Apple's cool is no liberal triumph

[meegbear]

In the context of today's absurdly overheated culture wars, I am inclined to be sympathetic to technology blogger Anil Dash's effort to prove that "liberal values" are not "bad for business" by citing the success of Apple. After noting that the iPhone-maker is "the unequivocal leader in innovation, design, branding and now valuation," Dash provides a capsule description of the man who "bears the lion's share of the credit" for Apple's triumph: Steve Jobs.

He's the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock. He's a non-Christian, arugula-eating, drug-using follower of unabashedly old-fashioned liberal teachings from the hippies and folk music stars of the 60s. And he believes in science, in things that science can demonstrate like climate change and Pi having a value more specific than "3", and in extending responsible benefits to his employees while encouraging his company to lead by being environmentally responsible.

In his post, Dash neglects to point to a particular liberal-values bashing source, which makes it a little difficult to understand the motivation for the sudden attempt to reclaim business for progressivism, even if we grant that there are plenty of conservatives who do believe that peace and love equals bankruptcy. And sure, on the basis of such personal attributes, Steve Jobs helps to refute "the falsehood that liberal values are somehow in contradiction with business success at a global scale. " But is Apple, the company, really all that great an example of "inclusive, creative, tolerant values"? One could just as easily argue that Apple's ability to play the game of cutthroat capitalism as well, or better, than anyone else, derives from factors that have nothing whatsoever to do with anything "liberal."

Is it "liberal" to exploit cheap Chinese labor in massively dehumanizing monster manufacturing complexes? Is it "liberal" to lock down absolute control over the computing ecosystem? Is it "liberal" to wield a ruthless intellectual property litigation strategy to ward off competitive threats to market share?

<snip>

An open-source operating system, like Google's Android, which anyone can modify or copy, fits the definition of "liberal" much more closely, as do Internet technology pioneers like Tim Berners-Lee, who asked for nothing in return for the creation of the World Wide Web. Fighting aggressively for higher wages and better benefits for all employees, across borders, would probably be more "liberal" than offshoring all one's manufacturing operations in search of the lowest possible operating costs.

But that's not Apple. Apple does a fantastic job of marketing itself as the cooler alternative to its dowdy, mainstream competitors. But cool does not equal liberal. If there's a single quality that Apple exhibits above all others, it's the way the company has managed to mint gold out of Steve Jobs' totalitarian control-freakery. Creative, yes. Liberal, not quite.

http://www.salon.com/technology/apple/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/08/23/apple_and_liberal_values

3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

[JVS]

1. Since when is gaming the system in order to get a liver liberal?

http://exiledonline.com/memphis-where-the-oligarchs-eat-their-fellow-americans/

Also, Bill Gates whupped his ass.

[KurtNYC]

2. Apple valuation $300+ billion, of which $76.2 bil is cash

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/29/business/la-fi-apple-cash-20110730

Microsoft valuation $208 bil,

What is the Bill Gates equivalent of:
iTunes
iPhone
iPad
Pixar ?

[JVS]

4. Gates: $56,000,000,000. Jobs: $8,300,000,000

[midnight]

3. Used the link and found a couple of interesting pieces of info.

Computer crash: Unemployment and the iPad
Tablet mania isn't the only reason PC sales are down. There's also the failure to turn corporate profits into jobs
Apple's secret location tracker: An "ominous development"
Heidi Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild discusses the worrying implications of the location tracking devices
BY NATASHA LENNARD

All that profit and no jobs are being created?

AP/Paul Sakuma
Today in concerning: the news that certain Apple devices track and store the locations of their owners.

A hidden file on the Apple iPhone 4 and iPad 3G has been found to track GPS data, which is frequently updated and stored. Anyone who can get access to your iPhone or iPad can access this information -- the files are not even encrypted.

The full implications of this surveillance are still unclear and Apple has not spoken out in response to the discovery, revealed by two researchers earlier this week.


Yesterday..Listened to an old school computer programer who spends hours keeping his computer free of spying software being used to track his work on line....I did not get a name.. We were both waiting for people and he showed me some tiny writing covering a legal pad... Could not make sense of it... but it's his life pursuit... and it works... So I'm happy that their are liberals out their guarding their castles....