Forget planned obsolescence, the digital age means manufacturers can trigger killer apps like a remote switch for the hangman's trap door. Just poke a hole in your customer’s canteen if you want to bring them back to your watering hole. 51747
Tag: Apple
This American Life caves to Apple Corp, swaps Mike Daisey Chinese factory horror story for Marketplace puff spin
This American Life host Ira Glass tried to pull an Oprah on playwright Mike Daisey, to dress him down on creative license Daisey took with an excerpt of a monolog aired on TAL titled Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory. The debunking came courtesy of American Public Media's laughable "Marketplace" Wall Street PR engine, which Glass pretended were reliable experts on the subject of China's apparently resolved labor abuses. That's not even funny. This "retraction" reeks even upwind, and Apple's having become the most highly valued corporation probably explains Glass's uncharacteristically virulent condemnation. Shameful is what it was, and I hold it unforgivable, for the pretend-affable Glass, so-called folk archivist, to scuttle someone else's too successful artistic quest for fundamental truth. 31891
Not a tribute to Steve Jobs, just a sad note. Nicola Tesla or Thomas Edison?
I'm more than a reluctant adherent to Apple technology, and am personally saddened at the death of Steve Jobs. Was he only 56? I assumed by his accomplishment that he was decades older. But my sadness is probably selfishly motivated, as a suspect of Apple acolytes, believing that Apple's fruitfulness was owed chiefly to its larger-than-life leader, so a return to Jobless Apple means no more candy. But Jobs wasn't larger than life really, he seems to have led less than a life. The fact that Steve Jobs was unable to discuss his cancer for fear of rocking the markets and hurting his company's stock value, betrays the preoccupation he had with the bottom line. One of the richest persons in the world, who'd influenced so many lives in an incredibly personal way, went to his death a mystery. And while convention may hold that's it's too early for heresies before the wake, accelerated Twitter lag means a post mortem enforced deference for Steve Jobs has probably already expired. 28185
What happens to Outsourced (Steve) Jobs workers…
a Taiwan manufacturer of touch-screens ordered a switch from wood alcohol as a cleaning solvent to n-hexane. Hexane is a petrochemical that's more volatile than gasoline (octane) but won't dissolve plastic and rubber like the in-between number heptane. Think mono, di, tri, tetra, penta, hexa, hepta, octa as one through eight. The reason for using the carcinogenic chemical, brain-cell eating chemical? It dries faster than alcohol. Not much, but some, and made a measurable difference in production. Profit is everything, workers, well, they're a dime a dozen. The iPad markets $459 retail. The 137 workers who had the "side effects" severely enough to require medical intervention, produced thousands of these every day. What percentage of the profit margin did they receive just for their work? Those are the wage and safety issues the Bush-appointed-but-never-revamped Department of Labor Exploitative Practices say are "over regulated" and job killers. As opposed to Worker Killers like toxic chemicals. The Hexane evaporates faster than alcohol and tweaked production by about 20%. Just, you know, at the cost of Human Lives. Which, had the practice continued, it would have been deadly. Apple, in their annual report, did say that they (text below) had ordered WinTek, the company which subcontracted the production, to
As Wikileaks threatens establishment, Apple wields sledgehammer FOR 1984
Remember when Apple pretended to be the defiant sledgehammer to 1984? Today as Julian Assange swings the hammer, Apple joins its big brothers on the giant screen as it removes the Wikileaks app for iPones and iPads. Did you think there were any heroes in the corporate firmament? Amazon, Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, now Apple, nobody wants YOU to get un-manipulated news. But here Steve Jobs has missed an innovation bigger than he has ever rolled out. For man's innate curiosity about himself, Wikileaks has become the reason to get up in the morning. Every new day is a chance to learn or confirm something you intuited about the facade erected around you. Odd, but isn't that what the NEWS used to do? 20962
$35 iNDIApad running Linux reveals iPad users pay for intellectual property
While MIT has been racing to design the world's first $100 computer, India has performed an end-run at a third the price, and it's a tablet no less. Running with open-source software, as genuine volks-werks will, the iNDIAPAD will reach third world schoolchildren for $35, developers at the India Institute of Science hope even as low as $10. Absent keypad and hand crank, but with camera, touchscreen and wireless. Which begs the question of course, what indispensable features drive Apple prices? Bill Gates earned his fortune on them. Patents.
Who is making a list, checking it twice
I know, right? Why won't her boyfriend take his new Playstation online, where obviously all the fun is? "What's wrong with him?!" The Sony PS3 spokesman commiserates, but he's an interested party. So what's up? Well, we have a clue this week with the Xbox. 11491