I often feel like writing about my Very Complex Thoughts about why it’s odd to me that Apple fans work so hard to demonize Google, as if it were akin to sport affinities, not handing over our money to companies with mind boggling amounts of cash on hand (though you see Apple dick measuring more, GOOG has $50BN in cash and equivalents).
Except no one hands cash to Google. Well, I do, paying for premium Apps services and additional storage (fun fact! I pony up for any premium offering because I think people should get paid for their work). But the trivial amount of money I’ve given them for the services I’ve gotten in return is ROI that is just astounding, and doesn’t force thousands of Chinese laborers to live in near slave conditions.
I have literally never thought about this because I’m not very smart. But I did think about it, just now, for just a moment. Holy cow is Apple (and other companies, but mostly Apple) really evil. Like, I was out with the dogs just now listening to the latest edition of Apple blogger John Gruber’s podcast. And as I walked in the door on my return, he says, “If they’re not selling you a product that means they’re selling you.” (Talking about Google and how it makes money via advertising.) Now, earlier in the podcast, he made the point that the Chinese-Foxconn-Industrial Complex is a lot like Big Meat. People eat hamburgers, and they’re aware that conditions at meat factories are bad. But they still eat meat, and it’s OK as long as you’re aware of it. So what Gruber is saying, I take, is that when you buy Apple/Nintendo/Samsung/etc, you’re buying the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people who live in a place you’ll never really go to or think about too much except in an abstract way. These factory workers are the meat cattle of the electronics industry.
What Google sells (to advertisers, its customers) is you, the user. What Apple sells (to users, its customers) is the magical fruits of thousands of sub-human laborers. It is. And even if Foxconn represents the very best that China has to offer, the conditions are still recognizable, by western standards, as terrible. And if Apple is the biggest beneficiary of these conditions, then, well apply some logic.
When Apple evangelists like Gruber get all apoplectic over (or even, like, archly detachedly ironically humorous about) Google, what they’re saying is they value their own human experience quite a bit. And when they shrug off the human costs of electronics manufacturing, what they’re saying is they don’t care about any other humans.
Good job, guys.
P.S.
In that same podcast, not ten minutes after Gruber went all-in on paying people $2/day to make iPads (and saying that was just fine, nothing to be worried about, nothing to feel guilty about), he argued that Apple makes it too hard to get a refund on apps. Because who wants to spend five minutes to get back their $0.99. You really cannot make this shit up. Again, good job, Gruber. You’re a really good guy.
