I came across an article titled Hard drives could get scarce: Apple, analysts which covers the flood in Thailand causing production for Apple’s HDD (hard drive disk) components, primarily drive motors, to decrease, and a result, functioning HDD.
In the comments of this article, a lot of people were saying, “Just make it in America. G’der!” I’m with that group, because companies in the US exploit the labor and resources of many other countries. ’It keeps America safe from pollution, and makes things affordable!’ Sure, by depreciating the lives of other human beings, their culture, and environment. If these jobs were in the US, the products might cost more because of health and safety regulations, as well as paying employees at least minimum wage and possibly providing benefits (Oh, no! Not benefits!), but think of the money that would actually be going back into the US by paying people in the US, and having these companies pay taxes (I think it’s unpatriotic to avoid paying taxes! [...that was sarcasm, but some how felt true]). And, it wouldn’t be just the factory workers who get jobs, but people who build the factories, people that manufacture factory equipment (well, that one was sort of redundant), as well as people who manage and maintain the factories and machines. That just terrible!
I wouldn’t have a problem with outsourcing if all companies based in the US had to provide the same rights and wages to workers in other countries. ’Why?’ Because most of them are currently making profit by avoiding regulations that are in place in the US which saves them money, they pay their workers well under minimum wage, and avoid paying taxes and providing benefits to employees. If they weren’t able to cut these corners, the majority of all outsourcing would not be profitable.
‘It creates opportunities for growth in less developed countries! They’re better off!’ Sure, it creates an initial boon. But, once the company leaves, and they’re left on their own to compete with other developing countries to which are outsourced, they more than likely won’t have the ongoing skill or resources to compete. For companies that stick around for several years picking up camp, the young people who worked there for their first jobs and don’t have previous experience with other jobs and are unskilled for other typical employment that would be available for their region.
Anyhoo, back to the main topic of the HDD supply…
Not to bash Apple, or make people mad, but in that past a lot of Apple’s computers seemed extremely overpriced for what they were, especially with most decent computers being on par with them in hardware/performance, and I think many of Apple’s machines still are overpriced. However, they’ve made some steps in the right direction with some of them. Looking at the MacBook Air, it has a solid state drive, backlighted keyboard, lightweight design (although too thin, in my opinion. Not enough depth). I would love to have this laptop because it seems like the ideal laptop, but there’s no way I’m going to pay over $1,000 for it, especially when they only include a 64gb SSD (solid state drive) to start with. That, and I already have a very nice Toshiba laptop… which was made in… China… as is the wireless keyboard I used to type this, and the mouse I’ve used to navigate and edit this text… and the LCD monitor I’ve been using…
So, what does my rant about my thinking Apple’s computers are overpriced have to do with the flood in Thailand effecting their HDD supplies? Solid state, baby!
‘What’s so great about solid state?’ Unlike HDDs, SSD doesn’t have any moving parts inside it. It doesn’t have to spin a disk to write, store, or access data saved on the drive. As a result, it is faster, more energy efficient, and more compact. If Apple is deprived of its resources for creating HDD, I’m hoping they will take the next step forward with SSD, hopefully approaching the Terabyte range!
I’m also excited to see the next step in multi-core processing! I think of processors like tiny percolators. Sure, percolating one or two big pots at a time is fine. But several small pots at once! That’ll make coffee faster than you could serve it! …Just as long as those percolators are made in the US… or Canada… or Japan… or the UK, Australia, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Austria, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, France, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, and other lovely countries, such as China!
