White House Advisor Kudlow Says Apple Technology May Have Been 'Picked Off' by China (cnbc.com) 181
Fred Imbert, writing for CNBC: Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday that Apple's technology may have been stolen by the Chinese. "I don't want to surmise too much here, but Apple technology may have been picked off by China and now China is becoming very competitive with Apple. You've got to have rule of law," Kudlow said in an interview with Bloomberg. "There are some indications from China that they're looking at that, but we don't know that yet. There's no enforcement; there's nothing concrete." Kudlow's comments came shortly after China's Commerce Ministry said Chinese and U.S. officials will meet next week to discuss trade. Both countries have been engaged in a trade spat for months that has sent ripples through global markets. John Gruber at DaringFireball comments: I think what he's saying here is that the Chinese stole Apple technology, copied it, and are now flooding the Chinese market with phones based on that stolen tech. I'm 99.8 percent certain that hasn't happened -- if there were Chinese phones built with stolen Apple technology we'd know it because we'd see it.
Apple technology (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple technology!!!
Ahahaha that's so funny! Now the Chinese can round their corners add notches to screens and remove headphone jacks and extra mouse buttons!
Apple bought their tech (Score:2)
that's the joke. the guy is so out of it and doesn't understand what goes into a mobile phone.
"Apple tech", well, you could at least specify what technology is there that's unique to Apple then. How do you steal something you're selling and licensing? like an arm soc - arm holdings licenses it, chinese pay for license and put it on a cheapo chip they put on a phone - where in that scenario is there anything stolen off apple?
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Apple doesn't have the fastest hardware. They leapfrog each other regularly. Their OS and the thermal design of the devices lets them use the hardware much more efficiently than the competitors, however.
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1: They were handed 40 years of engineering by ARM and Imagination Technologies.
2: They didn't invent facial recognition software, and adding poop-emojis doesn't make it an invention.
3: Remember "The Fappening"? It wasn't some guy who made phonecalls to 200 pretty celebrity girls, it was someone who had unrestricted access to iCloud and could search and view all user data.
4: Just regular cryptography.
5: Just regular cryptography.
6: Apple do not build their own phones, Foxconn do.
7: That's not an Apple techn
Re: Apple technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Apple technology (Score:1)
yeah, that makes sense. one of the richest companies in the world is actually being driven out of business because the chinese government is subsidizing knock-offs of their cheaply manufactured toys which obviously must be being produced at a loss, because apple would never rip off its customers with bloated prices
are you awake
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A Chinese company has to, by their law, have Chinese government employees and Party members as part of the decision making company board. It would be equal to having a DHS/CIA/NSA employee on every US company's board and who has the deciding authority about everything.
If you do a venture on Chinese soil, China has to own 51% of the venture, or you go to prison.
So, where Chinese companies go, so does the Chinese intelligence, Chinese military, and Chinese government.
Re: Apple technology (Score:1)
Re: Apple technology (Score:2)
If you think China is ultra capitalist, you should read Hayak to understand what capitalism looks like.
Build something in a country (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Build something in a country (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Build something in a country (Score:1)
Chinese people are allowed to crack software. It is not illegal for them crack foreign software. China advances.
Americans are brutally punished for cracking anything. America falls back.
It's almost like it's logical or something.
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Apple certainly does not build any of the manufacturing tech. China does. China hasn't stole anything as far as how to turn a brick of aluminum into a sleek phone, they are the ones that posses that technology. Apple makes a design, emails it over to their producer in china and they use their Chinese developed manufacturing techniques to make it. Upload the file to the CNC machine, out comes something that fits within the design limitations of the CNC. At best apple can claim trademark theft by using a simi
Re:Build something in a country (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to build things isn't the issue. That's fine. As is learning to design those things after building enough of them. That's fine too.
But if they have a contract in place that stipulates that the parts are to be built exclusively for the client and the designs are to remain confidential, there's a problem if they start building the parts for other clients (including themselves) or sharing the designs with anyone else.
To draw an analogy, it's fine if a contractor knows how to build homes. It's fine if they eventually learn how to design their own homes after building enough of them. But if your general contractor steals your custom home's blueprints and sells them to a developer who builds a neighborhood of copycat houses right next to yours, that's not fine.
I don't know what's being alleged here, but it seems evident to me that they aren't simply talking about China learning how to manufacture and design stuff on their own.
Re:Build something in a country (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to build things isn't the issue. That's fine. As is learning to design those things after building enough of them. That's fine too.
But if they have a contract in place that stipulates that the parts are to be built exclusively for the client and the designs are to remain confidential, there's a problem if they start building the parts for other clients (including themselves) or sharing the designs with anyone else.
To draw an analogy, it's fine if a contractor knows how to build homes. It's fine if they eventually learn how to design their own homes after building enough of them. But if your general contractor steals your custom home's blueprints and sells them to a developer who builds a neighborhood of copycat houses right next to yours, that's not fine.
I don't know what's being alleged here, but it seems evident to me that they aren't simply talking about China learning how to manufacture and design stuff on their own.
Yeah, except you left out the part where you know that contractor you just did a deal with has stolen designs from 50 other designers and you still decide to do business with them anyways, and then act surprised when they steal your design too. Gee, who would have guessed that would happen?!?
At least... (Score:1)
Hahahahha
Re:Build something in a country (Score:4, Informative)
The whole world will learn how to build it as soon as you release it, because everyone can disassemble it and a lot of the parts of off-the-shelf or explained in patents.
These days Apple learns as much from China anyway.
For a start designing any product is as much an exercise in figuring out how to mass produce it as it is engineering the features. And since Foxconn builds Apple products for them they likely learned a lot from Foxconn and took their lead on a lot of the design decisions. Every time a new material or new way of assembling something is introduced, you can bet that it was Foxconn that did a lot of the R&D, quite possibly even originated the idea.
Of course that's completely normal with US companies too. For example the touch wheel on the iPod was invented by Synaptec, they just couldn't find anyone interested in buying it until Apple came along.
Modern Chinese smart phones often introduce features before Apple does, and Apple copies them. Wireless charging, for example, became a staple of Chinese high end phones long before Apple adopted it. Dual cameras too, although Korea gets some credit there as well.
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Is there anything the Chinese could do that you wouldn't condone?
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Their human rights record, their massive surveillance state, censorship, inequality, forced relocations... Loads of stuff.
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Of course China stole Apple technology (Score:4, Insightful)
do the China phones have rounded corners? Yeah? Well there you go.
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While Android was in development before iOS. When Apple released the iPhone, Google had to go back and completely rejigger its OS to meet demand of the Gesture based OS.
Before the iPhone, Gesture were a Gimmick, and often they were way to hard for people to remember, so they resorted to pressing buttons. Android OS was meant to go against Blackberry with devices with full keyboards and physical pointing devices. Apple when they released the iPhone actually put the smart phone market on a 2 year gap where
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Before the iPhone, Gesture were a Gimmick
Except for the millions of Palm Pilot [wikipedia.org] users.
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I had a laptop with gesture trackpad back in the 90s. Turned them off though, because tapping too near one corner kept opening the start menu.
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And today's and yesterday's (Pick any reasonably complex software) is a hellstew of bugs and bad design.
As a consumer you need to find the product that sucks less for what you will be doing the most of.
But when you design software and its scope of use will expand, the more doors are open where you need to either break architecture causing bugs, or try to use the existing architecture in different ways causing a bad design.
We can all look at a completed product find its problems and come up with a solution t
a classic poem is warranted (Score:1)
Me Chinese
Exploit SOCKS
Me Put Malware
On your box
What technology, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Could he maybe offer some specifics? Exactly what is is that China is being accused of stealing? A claim this lacking in detail is suspiciously non-falsifiable.
Re:What technology, exactly? (Score:4, Informative)
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You can pick off your nose.
You can pick off your friends.
But you cannot pick off your friend's nose.
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C'mon, this is Larry Kudlow. His previous position was talking head on some network. It isn't like he's qualified for anything. Blinky lights confuse him.
Re:What technology, exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, come on, how bad can it be? I know nothing about they guy but I'm sure he has some talents. Let's check Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Wow! That was hilarious! One ridiculous statement after the other. Best summed up by this paragraph:
In their 2015 book Superforecasting, University of Pennsylvania political scientist Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner refer to Kudlow as a "consistently wrong" pundit, and use Kudlow's long record of failed predictions to clarify common mistakes that poor forecasters make
The plus side of incompetence (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd be much more worried about a White House advisor spouting nonsense if we had a White House that actually listened to advice.
With this administration, if the Big T himself didn't say it, its just meaningless noise. And sometimes even if he DID say it.
Hypocritical FUD (Score:2)
oh.. yeah, then they don't need to go the more obscure way [theintercept.com].
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Here's the evidence [bbc.com].
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Maybe you are the one having reading difficulty. The first sentence said:
German media reports suggest the country's spy agency BND collected data on European firms at the behest of the US National Security Agency.
And in NYT link of the Intercept report:
In each of these cases, American officials insist, when speaking off the record, that the United States was never acting on behalf of specific American companies. But the government does not deny it routinely spies to advance American economic advantage, which is part of its broad definition of how it protects American national security. In short, the officials say, while the N.S.A. cannot spy on Airbus and give the results to Boeing, it is free to spy on European or Asian trade negotiators and use the results to help American trade officials — and, by extension, the American industries and workers they are trying to bolster.
So the differences are
1. some Chinese companies may spy on American companies; some of them may be state-owned. All of above are according to some US agencies who also told us that Iraq had WMDs. (Also note: "state-owned" in China is no more relevant than the US Treasure holding huge amount of shares in GM.)
2. whereas the US agencies are spying on Chinese and European business as a government ope
How would you know (Score:4, Insightful)
China builds Apple's phones. There was no "theft" necessary. Apple taught them how to build the phones.
I assume what's in question here is "Is China building iPhones and selling them in China without giving Apple a cut?"
That's an entirely different question, but quite plausible.
As for DaringFireball's later comment: How would you know? If they technically are iPhones flooding the Chinese market they wouldn't look like "fake knockoffs" because they technically aren't. But if Apple isn't selling the phones or getting any cut then there's still shady activity going on.
Re:How would you know (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How would you know (Score:5, Informative)
About ten years ago I bought a Prada-labelled shoulder bag in Vietnam for $10 from a street vendor. When I got it back to NY I asked around and it sold for around $400. Not only is it indistinguishable from the real thing, it IS the real thing. It's what I call a "real fake." As described above, the factory gets an order for 5000 of these bags, makes 6000 and sells 1000 out the back door. There is no difference between those 1000 and the other 5000. Did this happen in China with iPhones? Has Apple complained about it? Because they would surely know.
I read a book some years ago on the many pitfalls of doing business in China. Issues raised included:
- Selling unauthorized overproduction runs as you described
- Making unauthorized changes to the product design or materials to make manufacturing cheaper. There were multiple cases cited where the product changes produced unsafe or defective products that cost the product owners dearly
- Duplicating the product under another label and competing with the original
The Chinese government has little incentive to crack down on such practices.
Re:How would you know (Score:4, Interesting)
All those things happen in the west as well. And those responsible go out of business eventually, because they get a bad rep. Then they try to start again with a different name, but eventually people caught on.
These days if you want high quality, secure manufacturing in China it's available. You might pay a bit more for it. Up to you, go with the cheapest or go with a reputable manufacturer. Do you think Foxconn has 3rd shifts making iPhones?
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No instant way to legally set up a new factory in the "West" with the same look and feel of the tech for export.
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Substitutions for inferior parts definitely happen. One place I worked we ended up buying components ourselves and sending them to the manufacturer, because every time we asked any of the several we used to source some expensive, rare bits they ended up with fakes and nothing worked.
We even ended up having to specify certain fluxes and solders and reflow ovens because otherwise they would switch to the cheap stuff after a while and quality would go through the floor.
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- Duplicating the product under another label and competing with the original
Pfft. Product? Amateurs. China has been caught duplicating entire companies [eetimes.com]
Not only that, but they expanded the companies they counterfeited. Did you know NEC made DVD players? NEC didn't know. But apparently they did and they were designed in a subsidiary that they never knew existed.
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Apple would easily know when the phone needs the next update or any other interaction with the Apple servers.
Phones are no Prada handbags: they need constant service after manufacture. I'm certain almost every chip in every apple device has a unique serial which apple can and does query everytime they phone home for updates, icloud sync, appstore access, etc. There is no way anyone can sell more phones than apple knows. Serials which apple hasn't given out would stand out like a sore thumb, and double seria
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PS: Samsung or TSMC would need to be "in on it" too since they need to make the additional SoCs. Even more fallout, this time Korea or Taiwan. And they need to use those SoCs or the buyers of the IPhones couldn't use it as an IPhone: no iCloud/Appstore/ITunes access.
Re:How would you know (Score:4, Insightful)
I worked for a company that bought out an other company including all its IP. The owner of the bought out company quit (because he didn't realize when you get bought out, you are no longer in command of such company). Being fed up he used his money he got from the purchase to start his own company. Then he used the software he wrote for the previous company which we now own. We sued him, we won.
Now if he had written a new program then he would be OK. But the software that we bought the rights too. Thus he went bankrupt, and we got all our money back that was the cost of the company to be purchased.
Just because you made it, doesn't make it yours. If you sell it, or get paid to build it for someone else, it belongs to them not you, they paid you for it, so it is no longer yours.
What is yours though, is the experience gained in making it, so you will be on good footing to make something new, possibly better.
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Note to self: Always sell a company with the buggy version of the software. Keep the good stuff for the new venture.
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Well the guy thought he was all that. A super genius Business man and programmer because he wrote an Application in Visual Basic.
While he was still employed at the company, we knew about his ego, so we all kinda played dumb with him, during the period of knowledge transfer. So his ego, with us playing to it, just so we can get the information much quicker from him, he just thought we were idiots. He thought he could get away with saying he was running with an older version of the software without any ways
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Chances are Foxconn taught Apple as much about making phones as Apple taught Foxconn. They are hardly new to this game. In fact they have been designing products for western companies to slap their names on for decades.
As for fake iPhones, there is no need. Go to Shenzhen and wonder around the massive shopping centres that are nothing but people with rework stations refurbing phones, mostly Apple ones. If you want a cheap iPhone X they will sell you one that has had whatever was wrong with it fixed, in mint
Re: How would you know (Score:2)
I think what Gruber is talking about are things like the processor tech or the Face ID system. We would be seeing more phones with guts more like Apple's and more secure facial recognition. We already know that they're apeing the look and feel of iPhones, and they seem to catch up to the tech (fast fingerprint sensors, dot projectors) on a timeline that suggest they copied the idea but didn't actually lift the manufacturing process.
Apple only have themselves to blame (Score:1)
The innovativeness of Apple's "technology" notwithstanding (I can't see rounded corners and annoying notches being a particularly special USP), if the Chinese stole it, Apple had it coming: they wanted to build cheap, they played with cheap Chinese suppliers, and they've been had. If you stick your head in the mouth of a lion, don't be surprised if you get a headache...
Re: Apple only have themselves to blame (Score:1)
Which tech? (Score:2)
Did they make another BSD fork [wikipedia.org] or are they switching to an x86-based architecture? [wikipedia.org]
My cat probably knows more about economics... (Score:3)
... than Larry Kudlow.
Apple's problem is that they think everyone on the planet has $1000+ to spend on a phone every couple of years.
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those bastards!! (Score:1)
now the Chinese will have phones without headphone jacks!!!
-db
It's not Apple's technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the median income in China is 18,371 Yuan, or roughly $2,674 per year. You're kidding yourself if you believe the Chinese would be buying $1000 iPhones if it weren't for the availability of cheap knockoffs.
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If you're familiar with the Chinese income distribution, why are you quoting the median, rather than the percentile and the nominal number of people, who have incomes well north of $30,000 per year, and can afford to purchase an iPhone? Most Americans would be surprised at the raw number compared with the number of US citizens at the same earning level.
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Most americans want to pretend China is an economic wasteland, and they are years ahead of them.. They prefer this comfortable feeling instead of reality.
"
Who Has the World's No. 1 Economy? Not the U.S.
By most measures, China has passed the U.S. and is pulling away.
"
https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com]
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The only parts Apple makes are the A10 processor and the software
Maybe, but "the software" is a huge part of a phone. All those people pricing the components of iPhones and then ridiculing people for paying much more for the device are missing this same point. There's a huge amount of R&D and work in the software. Sure, Google gives Android away for free ... but it's really funded by end-user consumption of Google ads. Smartphone OSes cost serious money and end-users have some choice in how they pay for them, though I guess most people don't realise this.
All th
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The only parts Apple makes are the A10 processor
The A10 is made by TSMC. Apple designed it, but they do not make them.
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Also, the median income in China is 18,371 Yuan, or roughly $2,674 per year. You're kidding yourself if you believe the Chinese would be buying $1000 iPhones if it weren't for the availability of cheap knockoffs.
The median income in a country of 1bn people many of which are 3rd world is not very interesting. Based on telecom activation figures there are only 100million activated iPhones in China, not all of them current, not all of them top of the line. They are very much toys for the rich.
That said there's a lot to choose from in the iPhone lookalike category, but this all has zero to do with "stealing technology" as much as it is buying the same screen and camera module and throwing it in a case and slapping Andr
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The sealed battery design. CPU, GPU, storage use. Battery time. The ability to make a new production line work with less workers, robots
Thats the US design skill that set advanced and new US designs apart from the existing generations of smartphones and flip phones.
Thats all US tech that gets transferred out when seeking low cost nations.
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ARM does not make any CPUs. They have the design for them and license it out, for someone else to fab. In fact, Apple does its own silicon.
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ARM does not make any CPUs. They have the design for them and license it out, for someone else to fab. In fact, Apple does its own silicon.
I believe that ARM does have some engineering samples fabbed for development purposes. But nothing that is commercialized by any means.
Re: It's not Apple's technology (Score:1)
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Apple bought Freescale many years ago... engineers and all. Apple soc are based on Freescale technology.
I am aware of that. I was just pointing out that I believe that ARM does manufacture some CPUs, at least in the same sense the AMD manufactures them.
Re: It's not Apple's technology (Score:1)
Re:It's not Apple's technology (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is not making anything at all, especially not any chips. They don't have fabs.
The main chips for i-devices are made by TSMC and Samsung, no one else.
They are designed by PA Semi an Apple subsidiary or maybe it is incorporated fully into Apple now.
PA Semi designs custom ARM chips, they don't use the normal cortex A8 A53 or A73 designs from ARM at all. They start with the ARM v8 ISA and from there on, they do everything in their own way. And generally much much better than ARM itself, of course the chips are also quite huge and therefore expensive to manufacture compared to any ARM design. They are however always faster/better than the ARM ones. A current A12 Bionic chip from Apple is about the same size as a current Intel Quadcore CPU, 122mm^2.
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Huawei also designs their own chips like the Kirin processor line.
Re: It's not Apple's technology (Score:1)
The situation is really grave. (Score:2)
If China figures out how to make people pay premium prices for its crappy products we are doomed!
It is time we replace Sam Walton as the ultimate traitor of the USA, Benedict Arnold is nothing compared to this rat. Exported the manufacturing technology, taught them how to make products that could be sold in USA. Single handedly changed th
Re:The situation is really grave. (Score:4, Informative)
Old Sam didn't do what you think he did. When he ran the company it prioritized american made products.
When Sam handed the company to his kids is when the made in china takeover happened. His kids had been raised with a silverspoon in their mouths and had no concept of american patriotism. Much like the current president.
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Profits stayed in US of A.
that isnt accurate either.. The profits stay overseas so Apple can avoid paying US taxes, while maximizing US benefits they receive (patents, etc).
Kudlow's a Shyster (Score:1)
Another idiotic comment from an corporate, know-nothing shill. Some excellent quotes from Kudlow just to show how out of touch he has been with economic reality:
“Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas, the resilient U.S. economy continues moving ahead,” Kudlow wrote on Dec. 7, 2007, in National Review.
“There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen,” wrote Kudlow. “ ... The Bush boom is alive and well. It
Re: Kudlow's a Shyster (Score:1)
The greedy corporations gave it all to the China (Score:3, Interesting)
We've been outsourcing US work to China.
This means the greedy US corporations built factories in China, exploited the cheap labor and showed China how to
make product X, Y and Z. Now the greedy US corporations are surprised that China knows our technology.
This concept is best explained by Jib Jab's Big Boxmart video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKv6RcXa2UI
In essence, US corporate greed created their own competitor.
No, China has not! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe if Apple's development environment didn't suck so bad people could make some innovative apps for it specifically, but Xcode is shit, Swift has trivial but breaking changes every single year, and Apple's down documentation is littered with old objective-c code and warnings like "this document is no longer updated go here for a newer version" which just points to a list of methods and absolutely nothing else. It sucks so fucking much. Apple is clearly horrible at software.
I think we are making the wrong assumptions here (Score:1)
From all the comments here, everyone has been assuming this is about the iPhone or other mobile products. But Apple has it's fingers into other areas too.
So, is it really far fetched that the statement is false? Especially seance their already has been arrests.
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Re: (Score:2)
From Larry Kudlow we can fairly assume the statement is false. He's on par with economics in the same way a brick is on par with the Sargasso Sea (to rework a Douglas Adams' metaphor).
Cold War feelings... (Score:2)
rule of greed (Score:2)
No, it's the rule of greed that says send your work to countries with cheap labour and maximise profits.
Japan did the same thing years ago, they learned fast how to do it better than the fucking Yanks.
Now China is doing it on a vastly different scale.
They are going to fuck us over so bad we'll have a new appreciation of what our arses are for.
Now just bend over and take it like a man.
Microsoft says... (Score:2)
How this could have been avoided (Score:2)
Make a deal with the governments for union free, low tax, low cost workers.
Such pro West nations would have kept all US secrets and produced great export products for generations.
Making Up a Story to Deflect from the Trade War (Score:3)
In addition to it being peak Apple there is a backlash against things American since Trump decided to start his winnable trade war with China. The iPhone is no longer the status symbol it was six months ago. The Chinese brands, which typically use Android, are seeing a huge surge of interest, especially Huawei.
It wasn't that long ago that the US Government came out with the "report" that Huawei's telecom gear had backdoors in it but they couldn't say what it was. So far Germany has only come out and called their bluff. The other day Apple comes out with a warning about China and Trump's Trade War impacting their upcoming results. So now the White House comes out with a vague statement about China stealing Apple's technology. This is all a smokescreen to get you to forget about the damage that the trade war is causing but there's going to be a bunch of other companies with disappointing financial reports soon because Trump doesn't know the first thing about economics.
And they can throw a LOT of engineers at it. (Score:2)
if you produce everything in China... of cource they will have the tech to make it and even improve or make similar products.
And they can throw a literal army of engineers at it: Reverse-engineering anything you didn't tell them about your stuff, then fixing bugs, adding bells and whistles, and eventually pushing out the core functionality to advance the bleeding edge.
Individually they may not average as good as US engineers (though many of them are quite competent). But suppose they're only a third as ef