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ninety9: 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.

ninety9:

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.

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Google Tracked iPhones, Bypassing Apple Browser Privacy Settings

parislemon:

At first glance, this sounds really bad. I mean, really bad. The Wall Street Journal essentially sets it up as Google (and other, smaller advertising players) purposefully circumventing the web browsing privacy controls on the iPhone in order to track users’ browsing habits.

And when they got caught, Google stopped doing it. Which is usually not a good sign.

But my initial reaction is that John Battelle is right. This is much more nuanced than a simple black and white argument. Mobile Safari does have stricter privacy controls than other browsers, which is likely a very good thing for most users, but it also benefits Apple because it essentially destroys Google’s business. 

And it’s a business that you could argue is helpful to some people for a number of reasons (all the free services Google is able to provide as a result, for example).

I just don’t believe this is as big of an “evil” Google thing as WSJ may have us believe. But having said that, if this really is mainly about Google+, that’s very poor form on Google’s part. You can argue that Google web ads are useful in certain situations and that data Google gets from cookies on the web makes them better. But the whole +1 junk is forced at best. 

One thing is certain: Apple is not going to like this one bit. This seems like the kind of thing Steve Jobs would have gone ballistic over. This will undoubtedly escalate the war between the two sides.

This is really not good, guys. I know “I deleted my Facebook” is/was a thing. But you can’t exactly delete your iPhone. Or delete Google. Unfortunately. Google is doing nefarious things, and something shall give.

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Apple, Amazon, and Google’s Dehumanizing Technologies [Dead Story File 12/2011]

For a long time, technology has played an obvious role in our lives. As the state of the art has advanced, technological progress has had a pronounced effect on the world: pollution, overpopulation, extreme class disparity. There’s a more insidious effect, prefigured by Wordsworth two hundred years ago: “Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

The big picture problems are more than bothersome, of course, but technology’s “sordid boon” seems like it could be even worse, because of its subtlety. There has been recently a myriad of stories that make me think that technology, defined contingently as the consumer-facing fruit of certain leading companies, has inserted itself into our lives in such a way as to be more important, and by extension more desirable for abuse, than ever before. This combination of inconspicuousness and importance makes even salutary advances, if they remain unremarked upon, an area open to exploitation. Companies like Apple, Amazon, and Google perform fabulous feats and offer incredible products. Their ubiquity in the market means that they shape people’s existence as much as the government, family, and the larger cultural atmosphere. Maybe more than all those, and that’s fine. A lot of institutions have more power to shape people’s existence than the government. But very few do so under the guise of an ineradicable push to progress, with a real Law (cf, Moore) held up as describing its inexorable growth. And few institutions shape the course of humanity with humanity itself’s unquenchable approbation. This is a serious problem.

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