Is Apple eviler than Microsoft?

[ETC(SS)]

It depends on what you call "Evil."
I listen to TAL regularly, when I'm not engrossed in some novel I catch many of the NPR/PRI podcasts. I'll give the podcast a tumble sometime.

I'm not a really bid fan of Apple products...in fact I've owned exactly one. Somebody gave me an i-thingy (Nanno IIRC) a while back, and since it wouldn't play nice with WMA I had no use for it. I was forced to use some Mac machines back when the government signed all of my paychecks, and lets just say that this made me a dedicated Linux driver for a while.
Finally...I was forced to choose between another i-thing and a droid when I graduated to slate phones. Hmmmmm.....lemme think about this.....

OK, so that's my history with Apples. There's NO DOUBT that they've been foundational in the development of several industries. Podcasts are proof of that. So are slate phones and tablets. However (comma!) this coolness comes at a price. You have to do things Apples way, or you have to wait for the technologies to trickle down to the rest of the industry.

I came across a stat in a NYT article (not a trusted source to be sure) where Apple wrings more profit per employee than any other major corporation in the world. By a lot.
To be sure, they're one of the most profitable, if not THE most profitable companies on the planet.
Does this make them evil???
I guess that depends on how they go about it. If you have a bunch of Apple stock, or you're a devotee of technological progress maybe they're not.
If you're a low skilled, uneducated worker in China and you have the choice of working a 12-hour shift for very low wages or not eating or sleeping indoors, then they might not be too evil either. After all...many of today's Apple employees will crank out kids that take advantage of being able to go to school, and better themselves and their communities.
That's a lot easier to do when you're employed---even at humble wages.

I find it highly amusing that many of the 'anit-establishment' Wall Street haters out there wouldn't drive a PC or a Droid unless you held a gun to their heads, but hey.....
I have no axe to grind with Apple, even if I choose to buy 'lesser' products.

Apple is successful......just like Microsoft was.

[eagle33199]

Originally Posted by ETC(SS)

If you're a low skilled, uneducated worker in China and you have the choice of working a 12-hour shift for very low wages or not eating or sleeping indoors, then they might not be too evil either. After all...many of today's Apple employees will crank out kids that take advantage of being able to go to school, and better themselves and their communities.
That's a lot easier to do when you're employed---even at humble wages.

Lets keep in mind that a majority of those workers in China aren't Apple employees. They're employed by Foxcon and other manufacturers who act as suppliers for Apple.

[qbee42]

Originally Posted by eagle33199

Lets keep in mind that a majority of those workers in China aren't Apple employees. They're employed by Foxcon and other manufacturers who act as suppliers for Apple.

This becomes a fragile argument. If a company knowingly contracts with supplier, are they or are they not responsible for the conduct of that supplier? Volumes have been written on similar issues.

Tom

[burritos]

My question was more rhetorical than anything else. Just something to trigger reflection on Apple, the icon of American innovation and corporatism. There could be follow up questions to challenge the queries that spot brings up. Yes there are some bad things with Foxcon and industrial manufacturing in China in general, but overall is China better off than just being a agrarian communistic country which at one time was the mirror image of NoKo? Is the world better off? Is Foxcon/apple merely the drug dealers and the 1st worlders the drug users?

[stevemcelroy]

Originally Posted by kornkob

However, I really feel like most of the things attributed to Microsoft fall well short of 'evil'.

The following is something that I remembered from way back when - I just googled it and pasted it below - now that Gates has left Microsoft and become a philanthropist and dropped largely out of the public eye perhaps public opinion had changed, but Gates was a pretty hated guy back when he was in charge - same would go double for Balmer when he was #2 - I think now that pity and annoyance has outweighed the hatred for him though.

The real name of "the" Bill Gates is William Henry Gates III. Nowadays he is known as Bill Gates (III), where "III" means the order of third (3rd.)
By converting the letters of his current name to the ASCII-values and adding his (III), you get the following:

B 66
I 73
L 76
L 76
G 71
A 65
T 84
E 69
S 83
+ 3
--------------
666 !!
Some might ask, "How did Bill Gates get so powerful?" Coincidence? Or just the beginning of mankind's ultimate and total enslavement???

Before you decide, consider the following:

M S - D O S 6 . 2 1
77+83+45+68+79+83+32+54+46+50+49 = 666

W I N D O W S 9 5
87+73+78+68+79+87+83+57+53+1 = 666
Coincidence? You decide...

[daniel]

Microsoft is evil, not because of their manufacturing or anti-competitiveness, which all big companies do, but because they choose to market sub-standard software full of security holes which most computer users are not savvy enough to close up with the myriad necessary third-party anti-everything programs, leading to millions of computers captured and tied to bot-nets, distributing spam and enabling all sorts of computer crime.

Were it not for Microsoft, the internet would be a much safer place than it is.

As for the exploitation of Chinese (and other third-world) labor, this only happens because Americans prefer to buy cheap imports over American-made products. If Americans gave a damn about third-world working conditions and refused to buy cheap imports, there would be far fewer sweatshops in China. (Whether that would be good or bad for the Chinese workers is another matter.)

[SageBrush]

American corporation sponsored jobs outside the US is not evil per se, if the workers have a choice whether to take the work. Examples of evil work are the quasi-slave banana plantations of Dole in the Phillipines, or the Belgian Rubber plantations of the 19th century where they cut of the hands of people who refused to climb the trees.

Much closer to evil are the US corps who set up factories outside the US in order to pollute without hindrance. The US auto manufacturers in Mexico are a good example.

---
As for MS, it was a scumbag company because it abused its monopoly position for decades. Personal computing became cheap enough for poor people, but the cost was stifled innovation and poor quality. Is that a reasonable trade-off ? I'd say yes if you are poor, and no if you have money to buy a superior product but cannot because of MS.

[Rebound]

In the 1990's, if you worked really hard and created really innovative new software of any kind, Microsoft would copy it and run you out of business. Period.

[stevemcelroy]

Funny timing - this ad was released by Microsoft in the last couple of days - the gist of it is that their privacy policies are less intrusive than Google's. Not really evil, more like the negative/attack ads going on in the current political race.

[qbee42]

Originally Posted by Rebound

In the 1990's, if you worked really hard and created really innovative new software of any kind, Microsoft would copy it and run you out of business. Period.

If that isn't the truth. If they couldn't copy outright, they would form a partnership with you until they had all of your intellectual property in-house. After that, they would end the partnership and introduce their own product using the acquired IP. Been there, done that.

Tom