[Rick Lang]

Franz, I am aware of the extensive problems in Foxconn’s factories. I wasn’t trying to focus on that as much as the assumption that in America, it would be ‘ business as usual’ for Foxconn. Agencies like OSHA are tasked to ensure that doesn’t happen in America. And with Apple’s high profile, it won’t. No problem with your healthy scepticism though. The typical job in a Foxconn plant in the US in which Apple invests allegedly $100,000,000 to get it started will not be comparable to the typical job in Asia (sadly for the Asians).

Stepping back and looking at the many decades of labour markets in my lifetime, from my perspective in Canada which is similar to the US, manufacturing jobs have steadily eroded since the post-war boom into the 60s while different Asian countries have boomed in that regard, When I was young, we knew Japanese made goods were cheap and unreliable but their labour was cheap and over time the products became even superior to what we made in North America (automobiles for example, I drive Japanese cars after giving up on The Big Three car makers in the 70s). But as Japan excelled, them labour moved to South Korea and followed a similar development as Japan, cheap and inferior to begin with but not now. And the latest movement has been to China. Talk about cheap and unreliable, I once bought an vice made in China and the threads stripped about the second time I used it! China was copying everything but the quality. But that’s not true anymore as all countries (Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan) abound in innovation and research today. So much so that we are the ones who can travel to Asia to learn from them.

So I’m not trying to denigrate these Asian giants of industry. Just welcoming some manufacturing jobs to return to North America… It’s a start but we are so far behind now as Tim Cook implied in his interview with Brian Williams. I hope our young people have more opportunities than flipping burgers in a fast food joint as that’s no career. When I was young, opportunity was around every corner, and I’m so grateful for that. Manufacturing is a solid base that can lead to more opportunities of all kinds over time. It’s almost non-existent here in many sectors!

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Sorry for not catching the auto-correction typo: “Fran’s” when I meant to direct the comment to Franz.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Fran’s, I’ve never read digitaltrends.com and after reading that diatribe, I won’t bother reading it again. I have no first hand experience in those factories, but I have read that the suicide rate in the campus factories is less than in the general population. Even one suicide is regrettable, but blogs still need to keep some perspective. All about someone’s agenda and not a well reasoned article at all. For one thing, in the USA, at a minimum employers must meet various standards such as OSHA that would preclude many of the problems that appeared in mainland China. I understand China have standards too but the practise of enforcement is questionable.

There has been conjecture that the number of people employed may be quite small which hardly will compare with the campus conditions in Foxconn’s enormous manufacturing sites in China. And it may be if Foxconn and Apple use this as an opportunity to introduce higher levels of robotics than currently used in much of Asia, the people employed may be spared those mind-numbing suicide-inducing assembly tasks. On a more positive note, given the enormous US manufacturing jobs lost since the Great Economic Downturn, it can only be the start of more good news to come. Tim Cook’s comments on Brian Williams’ Rock Centre were very telling: the problem isn’t the labour cost of manufacturing in the US, it’s the supply of an appropriately well-educated and trained workforce.

Hope my comments didn’t sound too much like the tone of the digitaltrends.com article but the article begs for a response.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Jason Jenkins] “I’m not sure about the Fusion drive. How is this better than a discrete SSD for the OS & applications and a second internal HDD for media?”

Just conjecture until we get more experience with the newest 27″ iMac, and just running the system as you suggest may be perfectly fine. I lean towards the high-end Fusion, 3TB HDD with 128GB SSD (wish it was 256GB for $250), though because it may be the smartest “it just works” disk management option ever (even easier than Time Machine). The OS manages what is on the SSD and what is on the HDD according to its use. Initially on a new system, everything is loaded on the SSD which would be the OS and your applications and other data, but as the demands exceed the capacity, data is loaded to the HDD. Then as data is used by you over time, the rarely used material (including OS and apps) migrates to the HDD and data you use frequently goes from the HDD to the SSD.

Sure it takes some time for the OS to learn what belongs where, but apparently it learns after a couple of accesses to the data. So the OS does potentially a better job than the user would of maximizing performance in the internal system. And you don’t waste too much empty space on the SSD because the OS and your apps only took up 75GB for example.

Of course when we have more experience with the Fusion drive, the theory may have its quirks in practice. If it proves to be a winner, it’s such an elegant way of benefiting from an SSD while retaining high capacity on the iMac’s internal volume. Much better than simply using the SSD/Flash on a hybrid drive as a temporary cache.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

[Martin Curtis] “Franz,

Thanks for your email. Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year. We also updated the current model today.”

Thanks for finding that quote, Martin. It seems a couple of people here didn’t get the e-mail. I’ll grasp at that straw. Coupled with the very long delay on an update and knowing Tim’s not going to mention a Mac line will be Made in the USA, without a couple of years of planning behind the remark, some will risk concluding the Mac Pro line or its replacement will be built in the US.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Maybe a quick update of housekeeping fixes to improve reliability before the next update with feature improvements, FCPX 10.1.0? And I wonder if that will be free or reset the clock and cost everyone $299?

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Marcus Moore:
“It’s complete supposition, but in a way it makes sense. If Apple plans to manufacture an entire line of Apple machines here, it might be the best test of the idea to start with a high margin, low volume product.

That’s the MacPro to a “T”.”

Exactly my thinking when I read that. Because Tim Cook said manufactured, not assembled. Some iMacs are assembled but their volumes are likely too high to take on the risk of exclusive manufacturing of the iMac line in the USA. The Mac Pro or whatever it is has low enough volumes to make it physically possible and high enough margins to make it fiscally responsible. But please Tim, not too high!

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Brett Williams:
“I use air sharing too. But just got my first iPad. I don’t use air display, just read about it.”

Posting this from an iPad4. Tried Air Display last night and it worked well on Aperture as a secondary screen. Both my 27″ iMac and my 23″ Apple Cinema Display have different colour viewing the same image. The iPad’s colour is also different but it’s much closer to perfect than my larger displays… Definitely will use the iPad when colour correcting. The iPad can also be used as the viewer in the video applications. Video colour looked good. Not a professional monitor, but better than what I’ve had to judge colour.

Who knows, someday may even work as a control surface in DaVinci Resolve and FCPX (there’s another thread just started on that topic).

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

At one time Scott Forstall appeared to be groomed to inherit Tim Cook’s CEO role on Tim’s retirement! Explains why he didn’t make an appearance on stage at the latest dog-and-pony show last week.

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB

[Rick Lang]

Cute! Just chatting about the next Mac Pro in another thread!

Rick Lang

iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB