Talk to me about Macs

[Block]

Hey block every time you say 'Apples market is showpff hipsters' you not only demonstrate your ignorance and bigotry but put the brakes on discussion.

No, I think you demonstrate your ignorance of how Apple markets within the US.

[Terralthra]

The document/application UI focus annoys the hell out of me by making me hit different keyboard shortcuts for switching between windows of a single application and switching between windows of different applications. Even if one window is a document, and the other isn't. Windows has that one much more in keeping with how I use a computer: if it's a window, it shows up on the alt-tab list (or win-tab list, if you really need window previews on the switcher). The taskbar has come far since 2K, and how it is in 7, with multiple application windows collapsed into a single icon, pinned icons for frequently used programs, mouse-over for window previews, is an elegant solution, and similar in a lot of ways to the Dock, though Apple and MS converged on similar-ish solutions from different directions.

Expo et al. are all available as compiz plugins, and I admit to having diddled around with some of them before going back to alt-tab for most uses.

[Stark]

In windows ctrl-tab shifts within apps and alt-tab shifts apps so ... Im not sure what you're getting at.

Not that the thread needs to be derailed into yet more 'talk about PC users who hate Apple' stuff.

[Terralthra]

In windows ctrl-tab shifts within apps and alt-tab shifts apps so ... Im not sure what you're getting at.

Not that the thread needs to be derailed into yet more 'talk about PC users who hate Apple' stuff.

I'm not sure what you're trying to refute here. Are you saying that because some applications have tabs, you should never use more than one window of that application? If that's not what you're trying to say, I really have no fucking clue what you mean. Multiple tabs are not multiple windows.

[Melchior]

Macs are a lot like consoles (you know, Xbox, Playstation stuff). What they are meant to do, they do well. But I would strongly disagree with some of the points of this thread.

Mac OS X is arguably more open to the advanced user than Windows, actually. It's basically a GUI on BSD, after all.

2) Programming. Well, maybe Poland is a different country, but I've yet to see a Mac programmer that's a real programmer. Not meaning to insult anybody, but at least over here, there is no "massive switching" of programmers to OS X. Programmers are knowledgeable animals which know their way around PC's quite well and actually enjoy all the pixel hunting involved in building and maintaining a PC. But Im in Poland where there are polar bears roaming the street and most americans probably don't know we have a coastline.

Reasonable people that do actual work, if they like to tinker with computers (many do), don't tinker with the production machines, it's a recipe for disaster.

GeForce 9800GT GPU and a Pentium Dual Core will get you through the most of the games with decent quality and no problems.

I suspect that you might be underestimating how badly coded games are. Also, something that I always find funny with the very Apple-skeptics is that they typically both decry how Apple offers little choice on most things and at the same keep telling people what they should want.

The thing I really like about OS X is that it is, for the most part, hassle free. Your clueless grandma would be able to operate it, but a run-of-the-mill windows 7 would give her problems. Installation is a breeze: you just point it to a partition, wait 10 minutes (or less, did a Lion installation on a brand new iMac today and I didn't even notice when it finished) and you're done.

This sadly isn't really true past basic usage; had to help a friend installing ROOT (the CERN data manipulation package) recently, there is a lot of UNIX stuff that seems like it would work as you're used to but it actually doesn't (case in point .bashrc and .bash_profile) which makes some problems harder than they need to be (in the end we gave up and made room for a linux partition on her computer - so we had to install rEFIt, etc.).

There is this thing going about a 27'' iMac screen being "beautiful". Yes, it is an IPS LCD which is quite impressive when you look at it for the first time. But imagine my surprise today when I came into my room and the thing was booting up. Viewing the monitor from an angle, there were huge black spots which looked like mold on the LCD. Excuse me, but you will not find anything like that on a used Dell U2311 that I got for about 150 bucks. Also, the LCD has shiny surface.

Looks like a defective panel (probably backlight layer trouble?). Generally Apple uses decent prosumer level panels (and currently has the best laptop screen on the market, of course); if you really need something better (pre-press) you can buy it from Eizo or Barco for the price of a used car.

[Simon_Jester]

Don't take this the wrong way, but that sounds rather a lot like a long-winded way of saying that if you're a rich idiot who wants to impress other rich idiots, Apple is the brand for you.

Buying expensive stuff because you think it's better can actually work as a shortcut. Cheap products aren't always made cheap by cutting corners on reliability and features. Expensive products don't always use their big gross income to make sure they get the small stuff right. But that's the way to bet, if you have the money.

Take shoes. Cheap rubber sneakers wear out fast; pricey business shoes last a long time if they're properly cared for.

Now, do you get enough reward to be worth the price? Hard to say. One pair of 120$ shoes isn't a "shoe experience" three times better than one pair of 40$ shoes. Both pairs of shoes mean you don't get blisters from walking on concrete, and that's the main thing, after all.

But if you have three times more money in the first place, who cares? You're still getting a better experience for the same percentage of your income.

[The Kernel]

1) Some design choices are good, some of them are... well, I can't for the love of me figure them out. Magic Mouse is one example of a totally botched design in terms of ergonomics. Sure, it looks slick, but it is about as usable as a brick.

How fortunate indeed that the Magic Mouse is not a product that is mandatory to using Apple products. I don't like it either but no one here is saying everything Apple makes is perfect or even great, just that the stuff that matters is better than the competition.

So, in short, some of the things Apple does well, some of the things it does not. The one thing that really fires me up as an Apple opposer is their smug attitude which for some reason makes it alright to charge people ridiculous amounts of cash for their products. Drop the smugness, lower the prices and you get a really decent hardware which is easy to use and accessible.

Oh for Pete's sake, why the hell do you care about their attitude even if we take your characterization at face value?

And as I have said above, they really don't charge ridiculous amounts of money for most of their products. Furthermore, cost of a computer to those that make a living on it is a drop in the bucket. When you pay an engineer $150k annually and have to keep them happy in order to get them to stay buying a $3k machine for them is really not a big deal.

2) Programming. Well, maybe Poland is a different country, but I've yet to see a Mac programmer that's a real programmer. Not meaning to insult anybody, but at least over here, there is no "massive switching" of programmers to OS X. Programmers are knowledgeable animals which know their way around PC's quite well and actually enjoy all the pixel hunting involved in building and maintaining a PC. But Im in Poland where there are polar bears roaming the street and most americans probably don't know we have a coastline.

As Phongn says, this is likely because tech companies simply have a much different standard in the US. Here good programmers make a lot of money and buying them best-in-class hardware to improve their productivity (and keep them happy) is a drop in the bucket cost wise.

Mountain Lion is also very cheap: currently it costs around 15 euros. But don't believe the crap Apple is selling about it being "virus free".

Bullshit. From Apple's own marketing materials on "Why You'll Love a Mac":

Is a Mac reliable?

When you buy a PC, you’re buying hardware from one company and an operating system and software from other companies. Not so with a Mac. Because Apple builds both the computer and the software that comes with it, they’re literally made for each other. This means that a Mac rarely freezes or crashes. Occasionally an application might quit, but it won’t affect the rest of your system. And OS X resists most viruses, so you can do anything — without worrying about losing everything.

I don't see anything about "virus free", I see "resists most viruses" which is true.

Just because Apple had a small market share and no one even bothered to write viruses for it doesn't mean that it is immune. Apple is reaching the market share at which some bad people are starting to take a look at OS X and the ways to break it. Dark days lie ahead, especially that Mac users are not accustomed to fending off malware and scamware.

Yeah, which is exactly why they built Gatekeeper. Apple's strategy is to push off the idea of third-party installs entirely for the majority of casual users (Mountain Lion by default won't let you install apps that aren't App Store or signed by Apple for third party distribution) and the power users should know well enough how to avoid malware.

You can agree or disagree with this approach but it makes logical sense and it demonstrates Apple is very well aware of the problem.

5) There is this thing going about a 27'' iMac screen being "beautiful". Yes, it is an IPS LCD which is quite impressive when you look at it for the first time. But imagine my surprise today when I came into my room and the thing was booting up. Viewing the monitor from an angle, there were huge black spots which looked like mold on the LCD. Excuse me, but you will not find anything like that on a used Dell U2311 that I got for about 150 bucks. Also, the LCD has shiny surface.

The funny thing about this rant is nothing you are mentioning is really all that fundamental to owning a Mac. Yes the experience is BETTER if you have the Thunderbolt display but Macs work perfectly well with third-party displays and use open (if cutting edge) standards to pipe display output. There is literally nothing stopping a display manufacturer making the equivalent of the Thunderbolt display (sans power adapter) for Mac users, and you can easily convert Thunderbolt to Display Port via a dongle.

I like Block's comparison of Lexus/Toyota, there is a lot of truth in it. Under the hood, these are almost the same cars. PC's and Macs are more similar when you look at the overall picture than any of the Apple/PC fatboys will ever admit. The pricing policy of Apple is a little surprising at this point.

Bullshit. You've ignored virtually every point I brought up and cherry picked a few things from others because you obviously have a pre-determined opinion on the matter.

Here's a clue: it's doesn't make you "cool" to hate Macs anymore than it is cool to buy a Mac because it makes you look awesome when writing fanfiction at Starbucks. Serious professionals use Macs for a reason that has nothing to do with their perceived awesomeness by the general population.

[Covenant]

Stark is on the money, he's just not doing it with baggage and nerd rage.

Personally, I've used Macs and PCs throughout my life and career and I'm happy to report that Macs no longer suck, and for serious programming or coding work or whatever they can really streamline things and just generally make your life easier. If that's not good then whatever. Back in the day I found them unusable and hated having to work on them, but since the OS change to becoming a dressed-up UNIX box I've been thrilled with their progression. That change should have ended most people's Mac vs PC war because it demonstrated that the real winner was UNIX, which most everyone should agree is a great compromise from most usability standpoints. I agree that Apple's marketing is absolute pandering, what with their "Genius Bar" and other skin-crawling efforts, but it's just a bit of marketing fluff not worth getting all enraged over. They're a luxury computer company, just like there's luxury industries all over that pander to their clientèle. If you think it's dumb then don't let it aggravate you.

Anyway. Nowadays, the real reason to use an Apple brand-name product over a more affordable alternative is maximum out-of-the-box usability. That used to be a bit of a snide joke, since it was the computer for people who didn't want to learn how to use their computer, but the idea of a "personal computer" has gone way past the original segments of use and now everyone needs one. Given that situation, it's no surprise that Apple products are desirable and do fit a niche outside of being the "more expensive" option. It's not all retina displays and overpriced curved panels, you can get plenty of apple crap that's affordable enough and pays for itself in saved effort. If my Dad wasn't a computer builder like me then I'd absolutely have gotten her a Mac (and not just an iPod) because going over to fix it would drive me insane. Macs, by and large, either don't crash or crash so spectacularly that I don't get a phonecall asking to fix it. Plus they do just about everything a PC does so if "ripping it open to mess with it" isn't an objective then I'll take paying a bit more to have it work more regularly.

The only Apple product I own right now is an iPad 2.0, which I hate in between periods of begrudging acceptance. It's an overblown toy with next to no useful features, but for enough money and effort you can buy apps that are half-decent. Mostly I don't know what it's for, and we got it as a development platform for me, and aside from that I try to squeeze out what usefulness I can so the thing doesn't just sit and get dusty. So when people see it and ask me how I like it, I always return a very negative response--

--However, our company uses a lot of mac hardware and I couldn't be happier with the change. Apple stuff when used for computer science and programming efforts has really made my life easier in an indirect fashion. It's also very nice in terms of portable computing devices in the non-iPad department. I personally find it odd that their well known devices are basically doorstops as far as I'm concerned, but their goofy little square boxes that we host all our development on work so well and so painlessly that it's just a tremendous joy. That's the biggest blow to the idea they're only for hipsters. They may have a hipster wing, but they're also for people with better things to do. My PC is my PC, but our corporate computer is Apple-brand and lives in a safe little nook.

So it's like anything else. I don't need an Apple computer because I'm happy to be a computer hobbyist (as someone called it) and build my own. But for example, I don't feel inclined to learn a ton about my car, and I'm happy to have a car that is easily maintained, reliable and I can just bring it in to someone to fix it when it acts up. If the situations were reversed maybe I'd have an Apple desktop that I didn't need to fiddle with, but a car I liked to work on, and I think nobody would see that as too odd either.

I still think this iPad is two steps away from being a paperweight, but the war is over and there's really no reason for bile anymore. Just roll your eyes at the "geniuses" and accept that there's a market for computers that don't need effort to maintain and run. If you only have X hours of "giving a shit" a day, you gotta allocate those hours where you think it'll do the best good. Some people just don't want to give a shit about their computers and just want them to look pretty, run correctly, and are happy to replace them every few years. There are worse things.

(BTW, before anyone jumps down my throat about thinking the iPad is a better cutting board than computer, also know that most of the things the iPad does well are not things I need, and that my version doesn't have the GPS or Cell connection required to make it useful on the go. Having said that, if someone wants to offer constructive ways to make it more useful, I'd be thrilled. I take it everywhere I go in order to find ways it can make my day better, and would be interested in SDN-vouched methods of extending it's usability)

[The Kernel]

This sadly isn't really true past basic usage; had to help a friend installing ROOT (the CERN data manipulation package) recently, there is a lot of UNIX stuff that seems like it would work as you're used to but it actually doesn't (case in point .bashrc and .bash_profile) which makes some problems harder than they need to be (in the end we gave up and made room for a linux partition on her computer - so we had to install rEFIt, etc.).

Meet Homebrew.

Concerning this, did you perhaps manage to avoid getting pixel doubled text in HiDPI mode in Eclipse?

Yeah, there is a workaround for now.

[phongn]

That is where you're missing the point. The point I've made before and will continue to make is that people who pay premium prices for a name are morons. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work, it clearly does and always has, it does with wine, cars, computers, all kinds of shit. That humans are easily maniplulated apes is pretty obvious. Also don't give me this "the experience" garbage, douchey hipsters, Apple's biggest market, don't buy things for the experience, they buy it to show off.

That isn't their biggest market. You seriously think that "douchey hipsters" alone were going to lead Apple to being one of the most highly valued companies on the planet? Apples biggest market is the mass market, who are seeking nicely-designed computing appliances, as Stark has made repeated pains to point out.

Is it true that there are a lot of people who want Apple products as status symbols? Yes. Is it true there are a lot of douchebag hipsters with a MacBook Air at the nearest indie coffee shop? Also yes. That's not what accounts for their success.

No, I think you demonstrate your ignorance of how Apple markets within the US.

Their iOS marketing has been "watch it do X, Y or Z. No bullshit, no simulated screens, the real thing." Or "we can help you get your stuff done." Yeah, they've done mean things like "I'm a Mac" ads, but those aren't too recent, are they?

This sadly isn't really true past basic usage; had to help a friend installing ROOT (the CERN data manipulation package) recently, there is a lot of UNIX stuff that seems like it would work as you're used to but it actually doesn't (case in point .bashrc and .bash_profile) which makes some problems harder than they need to be (in the end we gave up and made room for a linux partition on her computer - so we had to install rEFIt, etc.).

Goddamn but I hate dealing with ROOT

[The Kernel]

(BTW, before anyone jumps down my throat about thinking the iPad is a better cutting board than computer, also know that most of the things the iPad does well are not things I need, and that my version doesn't have the GPS or Cell connection required to make it useful on the go. Having said that, if someone wants to offer constructive ways to make it more useful, I'd be thrilled. I take it everywhere I go in order to find ways it can make my day better, and would be interested in SDN-vouched methods of extending it's usability)

'

Buy a Nexus 7. If all you want to do is consumer content and you don't want the apps then the iPad is not very useful in my opinion. When I want to read or do light browsing and I don't want my laptop I reach for the Nexus 7 not my iPad Retina.

[Melchior]

Meet Homebrew.

Oh, I know about that. There isn't a up-to-date ROOT recipe, as far as we managed to find, and the problem wasn't compiling from source, it was a bizarre X11 bug (probably, and yes, we tried XQuartz) that caused the TCanvas constructor to segfault.

Yeah, there is a workaround for now.

Nice, I'll try at once, thanks.

[The Kernel]

Oh, I know about that. There isn't a up-to-date ROOT recipe, as far as we managed to find, and the problem wasn't compiling from source, it was a bizarre X11 bug (probably, and yes, we tried XQuartz) that caused the TCanvas constructor to segfault.

Wow. That's either some very poorly written code or some very, very bad luck indeed. I'm honestly never run into a single issue even with some very complex stuff built against OSX that were never even meant for it (the fact that I was able to get PostgreSQL 9.x + PostGIS 2.0 working from source in just a few minutes is a miracle considering they are notoriously difficult to setup even on Linux). Most of the time Homebrew recipes have treated me so well that I feel like it is making me lazy.

I mean seriously, it's stupid easy these days to setup a development box. I've been experimenting with Scala lately and this is what I had to type to setup the Typesafe stack (Scala, Akka, Play):

Code: Select all

brew install scala sbt maven giter8

One damn line and a full development stack. Even getting Rails up and running wasn't much harder to be honest...Homebrew really makes you glad you don't have to deal with manual build shit and OSX finally has a proper package manager...especially since you don't want to deal with the whole LLVM vs GCC thing and you can let the developers themselves worry about the Homebrew recipes.

[The Kernel]

And btw, if that wasn't awesome enough you get projects like this. Seriously, I love the OSX dev community sometimes...they are so freaking thoughtful.

Postgres.app

Ok ok, LAMP.app solutions have existed for a while but for those of us who don't just use PHP and MySQL this sort of thing is pretty cool.

[phongn]

Wow. That's either some very poorly written code or some very, very bad luck indeed. I'm honestly never run into a single issue even with some very complex stuff built against OSX that were never even meant for it (the fact that I was able to get PostgreSQL 9.x + PostGIS 2.0 working from source in just a few minutes is a miracle considering they are notoriously difficult to setup even on Linux). Most of the time Homebrew recipes have treated me so well that I feel like it is making me lazy.

ROOT is an enormously complicated piece of software; the thing has its own C++ interpreter built into it, along with its own enormous library (much of which predates the C++ STL).

And btw, if that wasn't awesome enough you get projects like this. Seriously, I love the OSX dev community sometimes...they are so freaking thoughtful.

Postgres.app

Whaaaat? Where has that been all my life?! (I was using the EnterpriseDB packages!)

[Simon_Jester]

ROOT was written by the particle physicists at CERN to crunch the biggest damn data files anyone's ever seen. It's fast, it's great at what it does (how do you think they know the Higgs exists?), but it was written with complete indifference to 'ease of use;' it's only really meant for super-geniuses who already know how to use it.

It changed my life; my experience with it was so bad I changed jobs to get away.

(Seriously, no, although it was one minor contributing factor among several)

[Melchior]

ROOT was written by the particle physicists at CERN to crunch the biggest damn data files anyone's ever seen. It's fast, it's great at what it does (how do you think they know the Higgs exists?), but it was written with complete indifference to 'ease of use;' it's only really meant for super-geniuses who already know how to use it.

The problem here is that the average physicist (like my friend) isn't an expert programmer, so while they can use it when it's working, they're not necessarily able to get it to work when it's not playing nice, and the frankly insane architecture and design decisions (which I assume are historically motivated, but still insane) do not help (hence me spending a lot of time with exceptionally opaque interpreter logs).

[The Kernel]

Whaaaat? Where has that been all my life?! (I was using the EnterpriseDB packages!)

Yup, it's about time PostgreSQL got some love.

You can thank Mattt Thompson for this--he's a developer formerly of Gowalla (where he developed AFNetworking) and now he's at Heroku (big Postgres shop hence why he worked on this I imagine) and in addition to working on putting Postgres.app in the App Store he's also working on Induction (a novel app for database viewing that isn't geared towards BI or folks that enjoy pain). It's very early though, I still use Navicat myself.

[phongn]

You can thank Mattt Thompson for this--he's a developer formerly of Gowalla (where he developed AFNetworking) and now he's at Heroku (big Postgres shop hence why he worked on this I imagine) and in addition to working on putting Postgres.app in the App Store he's also working on Induction (a novel app for database viewing that isn't geared towards BI or folks that enjoy pain). It's very early though, I still use Navicat myself.

Oh man, Induction would make my life 1000X easier for ad-hoc reports.

[Starglider]

And as I have said above, they really don't charge ridiculous amounts of money for most of their products. Furthermore, cost of a computer to those that make a living on it is a drop in the bucket. When you pay an engineer $150k annually and have to keep them happy in order to get them to stay buying a $3k machine for them is really not a big deal.

If you'e paying someone significant money to sit in front of a computer all day $15k is not a big deal, never mind $3k, but there is no way in hell I would spend that budget on a Mac Pro. The thing is slow, obsolete, barely expandable locked-down worthlessness. These days even the case design is old fashioned (unsurprising since Apple have left their desktop design team to wither on the vine).

[The Kernel]

If you'e paying someone significant money to sit in front of a computer all day $15k is not a big deal, never mind $3k, but there is no way in hell I would spend that budget on a Mac Pro.

Since most developers are using laptops these days that's not really such a big deal. The Mac Pro is more a creative professional and scientific workstation.

The thing is slow, obsolete, barely expandable locked-down worthlessness.

Wrong, semi-right and wrong. It's not got the latest hardware sure but it's Westmere based Xeons are plenty fast and only suffer at most ~40% in professional workloads. Sounds like a lot right? Well that's assuming you are hitting it with CPU limiting workloads which is actually not the limiting factor for most designers, modellers, photo pros and video pros--things like gobs of RAM and tons of super fast solid state storage are what matter (did you know OWC offers 960GB PCI-E SSDs for the Mac?).

As for the joke of it not being expandable and locked down, clearly you know nothing about the aftermarket solutions for Macs. Small community but since the whole workstation market is small and Apple owns a third of it pretty much any solution that matters works fine on a Mac Pro.

As a SERVER the Mac Pro is obsolete and worthless but that's not what its intended market is.

These days even the case design is old fashioned (unsurprising since Apple have left their desktop design team to wither on the vine).

Nobody is happy about how Apple is treating Mac Pro customers. Although the fact that they have been promised an update from Cook and that they should stay tuned is promising.

Anyway, most people who don't need more than 16GB of RAM have already moved on to the Macbook Retinas and Pros.

[The Kernel]

You can thank Mattt Thompson for this--he's a developer formerly of Gowalla (where he developed AFNetworking) and now he's at Heroku (big Postgres shop hence why he worked on this I imagine) and in addition to working on putting Postgres.app in the App Store he's also working on Induction (a novel app for database viewing that isn't geared towards BI or folks that enjoy pain). It's very early though, I still use Navicat myself.

Oh man, Induction would make my life 1000X easier for ad-hoc reports.

It has major potential that's for sure. Talking about it makes me want to go look at the progress again--Mattt Thompson (no that's how he spells it) is pretty good about neurotically pushing forward his side projects to completion.

He's also responsible for this gem: Heroku Status

For extra fun check out the responsive design of that link. Responsive is becoming par for the course these days but it was actually particularly hard to apply to that timeline paradigm and the way they did it is actually quite impressive.

[Starglider]

It's not got the latest hardware sure but it's Westmere based Xeons are plenty fast and only suffer at most ~40% in professional workloads. Sounds like a lot right? Well that's assuming you are hitting it with CPU limiting workloads which is actually not the limiting factor for most designers, modellers, photo pros and video pros

I don't really care what artists are using - I am sure they buy right into the Apple philosophy of mediocre technology in a minimalist shiny wrapper, relentlessly locked down to make it into an appliance. What I find vaguely sickening is the notion of serious technologists buying that crap. Good HPC developers love the bleeding edge; pushing beyond the state of the art, doing what was previously impossible is what the job is about. In fact getting a developer machine (and development grid) significantly beyond anything you can buy off the shelf has been a significant factor in many of my hires. I am aware that Apple force devs who want to make sociocasual edutainment crapplets for iJunk to buy Macs to develop on, but that is the opposite end of the software engineering profession to where I'm working. Why buy a MacPro, which has only 2 useful PCIe slots and doesn't even support dual-GPU cards, which forces you to waste money on overpriced worthless Apple components when you buy it even if you're going to upgrade later, for which anything even remotely good requires unapproved-by-Lord-Apple-dubious-hacks... when you could just buy something like this and at least twice the performance (if GPU, SSD bandwith or RAM limited) hassle-free.

[Starglider]

Also from an ethical standpoint, I would much rather give money to small botique system builders doing interesting design work and employing engineers in the US, UK and Germany. Money spent on Apple equipment goes to fund absolutely pure evil patent trolling that chills innovation and generally tries to destroy the rest of the industry, Chinese slave labour to make their iJunk and of course hoarding ludicrous amounts of cash in offshore tax havens.

[Terralthra]

Also from an ethical standpoint, I would much rather give money to small botique system builders doing interesting design work and employing engineers in the US, UK and Germany. Money spent on Apple equipment goes to fund absolutely pure evil patent trolling that chills innovation and generally tries to destroy the rest of the industry, Chinese slave labour to make their iJunk and of course hoarding ludicrous amounts of cash in offshore tax havens.

Careful, Starglider, someone might read this thread and realize you're not actually an ultra-right-wing worshipper of globalized crony capitalism!