I'd have to agree with rocco here. I may not be a huge fan of Capitalism, but the fact is that Steve Jobs made a product that people liked, charged a price they were willing to pay for it, and the products were all LUXURIES. It's not like he was holding water ransom for $30 a bottle, for things like this, if you dislike the product or the price, you just don't buy it.

 

Think of it this way. You say he repackaged the MP3 player. Probably true, but in a market driven by competition, people preferred HIS ripoff to the original or any of the other ripoffs and were willing to pay for his over the others. Nothing devious about it, it's exactly how our economy is supposed to work.

 

Yes, but it is still preying on consumer psychology. He just doesn't agree with that. His opinion.

Shrewd businessmen =/= power hungry pigs geared towards hierarchical domination and world control. At least not all the time.

That's not preying on anything.

 

"Do you want to buy this rock?"

 

"That's just a rock from the ground painted red."

 

"Okay, do you want to buy it? $50."

 

People are willing to buy his expensive [cabbage]. He is not preying on them, he is selling a perfectly legitimate product without ever being deceptive.

 

He is preying on the psychology. I don't care, I'm just telling you where he's coming from.

Jobs was a part of a corrupt system -- I don't see any value in denouncing him in this particular context, though. He benefited from an exploitative system; yes, we in the West are seeing this filtered through a very privileged, very western worldview. However, I think I'd rather save these denunciations when we're discussing the exploitative nature of our system writ large rather than pointing to one particular person who succeeded from it.

 

On another aspect of Jobs that I think is going unnoticed but that the generally thoughtful Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, was Jobs' drug use, how it served him, and a critique of the drug war in general:

 

Its fascinating to juxtapose Americas reverence for Steve Jobs accomplishments and its draconian drug policy with this, from the New York Times obituary of Jobs:

 

[Jobs] told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics even people who knew him well, including his wife could never understand.

 

Unlike many people who have enjoyed success, Jobs is not saying that he was able to succeed despite his illegal drug use; hes saying his success is in part in substantial part because of those illegal drugs (he added that Bill Gates would be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once). These quotes (first published by a New York Times reporter) have been around for some time but have been only rarely discussed in the recent hagiographies of Jobs: a notable omission given that he himself praised those experiences as an integral part of his identity and one of the most important things he ever did. A surprisingly good Time Magazine article elaborates on this Jobs-LSD connection further:

 

The paradoxes of love have perhaps never been clearer than in our relationships with Apple products the warm, fleshy desire we feel for such cold, hard, glassy objects. But Jobs knew how to inspire material lust. He knew that consumers want something that not only sparkles and awes, but also feels accessible, easy to use, an object with which we want to merge and to feel one and the same. . . .

 

Not coincidentally, thats how people describe the experience of taking psychedelic drugs. It feels profoundly artificial yet deeply real, both high-tech and earthy-crunchy, human and mystically divine in a word, transcendent. Jobs had this experience. . . . As attested by the nearly spiritual devotion so many consumers have to Jobs creations, the former Apple chief (and indeed many other top technology pioneers) appeared to have found enduring inspiration in LSD. Research shows that the psychedelic experience is, in fact, long lasting: a new study published last week found that people who took magic mushrooms (psilocybin) had long-term personality changes, becoming more open, more curious, more intellectually engaged and more creative. These personality shifts persisted more than a year after taking the drugs.

 

Americas harsh prohibitionist drug policies are grounded in the premise that the prohibited substances have little or no redeeming value and cannot be used without life-destroying consequences. Yet the evidence of its falsity is undeniable. Here is one of the most admired men in America, its greatest contemporary industrialist, hailing one of the most scorned of these substances as integral to his success and intellectual and personal growth. The current President commendably acknowledged cocaine and marijuana use while there is evidence suggesting the prior President also used those substances. One of Americas most accomplished athletes was caught using marijuana at the peak of his athletic achievements. And millions upon millions of American adults have consumed some or many of those criminally prohibited substances, and themselves will say (like Jobs) that they had important and constructive experiences with those drugs or know someone who did.

 

In short, the deceit at the heart of Americas barbaric drug policy that these substances are such unadulterated evils that adults should be put in cages for voluntarily using them is more glaring than ever. In light of his comments about LSD, its rather difficult to reconcile Americas adoration for Steve Jobs with its ongoing obsession with prosecuting and imprisoning millions of citizens (mostly poor and minorities) for doing what Jobs, Obama, George W. Bush, Michael Phelps and millions of others have done. Obviously, most of these banned substances like alcohol, gambling, sex, junk food consumption, prescription drug use and a litany of other legal activities can create harm to the individual and to others when abused (though Americas solution for drug users prison also creates rather substantial harm to the drug user and to others, including their spouses, parents and children: at least as much harm as, and usually substantially more than, the banned drugs themselves). But no rational person can doubt that these substances can also be used responsibly and constructively; just study Steve Jobs life if you doubt that.

 

Full article here: Steve Jobs and drug policy

i love reading your hippy liberal psychedelic drug posts ( as well as "the *entire world is decaying" ones )

Many Jobs have been lost recently, including this one. RIP

You don't need an ipod. Nobody needs an ipod. I have an ipod, why? Because I like ipods and I'm willing to pay $x00 for them. Maybe you aren't, but luckily that doesn't mean [cabbage] because plenty of people are. There are qualities in apple products that make people want to purchase them and make them willing to spend money on them. Is steve jobs preying on these people? No, they can buy a zune if they want. Nobody is stopping them, but they want to buy the ipod.

 

I still can't figure out what the hell is wrong with this. Next time you try to sound edgy please make coherent statements.

 

Because in our current society the view is that we SHOULD keep people from being ignorant and trying to educate and inform them so as to make (hopefully) the best choices. That's why there are (supposedly) safe-guards on banks to limit how much advantage they can take of you, that's why you have to put labels on food products with ingredients and other key information and make commercials saying 'too much this is bad, dont do it'. Going by this logic we should also offer people a better range of alternatives and give them the means (information and knowledge) so as to pick the one that would best suit them for their needs, whatever those may be (and i don't just mean the technical specifications of the product).

 

Now i'm not saying i subscribe to this, or that i'm against it, but wouldn't you agree that, since we have safe-guards in place for other above-mentioned areas of our society, we should also adopt similar measures in the technology industry? It would be sound logic, no?

 

As for Steve Jobs, i don't know much about him and i would like to refrain from making comments on that. Yet i will say that i view his death with indiference at the present time.

They repackaged the MP3 player in a way that people liked. I could sit on a plain blue couch or I could sit on a shiny black leather couch. Ultimately the function is the same but I'd wager that most people would prefer the leather one.

 

For reference the only Apple product I own is an iPhone 3G that I bought 2 months ago for $50.

 

I'd say its more of a comparison of 2 leather couches, one a little shinier than the other.

 

 

I'd have to agree with rocco here. I may not be a huge fan of Capitalism, but the fact is that Steve Jobs made a product that people liked, charged a price they were willing to pay for it, and the products were all LUXURIES. It's not like he was holding water ransom for $30 a bottle, for things like this, if you dislike the product or the price, you just don't buy it.

 

Think of it this way. You say he repackaged the MP3 player. Probably true, but in a market driven by competition, people preferred HIS ripoff to the original or any of the other ripoffs and were willing to pay for his over the others. Nothing devious about it, it's exactly how our economy is supposed to work.

Oh no I'm not disagreeing at all with the way the products are marketed. In fact, I applaud the way Apple got suckers people to buy into the gimmick brand.

Oh no I'm not disagreeing at all with the way the products are marketed. In fact, I applaud the way Apple got suckers people to buy into the gimmick brand.

But I like my iPod :cry:

 

No interest in their computers, tablets, or phones, but the MP3 player is nice.

Oh no I'm not disagreeing at all with the way the products are marketed. In fact, I applaud the way Apple got suckers people to buy into the gimmick brand.

But I like my iPod :cry:

 

No interest in their computers, tablets, or phones, but the MP3 player is nice.

iPod and iPhone are the only products I really like from them. Apple in general are too much of Nazi's when it comes to computers. hell, it's taking me months to locate OSX Leopard drivers for my PC so I can dual boot OSX and see what its like powerwise for what I do WITHOUT blowing $2,500 to test drive. Plus so many people wanted the iPad 2 to have USB. I dont think iPad 3 is even getting it.

 

On that note:

Just before you die, you see your life pass in a Flash. Steve Jobs did not experience that. Apple does not support flash.

Just before you die, you see your life pass in a Flash. Steve Jobs did not experience that. Apple does not support flash.

I actually laughed at that. Well played. :lol:

Heh, another reason I like Apple: gtfo, AT&T and Verizon:

 

Free Texts Pose Threat to Carriers

More than two trillion text messages are sent each year in the United States, generating more than $20 billion in revenue for the wireless industry. Verizon Wireless alone generates as much as $7 billion a year in revenue from texting, or about 12 percent of the total, Mr. Moffett said, and texting brings in about a third of the operating income.

 

Professor [srinivasan] Keshav estimates it costs the carriers about a third of a penny to send text messages. Considering that the major carriers charge 10 to 20 cents to send and receive them, its something like a 4,090 percent markup, he said.

 

At 20 cents and 160 characters per message, wireless customers are paying roughly $1,500 to send a megabyte of text traffic over the cell network. By comparison, the cost to send that same amount of data using a $25-a-month, two-gigabyte data plan works out to 1.25 cents.

 

It looks like Apple has figured out a way to take a huge chunk of Verizon's business and give it back to the people who use iPhones. It couldn't happen to a bigger set of swindlers. I hope Apple confiscates all that business and gives the money back to the people. The mark-up on text messages is nothing less than theft. Imagine, a third of Verizon's operating income is based in a simple crime that Apple can now rectify.

Works the same way as what RIM has already been doing with BBM.

Just before you die, you see your life pass in a Flash. Steve Jobs did not experience that. Apple does not support flash.

I actually laughed at that. Well played. :lol:

It's horrible, but so did I.

Heh, another reason I like Apple: gtfo, AT&T and Verizon:

 

Free Texts Pose Threat to Carriers

More than two trillion text messages are sent each year in the United States, generating more than $20 billion in revenue for the wireless industry. Verizon Wireless alone generates as much as $7 billion a year in revenue from texting, or about 12 percent of the total, Mr. Moffett said, and texting brings in about a third of the operating income.

 

Professor [srinivasan] Keshav estimates it costs the carriers about a third of a penny to send text messages. Considering that the major carriers charge 10 to 20 cents to send and receive them, “it’s something like a 4,090 percent markup,” he said.

 

At 20 cents and 160 characters per message, wireless customers are paying roughly $1,500 to send a megabyte of text traffic over the cell network. By comparison, the cost to send that same amount of data using a $25-a-month, two-gigabyte data plan works out to 1.25 cents.

 

It looks like Apple has figured out a way to take a huge chunk of Verizon's business and give it back to the people who use iPhones. It couldn't happen to a bigger set of swindlers. I hope Apple confiscates all that business and gives the money back to the people. The mark-up on text messages is nothing less than theft. Imagine, a third of Verizon's operating income is based in a simple crime that Apple can now rectify.

 

That's not a crime. That's business. Texting is a luxury; it's not a necessarily. Verizon was started to make money; and they are doing just that. It's called capitalism, nothing more and nothing less.

are you serious ? you'd let people (corporations, companies, anyone really.) [bleep] you in the ass for no reason and just be happy with it , by saying it's out of your control, just live with it ?

 

what's wrong with you, america

are you serious ? you'd let people (corporations, companies, anyone really.) [bleep] you in the ass for no reason and just be happy with it , by saying it's out of your control, just live with it ?

 

what's wrong with you, america

 

No reason? They're making money. That's what they started out to do, and that's what they are doing. I don't see anything wrong with it.

it's a trivial amount but it's still exploitative (it's a complete super profit).

 

you've heard of systematic monopolies and the amount of collusion in this industry, it's ridiculous. by that reasoning, you could come up with a means to justify near anything, limited to making money for money's sake.

People kiss the corporation's asses by using fundamental theories of capitalism in order not to sound like a commie.

 

Production costs for not only Apple products but most products put forth by corporations today are hundreds of percents lower than their retail value.

 

Example:

A iPad made in China costs $30 to produce, $15 to ship. They sell it in America for $500. Realistically, they should be selling at 150-200 (and even that's being generous).

 

But no. Companies are out to make money in "capitalism", and its socially and morally acceptable to sell a product at 1800% profit value. :rolleyes:

 

All corporate products are like that, so don't say we 'had a choice'. The choices are "Yes/No" rather than "Apple/Microsoft/Android/etc" since all corporations do this nowadays.

 

 

 

I AM A SOCIAL ANARCHIST OUT TO DESTROY THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CAPITALISM 'COS I HATE CORPORATIONS TROLOLOLOL

That's rubbish that it only costs $30 to produce! Where is your source for this claim?

 

iSupply (a company who specialise in sourcing materials for mass production) put the bill of materials for the iPhone4 at $187.51 and this doesnt include the cost of actually putting it together, other factory costs or any research and development. [source]. Yes Apple have one of the best supply chains in the world and yes the price above is probably a generous estimate but it's a far cry from the $30 you are claiming. Your percentages and cost estimations are WAYYYYYYYYY out of reality.

That's rubbish that it only costs $30 to produce! Where is your source for this claim?

 

iSupply (a company who specialise in sourcing materials for mass production) put the bill of materials for the iPhone4 at $187.51 and this doesnt include the cost of actually putting it together, other factory costs or any research and development. [source]. Yes Apple have one of the best supply chains in the world and yes the price above is probably a generous estimate but it's a far cry from the $30 you are claiming. Your percentages and cost estimations are WAYYYYYYYYY out of reality.

As I said, it is an example.

 

But how the hell do they make an iPhone 4 at $187 and sell it at $200? I don't believe that iSupply: it's too easy to inflate actual prices and I wouldn't trust a company with the Apple 'i' trademark reporting honest Apple data. :rolleyes:

That's rubbish that it only costs $30 to produce! Where is your source for this claim?

 

iSupply (a company who specialise in sourcing materials for mass production) put the bill of materials for the iPhone4 at $187.51 and this doesnt include the cost of actually putting it together, other factory costs or any research and development. [source]. Yes Apple have one of the best supply chains in the world and yes the price above is probably a generous estimate but it's a far cry from the $30 you are claiming. Your percentages and cost estimations are WAYYYYYYYYY out of reality.

As I said, it is an example.

 

But how the hell do they make an iPhone 4 at $187 and sell it at $200? I don't believe that iSupply: it's too easy to inflate actual prices and I wouldn't trust a company with the Apple 'i' trademark reporting honest Apple data. :rolleyes:

 

It is $200 with a contract. If you were to straight up buy the phone without a plan, it would be almost $500 dollars.

are you serious ? you'd let people (corporations, companies, anyone really.) [bleep] you in the ass for no reason and just be happy with it , by saying it's out of your control, just live with it ?

 

what's wrong with you, america

Yes, how dare someone sell a product that people want at a price they're willing to pay for it.

When you buy a phone with that long contract, it's not just costing the amount you initially pay - you're paying for it over the term of the contract as well.

 

So really, you can't buy an iphone for $200 at all.

Works the same way as what RIM has already been doing with BBM.

Exactly this. BBM has been around for a long time, and then there are also cross-platform apps exactly like this (the name of which completely escapes me at the moment). It's hardly a new idea.

 

There's an interesting article here about him and his less-than-nice side, and then there's the infamous conversation detailed here. He was by no means the nicest of people, and I certainly do not agree with the market plan that Apple has, but he certainly was a great contributor to his field.