At the introduction of the Apple iPad, for some reason that doubtless stems from some arbitrary event within the realm of professional journalism, people suddenly became aware of current global manufacturing conventions. The iPad is assembled in China, just like pretty much all competitively priced consumer electronics. Just like consumer electronics have been for many years.
The heart of this favorite media topic is the old “Buy American” [Uh-MRRR-kin] saw. If you don’t understand at a glance what’s wrong with this argument, then Sherlock Holmes infers that you passed macroeconomics with the help of that dumpy girl you strung along with smooth talk until the end of the semester; shame on you.
The dumpy girl isn’t impressed with news reports on Chinese assembly of allegedly American products [organist hammers on diminished chords as mustachioed villain appears]. And she is unimpressed with Larry-the-Cable-guy-in-a-Three-Thousand-Dollar-Suit union leaders issuing statements about the immoral, unethical theft of American jobs.
The parts in any electronic product featuring new technology come from all over the world, and the final product will be assembled somewhere where a laborer’s time can be had cheaply. That formula hasn’t changed much since the advent of the steam ship. If you’re wondering why iPods can’t be assembled in the USA, look into how and why unskilled labor has been legislated into extinction here. Apple didn’t create this environment - the whole of corporate commerce in its entire history isn’t solely responsible - Apple merely operates in this reality. And if they want to compete with e.g. Sony, they have to play by the same rules as Sony. Sony also farms out assembly of most products to Asian factories where people work much cheaper than would anyone in Japan.
The more interesting facet of the relationship between Apple users and our American-ness is how readily we are willing to accept a virtual universe that is ruled from the top down with a heavy hand. When I recently started teaching guitar lessons again I bought an iPod touch as a low-cost alternative to a new notebook computer. I was amazed that I had to bow on bended knee, pledge allegiance to iTunes, and give a credit card number before I could even boot the device. WTF?! More recently I bought a new motherboard and memory for my desktop computer. I went out of my way to get something based on the same chipset so I wouldn’t have to reinstall anything, yet iTunes informed me that I had used up one of my allotted 5 syncs, that I had a few left, and I had better watch it. And by the way, I had to start over with iTunes. This was the only piece of software that didn’t make the transition to the new hardware. I understand how this is done – iTunes is keyed to some piece of uniquely identifiable hardware on the mobo (probably the network card) and the new mobo looks like a new computer to iTunes – but that understanding does nothing to ameliorate the annoyance.
This is what bugs me about Apple – the audacity to dictate every little detail of how the hardware is used; you get the impression setting up your iPod in iTunes that the device actually belongs to Apple and you are allowed to use it at their pleasure. Even more it bugs me that it doesn’t bug others. And worst it bugs me that it didn’t bug me enough to immediately return to Best Buy for a refund. I am not used to cowing to someone else’s will for my stuff, be it guitars, cars, or digital devices. If I don’t like the way a guitar plays I will hack out the neck with a chisel and build a new one. If I want to quad-boot my computer to Ubuntu, XP, Vista, and the minimal OS that came with the motherboard, try to stop me. But with my iPod, so far I have been content to grab my ankles and suffer through. The iPod, unlike any other device I’ve owned, is actively resistant to any kind of customization. At all. Period. Stop asking if you know what’s good for you.
- You can’t get direct access to files on an iPod.
- You can’t write your own software (apart from the draconian approval process through iTunes)
- Assuming you go through the trouble of getting your software approved, you can’t move data on or off the device except wirelessly through HTTP
- iPod is suxxorz
I think my problem is that I object to everything about the iPod on principle, but I have such abundant disincentive to do anything about it. For one thing, I had very low expectations for the device in the first place. I basically wanted a looper and a metronome for guitar lessons, and nothing else. So when that much worked flawlessly – plus I found Beatmaker, 4 Track, and Xewton Studio, the Blue stereo mic and its software, not to mention all the useful apps and entertaining distractions that all run without issue – it became very hard to look at the iPod as anything but a great solution to a particular need.
It turns out that there is a way to open the OS and make the hardware available to yourself. It is called jailbreaking and it a software hack that gives you control over basic things like the filesystem and execution permissions. So it turns out the iProducts are American after all.
If I really wanted to burn through an entire afternoon reading tutorials and other documentation, then fiddling until it worked, I could jailbreak my iPod and I would be back in control. But I’m not going to, and neither are most iProduct users. I suspect that this is how things have always been; most Americans don’t hot rod their own cars or wind their own guitar pickups or hand build additions to their own homes. It’s probably always been a small percentage, and I take great comfort knowing that that small percentage is still beavering away iPods, hacking them until they are free and self-determining. And covered in bland, melty cheese. Wearing logoed T-shirts and baseball caps. And loud and fat and ignorant. So proud [wipes tear].
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