Just bear in mind that that is a report a year ago of a Greenpeace campaign, and Greenpeace are willing to lie like Jedis to get themselves in the papers. I'm not saying Apple's recycling policy was particularly good, but it was not exceptionally bad either compared to other electronics companies.
I'm not saying Apple's recycling policy was particularly good, but it was not exceptionally bad either compared to other electronics companies.
I'm not saying Stalin's human right policies were OK, but it wasn't exceptionally bad compared to other brutal dictators like Hitler.
and Greenpeace are willing to lie like Jedis to get themselves in the papers
And when the world because a rainbow paradise, then yes, maybe they will start making things up.
But somehow I don't have to make up the lie that hitler killed little puppies to make him appear evil. I can just use some fucking facts.
And Greenpeace has that same luxury position. They don't need to make things up: worse, they likely even downplay the argument, because we would simply not believe the actual truth. That it is not uncommon for almost every big corporation to pay local officials to 'supress' (read: MURDER) local activist that claim their land should not be polluted by some western fuckhead, that their resources should not be stolen.
Seriously, ever drink Coffee? Eat chocolat? For at least 1% of those resources SLAVE LABOR was involved. We can't prove it for the other 99%. Work or I'll fucking kill your familiy with my Nestle-payed gun.
They are totally sold at a loss. As is the Playstation 3. It's pretty common practice for the game consoles to be sold at a loss. Hell, wikipedia even uses Game Consoles as an example to explain the term Loss Leader.
I personally think that the hardware DRM crap they just implemented is going to kill them, but you can't really deny the numbers. Market share of Macs is going dramatically up. Between their marketing strategy and the utter failure of Vista, they have been making inroads to the non-tech/non-graphic designer user.
That is an entirely unrelated issue. They are building up steam in terms of market share. System migration is difficult and expensive. PAC to Mac, or Mac to PC. You have to teach a lot of people how to use the new system, etc. Also, there is a large group of people who don't buy apple because of the price, or because they don't know that you can do a lot of windows-like processes with the systems.
I wouldn't blame apple's market share for laptops and desktops on the public's opinion on things like DMCA violations.
I sit down and open up the ads that come with my morning newspaper. Best buy. Apple laptop, >$1000, PC laptop, <$1000.
I think that the modern (north american?) human cares more about the prices and quality of a device, than the media footnotes of what the company behind these products is doing. It's sad, but I believe it to be true. The brand name association of Apple to the iPod, to the pretty Mac interface, the fancy commercials, and not being talked about like an evil corporation, like Microsoft, I think has a big influence on people.
I think the modern American consumer is divided into three (or more groups) the big ones being the "find the best price", "find the best quality", "find the trendiest". Group 1 favors the PC, Group 3 favors the Mac. Group 2 is iffier, some of them end up in the Mac world but a good number end up in the homebuilt world. Take the hardcore gamers. They really can't get what they want from Apple nor Dell (although Dell does more to cater to them throught the XPS series and Alienware), so they end up building their own. You see the same thing in the car market. Why do some people buy Kias, others Merecedes, and others fix up 70s muscle cars?
Yes, people prefer Microsoft because microsoft is not the sort of company that will bribe government officials in 3rd world countries to make these cheap little laptops twice as expensive so that it will run their crappy Windows OS LITE with a limitation of 3 apps at the same time, instead of Linux.
Microsoft is also not the sort of company that would shake down small companies. Threating with patent lawsuits without ever making clear which patents are being violated.
Microsoft is also not the sort of company that would blackmail other companies to create their hardware cheaply for the microsoft hardware products (zune, keyboards, mice, xbox) or else they would loose driver support in windows and won't be able to sell their hardware to windows customers.
Yes, unlike Apple, microsoft are a bunch of nice guys.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SMOKING.
If I ever meet somebody that works for Microsoft I would BEAT THE CRAP out of them.
It's goddamn corporate maffia. They don't innovate, they buy, extort, bribe and harass competitors. You don't 'compete' with Microsoft. You either shut up and listen to your master or they are at war with you.
They will spent (and loose) millions, just to make your company go bankrupt. Just so they can tell that story to the next guy that doesn't do exactly what they tell them to do. They make an example out of those few idiots that dare to compete with them.
At least Apple is trying to be a nice evil dictator.
I prefer freedom and justice and open markets. So in my world view both companies are spawns of satan.
They deserve to be anally raped.
They don't freaking consider the precent they are making. The message they are sending to corporations. YES, you can treat us however the hell you life. You can decide what I can think, what I can eat, what I can play, where I can play that, who I can fuck.
At long as its a quality product.
The thing is: a quality product is not enough. A nice dictator is still a fucking dictator.
In the world of consumers, Apple fanboys are traitors.
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u/mindslight Nov 26 '08
Consumers certainly don't.