Commence geek war.
For the rest of you, a pretty picture of a kitty.
Lion – Jean-Leon Gerome (Jean Leon Gerome) (1824-1904)
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.
The revolution will be supervised.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
People are complicated. Love is not.
The words do not have to be perfect.
If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.
An almost top 10,000 blog!
Bark louder, little dog.
Accountability, motherfuckers.
The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.
Not all heroes wear capes.
When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
Come on, man.
Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll
Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.
Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.
Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.
Hot air and ill-informed banter
When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?
They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!
Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.
Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.
This fight is for everything.
You are here: Home / Science & Technology / If Mac OS X Lion was a man, I’d marry it (or at least show it a damn good time)
stuckinred
It killed my cosmopod and flip 4 mac!
arguingwithsignposts
@stuckinred: Any other bugs to be aware of?
stuckinred
arguingwithsignposts
iChat will not reopen when you close it without a restart. Repair permissions seemed to have fixed that.
BTW, both Flip and Cosmo assure that a fix is coming.
PopeRatzy
Apple declared its greatest quarterly profit EVAH!
Free markets! Get the people to overpay and convince them that you are doing them a favor for making them overpay!
Outsource 10s of thousands of jobs to Asia so you can make those historic profits!
Who cares how many low paid Asian workers get abused in the process! I got my new shiny upgraded geegaw before all my friends got their upgraded shiny geegaw! WIN FOR ME!
MikeJ
Autosaving and versioning is nice. Pity apple doesn’t give a shit about UI for computers. Things that make sense on a phone screen are flat out stupid on a 26″ monitor.
stuckinred
Also, it took a while for my Office suite to work. Got the beachball trying to start Word and had to force quit and restart. All seems well now.
stuckinred
PopeRatzy
yea $29 bucks for a new OS that goes on all my machines is highway robbery.
Linnaeus
@stuckinred:
Are you using Safari? Version 5.1 that comes with Lion no longer supports plug-ins at all. The idea is to get developers to move to extensions, I think.
dmsilev
Thinking about jumping in, though Snow Leopard is working well enough that I don’t really feel any burning sense of urgency. The idea of Versions is really nice, but the applications that I would most want to use it on will probably take about 5 years to be updated (MS Word…).
cleek
@MikeJ:
my wife has been wishing Windows would do auto-versioning for years. why? because VMS was doing it back in the 80s, when she first started using computers, and she got hooked on it.
FILE123.txt;1
FILE123.txt;2
ahh… instant backups. protection against overwriting. transparent to both user and programmer. completely simple. forgotten.
The Moar You Know
stuckinred: way to utterly and completely miss the point.
jeffreyw
My fuckin TV set just downloaded a software upgrade. Is that cool or what.
stuckinred
The Moar You Know
Guess what? I don’t give a fuck. better?
stuckinred
Linnaeus
Yea, I emailed the cosmopod folks and they said they are on it. I don’t care how it works just so it works.
alwhite
Poperatzy – if you think any tech company has clean hands on this matter you have not been paying attention. There are no cell phones, no PCs, no tablets and damn little software that is not built on the backs – and over the dead bodies – of lots of third world citizens.
But don’t worry we are well on our way to join them.
The Moar You Know
An incremental improvement at best on most aspects of the OS. The big one is the one that most users won’t notice. Full screen apps are nice; Windows and Linux have had both those since whenever, but OK. The bone tossed to the security folks that have been telling Apple users and designers for years that they are “asking for it” by running single user mode, insecure passwords, no firewall, etc – is a good start but not nearly enough. The platform (BSD) that OSX is built on can be plenty secure, why the hell hasn’t Apple incorporated the plethora of tools that are available?
Apple needs to get serious, the exploits are now out there in the wild, and they are being used.
I like my MacBook Pro, it’s pretty. It’s entertaining. But there’s nothing that it does that I can’t do on a 500 dollar laptop running Ubuntu, or a 600 dollar laptop running Win7, except for one thing – the backlit keyboard. I like that a lot.
magurakurin
who gives a fuck? Computers are like toasters. Arguing over which is better is like arguing over which toaster is better. But if it makes one happy to do so, I suppose there is no harm in it. But I can’t be bothered to care whether Mac is better than Windows. I don’t understand the religious like attachment to a computer operating system.
cleek
@cleek:
oh, and by auto-versioning i mean: when you save a file, the OS automatically checks for a file with the same name in that folder, and if one is found, the new file name is given an auto-incrementing version number.
save “FOO.TXT”. if it doesn’t already exist, your file becomes “FOO.TXT;1”. if FOO.TXT;1 already exists in the folder, your new file becomes FOO.TXT;2.
opening the file for reading without specifying a version number gets you the latest revision, or you can specify the particular version.
and, you can control the number of revisions that get saved – oldest versions are discarded, when the limit is reached.
VMS: kicking Mac’s and Windows’ asses, from the past.
Tuttle
After a full day it still seems kind of slow. It was like molasses at first. My Quad Xeon with 6 GB felt like a 386 trying to run Win7 (except Windows 7 can run old versions of Office). A few restarts, permissions repairs and letting it re-index the drive and re-map the app presets have made it much better, but still a bit pokey.
My three major issues are;
1. Mobile LDAP login added to keychain. This is a security no-no and it did it without asking when I reset the keychain password.
2. Can not sync Software Update with a Snow Leopard SU Server (Lion is cheap to acquire and easy to set up, 10.7 Server is neither).
3. The new scroll bars suck…
Yes they do, but really it’s the lack of Rosetta that has me most annoyed. I admin 120 users who still use Office 2004 on G5s. This just pushed up the cost of upgrading them by $200 each.
The Moar You Know
Yes, actually. I’ve got 6 computers and a cell phone in my office, and today is a slow day, sometimes I have to bring in a couple of more. I like tech toys, and it has made me a very good living over the last few years, but I think it behooves us all to acknowledge that these devices are built on the blood and despair of people who live under conditions that would have you and I murdering someone in less than a day.
I’ve been to a Chinese factory, and I guess it’s better than the alternative – slogging through the fields, up to your waist in human shit and dirt, harvesting just enough to keep you alive – but barely better. They really do treat their people very badly. No humanity in that relationship at all.
NonyNony
@magurakurin
I wish. If they were like toasters it would be simple to evaluate them – “This one burns the toast on every setting therefore it sucks” vs. “This one makes toast and does not burn it”. Done – toasters generate few arguments.
Computers are more like coffee machines. Two people with different tastes in coffee are going to argue about whether a particular coffee machine is a good machine or not. And they may disagree fundamentally about things that people who don’t like coffee at all think are trivial matters.
J.W. Hamner
I find it sort of amazing people still get fired up about Mac vs. PC at this point… it’s been well over a decade people, and the same things are true now that were true in 1999. Can’t we admit at this point that fanbois of either side are unlikely to be persuaded by the same damn arguments? Either you like the price/performance ratio and software support of PCs or you like the design and usability of Macs.
stuckinred
The Moar You Know
Listen pal I spent two fucking years in those paddies so skip the lectures about Asia.
Linnaeus
I’m not an OS fundamentalist either. I prefer Mac OS X for my own personal use, but I’m fine with other OS’s too as long as I have some familiarity with them.
Linnaeus
Ooo…good point. I still use Office 2004. Okay, not upgrading for now.
mistermix
@ The Moar You Know: So, instead of limiting your computer consumption, you come here to lecture others on the proper calibration of guilt feelings over their purchase of technology created by underpaid and exploited labor? Got it.
Chinn Romney
Yes, I’ve been working the tech field for 25 years now. I started out working with VMS 4.x. In the year 2011 I still have not seen it’s equal, something I moan about regularly.
What keeps me going in this soul sucking field is the knowledge that I’m on track to eradicate every last sign of SUN from our building. The last system is getting the full Gallagher sledgehammer treatment. And then a bonfire, using a stack of Oracle documentation for fuel, will complete the party.
sneezy
“…by running single user mode…”
You apparently don’t know what that phrase means. You can boot your mac into single-user mode by holding command-S on the keyboad while it boots, but that’s not how they normally run.
“…insecure passwords…”
The OS forces you to choose bad passwords?
“…no firewall, etc…”
There is a firewall. I think Mac OS X has had one longer than Windows, but I’m too lazy to look it up. It’s been there for years, though.
Tom65
The way I see it, this is like comparing a Yugo to a BMW. Both will get your from point A to point B, but one does it with a bit more style and the quality of the experience is much better. Is it worth the price of admission? Sure, if you have the money.
NonyNony
@Tom65
Seriously? A Yugo? Sheesh.
It’s more like comparing the Ford Focus to the Lexus. They’re 99.9% the same, but their style appeals to different groups of people, even some people who can afford the Lexus don’t think it’s worth the money and Ford offers fleet discount purchases to business customers.
wesindc
WTF has Norway done to anyone outside of whaling?
Josie
Wow – does anyone else see a similarity between that kitty picture and a few shots from the movie “The Lion King?”
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
What do you have against OS X Lion?
stuckinred
Norwegian prosecutors on Tuesday filed a terrorism charge against Mullah Krekar, founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, who is accused of threatening a former minister, Erna Solberg, with death.
“Norway will pay a heavy price for my death,” he said. “If, for example, Erna Solberg deports me and I die as a result, she will suffer the same fate.”
stuckinred
Or, as Del Gue said in Jeremiah Johnson “twarnt Mormons”.
wesindc
Ahh thanks stuckinred. Did not hear about that due to our lamestream media that can’t focus on anything outside of Palin or Casey Anthone (who ever the hell she is).
burnspbesq
The Sonos desktop software doesn’t work at all (nice to get an email from Sonos the morning after I updated). Amarra only runs in 32-bit mode. As previously stated, scrolling without arrows is a pain in the ass.
I’m not yet at the point where I’m wishing I hadn’t made the switch, but Lion gets no blowjobs from me.
P.S. My real pet peeve with Apple has to do with the iPad. We’ve had iPads for 16 months, and there is still no word-processing app that can deal with tracked changes in a Word doc. On behalf of the entire legal profession, a hearty “fuck you” to the entire developer community.
stuckinred
burnspbesq
Ha, that’ll bring em around!
burnspbesq
@magurakurin:
DeLonghi roolz! Everything else is shite.
kindness
Buying a current Mac was the best computer move I have ever made. It is SOOOOO much better than any PC or older Mac I have ever had.
Having said that, I haven’t upgraded to Lion yet. After reading about the bugs, I figured I’d wait a cycle or so & get it later, which I no doubt will do.
Yes Macs cost more. Better things usually cost more. Why is that so hard to put together?
burnspbesq
@The Moar You Know:
As bad as it is (and like you, I’ve been there and seen it, and it’s bad), they have no trouble recruiting. That tells you a lot about the available alternatives.
pete
@NonyNony (21) Computers are more like coffee machines.
Spot on. I speak as someone who tried to replace my trusty old Braun for a couple of years (I could tell it was not long for this kitchen) and gave away two that didn’t make the cut. The Krups I have now is OK but overelaborate. Remind you of anything?
I love my big-screen iMac, bought last year, but I’m reluctant to upgrade while everything continues to work.
wrb
SUCKS
I depend on some power pc programs and will for the foreseeable future.
So by dropping Rosetta they’ve lost me not only for this upgrade but for future ones, and for whatever they want to sell through those future ones.
It is a mistake that will take us to the situation of Windows in the 90s-lots of people stuck with past operating systems, the user base not moving forward together.
NonyNony
@pete
This is something that as I get older, I wonder about. If your computer is working, why upgrade at all? As long as you’re getting security patches for your system and no new software comes along that is incompatible with your system, there’s no need to go through the hassle and heartache of changing out the OS every few years just because Apple/Microsoft says it’s time for an upgrade.
Now if those conditions change – new software comes out that you want/need or they stop releasing security updates or your system goes belly up and it’s time to buy a new one – upgrading makes sense. But to me in the last few years computers really have become like coffee machines – I use ’em until it’s time to buy a new one and that’s when my “upgrade” happens. (And I’m a freaking Computer Scientist by profession, so it’s weird to make this admission).
Amanda in the South Bay
@ 40 Kindness
Oh, I dunno, there’s a recession and some of us are poor and….lets brag about how we can afford 1000 dollar plus Macs! Because its assumed everyone on BJ makes high 5 figure/low 6 figure salaries, right?
RAM
No Rosetta, no move to Lion for me, at least not for some years due to the investment I’ve got in 32 bit apps. Yeah, Lion’s cheap, but updating Adobe Design Suite and Office is not.
Martin
There’s one thing the MBP does that the 500 or 600 dollar laptop can’t do: not break. Apples hardware is solid. The laptop I’m typing on now is a bit over 2 years old and has never been shut down longer than a restart (and even that only every month or so). It goes home with me every night and probably averages 12 hours of use every day. The only thing I’ve ever had to do to it is replace the battery last month.
Amanda in the South Bay
Martin-
Yeah, but I can find plenty of Mac owners who’ve had their computers die, I can find plenty of PC owners who’ve used the hell out of their computers the past couple of years without them breaking, etc. It seems like argument by anecdote to me.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
Macs cost more out of the box. But for those of us disinclined toward serious hardware/software troubleshooting and repairs, Apple’s support comes close to mitigating the cost difference over the lifespan of the product.
The Genius Bar in the back of my local Apple store helped me back out of a problem that could have resulted in “catastrophic data loss.” A PC and I would have been on my own–the $300 extra I “spent” buying an iMac in 2005 woulda gone into the pockets of some hourly IT guy, so the TCO is a wash.
Not a Mac zealot, though. Cost being the same, I’d have an iPhone. But my Android phone w/plan costs $60/month less than an iPhone w/similar plan. Yes, $60/month.
stuckinred
Amanda in the South Bay
What’s the break like at El Porto? If I were you I’d be at the beach not here fussing.
Martin
Apple doesn’t do manufacturing in China because of cheap labor. Hell, they can get cheap labor anywhere.
They (and everyone else on the planet doing consumer electronics) does it in China because that’s where the suppliers are. The thing that is much more important to Apple than saving labor costs is time-to-market, and proximity to suppliers and the ability to quickly ramp up a production line becomes critical for someone whose core businesses are now things like iPads and iPhones.
The only way the US is going to get that manufacturing is to build economic zones that are competitive with Chinas. We have that to some degree (which is why all of the software work for all those same electronics companies happens in about a 10 mile radius of Cupertino – that’s our economic zone, we’ve got several biomedical zones, etc.) but we really do need an official national effort to do that, just nobody wants to actually make the difficult decisions needed. Right now they’re all being established informally by research universities.
Amanda in the South Bay
stuckinred-
El Porto? Hehe, wrong South Bay there ^^
stuckinred
Amanda in the South Bay
Not LA???? Damn.
Well, the surf is crappy there anyway!
http://www.surfline.com/surf-report/el-porto-southern-california_4900/
Martin
Well, we run hundreds of systems here. It’s not unusual for us to have 15% of our PCs out for service at a time – usually all for the same issue developing at around the same time. That never happens with the Macs. We can actually measure it.
That’s changing. You can’t buy an equivalent to the MacBook Air at the Macbook Air price. Intel is trying to build a market for what they call UltraBooks, but the OEMs are resisting saying that they can’t match Apple’s price. The Air uses most of the same component suppliers as the iPad and iPhone, so Apple finally has economy of scale working for them. They just don’t make enough MacBook Pros and iMacs relative to Dell and HP to get their prices more competitive.
Honestly, not having to deal with all the Windows security problems is worth a fair bit to me, so I don’t mind the premium.
ant
I wont be upgrading.
what for? I learned osx when leapord first came out, and the superduper copy of that computer still does everything I need and more.
snow leapord still jacks up with the 32 bit stuff sometimes.
at least apple isnt as annoying as firefox has been with their break it auto-updates, and new versions every five minutes.
Martin
Not comparable. Microsoft wasn’t adding many new users. All they had was migration, so preserving compatibility is very important to them. Apple just barely broke 5% global marketshare on the Mac. New Mac users is the growth market for them, not migrators. And their largest installed base now is iPhone/iPad and that’s who they want to bring onto the Mac, which is why Lion got developed as it did.
For the Power PC apps, alternatives will finally get developed, or you’ll upgrade. The biggest problem with dropping Rosetta is Quicken, and there’s quite a bit of action going on to fill that gap. For me, I also need to run Windows under VMWare, so for a couple of things I just moved over to the Windows version until the Mac versions get upgraded for compatibility.
Bruce S
something weird happened to the text – just delete
Martin
Well, I think the two best reasons to upgrade will be iCloud (which you’ll need Lion for) and if you want the autosave/versioning features, which are worth their weight in gold if you work with documents a lot. Basically in Lion, Apple is moving things so that a user never has to wonder if a document was saved or if you accidentally overwrote something, and provide a very easy interface to retrieve an old version of a document, not unlike what they did with Time Machine for backups.
They can’t fully deliver on it now because apps will need to be updated, but over time the experience will become more and more seamless. Check back in the fall after iCloud ships and after more apps have been updated to support Lion features and see if it makes more sense.
wrb
No, I’ll stick with snow leopard. Some people nursed their favored Microsoft versions for better than a decade, I expect there will be Mac users who do the same
The upgrade for one critical app would be over $5k and there are maybe 20 or 30 others that I use occasionally. This also would seem to put me out of the market for new machines
keith
So Apple ported Win 3.1’s Program Manager to OSX. Revolutionary
kindness
[email protected]
I’m thinking there isn’t much surfing in San Jose unless one goes over the hill.
Amanda in the South [email protected]
Man there’s a whole lotta assumptions in that post. I said I loved my Mac and you translated that as bragging about my disposable income? Maybe you should stick to what I wrote, not what you read into it. Anyway, enjoy your weekend even if you don’t go over the hill & enjoy the Cruz. Me, I’m doing a road trip up Route 1 with the significant other this weekend. I’ll tip a glass to you from Anderson Brewing Co & North Coast Brewing Co when I get there. And that’s all the bragging I’m gonna do.
stuckinred
kindness
proly best to avoid Mavericks
Dennis SGMM
@Martin:
Good hardware is good on either side of the divide. Twelve years ago I paid through the nose for a Quantex laptop with a dedicated video subsystem. It was dragged through most of the airports in the US and despite that it lives on now in the hands of my son who uses it for internet access. The thing will still play DVDs full screen when plugged into a flatscreen monitor without hiccuping.
I’m a volunteer teacher of computer literacy at our town’s Senior Center. Most of my students just want to use email, manage attachments thereto, research topics of interest to them, and be secure while doing so. I wind up sitting side by side with many nice people while I walk them through doing what they want to do with their computer. Most have Windows machines, some have Macs. From this particular POV there’s little difference in user friendliness between the two operating systems.
Sentient Puddle
I haven’t had the time to do backups and install yet, but I do have the installer downloaded and ready to go (hopefully) later today. So very much looking forward to versioning.
Not sure I’m looking forward to trackpad scrolling changes.
Dennis SGMM
@Martin:
If you have to wonder whether a document was saved or if you overwrite things then you’re better served by looking at your own work habits more than you are by relying on a piece of software to save you.
kindness
[email protected]
No doubt. I’m pretty much a boogie boarder & kayaker so Mavericks & it’s bone crushing reefs are out of the question for me. Let the sharks eat the seals, not me.
Quicksand
@cleek:
Such a shame, too, since VMS is pretty much a direct ancestor of modern Windows.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Dave_Cutler
Brachiator
@Martin:
What?
I don’t get it. Recent news stories provide us with information which immediately gets ignored in favor of variations on conventional wisdom, anecdote and confusion even by knowledgeable people who should know better.
So, in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake, which disrupted Apple supply chains, what did we learn about Apple?
Chinese labor and assembly, design in the US and elsewhere, supplies from various places (possibly Brazil in the future), corporate control and direction from Cupertino, California.
Since Apple is a US company, I am not sure what you mean here.
El Cruzado
For those who like the new stuff, install Lion now.
For those with a certain prudence, wait for 10.7.1 or maybe even 10.7.2.
That said, 10.7.0 is pretty good for a .0 release in my experience.
In general I find Lion to be the most usable with trackpads. Get one of those Magic Trackpads if you don’t use a laptop (that already comes with one, obviously). I find myself using mice these days only for games.
Pity about Rosetta but Apple’s way is that after five years don’t expect us to support your old crap (it does make life for us devs a lot more bearable. Backward compatibility is the bane of our existence)
For those who have an app stop launching or crashing on launch (a supported one, of course), try from the finder command-shift-G, go to ~/Library/Saved Application State, then find the entry for your application and delete it. Saved my bacon a couple times (Xcode, I’m looking at you).
WaterGirl
@ Martin
Hey Martin, can you say more about that?
Scout211
I have already purchased iBank to replace my Quicken 2007 and it converted everything from Quicken perfectly. Now I have to upgrade my Office to Office 2011 (v 14).
Then I will upgrade to Lion.
iBank I like so far.
Martin
I agree. But I’ve always been of the opinion that choosing Windows is a bit like choosing to stand in a live fire zone. Sure, you may not get hit by a trojan/malware/whatever, and you can wrap yourself in sufficient armor to absorb a lot of hits, but why would you choose to stand there in the first place if you can choose not to?
The iPad is going to be the proper platform for that class of user though, at least once the tethering issue is eliminated this fall.
Martin
Come on. That’s like arguing against improvements to backup software. You’ve never had an app crash? You’ve never accidentally overwritten a file – or had two people working on something and one overwrites what the other did, or deleted a page out of a document without realizing it until after you saved, or rewritten a section to discover that the previous version was better? I’ve got over 100,000 documents here in the office, and that shit happens all the time – people are rushed, new employee, miscommunication, etc.
There’s a reason why programmers use nifty version control software as a standard practice. Why shouldn’t everyone else get the same benefits? I hear these old-school arguments all the time opposing solutions to problems that we’ve known were problems for decades. If this was a problem that could be solved through behavior modification, it would have gotten solved by now. It hasn’t. Why not simply apply a little transparent technology?
Martin
Sure, some of the components come from Japan and Korea and Taiwan (all close to China) but the case fabrication and materials, logic board itself and most of the less technical components come from China, the HDs, the optical drives, the keyboard components, the various switches and leds, speakers, and so on. A lot of that stuff is coming out of the same damn factory as the Apple products.
But more importantly, there’s the ability to get a production line up and running quickly. The equipment used on the line is already in China, and the expertise to handle the assembly rampup, quality control, etc. Hell, in many cases the factory is already built, waiting for someone to move in. In the US, you have to assemble that stuff. You have to move families. You have to arrange for utilities and so on. You can’t really do it in weeks. China can because that manufacturing is all concentrated in a few places and because the Chinese government takes care of a lot of the heavy lifting, but here in the US, you have to work through the free market to get things like electricity and water, and for all the complaints about big government, the free market has no obligation to help you solve your problems, and sometimes has an incentive to make those problems worse.
That’s why I used the bay area as an example. Apple, Google, HP, Cisco, you name it, they’re almost all in driving distance of each other. You need a pile of new software engineers? They’re all right there. They share ideas and build relations between companies. And it’s a very fluid labor market. And local government is so dependent on them that they cater to their needs.
Since Apple is a US company, I am not sure what you mean here.
What I mean is that there are few economic zones in the US that serve manufacturing. You’ve got petrochemical down in Texas/LA, you’ve got various biomedical areas. Detroit of 50 years ago was a great example – everything was there – the automakers, the suppliers, the designers and engineers. It made sense to be there, even if it was more expensive, just as nobody is moving out of silicon valley in spite of the high labor costs, high cost of living, screwy state politics. It’s worth being there in spite of all of that.
If Apple were to bring manufacturing back to the US, what’s the logical place to go? There’s semiconductor fabs scattered across the country, but what about the other 98% of what Apple needs? Apple would basically need to build that themselves, because they’re not going to ship a zillion parts around the US just for the hell of it like the defense guys do. That’s what kills their time to market – and in the consumer electronics arena, being a month late to market can kill you. Timing is far more important than in a lot of other industries where long production chains are okay because products have long production lifespans. That’s generally not true in Apple’s markets (though Apple keeps those lifespans longer than most).
Now, the argument for Apple to do precisely that is growing, simply because they’ve gotten so fucking rich (I mean, absurdly so). They really do have the cash and cashflow to pick up and drop their entire manufacturing operation in California if they wanted, but what’s the business argument for them to do that when the arrangement they have is working quite well, and their size permits them to dictate terms to their suppliers? Not to mention that Apple themselves have no manufacturing operations talent other than the engineers that are responsible for ramp-up, and that China is far and away their fastest growing market and may soon eclipse all others – and that access to that market is at least tangentially benefitted by having manufacturing there?
It’s irritating to me that this isn’t benefitting US workers more than it should, but the US could do a lot to change this scenario, and they aren’t doing it because it’s be soçialist, or cause Congressional infighting because everyone wants their cut of the pork, or because the changes to the tax code would get the teatards or liberals all up in arms or whatever.
China changed the rules of the game by providing direct state support for industry in a place large enough to matter. The US is happy to let everyone fend for themselves. Well, guess what, state+free market trumps just free market. Nobody disputes that when they go screaming to the ITC or USPTO or commerce department or whoever, but it’s not enough relative to what industry is able to get out of China. We need to adapt and we aren’t doing it. And it’s not just Apple – everyone else is doing the same thing for the same reasons.
Martin
Well, Quicken (the full version that was actually useful) was discontinued when Apple switched over to Intel processors, so the old Quicken only runs in an emulated mode that’s been removed in Lion, so Quicken won’t run on Lion.
Quicken Essentials, the sortof replacement will work fine on Lion, but it’s a pretty shitty replacement if Quicken was what you needed. If it works for you, then you’re fine, but for a lot of us, it just doesn’t work.
For Quicken users, there’s a host of other products to look at, but they all have some tradeoffs. iBank is pretty much leading the pack at serving as a full-featured Quicken replacement. It’s got a little ways to go yet, but most of it is there and it’s a good product. I don’t mind moving off of Quicken because I always found it to be bugged – and in places where it matters. It could never seem to handle my stock splits properly, so some reports would show one number of shares, a different report a different number. Shit like that doesn’t fly. I talked to the Intuit VP about the problem ages ago when I first discovered it and could duplicate it, sent them all the details in a bug report. He said they’d fix it. They didn’t. Then they discontinued the product.
Intuit had two markets completely sewn up but it’s been one bad decision after another and they deserve to lose both of them.
WaterGirl
@ Martin
Thanks for all that info! Every time I have looked into Quicken alternatives I have been disappointed, but I will surely want to move to Lion, so it looks like I will have to do something. So do you use iBank or are you moving to iBank?
It does seem like Intuit has pretty much flipped off the mac users over the last several years. I use their web-based online payroll and that is really well done, with excellent customer service. Clearly their focus is not on the mac market.
Edit: I was surprised to see the comment above from DennisSGMM, which seemed kind of like a cheap shot (out of character) and I thought your response was good.
Scout211
@WaterGirl:
I have been browsing all the mac forums and reading the user reviews before and after Lion upgrades. The top choices are iBank and Moneydance with strengths and weaknesses for both.
iBank migrated all my Quicken files perfectly from Quicken 2007.
iBank did warn that it could not migrate your files if you are using the new version of Quicken (Essentials) though. (Most mac users have panned that version and have stayed with earlier versions).
I think I remember reading that Moneydance will transfer your Quicken Essentials files but I’m not sure.
iBank can be purchased through the app store on your mac.
Or you can go to the iBank site and download it (or download a free trial).
Brachiator
@Martin:
It’s clearly more than some, and some events, such as the past earthquake in Japan, can have a significant impact on manufacturing and assembly. Proximity of suppliers confers additional advantages. Still, it is important, and more accurate, to note that it is not just a matter of all the suppliers being in China, as you implied earlier.
Cheap labor appears to trump other costs.
And yet it appears to be cheaper for Apple to assemble products in China for the US market than it would be to have actual production facilities here.
And yet, google engineers in Northern California regular work via conference call setups with google engineers in Santa Monica California and in Ireland (from personal observation).
I agree with your point that China’s tremendous support for manufacturers confers a huge benefit, as does, presumably its central control of labor markets and wages. It’s ironic that what was originally promised to be a worker’s paradise is instead a Western capitalist’s paradise, as profits soar thanks to these restrictions on the market. It’s doubly ironic that the US government, both parties, have decided that access to inexpensively manufactured goods is more important than anything else.
But it is not just that China changed the rules of the game or that we have to adapt. It’s the challenge of deciding how best to respond to the fact that US companies have decided that where possible, they will find ways to generate profits without the drag caused by those pesky US workers.
By the way, I saw somewhere (can’t find a clean reference link) that Apple has enough cash hoarded to be able to pay a one-time dividend of $81 a share to every shareholder.
Martin
I made a first run into iBank in the previous version (3.xx) and it just wasn’t up to it, but it was close and had a lot of potential. I test drove 4 soon after it came out and it looked like it was going to work, but I haven’t yet had time to transition. I’ll be working on it this weekend. If you see me on Monday, give a hollar and I’ll tell you how it went.
We’ve got 20 years of finances in Quicken. House sales, refis, a mess of retirement accounts (the state DCPs and IRAs, etc.) the kids college 429s, stock and dividends and splits, etc., every credit card we’ve run through over the years, my wife’s busines. In years when we bought a car we have every purchase down to sales tax so we could get that deduction. It’s a lot, and Quicken has made a mess of some of it, so while I’m not a worst case scenario I think we hit all of the high notes.
Dennis is a good guy. I like him a lot.
WaterGirl
@ Martin
I will track you down on Monday to see what you think of iBank.
I agree about Dennis, that’s why I did kind of a double-take when I read what he had written. It seemed out of character and it made me wonder if things are tricky at home, which can throw any of us off kilter.
Martin
No, it’s just some. The problem is that they’re difficult components to swap in from other suppliers. Japan has pretty much the sole source for a kind of epoxy that Apple is dependent on, for example. It doesn’t matter if it’s the screen or the battery or just some kind of epoxy, if you’re dependent on it, you’re dependent on it and you’re fucked if you can’t get it.
There’s hundreds and hundreds of components in Apple’s products. More than half come from China. Most are pretty boring and not sexy like the battery and screen. Supplier dependency is a strategic problem for Apple – always has been. They’re not a commodity box maker and they aren’t going to randomly swap in parts like HP will.
Says nothing about cheaper labor as you assert. In fact, labor costs in Brazil tend to be higher. The article notes two things that I stressed before:
1) The government is helping Foxconn and Foxconn will reciprocate with jobs. When we tried that last here, the wingnut freakout could be heard from space.
2) “The move would likely mean cheaper goods for local buyers.” South America is a growing market for Apple and other consumer electronics makers. Companies are going to be motivated to be competitive in the local market.
I’ll also note that Apple is pushing for this to diversify their geographic supply. China and Brazil are unlikely to get impacted by the same disaster or political problem. They’re looking to diversify into other geographic areas as well.
It is. I never denied that. But US manufacturing defenders always point to labor as the sole cost savings, and I’m saying that’s not true – in fact, labor is likely not even the majority of the cost savings. Proximity to components, not needing to cover shipping costs for components, not needing to deal with production stoppages due to shipping problems with components, etc. Even if all of the components were made outside of China but every other consumer electronics maker that used those components were assembling inside China, it’d be cheaper for Apple to move inside China because that’s where all of the components are already going. Apple wouldn’t need to ramp up a zillion new chains, they’d just leech off the existing ones – which is why Foxconn, Pegatron, and Quanta makes the majority of Apple and Android devices as well as laptop computers from nearly all vendors. At least, that’s what Apple needed to do when they were much smaller. Now that they’ve grown, they can do different things.
I’ll give you an example – the Mac Mini largely met its price points due to its size when it was first introduced. Most of the cost savings in the product wasn’t Chinese labor, but because the package was so small, they could fit 8x as many in a truck as a standard PC, in a plane’s cargo hold, in a shipping container, in a semi in the US, in a local delivery truck. It took less time to handle for everyone along that chain. They took up 1/8th as much space to warehouse so they could keep more in each store and not have as many deliveries. The components were smaller so they were cheaper to deal with at every step along the way. Just making the fucking thing smaller saved Apple more money than Chinese labor over US labor, almost entirely due to shipping and warehousing. And when shipping and warehousing can account for that much of the cost of a product, then location matters.
Ok, so why are they there? If Apple is that cost sensitive, why don’t they move to South Carolina? Why spend billions on a new HQ when they could certainly get better tax rates and lower land and construction costs and cost of living in South Carolina or Alabama or Texas? Why would Facebook move across town rather than do the same thing?
It’s broader than that. The US corporate tax code is pretty fucked. You know that – but profits earned outside the US get taxed when brought back to the US. So even if China labor costs were the same as US labor costs, Apple would have to pay a 30% or so tax just to bring that money home to pay the employees. That makes US labor instantly 30% more expensive. If most of Apple’s revenue came from the US, that wouldn’t be the case – but over half comes from overseas. So, the profits earned in the US get taxed, and that money might as well stay here and buy big round headquarters and pay engineers, and the profits earned overseas might as well stay overseas. That’s the tax incentive system the US has. Change that – make it so that foreign profits can be repatriated without being taxed (since we’re not taxing it now) and that domestic profits for foreign companies are taxed more reliably and suddenly investments in the US get a lot cheaper, and companies like Haliburton that have moved overseas to dodge taxes will have to pay their share again. But there’s about $2T sitting in overseas accounts. That’d be a nice $600B tax day, don’t get me wrong, but it’d be a vastly better $2T stimulus.
Yeah, that’s about right. They could buy the 35th largest US company (Disney) with cash. On their current trajectory, this time next year that’d be #20 – Intel/Citigroup/Verizon, somewhere in there.
But they do use a decent chunk of that cash fairly effectively. In addition to their retail expansion (which they tend to pay quite well for) they use that cash to finance their suppliers. After the tsunami, Apple executives flew to Japan with cash in hand – if a supplier needed money to rebuild or help employees get stabilized or whatever, Apple was the bank. Of the deals I know about, they don’t charge interest – they just ask for first refusal on output, and the money is repaid with product. If you need $3B to build a new factory for something Apple needs, Apple will give it to you and take the first $3B in output, that kind of thing. But it’s an astonishing amount of money. It’s not like when Exxon was banking $10B because of a spike in oil prices – Apple is doing it every quarter like clockwork. But it’s a relatively recent thing – since the iPhone came out. Who knows if it’ll last or not. Product segments come and go pretty fast in that space (ask Nokia, or Cisco with their Flip acquisition) so you need to be prepared to transition out quickly. Cash helps enormously with that.
PopeRatzy
I have been in the high tech world, a true silicon valley geek for over 30 years. I have watched more technology wash over society than most of you would ever imagine. Founded 1 company, made a few bucks there, started a 2nd, watched it fail. Working at #3 properly chastised and much more careful.
The frightening thing is that these days many investors fucking insist that if yo do not manufacture overseas then you are not a *serious* company. I did a fairly significant contract for a start up that was off-shoring all because their investment bank wanted that on the data sheet. The cost to them was significant in movement costs and loss of production as they brought up their Thai Contract Manufacturer.
As long as all of you insist that the the latest Apple Geegaw is the greatest thing since the last Apple GeeGaw we will continue to bleed jobs, technology and brains to Asia.
But feel good, because Apple is cool and well, they are cool.