I'm noticing a lot of people taking "you should read more about this, here are some book recommendations" as insulting their intelligence.

This is relevant because most USians lack a political education.

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    11 months ago

    products like iPhones and MacBooks are only due to the brilliance of people in the West.

    Apple products all suck. They're interfaces are simplified to the point of being glorified Speak-And-Say machines, and the company hasn't put out anything particularly novel since the iPad (which was already just a malformed iPhone).

    Nothing in the engineering of these products outperforms any other device on the market, from Dell to Samsung to Huawei.

    The only reason Americans think Apple is a good product is the enormous amount of marketing and the dismal state of Microsoft.

    In the US, they skim off stolen land 'earned' by a near complete genocide. Really in what way are they superior?

    I think it's insane how Americans wiped out native peoples, and the native floura and fauna with them, to impose a meaningful worse agricultural system in its place.

    Even setting aside the raw evil of the genocide, wholesale replacement of native buffalo with imported cattle was incredibly foolhardy.

    Nevermind the desolation of the Mississippi River Valley, the draining of the Colorado, and the strip mining of the Atlantic Coast interior. Just enormous amounts of waste created so we could put "profit" on our business ledgers.

    But the devil is in the accounting. How do you convince people that they're being robbed when Big Line Go Up?

    • IzyaKatzmann [he/him]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Completely agree with your comment on Apple devices. My view also includes the absurd amount spent on marketing and sort of anti-marketing usually through the news of non-US products (e.g. Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, etc.)

      I'll say there are likely some genuine innovations by Apple, with as many resources and dollars poured into it, it's hard for there not to be. And much of it seems to be due to acquiring companies that have genuinely interesting technology, e.g. P.A. Semi, Imagination Technologies, etc.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        11 months ago

        there are likely some genuine innovations by Apple, with as many resources and dollars poured into it

        I'll believe it when I see it. But the Apple business model always seemed to be five years behind the curve delivered with polish for a retail market.

        much of it seems to be due to acquiring companies that have genuinely interesting technology, e.g. P.A. Semi, Imagination Technologies, etc.

        Right. They mastered maximizing they're market cap, which gives them cheap financing to monopolize other people's innovations.

        But what they advertise as revolutionary tends to simply be shiny.

        anti-marketing usually through the news of non-US products (e.g. Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, etc.)

        The real innovation is convincing people bleeding edge hardware and phenomenal engineering is cheapo crap.