Apple: The New Wal-Mart

[FanIn80]

Pie. And Cake. Mostly pie, though.

(Mmm... Canadian "T1" software for a Mac, from a "major developer"...)

Edit: Oh, there's even a free Student Version, too! I knew creating this thread would pay off. I love this whole "student discount" thing I keep getting now.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Azure

Yes, because Walmart workers should all make $20+/hour.

Such a policy would probably wreck the economy.

Limiting employees to 29 hours a week and forcing them to work unpaid overtime isn't exactly economy crippling.

Externalizing what should otherwise be standard operating costs and using tax havens to bilk tax payers out of nearly half a billion dollars a year in state and federal taxes is a far more likely culprit.

But sure, the argument is that a greeter should make $20 dollars.

All is right in the world.

[GreenTeaFrapp]

Originally Posted by Rathji

This has always confused me, if a company doesn't pay its staff enough yet people continue to work there, whose fault is it? The workers or the company? At some point, there is a natural equilibrium where if they didn't have enough employees they would need to raise the wage.

Well, Wal-Mart's standard method of operation is to open in small cities and drive out pretty much all the competing businesses so that locals have few employment options other than Wal-Mart. And to make matters worse, they typically do so on the outskirts of town killing the local downtown in the process.

[mykalberta]

And the bonus of killing the local downtown is that residents no longer have to pay the ridiculous local markup of 30% + on items.

Where as before you would have to drive to the nearest big city to get those prices, now those prices are at your doorstep and you no longer need to drive.

In essence, Walmart is saving the environment by allowing local consumers to buy locally instead of supporting another cities tax base

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Rathji

I have never 'used' a present day Mac, so excuse the ignorance when I ask, what do thse programs do that don't have comparable options exist on a PC? I trust you that they are amazing, but from my knowledge of them they have PC alternatives, so correct me if I am wrong.

And on the flip side, what programs (aside from most games) cannot run and do not have a comparable option on a Mac that is not running windows?

You are correct, those programs do have PC equivalents but I heavily favor the Mac programs. I find those programs have a certain degree of visual polish, they all "talk" to each other and in many cases they are so easy to use it's astonishing.

I haven't used a PC since XP/Vista, so I'm sure Windows has improved many things with 7. These are just my impressions of the Mac products mentioned.

iPhoto - I've always really enjoyed the layout of iPhoto and how it displays your images. One common oversight is that it not only makes photobooks, but it makes nicer photobooks than I've ever seen available commercially. You can of course go online and find some upper scale companies that will make you a book, but the quality to cost ratio of a book from iPhoto is outstanding.

iMovie - I can very easily edit any movie and believe me ... I should have no part in movie editing.

Keynote - I don't use a lot of keynote as I don't give a lot of presentations, but again for me it boils down to a design preference. The fonts are really nice and the templates are very stylish. For many people that doesn't matter (and that's fine), but for me little things like that are very important. Also the ability to control the presentation from an iPhone or iPod Touch is pretty cool.

Garageband - This to me is the crown jewel of the "we make things work easier" line. I tried to get into music production on my old PC (using cubase) and it was nothing short of a nightmare. I can say without exaggeration that one night i was so frustrated I was almost brought to tears. Garageband is so effortless that it astounds me. I had a buddy come over last week and we were going to play around with it as I'd never really used it properly. I spent an hour looking at online tutorials over my lunch hour and after 10 minutes of tinkering we were light years ahead of where I was after an entire year of trying on my old PC.

Pages - I'm in the web/design field and it is common to get people send me design mock-ups in Word. I can't begin to explain to you how much I hate this. Word is a word processor, not something to be used for graphics. Oh it can do it ... it just does it horribly. The program I need everybody to use would be Adobe InDesign, but that's unrealistic as it's expensive and complicated (to people unfamiliar with Adobe's Creative Suite). Pages meanwhile is a very interesting blend of Word and InDesign. It's a full powered word processor and it can handle images/graphics and place them with pinpoint accuracy anywhere you need.

Numbers - In the same vein as Pages, numbers is a spreadsheet program that lets you play with more graphical layouts. I completely understand that most people just want a spreadsheet to tabulate data, but for me I like making my work look engaging. I'm very weird that way.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Limiting employees to 29 hours a week and forcing them to work unpaid overtime isn't exactly economy crippling.

Externalizing what should otherwise be standard operating costs and using tax havens to bilk tax payers out of nearly half a billion dollars a year in state and federal taxes is a far more likely culprit.

But sure, the argument is that a greeter should make $20 dollars.

All is right in the world.

Hey, I'm not talking about the way Walmart deals with their employees. I'm SPECIFICALLY talking about wages.

If the greeter makes $20/hour, Walmart would be able to afford paying those kind of wages. But UFA, and Co-op, and A&W, and the rest of the minimum wage places won't.

Who do you think will go under first?

[Azure]

Originally Posted by GreenTeaFrapp

Well, Wal-Mart's standard method of operation is to open in small cities and drive out pretty much all the competing businesses so that locals have few employment options other than Wal-Mart. And to make matters worse, they typically do so on the outskirts of town killing the local downtown in the process.

The funny thing is, Walmart did exactly that here in Pincher Creek. Store on the outskirts of town, etc, etc.

What did it do to business? It brought more of it. People from all over come to Pincher to shop instead of going to Lethbridge.

Now we're looking at a multi-million dollar housing project coming into town. A Tim Horton's, and possibly a Canadian Tire.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Azure

Hey, I'm not talking about the way Walmart deals with their employees. I'm SPECIFICALLY talking about wages.

If the greeter makes $20/hour, Walmart would be able to afford paying those kind of wages. But UFA, and Co-op, and A&W, and the rest of the minimum wage places won't.

Who do you think will go under first?

What kind of illogical nonsense is this?

"I'm not talking about the way walmart deals with their employees..."

So you aren't talking specifically about wages...but you're talking specifically about wages...

Gotcha.

[GreenTeaFrapp]

Originally Posted by Azure

The funny thing is, Walmart did exactly that here in Pincher Creek. Store on the outskirts of town, etc, etc.

What did it do to business? It brought more of it. People from all over come to Pincher to shop instead of going to Lethbridge.

Now we're looking at a multi-million dollar housing project coming into town. A Tim Horton's, and possibly a Canadian Tire.

What happens in Alberta isn't exactly indicative of what happens elsewhere in North America. But how many stores went out of business in your downtown area?

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Limiting employees to 29 hours a week and forcing them to work unpaid overtime isn't exactly economy crippling.

Externalizing what should otherwise be standard operating costs and using tax havens to bilk tax payers out of nearly half a billion dollars a year in state and federal taxes is a far more likely culprit.

But sure, the argument is that a greeter should make $20 dollars.

All is right in the world.

Just wanted to quote something my old boss used to say to me:

"Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance within legal means is our right"

So blame the government if there are loopholes that businesses can exploit to save taxes, not the company that uses the loopholes.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Just wanted to quote something my old boss used to say to me:

"Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance within legal means is our right"

So blame the government if there are loopholes that businesses can exploit to save taxes, not the company that uses the loopholes.

I don't disagree with you.

Stealing with diplomatic immunity is still immoral.

That is all assuming that they haven't been busted for tax evasion, which they have.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by GreenTeaFrapp

What happens in Alberta isn't exactly indicative of what happens elsewhere in North America. But how many stores went out of business in your downtown area?

None, actually.

Most of the businesses that complained they would close down when Walmart came are still going strong.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by GreenTeaFrapp

What happens in Alberta isn't exactly indicative of what happens elsewhere in North America. But how many stores went out of business in your downtown area?

I read about a study that said most places where this happens were already in big trouble, economy wise and Wal-Mart was just the straw that broke the camels back. Of course, who knows who paid for that study...

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by burning_acid1

I hate Walmart for their practices re: wage received by workers.

They're low skill jobs.

They do get bonuses. And they can always become a manager. They're well compensated.

[The Yen Man]

Yah, I've worked at Walmart during my high school / university days, and the pay's comparable to working at any other low skill job. You get a 10% discount card, plus you get profit sharing after a year with the company, so that was kind of nice. I don't see why this is considered "slave" wages. Minimum wage sounds about right for the snot nosed teen working in the automotives department who's hitting on the cashier on break rather then helping customers.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Pie. And Cake. Mostly pie, though.

(Mmm... Canadian "T1" software for a Mac, from a "major developer"...)

Edit: Oh, there's even a free Student Version, too! I knew creating this thread would pay off. I love this whole "student discount" thing I keep getting now.

Dude - look closer - that's the "online" hosted version, not the installed version. Like I said, for most people with simple returns it'll suffice but there are a number of people that have privacy and usability concerns for which the "online" version won't do. I tried to use the online version a few years ago and it's very much a step by step "guided interview" approach. Not so good for those of use with more complex returns that need to jump from schedule to schedule. Hopefully they've improved page load times since then too....

That said for anyone with a complex return contemplating using an installed Mac Tax program (vs online ones) - please don't. I'd face the potential security and privacy considerations before I trusted a company that won't cover any tax liabilities from a fault of the program.

And yes, there are a lot of tax freebies and educational credits for students. Don't rely on the software to identify them all for you - educate yourself.

[Azure]

Full Text:
Apple Slaps Developers In The Face
By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms. Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion.
[Sentence regarding Apple's intentions redacted at request from Adobe]. This has nothing to do whatsoever with bringing the Flash player to Apple’s devices. That is a separate discussion entirely. What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe. This does not just affect Adobe but also other technologies like Unity3D.
I am positive that there are a large number of Apple employees that strongly disagree with this latest move. Any real developer would not in good conscience be able to support this. The trouble is that we will never hear their discontent because Apple employees are forbidden from blogging, posting to social networks, or other things that we at companies with an open culture take for granted.
Adobe and Apple has had a long relationship and each has helped the other get where they are today. The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible. We are not looking to kill anything or anyone. This would be like us putting something in our SDK to make it impossible for 3rd-party editors like FDT to work with our platform. I can tell you that we wouldn’t even think or consider something like that.
Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.
Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.

Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/09/ado...rself-apple-2/

[Hack&Lube]

I don't like either Apple nor Wal-Mart but I will shop at Wal-Mart occasionally. You'll never see me in an Apple store unless I'm dragged in by a member of the opposite sex until they redesign the Genius Bar and staff to be like the Milk Bar in a Clockwork Orange. It's close enough already!

[FanIn80]

This is already being discussed in another thread.