Said that I guess we (and the companies) should start thinking if this kind of 'collaboration' or contracts with Chinese companies are not only profitable (that is the main -if not only- reason) but good for China, the Chinese company, the Chinese workers, the non-Chinese company and the end user.
Because I guess, we are exploiting the workers in a country with a dictatorship just to get cheap gadgets, toys and such.
And yes, I would say Apple is a bit to be blamed for this. Not that Apple were aware or that Apple would approve these (I'm 100% sure it doesn't) actions.
But, if this Chinese company -and others- keep their contracts with American or European companies although things like keep happening (At least we know about this case! How many of them have happened?)... they (the 'first world companies') will become (if they are not already) part of the problem.
ps. Sorry for my English (I'm from Spain and well...)
Why the cult of 'new' is so crazy about having the latest gadgets and how much that drives sales is totally beyond me. If it works and I need it I'll buy it, otherwise you can keep it.
I never realized how bad it really was until a good friend - who shall remain nameless - vowed to queue to be one of the first to have an iphone. Seriously, who cares. People think they're cool because they have cool stuff, not because they do cool stuff.
This is one of the reasons I read HN. People whose writing skill makes me think "I wish I could write as clearly as that".
Many (most?) other companies have talked a product to death by the time it is actually for sale. There is no excitement at this point, it has all been dissipated away. Consumers don't see much of a need to buy it right away. Maybe they'll forget about it altogether before making the decision.
I'd say this works pretty well for Apple. You are trivializing their methods in an ugly way.
Are you saying that expo demos and previews for the media actually hurt sales? I always thought manufacturers do it to build up interest and excitement; this way when the product is released everybody is rushing to buy it. Look at the games industry, for example. It seems to work.
Why Apple thinks it works the other way around, is beyond me.
For some products a slow trickle of information helps, however it's generally the exception than the rule (I'd say the movie industry is wholly an exception to this). Windows 7 is faltering because it's the alternative to Vista and now the bad scuff marks of Vista are appearing on 7, instead they could have had 7 appear suddenly and have sold millions of copies before anyone even heard a bad word.
Apple has major flaws sometimes, the iPod Nano was a flat out disaster in Europe, but it turned into a disaster after they'd sold millions of copies and not before they'd sold a single copy. If test versions of the Nano had broken en masse even the hardcore Apple fans wouldn't have touched it.
Apple thinks it works the other way around is because it does work the other way around. Announcing a product early can set it up for failure, especially today when products can go from concept to market in less than six months. If I announced in Q2 2008 that I had a product coming out at the start of Q4 2009, it gives nearly 18 months to challenge me. It doesn't help that there's a nasty habit of identical products coming out at the same time and if you announce a unique feature early, you're identical by release.
I still don't think that in software industry it works the same way. Most people I know would not care about new version of Windows coming out of the blue, unless there has been enough hype for long enough time.
And it is certainly so in the video games industry, where previews, trailers and detailed media reports are released in abundance sometimes years before the game is finished. Especially so for the more popular game franchises.
The new Harry Potter was held off last year because the produces were afraid two competing fantasy series could kill each other near a Christmas recession. Twilight, which is basically swept up in the box office and with Harry Potter 6 due out literally like a week later and cost almost 7 times as much to make.
However cooincidences occur frequently with movies and games due to waiting for the right market attention. I mean a G.I. Joe movie or Transformers movie could have been made whenever, similar with a lot of movies, however it's been impossible up until late to make live action movies with quality animation.
I personally see little difference between a lot of video games and movies. I'm uninterested in 2012, because I already saw it with Knowing and its about as meaningful as a movie on the millennium bug would have been in 1997. Then there's the whole Bedtime Stories following Inkheart (Which was due out in March 2008, but was pulled back to December 12 at least in the UK), and Bedtime Stories looked like it was rushed into production following the sale of Inkhearts rights.
Again, I'm probably not the best person to ask as I had a movie pass at like 13 (the pass cost $20 a month, I easily got $40 worth of movies per weekend). So I'll say there is a need for hype in the movie and video game industry, however I still believe there's a big opportunity for companies to rush poor quality movies into production to steal the limelight from another. This is especially true when some movies can take 3 years to produce and others are done and finished in 9 months and may wait another 6 months for release, but if you group movies too closely you end up with two distinct groups of movies (like plays) Comedy or Tragedy and then all grouping is meaningless.
i'll add one thing. an enormous amount of work often goes into products that are killed before release. evidence exists that this has happened many times within apple. anticipated products that get cancelled leave a bad taste in people's mouths. if you don't announce until the product is for sale, you've automatically guarded against vaporware.
I don't think that assigning blame to Apple is warranted here. Apple certainly is horrified at what has happened - not just due to bad PR, but because an engineer took his life over a consumer gadget.
There are no easy answers here. My hope is that within a few generations the societal earthquakes will settle down with respect to modernization. Even then though, what does it take to overcome millennia of societal acceptance of suicide?
Edit: What, you don't believe me? Try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_the_People%27s_Repu...
Hu Jintao has been President since 2004, succeeding Jiang Zemin who became President in 1993. Some dictatorship.
Not everything non-western is equivalent. That's just sloppy thinking.
Sometime back HP had employed an agency that used illegal means in the US to trap peoples phones etc. While the contract agency committed the crime, HP did take responsibility for this.
On similar lines Apple could investigate take action on their outsource partner. It should also see if its own staff gave such expectations to the outsource partner.