It seems like that someone assumed this started only after the covid-zero thing, but it's actually not. (though this has definitely made the workers' lives worse)
That's how the "advantage of low labor cost" works.
This is the appropriate response. It's more about China saving face and their attempt to maintain control than actual Covid-19 prevention, although there is some of that too.
They had a choice to accept Pfizer and Moderna early on and chose not to. Now they're paying for it politically, socially, and epidemiologically.
Cook should be sacked. After a President openly hostile to trade with China, Covid and a crazy Zero Covid policy, now he’ll throw up his hands and say “who could have known?”
With a $100B in cash sloshing around overseas, he’s had 6 years to be a genius.
Thanks, but no. I own a Pixel 6 Pro as my second phone (for work), and I prefer not having to treat my phone like it is a (non-M1) laptop. I.e., constantly worry about having a way to charge it whenever I am out and about.
It isn't just my perception either, the reviews all pointed out the battery to be lacking. Meanwhile, I charge my iPhone about once every 2 days (or once a day before i go to sleep, in case I am using it very heavily on that particular day).
No idea what the whole "better camera" complaint is either. Pretty much every in-depth technical review (by blogs/people who actually have knowledge of photography and camera tech) of iPhone 14 Pro camera laud it as great, which my personal experience confirms.
do me a favor. can you check how much you use your iphone vs android. It seems you use your work phone more than iphone. thats why its running out of battery most likely. also, i would prefer iphone over android for work because they have better enterprise compatibility. Android is always a mess with work profile in my experience.
also, w.r.t camera, DXOmark rated pixel 7 pro more than iphone 14 pro max. even latest macrumours review (check comments of that review) shows pixel is clear winner
for example, go and take moon pictures with your 6 pro and iphone 14 pro. tell me which one has moon vs white blob.
> It seems you use your work phone more than iphone.
I pretty much don't at all, precisely for that reason. Just checked, and my average active screen time for the past 10 days was a tiny bit over 9hrs on iphone (because traveling, so i need it a lot for navigating around, coordinating stuff with other people, etc), and I was charging it before going to sleep (but it was not empty, it still had a decent amount of charge left). On my Pixel, back when i was using it, it was around 3hrs at the very most, and I would have to charge it midway through the day
If you are genuinely curious, please let me know. I can try using my Pixel as I would my iPhone tomorrow, and then report the results the day after that.
> go and take moon pictures with your 6 pro and iphone 14 pro. tell me which one has moon vs white blob.
Haven't tried that yet, but will do and report back along with the battery. Would heavy light pollution be a problem for taking moon pics? Because I am in theater district in Manhattan rn, and light pollution here is off the charts.
3 hours sounds like something is wrong. On my Pixel 7 Pro I currently have 5.5 hours of screen time with 40% battery left. Not as good as an iPhone, but certainly good enough to get through a day with charge remaining.
To clarify, my pixel wouldnt die after 3 hours. It would drop to around 50% or so, i would put it away, and it would die on its own by the end of the next day without me using it pretty much at all (outside of it sitting there and receiving notifications).
Taking moon photos needs special camera modes and doesn’t have much of anything to do with how good the general tuning is. The usual auto exposure algorithms don’t work on it.
I want to get a Pixel 7 Pro (sending from my Pixel 2XL) but no 5G support for the country I'm currently residing (Greece) is a bit of deal-breaker. Rooting is an option but I don't thing I want to go that way. (Has been doing it on my Nexus 5.)
It's the 1st time I'm considering a switch from Android to iOS.
Someone here a while back was talking about how in the farming industry, "leaky" vaccines have been used for a long time. They mentioned that in the poultry industry that just resulted in viruses evolving to be fantastically virulent, which means that unvaccinated populations of chickens have viruses just rip through them at unbelievable speed. Note that this doesn't mean that the viruses are more dangerous, just that they're more evasive against that first line of immune defence and are harder to avoid.
What does this have to do with iPhones?
China can't keep up their zero-COVID policy forever. While they keep trying, COVID is slowly becoming more and more virulent overseas due to our use of leaky vaccines.
Either they give up now, and deal with the fast-but-maybe-manageable wave of infections, or they wait until it evolves to be so infectious that it becomes totally unmanageable.
They're stretching a rubber band further and further while repeatedly mumbling something about a "not letting go policy".
I mean that it literally won't matter what the official policy is. Eventually COVID will become so virulent that no amount of lockdowns will stop it spreading.
E.g.: by the time a case is detected and a lockdown enforced, it'll have spread too far to contain. Rinse and repeat and there will be "hotspots" everywhere, impossible to contain.
It can become even more virulent. Much more. To the point that containment becomes obviously futile. Right now, it is "working", for some definition of that word. Eventually there won't be any definition of "working" that will remain true.
There’s no rule saying that happens. Most likely for earlier pandemics, it’s us that changed to make it less dangerous, by dying until we evolved past it.
"Apple revolutionized personal technology with the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984. Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV. Apple’s five software platforms — iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS — provide seamless experiences across all Apple devices and empower people with breakthrough services including the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud. Apple’s more than 100,000 employees are dedicated to making the best products on earth, and to leaving the world better than we found it."
Sure maybe at one time, perhaps early 2000's. Apple you can thank samsung for all the success you've had over the years. lets be frank!
