It's hard to tell about dogs that don't bark, but I get the impression that Apple Inc. is relatively immune to the diversity shakedowns that everybody else pays. Apple is considered just too cool. Thus:
A local Detroit (Mich.) business owner has been talking with Apple’s retail team, trying to convince them to locate a store inside the ground floor of a downtown office building. In an interview with WXYZ-TV, Quicken Loans owner Dan Gilbert said he’s marketing the ground floor of his company’s 14-story Chase Tower to Apple, a 1½–story former banking office. ... Gilbert is part of the latest public-private effort to reinvigorate the city-center by relocating suburban employees into empty downtown office space. He’s already committed to moving 4,000 of his own employees to downtown offices as part of the revitalization project. There are already four Apple stores in the region, but in the very far suburbs of Detroit.
In other words, Apple has been making a fortune off its Apple stores in snazzy locations and has seldom felt like wasting money and/or tainting the brand by getting involved in any early stage urban renewal projects. It doesn't have to shell out for white elephants in black cities. Why not? Because it's Apple! For example, lots of big firms have felt obligated over the last 15 years to put their outlets in the best black neighborhood in LA at the base of Baldwin Hills (what I call Magic Johnsonville, who redeveloped it in the 1990s) as a sporting gesture, but there are no Apple Stores in LA south of Wilshire Blvd.
Apple has more money than God (a recent business press article argued that Apple's market capitalization will grow to $2 trillion [warning: do not invest based solely on second-hand smoke blowing]). But, the general feeling among the people who matter seems to be that if Apple had to waste a penny on the usual diversity payouts, that might delay the release of the iPad III by a week or whatever, which would rob their lives of all meaning.
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43 comments:
I see an opporunity for some social justice minded law firm to shake down Apple.
Force Apple, Google and the rest of them into inner city neighborhoods and hiring NAM engineers like banks are forced to make bad loans and open branches operating at losses.
No piece, no justice!
investment houses, the fed, etc, don' t pay diversity tax either..
apple will flounder when jobs dies - it's a cult of personality company
i think its criminal to force employees to go into NAMberhoods or cities. i bet dan gilbert etc, will have armed escort.
http://totalaxis.com/diversity/google-won%E2%80%99t-release-minority-hiring-statistics
so Steve: what does Intel's, CSCO's data illustrate?
are there budding race realists at those companies?
Oh btw do East Indians with Portuguese last names, eg Perreira, Correa etc qualify as Hispanic?
Right: getting back to your great point about Special Snowflake jobs, it seems that it's not just certain broad sectors of powerful or connected people whose jobs are immune or semi-immune (CEOs, journalists, celebrities), but that there is also a trendiness, a belovedness factor that helps you get immune.
That may be a subset of being connected but it feels a little different. It's like how NASCAR can be suspect for whiteness but not indie pop. It has less to do with power or importance in that case as it does with indie pop appealing to SWPL whites and NASCAR appealing to non-SWPL whites.
No piece, no justice!
Awesome pun!!!
Screw a law firm shakedown -- just get a bunch of conservatives to picket those suburban Apple stores, just like ACORN would have done. Hopefully Apple will release a new product this summer and the picketers could get into a shouting match with the liberal losers lined up outside for the midnight launch. No camera crew would ignore that!
Note that Detroit wouldn't be terribly far away from Earlham College, where Charles Murray was silenced by two fire alarms.
The days of rage summer road trip beckons, dudes.
diversity payout
diversity shakedown..
etc. etc..
you talk about them a lot, but you have never provided any evidence
I'm having trouble seeing where the shakedown is here. If brand name X doesn't open a store in the urban center, what happens? Some professional victim whines in the local paper? Does anybody really care about that aside from self-hating white people?
whatever their diversity situation, there's just no way apple contributes 100 BILLION dollars more value to society than GE, microsoft, IBM, wal-mart, or AT&T.
apple makes small plastic distraction devices. i'm at a loss for how there are no competitors eating up market share from them. i mean there are competitors, other companies which make similar equipment that is better and cheaper and even sometimes comes to market sooner than apple brings something to market.
it must be all about marketing. here's a funny youtube skit from 2010 on apple's zombie buyers:
http://tinyurl.com/24qmxe8
but maddox had this nailed in 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/yvd4ct
"you talk about them a lot, but you have never provided any evidence"
You never heard of Jesse Jackson? Crack a book. Or at least wikipedia.
I think the elites who are shoving diversity down every other White group's throat are leaving the SWPL types alone a bit, because these are the kind of people who could muck up their plans if they got pissed off. Conservatives, by contrast, are not much of a threat.
It could be Apple donates(bribes) a lot of their money to 'just' causes, and that's enough to give them a pass.
Apple products are so small and so easy to steal. Not right for black areas.
"i'm at a loss for how there are no competitors eating up market share from them."
You've got to admit that their products, on average, look more elegant than the competition's products. Also, Apple is still run by someone who treats it as if he owned it. It's his life's work. The top guy is deeply interested in the organization's success. Most companies, on the other hand, are run by the parasitic MBA class. The owner mentality would usually get better results than the parasite mentality.
This might translate into more effective advertising campaigns, better hiring decisions (talented artists as designers vs. untalented artists), etc.
Apple is a luxury product. It does not do anything you cannot do with a regular computer; it's like buying a BMW instead of a Toyota, in the eyes of the market.
For this reason, they don't need to play the big equality game.
Their next big legal hurdle is going to be the coming antitrust legislation.
Dan Gilbert is also the owner of the LeBron-less Cleveland Cavaliers.
And...the owner of Fathead.com.
Anonymous said...
Apple products are so small and so easy to steal. Not right for black areas.
Apple products are so small and easy to steal that there is no need for their stores in black areas.
There, fixed that for you.
I feel sorry for those 4,000 employees of Quicken Loan being relocated to downtown Detroit...
"Gilbert is part of the latest public-private effort to reinvigorate the city-center by relocating suburban employees into empty downtown office space. He’s already committed to moving 4,000 of his own employees to downtown offices as part of the revitalization project."
Relentlessly promoting Michigan in general seems to be a requirement for doing business there.
I still don't get the need to do anything except let the old downtown areas of any city become arts venues,etc. Buildings get old and need expensive plumbing and electrical work. Then there's the typically narrow streets and limited parking.
As for Apple, Wal-mart and Target sell the ipads and ipods which are what most people want. I think this has more to do with the SWPL minority white population left in Michigan wanting SWPL Apple computers in their fashionable, regentrified yet impractical former business center.
Doesn't Bill Pullman do a promo for Michigan? He comes off as incredibly SWPL to me.
"it must be all about marketing."
No. Not even close. Apple's current hits like iPad are actually cheaper than the competition in many cases.
Apple's success involves a lot of flint-eyed, difficult business work--supply chain management, product design discipline, prudent spending. For example, Apple built up a huge hoard of cash from the original iPod, and recently they used part of it to buy up almost the entire market availability of 10-inch touch panels at volume prices. They bought huge amounts of flash memory as well.
Tablets from quality competitors (Moto, Samsung, RIM) are either smaller at the same price, or the same size at a higher price. They actually CAN'T BUY the parts as cheaply as Apple can. So, the Apple product has similar quality, lower price AND great marketing...ding ding ding we have a winner!
Pure business savvy and focus. Cornelius Vanderbilt couldn't do it better.
Actually, you could do something more effective than a one-off picketing of suburban Detroit Apple stores -- make an earnest documentary about Apple neglecting its duty to heal the racial divide in urban America.
You know, the kind of passive-aggressive thing Michael Moore would do if it weren't Apple. It's in Michigan, too, so you could work some great parody of Moore's fake sincerity for the car-burners.
Throw it up on YouTube, send it around to the IndyMedia sites or not-so-establishment lib sites, and maybe one of them would cluelessly bite and make it go viral.
"you talk about them a lot, but you have never provided any evidence"
You never heard of Jesse Jackson? Crack a book. Or at least wikipedia.
Jessie Jackson made the rounds in Silicon Valley when I was there a few years ago working for one of the biggest tech companies there.
He was meeting with big companies to help increase diversity and make Silicon Valley more competitive.
He passed beneath the radar I figured without the usual media whoring I just assumed he was well-paid for his efforts (and to quietly leave).
It's not just Apple. When was the last time you heard of any tech company being maumaued for anything--hiring, outlet placement, whatever?
I remember reading about Microsoft getting sued for racial discrimination about a decade ago. I haven't read of its settlement. Meanwhile, every time a woman at Walmart sneezes, we're reminded of its lawsuits.
Tech plays by different rules. You can't rise in a tech company by being the community services veep or HR administrator, or whatever garbage jobs they have in other companies.
Apple is a media company more than a tech company these days, which actually means it will be *more* likely to get hit with diversity whining in the next few years. But don't make it about Apple. It's tech in general that gets the pass, not the Great Coolness of Apple.
steve setzer, if it's not about marketing, then how do you explain those two links i posted? i openly admit i don't know much about this stuff. the little portable devices, i mean. apple does not make a single thing i would ever buy or have any use for, so i definitely don't know how their equipment stacks up against other equipment except for personal computers, where macintosh is overpriced and underperforming and has like a mere 10% market share.
"It's not just Apple. When was the last time you heard of any tech company being maumaued for anything--hiring, outlet placement, whatever? "
in obama's open borders texas speech last week, he tried to pretend that letting 40 million mexican peasants jump the border was exactly the same thing as starting up google, yahoo, and intel.
not a direct attack on tech companies but a direct comparison and suggestion that open borders = the next twitter, netflix, youtube, AMD, tesla, et cetera. pure delusion at it's finest.
btw, apple is a religious experience for some apple adherents. (~_^)
Jody, if you don't know much or have ever used any of their products, may I suggest that you STFU?
Women...sigh
Regardless of location Apple has to attach all its demo devices to the wall with steel cable to avoid them being filched by NAMs. In the age of larcenous flash mobs of grinning black youths, even these measures could easily be defeated with cable cutters shop lifted from the Home Depot down the street.
In the ghetto, it would be cheaper for Apple to throw its merchandize out the back of a truck than to open a store there, and they know it.
If you put an Apple store in a majority black area, you'll get lots of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O005Hr-xQfc
(Black thief snatches new iPad from a consumer outside an Apple store, ripping off a finger)
Trying to confirm my first impressions, I've done a bit of Googling around, and it seems to me that Jobs and Apple are not nearly as H1-B happy as Microsoft or other tech companies.
"Most companies, on the other hand, are run by the parasitic MBA class. The owner mentality would usually get better results than the parasite mentality."
The same problem that applies to large, ownerless companies applies equally to large, ownerless countries. It's shakedown heaven.
Anecdote: was in 'Vega$' recently with a bunch of mates. None of them could get their fancy-dancy electronics to connect to the hotel wireless, and the guy with the PC laptop couldn't either. My 3.5 year old low-end macbook saw the signal and connected to it with zero problem.
A lot of times it is true -- Macs just work.
No Anon, there would be a scene like in Steve Martin's LA Story, where the muggers stood next to the ATM. "Hi, I'm Tom, your mugger this evening."
I would actually applaud the little maggots mugging the Swipple dweebs exiting the Apple Store!
Jody,
The simplest explanation for the two links you posted is that individual preferences and needs vary. There are some other things at work though.
One area where manufacturing affects marketing is that Apple only has two models, each with a few sizes of memory. There are no feature differences otherwise. Other phone manufacturers make multiple models with varying feature sets on varying networks, meaning that they splinter their own marketing efforts and get no economies of scale in buying parts.
With regard to the Youtube video, Apple had first mover advantage over HTC. The first iPhone shipped years before HTC or anyone else shipped their first similar products. The HTC Evo is a great clone, but that late start hurts.
With regard to the second link (the rant about the Nokia N90 vs the iPhone), that user had specific needs (hardware keyboard, etc.) that his N90 met and the iPhone did not. His experience represents some number of people--just a lower number than the author wishes.
I predict there won't be just one winner in the "smartphone wars." It will be more like the auto market than the personal computer market.
For some reasoned thinking on the topic, check out www.asymco.com. The host's insights into the whole smart phone phenomenon are well thought out and defensible.
If Apple doesn't open a store in downtown Detroit then Apple is surely a racist company that should be sued for product availability disparate impact.
"I would actually applaud..."
Really? Are those Swipple dweeb Mac users more like Tom Clancy, or like Rush Limbaugh? Or my elderly neighbor who uses a Mac to email his kids? You'd like to see him beat up because he bought a computer of which you disapprove?
You, Anon, are a one-person sign of the apocalypse.
"spandrell said...
Jody, if you don't know much or have ever used any of their products, may I suggest that you STFU?
Women...sigh
5/20/11 1:25 AM"
i think Jody is of the masculine persusion, and is from a techie background, but I may be confusing Jody with another commenter.
Diversity payouts do rob life of meaning. Delaying iiiPad another week would rob even more meaning from life.
"If you put an Apple store in a majority black area, you'll get lots of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O005Hr-xQfc
(Black thief snatches new iPad from a consumer outside an Apple store, ripping off a finger)"
I kinda like this argument for putting an Apple store in a majority NAM area. These insulated folks are due a brutal wake-up.
Women...sigh
Oh brother, here we go again.
Apple regularly gets shaken down by the Greens to force them to make more recyclable products.
Somewhat interestingly I think Apple is one of the few companies that doesn't outsource large chunks of its OS to China or India. From what I can tell they do most of their coding onshore. Their model seems to be to hire a fairly small number of supersmart guys instead of using Chinese Army human wave tactics. That has its plusses and minuses; they seem to be able to focus on only one thing at a time, and right now that is IOS.
Setzer, bombastic hyperbole isn't wasted on you, huh? Are you an Aspergery Apple tech boy or just a True Believer?
Today's price: 2.9 gig Dell desktop-$279.00. Apple 2.7 gig IMac-$1,199.00! WTF are the cool kids getting for the premium they're paying?
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