alwaysinshade

> what if I am not US citizen?

I'm not a US citizen either. Apple's (and Amazon, Google et al.) primary market is the US. "Designed in California" makes no difference to you and I, but it might make the difference between 15 million vs 15.5 million sales if they drop an extra 0.05 cents worth of paint pointing out where the phone was conceived. That, and I truly believe Apple has a strong sense of pride.

> but why adding pride to this?

Evoking emotion sells your product to people who feel it. Those who don't feel it...eh? They'll still buy the product if they like it. Perhaps you can market it to them in a different way. Broad-spectrum marketing.

Let's just take a step back and breathe deeply - it's just a shit ad from a company that usually markets things really well to the masses. They'll do their research and find it doesn't jive, then change their tune to something that does.

Watch the masses lose their collective bowels over the new products that are going to be released over the coming months. You know - that season when people drop a lot of cash on things. This idea that if products aren't updated bi-annually the company is going down the toilet will go away.

I don't live in California but I suspect that a lot of people who do might take some pride in it (think sports teams) and when they make something cool, it's nice to see their home state on there and not just an FCC badge and "Made in China". There's nothing wrong with being proud of your work. The same applies with the "Assembled in USA" badge you might see on an Apple or Google product - be proud.

> the software landscape in Japan is pretty rough -- bureaucratic, aged, and inefficient

Quite true. Where they excel is physical processes (hardware and people). Within an hour of being there it's evident: monorail quickly ferries you from tarmac to customs (easy), then fingerprint scanner connected to PC running Windows XP craps itself 10 times before success (annoying). Your luggage is neatly arranged on the conveyor by staff so that it's upright, identifiable and simple to pick up (easy). Go to bathroom and grin as the urinal flushes itself, then wash hands with delightful auto soap dispenser and auto basin then quickly egress to the airport subway (great!). Discover onboard wi-fi only accessible using unintelligible pre-paid system (nuts...I need to check my email). Oh well, I'll be at the hotel soon. Check in and bang your head against the wall as they advise one part of their system has the correct check-in/check-out dates, while another critical system has different dates. Lovely clerk talks with manager to find a work-around to a double-booked room. Finally get in hotel room and whip out Macbook Air...Ethernet access only. Off to the local Softbank store to get a dongle. Plug it in - 100/100mbit internet connection (Lovely!).

You're in a state of flux between delight and bewilderment.

> I'm not sure a magazine about diabetes is something to be appalled about.

The magazine is mounted on a shelf encrusted with boxes of discounted chocolates/candy. I think the point was the irony - perhaps after stocking up on Mars bars we can mentally pat ourselves on the back for flicking through a personal-health rag or feel less bad about gobbling sweets as we look at overweight/deformed celebrities.

It's an Australian supermarket - South Australia I'm guessing based on the "SA Lotteries" sign in one of the photos. The supermarket in question is a Foodland but could easily be any other supermarket in Australia. I thought it was my local Woolworths store based on the product layout in the photos and I'm in Sydney, NSW.

> I've been meaning to experiment on myself a bit with some glucose tabs after a long day of code

Anecdotal feedback - they work great for short bursts of activity. I use them when playing multiplayer games at night. Given my opponents are usually young and fuelled on caffeinated sodas I need some kind of edge after getting home from work. When I stomp a lobby on team deathmatch it's usually after popping a couple of glucose tabs. A good low-GI meal does much the same, but of course isn’t as convenient.

> For example, COD [...] Virtually the exact same game mechanics.

For single player, sure, but COD is a multiplayer focused game. The meta game in Black Ops 2 (the pick 10 system) is new to COD and has really changed up the game mechanics. You see a lot of diversity in player load-outs and strategies, making the game on the whole a lot more entertaining and have a lot of replay value.

> it strikes me as odd that he just assumes she's going to go ahead and try all sorts of things.

Given how pragmatic Sam is about drug-taking, it would be fair to assume that his daughter will grow up with similar views and consider experimenting. My dad's experiences with/thoughts on psychedelic drugs were what paved the way for me to experiment. And because of my family's attitude towards mind-altering substances, I was able to experiment safely which was an encouraging factor.

> City life very well might increase innovation in certain fields. I'd posit that country life increases innovation just as much, but in different areas.

Innovative people are everywhere - the benefit that cities offer is that for every unit of space you have a greater number of people, thus you're likely to find a few intelligent, like-minded people condensed into a smaller area. They become easier to find an collaborate with. To use a metaphor: you have a better chance of picking up in a bar if there are 50 members of the opposite sex than 5.

> I'm more inclined to prop it open on a tab on Youtube than I am to go through the hassle of opening iTunes

Perhaps the issue is one of perceived value to the end user. When I hear a song that I love, I have to own it. If I hear something on Spotify I'm off to the iTunes store to buy it. If I hear it in a shop or at a party, I Shazam it and I'm off to the iTunes store. If it's not on the iTunes store, I look for a store that has it. If it's not available on any store (this happens frequently - I listen to a lot of underground music) I check on Soundcloud. If it's not on Soundcloud then I'm off to Youtube and favorite it so that I can look for it again at a later date.

My music collection used to be 100% pirated, but when I lost my collection (and backups!) I realised how much good music meant to me. It's worth more than most of my possessions. The issue for many is perceived value - I cannot fathom how someone would happily pay for a beer or some other quick buzz but not for a song that will bring them joy for the rest of their lives.

> Apple [...] can store communications for evermore. And NSA can easily get a copy anytime, via a rubber stamp by a judge in the secret court.

"There are certain categories of information which we do not provide to law enforcement or any other group because we choose not to retain it.

For example, conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data."

https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/

Not untrue, but analogous to saying someone wouldn't have died from a gunshot if the ammunition hadn't been sold. It misses the bit where someone pulled the trigger.

Your post misses a key point:

"WikiLeaks published a lengthy statement on its website Thursday morning, accusing the Guardian of "negligently [disclosing] top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished US diplomatic cables." According to WikiLeaks, the disclosure of the password began months ago when Rusbridger's brother-in-law David Leigh, also the Guardian's investigations editor, learned the password and subsequently published the passwords in his book about WikiLeaks."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/wikileaks-unredac...

http://www.wikileaks.org/Guardian-journalist-negligently.htm...

> Hyperloop is a “cross between a Concorde, a railgun and an air hockey table.”

I'm thinking Wing in Ground Effect [1], where small vehicles are launched to supersonic speeds using electromagnetic slings (and perhaps then use their own power to super-cruise to the destination and eventually decelerate). You wouldn't need much infrastructure - the cost would be in the vehicles and launching mechanisms.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_In_Ground_Effect

Looking forward to your observations. Be sure to post a link if you're going to blog the results.

I've had this discussion with a few vego's. My wife doesn't eat meat because she doesn't like animal suffering or confinement, so she would happily eat lab-grown meat. Yet her sister is disgusted by the texture/taste of meat on top of the suffering/confinement aspect, so the lab-grown meat only removes half of her aversion.

Ultimately comes down to the individual's motive for being a vegetarian, which varies.

> what is so bad about McDonald's? Here in Australia [...]

McDonald's Australia has excellent QA, process management and supply chain. I received some insight through someone...involved in all that good stuff (my background is QA/Environment so I get to meet some interesting people from various industries).

Coworkers from the US all tend to say the same thing after going to an AU McDonald's - great burgers but ~3x the price. It's a different beast in the US where quantity trumps quality.

> the decline in demand for most meat varieties

That doesn't sound right:

https://www.google.com/search?q=meat+consumption&hl=en&#...

If anything, where there's been a slight reduction in one area of consumption (e.g. beef) there's been an increase in another (poultry) with an overall rise in meat consumption.

> economics do not allow those animals to be part of the cycle anymore

Given the incredible size of modern farms, using animals as a source of fertilizer is no longer practical. Meat consumption isn't really part of the equation - livestock require food themselves, so you'd need to grow huge sums just to feed the animals as well as produce enough grain/vegetables for human consumption. If you can artificially produce fertilizer then you remove this bottleneck.

Smaller farms would allow animals to be part of the rotation.

> Eat grass-fed, antibiotic-free beef

Or just eat pastas, lentil based dishes, vegetable curries, soups, or even supplement meat with texturized vegetable protein for faux meat pies, bolognese etc. I'm a meat eater and can't tell the difference.

The vegetarians I know don't eat tofu very often, and would rather eat tofu potentially produced by a notorious company than eat an animal.

Didn't down-vote you BTW, just thought I'd chime in because I know a few veggos, including my wife. It's not bad food I can assure you.

> How is ability of users being able to send each other high-resolution images, HD video etc. going to be worth $50bn+ to economy?

The real technological bottleneck of our time isn't CPU's, GPU's or anything that can be purchased by the end user. Internet speed/latency limitations are what's stifling emerging markets and technologies. Let's have a look at some ideas around the corner, some of them already waiting for fibre to the home...

- OnLive-like game streaming with minimal latency or frame compression - would only require cheap hardware to play super detailed games rendered in the cloud

- OS in the browser/cloud - instant bootup, less hardware dependent, software/file system accessible anywhere

- Streaming 4k high definition video on demand

- Downloading 12Gb+ games on a whim as opposed to walking/driving down to your local JB Hifi or EB Games and paying for the game plus physical materials

These aren't pie in the sky ideas. They'd be here already if we had fibre to the home. Australia will be open to markets that aren't practical elsewhere because of the NBN.

>I hope someone somewhere is documenting all the Bitcoin farming hardware.

>The future people would probably like a nice list of things that people are trying.

I can imagine future "coin" collectors gathering the ancient application-specific hardware that was used to mine bitcoins. "And here we have a 2013-era bitcoin ASIC...quite quaint really. I'd imagine she might be worth around...600 pounds?"

> > "I bought an Android phone to differentiate myself from the superficial drones carrying iPhones."

>

> If they really wanted to be different, they should buy a Windows Phone...

A phone shouldn't be something that defines you as an individual.

> so far I don't see any sign of the kind of leadership that would require.

As of 29 October 2012 - Eddy Cue in charge of maps/cloud services, Craig Federighi in charge of iOS/OSX, Jony Ive in charge of human interface and hardware design. It'll be interesting to see how iOS 7 pans out, because these guys are very good at what they do.

I agree re: faster iteration to keep up with competition, but my point is in line with what was said in the earnings call - Supply of the iPhone 5, ipad Mini and new iMacs was constrained, so they were unable to meet demand. Combine it with a shorter quarter and you can account for a good amount of the shortfall in margin.

> Did anyone see on their balance sheet where it went? Any extraordinary items?

They've introduced new products for every category, so the manufacturing processes are still being refined. As time goes on they should eek more output in a given amount of time with fewer rejects, thus increasing margin.

> What a fascinating and engrossing read. Thanks for sharing.

An amazing, gripping story...and then I read a thread about Who hates on other platforms more - Android fans or Apple fans?

Here's a free idea, assuming it hasn't already been done in some form: In a Twitter-like interface, people with first world problems type in what's bothering them (eg "Didn't get an iPad for Xmas - my parents suck!") and when they hit submit, an algorithm returns either a brief story, picture or video from less fortunate countries that neatly correspond to their problem (eg, picture of a child begging a guard for something to eat).

It would be a great place to help us get over the little things that bother us more than they should. Seems http://www.firstworldproblems.com is already taken.

I'm in Australia and would happily donate a few bucks to NASA from time to time. Anyone who recognises the value of expanding our knowledge of the universe would happily throw a few coppers their way.

> would humidifiers help or hurt?

I'd imagine in humid conditions the pathogens bind with the fine water droplets in the air to form an aerosol, which (I assume) sticks to surfaces more readily whereas in dry conditions the contaminants would remain airborne far longer and stick to the mucosa once inhaled.

As someone who loves playing violent/FPS games, I'd say he's being reasonable. From the article:

In the more than 3,000 words President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden uttered during their nationally televised address today, only 16 dealt with video games in any way. Here are those words, highlighted in the context of the speech:

And while year after year, those who oppose even modest gun safety measures have threatened to de-fund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it. And Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds. We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence.

This section of the speech refers to the fourteenth of 23 proposed executive actions Obama introduced today, regarding an "end [to] the freeze on gun violence research."

> You have your own place to sleep at night, with (nice) furniture.

> You have access to cars!?

> You have access to high speed internet

Let's be fair - relative to the people around him he's abated his consumption of things considerably and relies on services that are shared or transferable. Sure, if he wanted to be super edgy he could live in a mud hut and write code on a paper pad, testing it out whenever he can access the local community center computer. But relative to the people around him, his consumption profile is conservative and doesn't deserve ridicule.

Even if harping on about it is self-indulgent, it is not nearly as bad as the conspicuous consumption and hoarding that so many 1st world citizens take part in.