General Apple Megathread

[henry07]

Originally Posted by Russic

Kinda sounds like he may be a better candidate for the iPod Touch. That would save a significant amount of money.

u cant make calls from the touch plus its a good deal he's getting

[FanIn80]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

As I'm a bit new to the Mac world, how does the upgrade process (namely: cost) work? I bought a Macbook Air in November or so and it came with Lion pre-installed.

In recent history, Mac OS upgrades have been around $30. It wouldn't surprise me to see this one come in free though. I imagine we'll find out soon, though.

[silentsim]

30$ is my guess on this one, done through the MAS

[CKPThunder]

Can we upgrade to Mountain Lion straight from Snow Leopard or do we have to upgrade to Lion first before we upgrade?

[silentsim]

Originally Posted by CKPThunder

Can we upgrade to Mountain Lion straight from Snow Leopard or do we have to upgrade to Lion first before we upgrade?

Odds are it will require Lion to upgrade BUT you can do a clean install straight to ML

[MickMcGeough]

Foxconn workers get a raise.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81G0M920120217

[Russic]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

Foxconn workers get a raise.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81G0M920120217

Interesting. So does that mean just the Foxconn workers that make Apple gear get a raise or does every member of the entire complex get a raise? Did Apple just strong arm Foxconn into giving raises to the workers who assemble tech for other companies? I assume Foxconn eats that loss?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

It wouldn't surprise me to see this one come in free though.

Why? They are positioning it as a full point upgrade to the OS, this will be 10.8, not 10.7.x?

[Russic]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Why? They are positioning it as a full point upgrade to the OS, this will be 10.8, not 10.7.x?

I think it's possible just because hey are planning these to come out on yearly cycles just like the mobile OS. I still think they will offer it at $20, but Gruber from Daring Fireball made mention of the similarity.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

Foxconn workers get a raise.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...81G0M920120217

Hrm. Still doesn't address the bigger issue. The reason people were killing themselves wasn't because of the wages. It was the living conditions. From what I read, it was like a prison. People lived, slept, ate and worked at this factory. Mostly worked. One man died after being forced to work for 34 hours straight. Working 70 hours a week is common. The Bill Maher story on it was that because of all the suicides from people jumping off the factory roof, instead of improving the working conditions, Foxconn just built nets to catch the jumpers.

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Hrm. Still doesn't address the bigger issue. The reason people were killing themselves wasn't because of the wages. It was the living conditions. From what I read, it was like a prison. People lived, slept, ate and worked at this factory. Mostly worked. One man died after being forced to work for 34 hours straight. Working 70 hours a week is common. The Bill Maher story on it was that because of all the suicides from people jumping off the factory roof, instead of improving the working conditions, Foxconn just built nets to catch the jumpers.

So how bad would I get ripped if I said the suicide rates at Foxconn are actually lower than the rest of China? It's not to say that Foxconn suicides aren't a problem, just maybe that whenever you get 800,000 people together in a country with a high suicide rate it's going to happen (and it seems to happen less than you'd expect at Foxconn).

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Russic

So how bad would I get ripped if I said the suicide rates at Foxconn are actually lower than the rest of China? It's not to say that Foxconn suicides aren't a problem, just maybe that whenever you get 800,000 people together in a country with a high suicide rate it's going to happen (and it seems to happen less than you'd expect at Foxconn).

This is my main issue with the whole story. I've not seen a single article contrasting "life at Foxconn" against life in lower-class China in general.

A lot of people seem to only get half of what a Foxconn suicide says. Clearly, they'd rather die than continue working there, and that is a tragedy. But what seems to be forgotten in all this is that they'd also rather die than just quit their job and work in a mine or some other factory.

We're getting a look at how awful life is for some Chinese through this story, but I'm not convinced that Foxconn is responsible for it. They're guilty of taking advantage of China's existing social problems for cheap manufacturing, and so are hundreds of other companies.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

Hrm. Still doesn't address the bigger issue. The reason people were killing themselves wasn't because of the wages. It was the living conditions. From what I read, it was like a prison. People lived, slept, ate and worked at this factory. Mostly worked. One man died after being forced to work for 34 hours straight. Working 70 hours a week is common. The Bill Maher story on it was that because of all the suicides from people jumping off the factory roof, instead of improving the working conditions, Foxconn just built nets to catch the jumpers.

Foxconn suicide rates in 2011 were:

- One half of the UK's suicide rate.
- One quarter of the suicide rate at US Colleges.
- One tenth that of the rest of China.

Because I know someone will twist this - this doesn't make Foxconn working conditions "ok". Nobody should be killing themselves at all - never mind on the job. But the suicides themselves aren't the homerun metric by which we can vilify Foxconn, contrary to the belief of the average head-in-the-sand media consumer.

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by MickMcGeough

This is my main issue with the whole story. I've not seen a single article contrasting "life at Foxconn" against life in lower-class China in general.

A lot of people seem to only get half of what a Foxconn suicide says. Clearly, they'd rather die than continue working there, and that is a tragedy. But what seems to be forgotten in all this is that they'd also rather die than just quit their job and work in a mine or some other factory.

We're getting a look at how awful life is for some Chinese through this story, but I'm not convinced that Foxconn is responsible for it. They're guilty of taking advantage of China's existing social problems for cheap manufacturing, and so are hundreds of other companies.

Your argument sounds about as convincing as a teenager's saying that "all the other kids can do it".

If these factories do not respect normal human rights, they have no excuse.

[Mccree]

"The iTunes Library Extras.itdb file is locked, on a locked disk, or you do not have write permission for this file."

I get this error when launch iTunes. I recently upgraded to lion. I have my iTunes library in an external drive and was trying to set-up iTunes when the power when out. Now i get the above issue.

[Rathji]

Never having maintained a iOS system, I am guessing that your db file is corrupted and your best bet is to recover from a backup (or whatever iOS has for 'previous versions').

If it was Windows, I would suggest redoing ownership of the file, but I wouldn't be hopeful that it would work.

[MickMcGeough]

Originally Posted by Vulcan

Your argument sounds about as convincing as a teenager's saying that "all the other kids can do it".

If these factories do not respect normal human rights, they have no excuse.

What, exactly, do you think I'm arguing?

[Milt Schmidt]

Mccree, I'm more of a Linux guy but I might be able to help, I do use OS X and BSD a bit. It sounds like your permissions have gotten messed up with the Lion upgrade, but it should be an easy fix. First, make sure you have a backup, even if you just back up the presently unusable folders, that way you can try various fixes without risking losing everything. Navigate to your /itunes (the'/' indicates a folder in case you're not familiar with that nomenclature) folder in Finder, it's probably under /Music. Ctrl click on the /itunes and select "get info." At the bottom of the menu that opens there's a "Sharing & Permissions" section, make sure your account has "Read & Write" privileges, you'll probably be prompted for a password to make changes. That might fix your problem, assuming that the permissions are okay in all your sub-folders.

Also, you probably want to run Verify and Repair Disk Permissions from Disk Utility. This is a good idea every once in a while on a Mac, especially after an OS upgrade. To do it you open Disk Utility, found in /Applications/Utilities, select your HD, click the First Aid tab and select Verify Disk Permissions. Once that's done running select Repair Disk Permissions, that's it. Doing that every once in a while can prevent weird permissions issues, and you can run it in the background while you use your computer for what ever else you need to do. Hope that works for you.

Milt

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Milt Schmidt

Mccree, I'm more of a Linux guy but I might be able to help, I do use OS X and BSD a bit. It sounds like your permissions have gotten messed up with the Lion upgrade, but it should be an easy fix. First, make sure you have a backup, even if you just back up the presently unusable folders, that way you can try various fixes without risking losing everything. Navigate to your /itunes (the'/' indicates a folder in case you're not familiar with that nomenclature) folder in Finder, it's probably under /Music. Ctrl click on the /itunes and select "get info." At the bottom of the menu that opens there's a "Sharing & Permissions" section, make sure your account has "Read & Write" privileges, you'll probably be prompted for a password to make changes. That might fix your problem, assuming that the permissions are okay in all your sub-folders.

Also, you probably want to run Verify and Repair Disk Permissions from Disk Utility. This is a good idea every once in a while on a Mac, especially after an OS upgrade. To do it you open Disk Utility, found in /Applications/Utilities, select your HD, click the First Aid tab and select Verify Disk Permissions. Once that's done running select Repair Disk Permissions, that's it. Doing that every once in a while can prevent weird permissions issues, and you can run it in the background while you use your computer for what ever else you need to do. Hope that works for you.

Milt

Further to this, Mac OS X does not respect file permissions on externally attached drives (at least not by default), so the permissions issues, if that is root cause, are on your home directory, and probably more specifically on the Music or iTunes folder - keep in mind that with your iTunes library on an external drive, the DB that drives the whole thing is still kept in your home folder.

[Russic]

Looks like Nightline is going into the Foxconn factory for tomorrow nights (Tuesday Feb 21) show.

http://www.mactrast.com/2012/02/abc-...icial-preview/