Alternatively, the company is run by a comparatively moralistic CEO. Apple and Steve Jobs are not as superficial as their many detractors accuse them of being. In fact, they're among the least superficial entities in the business.
Would this be the same CEO that would fire people if they couldn't justify their job in an elevator ride? Or the Steve Jobs who denied his daughter's existence until it was painfully clear she was his (going so far as to force her mother onto welfare because he refused to support her)? Or are you talking about the Steve Jobs who paid lip service to improving conditions at Foxconn while not forcing them to improve anything (I think there's been 3 suicides so far this year)?
I own Apple products, I love my Apple products, I love Steve Jobs' talent for creating them. But let's hold off on beautifying the man shall we?
It's kind of a bummer that you included the Foxconn example, considering that there have been several articles pointing out that Foxconn is huge and, statistically speaking, they have a lower suicide rate than the national average. In other words, working at Foxconn makes you less likely to commit suicide!
That example kind of casts doubt on the others, which I hadn't heard of before (but wouldn't be surprised by, either).
On the other claims are you capable of using Google? If you had the time to post this you should have the time to verify the data for your own piece of mind.
You are assuming the suicide cluster is a continuing trend rather than a short-term incident. Statistics does not work that way, things are not neat and orderly and you can't extrapolate like that. Besides, suicide clusters are a known phenomenon (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7205141.stm).
Also bear in mind that other sources place China's suicide rate much lower by a factor of as much as 4 (but Foxconn's suicide rate would still be lower than the average).
Is it something to be concerned about? Of course. But it's not at the dark-forces-at-work stage. All you are witnessing is how sausages (or cheap Chinese-manufactured goods) are made; witnessing it is uncomfortable but how often does it turn someone vegetarian?
While you're suggesting people use Google, you should acquaint yourself with the calculator function. That's 1,000 in every 5 million people killing themselves. http://www.google.com/search?q=0.02%25+*+5000000
10 suicide attempts a week in a company the size of San Jose, California isn't particularly high.
> Or are you talking about the Steve Jobs who paid lip service to improving conditions at Foxconn while not forcing them to improve anything (I think there's been 3 suicides so far this year)?
Foxconn had 920,000 employees in 2010, according to Wikipedia. China's suicide rate per 100,000 people is 6.6. If there've been 3 suicides thus far, they're tremendously below average.
Young people make mistakes. Young suddenly-rich successful people will often make bad decisions.
Hating on Steve Jobs for something he has done previously when he was young and stupid makes as much sense as hating on Mark Zuckerburg as a 19-year-old calling Facebook users "dumb fucks".
But no. You're right. I'm sure the CEOs who have no vision or rigid beliefs are better. I'm sure that those that will change absolutely anything - selling PCs with not enough memory to handle an Operating System or putting Flash onto products that simply can't support them and crash - to simply sell more products are better.
We're not beautifying the man. We're simply giving him his deserved compliments in an industry where he's still a moral rarity.
Moral rarity how. What has he done that has been so moral exactly? Other than banning porn (which isn't inherently moral) I can't think of anything.
Second there is a big difference between calling people "dumb f*cks" and forcing your child and her mother into poverty because you refuse to pay (even though you easily could because you're rich).
They view the App Store as, well, a store. Just like virtually any other store, online or off, they restrict what they choose to sell. Ordinarily this isn't controversial, but for the fact that in Apple's case, the App Store is the only way to get native apps.
This sentence
> Apple has complete control over the kind of information you can get on your phone, and it exercises that right seemingly capriciously.
is just blatantly wrong, of course. It only has (near) complete control over the native apps you can get on your phone. There are several other obvious channels of information that it does not control.
Since HN doesn't have a private messaging system...
VoxelBoy, I noticed your username. I'm a graphics programmer --- I'd love to read about the type of stuff you've done, or simply chat. Have you looked into Sparse Voxel Octrees? Toss me an email (it's in my profile).
Sure, I will. I'm currently doing game development with Unity and I haven't dabbled in self-contained graphics research. I would hazard that you know more about me when it comes to voxel data and rendering; regardless, it's a topic I'm very interested in. Aside: Voxatron by Lexaloffle is doing some cool things with voxels, check it out sometime.
Do you know about the OSS game ForeverWar? http://foreverwar.sourceforge.net/ It's not developed anymore, but even the demo is pretty fun, and it would be cool if you picked it up. Just an idea. :) Voxatron looks cool too.
I the iPad as a videogame platform — that means their peers are really Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft with the Xbox. But unlike the later two Apple is really going for the home market, i.e. marketing to a family (just like Disney).
With that in mind Apple is really closer to being Nintendo than anything else — so if you think in those terms they're in fact very open with what they allow into their store. Also I've never known Apple to tout the idea that "we're open" or even that "we do no evil". So I think in that way they're a bit more honest.
The metric seems simple. It's not just Apple that's affected by the way the media find it ver easy to whip up a storm / moral panic / or as the article says "riots"...
If the decision to allow something will get us on Fox News, don't do it.
The media and political class are only allowed two positions on anything. Completely against or completely encouraging. Drugs. Infanticide etc. If you fail to condemn or block it, you're encouraging it. If you fail to encourage it, you're blocking it. Of course, when you spend less than any other industrialised country on education, you get a populous for whom everything is black and white.
As far as I can surmise, an app would be banned if:
* it would offend a large potential group of customers
* it offends even a moderate but vocal set of existing customers
* it spews and/or supports the spewing of FUD
* it makes the iPhone or Apple look bad
All in all, these are pretty easy to guess guidelines. They're also very geared towards keeping and attracting customers, and thus, the bottom line.