My point is that folks spend so much time arguing over which evil corpo is slightly more evil than another; it’s not worth the time or the elevated blood pressure 
Sure iPhones are manufactured by Foxconn using slave labor, so are Google’s Pixel phones. Foxconn also manufactured your CPU socket, so that probably was as well. If every product every one of us purchased was some sort of commentary on morality, we couldn’t in good faith own any of them!
Not really. You could boycott China as much as you can and minimize the risks of owning tainted devices.
I would 100% get a Fairphone if they would be supporting repairs here locally.
Also Foxconn is not the sole chip manufacturers for mobile phones. Samsung also makes them. I just recently helped in purchasing a low end Samsung phone. It was made in Indonesia.
Then I suppose you wouldn’t buy a fairphone, eh?
And of course, Samsung is no saint either. That report specifically mentions their abuses in Indonesia, so you might be interested to know what your money is supporting.
Which leads us back to the original point…
Samsung’s failure in being a decent company does not absolve Apple’s use of child labor and to some extent, the mental gymanstics people who conciously use Apple despite knowing its bad practices.
But we’ve derailed the topic of Apple’s misuse of open source licenses in the past. The point is, we should do better and Apple is almost actively hindering efforts of the world being a better place.
You are denying Wendell’s thesis directly, that Apple is much more than “slightly” more evil.
understood but we also shouldnt be ok with corporate mediocrity. things dont happen or change with complacency or apathy
I agree entirely! And my intention in highlighting the mental gymnastics used to earlier justify supporting Samsung’s abuse of Indonesian workers (although that’s really a non-sequitur to the original topic) was to call attention to how unproductive the hyperbolic finger pointing always is
My belief is that, instead of conning ourselves into complacency by believing one corporation is more righteous and holy than another, it would be more productive to investigate:
What pieces of legislation can we support to disincentivize foreign worker abuse by all companies with a presence in the United States?
If no such thing exists, what actionable requests can we make of our legislators to bring about such legislation?
What sort of shaming campaigns or legal means can we or open source developers employ to get companies to pay their fair share to the open source projects they’ve made billions off of?
Because, at the end of the day, merely changing your brand preference to a company that you perceive as slightly less evil is still an endorsement of corporate mediocrity.
i mean
there is also the other elephant in the room that the community releases great work under BSD or MIT for the benefit of everyone, stipulate that anyone can take it without contributing back to the community, and then pull a big old pikachu face when big companies use it and not contribute back to the community
complaining that Apple does it is an asinine argument
they all do it
I think it’s less that they don’t contribute/pay their fair share/whatever, and more that they take it, and then actively harm the ecosystem and everyone else using it, isn’t it?
Like, it’s fine to take a slice of the cake and not share any, but then turning around and poisoning the rest of the cake first is kind of a dick move, especially when you could have just come back for another slice of cake later, but now you can’t because it’s poison now and no one wants it.
The mightiest legislation known to man: the right to vote with your wallet.
There might be some complexity involved in convincing 1.5 billion iPhone users that they should “vote with their wallet” 
especially when it’s all but illegal to not have a cellphone, and the only real alternatives are just as bad.
especially since normies don’t even know what a copyleft license is, or care
reality is it doesn’t matter cos Apple’s line go up, still, even after the jankpile that is recent iOS/iPad OS
In contrast, as discussion pivoted to market share, how does Google upstream stuff?
They release AOSP, and Chromium, so seem to play fair? And with 75% market share on mobile, one would hope they do?
Because if they are just as bad as Apple…
is impotent faced with vendor lock in and other monopolistic practices, IMO.
You can choose a product without vendor lock in. There are withdrawal symptoms involved,no question. Migrations are always hard. And the vendors survival relies on you to stay, so you get discounts, free stuff and more barriers.
But there were good reasons why you decided on vendor locked products in the first place. Often this still applies and the disadvantages aren’t perceived as major problems. The vendor will manipulate you so it stays that way.
So there often is little reason to migrate, because your product is the only one really up for the task.
Vendor lock-in timeline:
You pass a shelf with 10 products and only one of them is compatible with your product, you don’t have a choice anymore.
The next day, there are only 3 products left on the shelf. Both more expensive than yesterday. You buy the one that is compatible.
The day after that you don’t bother checking the shelf anymore. You call the vendor directly/check their website. You pay even more. You know that somewhere there are different products, but it’s too complicated, inconvenient.
Your sales rep is super nice, hands out free stuff and you talk about casual things and how the new color of the product fits perfectly into your office and how the next generation will alleviate all your concerns. You already pre-ordered the entire product range with your upgraded brand loyalty discount to not miss out on this good opportunity. Some new products don’t fit into your use case, but the sales rep told me it solves problems I didn’t even consider so far. He’s really great!
Ignorance is bliss. But it works. And everyone involved is having a blast.
I like to keep a choice of 10 products because I know competition in a free market results in one or more very good choices. I still have to check the shelf every time and won’t be invited to corporate BBQ parties or get my loyalty rewards. But I always have a choice and the situation remains stable and predictable.
Until I realize the other faction dominate the market and we transitioned from a polypol to an oligopol/duopol and market access for start-ups is getting more and more difficult. Oligarchs get a tighter grip on standards and exclusivity and the free market is in disarray, to the detriment of everyone involved( except for the Oligarchs).
This is ultimately self-inflicted.The corporations just react to customers and double down on what is successful.
You can argue that protecting customers from themselves is a legislation useful for the general public. But I don’t think any legislation will ultimately solve this as long as the customer is willing to continue.If there is a will, there is a way.
And then there is the innovation argument. Mostly mentioned by the corporate side, but they have a point. Lightning port is crap and USB-C and open standards have more benefits. But it also prevents development and use of the Superport 3000. Standards often lead to stagnation. Thunderbolt was years ahead of USB specs when it was first released. Only now USB starts to catch up with it via USB4.
Hard trade-offs. And finding a healthy middle ground is a problem we haven’t solved yet. I think improving market transparency and education standards for the customer will achieve more than some legislation that is easily bypassed by other means.
If you are loyal to a corporation, you increasingly become dependent and limit yourself over time. And we humans have a hard time differentiating between normal social behaviour (friends, family or wife), which is where this is useful and desirable and attitude towards corporations where this is often dysfunctional.
Only compared to USB-C, (and not in every way, it’s a lot more satisfying to plug in, very gratifying tactile click). But remember that it was designed to compete with micro-USB, and it’s far, far better than micro-USB.
So is mini-B. Micro-B was a terrible standard from start to finish, and never deserved to exist. It was designed to increase failure rate of devices. It’s actually the worst mainstream plug standard ever. Nothing should be compared to it as competitive because it was a categorical downgrade from the previous standard.
I haven’t had problems with any mini-B ports, personally. PSP still works a treat over it.
Thanks for the explanation!
I apologise. I know Apple is sociopathic (especially given how anti-repair they are and how locked down their devices are, and seeing the extent to which they seem to have contempt for their technical users), but was unaware of how deep and egregious it has been on the OSS side of things!
Nothing wrong with lightning other than it not being updated from 2.0 speeds. It was invented in a world with shitty micro usb connectors. It’s the same as Metal: people bash Apple for not going the Vulkan route but Metal was invented in a time when OpenGL was the only option.
I’m not sure I’m a big fan of this brave new world of usb-c connectors. If the connector part of a lightning cable breaks you end up with a bad cable and a good device. If the same situation happens on usb-c it is likely that you will end up with a good cable and a bad device.