"Capitalism made your iPhone"

[Kozmos]

It's not really an iPhone if you're not running an Apple SOC and iOS. Being able to stamp out a shell doesn't really help with sourcing top-end NAND chips that run on Apple's in-house SSD controller, OLED screens, etc.

This is quite an exaggeration. If you had technical expertise you certainly could make a product line of smartphones on the cheap. You could also could a quite cheap finished smartphone. You could also get parts for some workable but not very good homebrew stuff. But no, you're not going to be able to make an iPhone. (you might be able get a contract manufacturer to run a ghost shift on some smart phone lines but not for a heavy hitter like apple or samsung)

*shrugs* I haven't benchmarked the clone phones of my Shenzen dwelling friends, but they tell me anything can be obtained if you know where to look and who for. The business climate in China is very accommodating if you're white and come bearing gifts. I'm inclined to believe them from my experience with a certain Taiwanese firm.

 

[Lexicus]

And yes, a commie with an iPhone is highly ironic and a ready-made joke.

"Those farm implements you peasants are using to overthrow your lords were made under feudalism!"

Labor made my iPhone. Capitalism stole it.

Yeah, I agree with this, but people we call "capitalists" did contribute in a real sense to the production of iPhones.

 

[Perfection]

*shrugs* I haven't benchmarked the clone phones of my Shenzen dwelling friends, but they tell me anything can be obtained if you know where to look and who for. The business climate in China is very accommodating if you're white and come bearing gifts. I'm inclined to believe them from my experience with a certain Taiwanese firm.

There's plenty of knockoff smartphones and I'm sure some of them are of reasonable quality. But they're not iPhones in terms of hardware or software.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

Only a fraction of the total value-added of an iPhone comes from China

I do not know what you're talking of. A quick googling gives this:

"$649 iPhone 7 estimated to cost Apple ~$220, here’s the component breakdown"

And of course these $220 could be broken down even further for each part. Taiwanese and other capitalists have their share also.

which of course is communist in name only

Of course China is communist, because it is led by a communist party following the communist ideology and aimed to build communism in the long-term.

Communism compared to capitalism has a clear scientific definition. That is why you can try to call any communist country not being communist.

Capitalism has a lot of unclear and politicised definitions. That is why you can praise top capitalist countries focusing on the wellbeing of their people and set them against communist ones totally ignoring how this wellbeing comes from a history of numerous heavily incorporated socialist principles and the need of capitalism to compete with communists to evade regime change.

 

[Ferocitus]

A commie with an iPhone is no commie, just a clown.

There are many ways to get an iphone, comrade.
IIRC, the Beatles sang about it in a song they took from some other guys...

The best things in life are free,
But only if you steal them from the bourgeoisie!

 

[caketastydelish]

Capitalism made your iPhone. Communism made your Andriod. Fascism made your Windows phone.

 

[luiz]

"Those farm implements you peasants are using to overthrow your lords were made under feudalism!"

So commies are using their overpriced hipster toys to overthrow capitalism! I'm sure the capitalists are scared now!

Coming next: Snapchat, the Swiss army knife of the modern revolutionary!

 

[Lexicus]

So commies are using their overpriced hipster toys to overthrow capitalism! I'm sure the capitalists are scared now!

Coming next: Snapchat, the Swiss army knife of the modern revolutionary!

Yes, good, this is a better joke and actually to the point.

 

[civvver]

I can't agree with anyone who doesn't think iphone is the best. Have you actually used multiple phones? Sure there are some annoying things about iphone like the closed architecture of it, everything you load has to go through the app store. For example my company made a companion app for one of our software products. It's software that performs long ac fill tests so we made a monitor where I wrote the client side stuff to upload real time data to a web restful service, then someone else wrote an app that pulls it down. I still think we should've done peer to peer but whatever. Anyway, we have an iphone and android version. To debug the android version you just copy new files to the phone, which we could do before we even had a google account. To do the ios version we had to register our apple dev account, register our company and software, then we have to upload files to a dev app store and point our phone at it and then download the dev software. I don't even know if that's all the steps since I didn't do it, the point is it's a giant pain the butt to develop apps for. Oh and you need emulators to run ios or a mac with their sdks and to compile it for final version you definitely need mac os. It's all very annoying but that's apple, tight control and they make a lot of money that way cus they get a cut everywhere.

But for a user that experience is all streamlined and easy. Everything goes through app store. Everything just works. Most apps I need are preloaded. Interface is intuitive. I love using my iphone. And cost wise they aren't much more or about the same as the top end galaxys. I do think they are overpriced, but dropping into the sub $400 market the phones are mostly crap. If you really want to save money you need to buy a used iphone. You can probably get a used iphone 7 right now for $500 or so and then were $700 new.

Actually the iphone 5s was a great phone, I had one until last winter. My only issue with it was lack of space, and I know the 16gb used version of that is like $150. So if you don't keep photos forever or use tons of apps that would be another option.

 

[warpus]

I think it is about time we stopped calling these things "phones"

 

[innonimatu]

They're just another miniaturization of computers. Even the iphone vs. android kind of replays the apple vs. intel architectures. And, just like personal computers, they've gone past "good enough" already.

Not being particularly environmentalist-minded, I still kind of fret at the amount of resources we're using to build electronic junk, from smartphones to datacenters. Mostly for building virtual worlds, virtual everythings to escape into.

 

[warpus]

I mean, they're not phones anymore, let's just call them tricorders or I don't know, why didn't Steve Jobs come up with something good before he died?

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

iPhones are over-priced, have bad battery time, lost their past quality of assembling and purity of interface. Xiaomi is an excellent alternative.

iPads are the best tablets in the niche of true mobile devices, which do not try to be desktops in a pocket. The best desktop in a pocket is Prestigio Visconte V.

 

[Zelig]

iPhones [...] have bad battery time, lost their past quality of assembling [...]

That simply isn't true. They don't have the battery life of niche phones with huge batteries, but they have class leading efficiency in both hardware and software on nearly every front. Pretty much their only weakness is in the display of predominantly-dark content, compared to phones with OLED screens, and that's likely to be rectified next month.

iPhones are over-priced, [...] lost their [...] purity of interface.

That's a matter of opinion. From the PoV of a (hypothetical) consumer, I think iPhones are overpriced, but from the PoV of a (hypothetical) shareholder, I don't think Apple charges enough for them. From the PoV of a technical enthusiast, they're priced pretty competitively with their competition.

Xiaomi is an excellent alternative.

Not if you value security. If you value security, your only real options are iPhone or Pixel devices. (Possibly Nokia 8 or Essential phone in the future, but I wouldn't recommend until they have a proven track record of delivering prompt updates.)

(Furthermore, Xiaomi/Huawei/Oppo/etc. are mostly not a good alternative in North America due to missing LTE bands for high performance anyway.)

 

[civvver]

They're just another miniaturization of computers. Even the iphone vs. android kind of replays the apple vs. intel architectures. And, just like personal computers, they've gone past "good enough" already.

Not being particularly environmentalist-minded, I still kind of fret at the amount of resources we're using to build electronic junk, from smartphones to datacenters. Mostly for building virtual worlds, virtual everythings to escape into.

That's not really true. PCs were something you could build at home so the open architecture of intel was needed. It was kind of revolutionary at the time. Remember when ibm bios and other bios were closed? Programmers needed different ports to run on basically every brand of computer. The open architecture was a huge leap forward, only apple clung to their proprietary stuff and got left behind.

With phones it's a little different, for one apple has provided easier ways to develop and port code for ios. It's not like writing two completely different applications anymore. And two people don't need open hardware as much as you aren't able to go build this stuff at home and it doesn't need to be as accessible. Operating systems port between each other a lot more easily now.

And computers are doing a lot more than just virtual worlds. The next big leap in human development is going to be problems solving AI. AI will be doing all sorts of things from trying to map the human genome to discovering medicines to economic models we just can't do today. So it's not just virtual worlds, it's going to spill over into the real world and greatly increase quality of life for billions of people, just like computers have already done.

That simply isn't true. They don't have the battery life of niche phones with huge batteries, but they have class leading efficiency in both hardware and software on nearly every front. Pretty much their only weakness is in the display of predominantly-dark content, compared to phones with OLED screens, and that's likely to be rectified next month.
That's a matter of opinion. From the PoV of a (hypothetical) consumer, I think iPhones are overpriced, but from the PoV of a (hypothetical) shareholder, I don't think Apple charges enough for them. From the PoV of a technical enthusiast, they're priced pretty competitively with their competition.
Not if you value security. If you value security, your only real options are iPhone or Pixel devices. (Possibly Nokia 8 or Essential phone in the future, but I wouldn't recommend until they have a proven track record of delivering prompt updates.)

(Furthermore, Xiaomi/Huawei/Oppo/etc. are mostly not a good alternative in North America due to missing LTE bands for high performance anyway.)

In total agreement. I just don't get the iphone bashers, they aren't even discussing the annoying things about iphone. I feel like they have never used one before.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I love my iPhone!

 

[Kozmos]

Not if you value security. If you value security, your only real options are iPhone or Pixel devices. (Possibly Nokia 8 or Essential phone in the future, but I wouldn't recommend until they have a proven track record of delivering prompt updates.)

(Furthermore, Xiaomi/Huawei/Oppo/etc. are mostly not a good alternative in North America due to missing LTE bands for high performance anyway.)

What about Blackphones and such?

 

[Zelig]

What about Blackphones and such?

Silent Circle is probably out of the phone business, Blackphone was a financial disaster.

 

[innonimatu]

And computers are doing a lot more than just virtual worlds. The next big leap in human development is going to be problems solving AI. AI will be doing all sorts of things from trying to map the human genome to discovering medicines to economic models we just can't do today. So it's not just virtual worlds, it's going to spill over into the real world and greatly increase quality of life for billions of people, just like computers have already done.

I think you will be sorely disappointed. That AI has been just a few [months, years] away since the 60s. Order the computer to solve a problem for you... it's bad science fiction. You will continue to have to actually program for whatever you need to solve and needing some human to do it. Especially (but not only) because defining the problem is usually the most difficult thing.

 

[Ryika]

Especially (but not only) because defining the problem is usually the most difficult thing.

Indeed.

The thing about self-learning AIs is that the process of creating such an AI almost seems trivial when compared to the problem of feeding such an AI with a "real life problem". How would we condense a problem that we need a solution for into a problem-solving machine? We most certainly can't enter all constants of existence, so just simulating the problem like we do with current-generation "self-learning AIs" is out of the question.

And even then... 42 is not a very satisfying answer to whatever question we pose, so that's the next problem, how would we read the solutions that we're offered?