.jpg "Apple leans on kid for doing what it can't -")
Fruity peddler of broken iPhones, Apple is leaning on a kid for doing what it can't manage – making a white iPhone 4.
Apple has been putting off making a white iPhone 4 until next March because it claims that it is pretty tricky. This has apparently opened the market for those who think it is a doddle.
It is such an easy task that Fei "Phil" Lam, 17, from New York, has been cashing in by flogging a converter kit that turns black iPhone 4s into white ones.
Apple's response has been to send the boys around. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Lam claims that Jobs' Mob had sent around a private dick to try and gag him from selling the kits. He also claims he had Apple shut down his eBay listings too.
So far he has made about $30,000 to $40,000 from the kits which cost up to $279 each.
What is doubly embarrassing for Apple is that the kits use parts supplied by the suicide plagued Foxconn, which makes the iPhone in China. The question is then, if Lam can make a White iPhone using kit from Apple's own supplier, why can't Apple?
The answer might be in the price tag. Lam said it costs him a lot to bring the components for the kits into the country and he does not have a high mark up. It might be that it is too expensive for Jobs' Mob to get its traditional high mark-up for a white case.
It might be that Apple does not have to take too much action against Lam – after he has made a bit of dosh he plans to go to college. Lam says he is an Apple fanboy, but admits he does not own an iPhone. Apparently, despite all the cash he has made he does not think he can afford one. This is how someone ends up being a billionaire before they are 20.
What are you going to write when the person stealing these parts for Lam commits suicide? Are you going to blame that on Apple, too?
You know the parts are stolen. Why encourage crime? Is it for a few page hits?
I love the way that fanboys discount information by objecting to the spelling. Faced with raw terror of facts, the try to get power over the writer by finding the trivial.
In an SMS world it is easy to knock out one sentence. I would like to see any of them knock out 2000 words before 9am. Oh lord, someone said "first draft" which gives you how much they know about real writing for money.
Going through it, there is not much wrong. It is written in a style that I guess Americans (who object the loudest) don't understand. It takes years to learn to write like that. I could be dull if you like, but where would the fun be in that?
So buying the stuff from Apple's supplier is making something Steve can't?. Your piece is so full of inaccurate BS it actually hurts my head
" It might be that it is too expensive for Jobs' Mob to get its traditional high mark-up for a white case."
Yeah, because privately importing small batches of white iPhone parts is comparable to using these parts to produce white iPhones in China and then shipping them over
There are two possibilites for that guy's business model: 1. The parts are unathorized copies. Every company will try to get rid of those. 2. They are originals stolen from Foxconn. Do you really think Foxconn would sell these parts officially, risking to alienate one of their most important customers?
"I love the way that fanboys discount information by objecting to the spelling. Faced with raw terror of facts, the try to get power over the writer by finding the trivial" Oh the fanboys argument, the old strawman every 'writer' uses when defending their shoddy linkbait.
" It takes years to learn to write like that" I didn't know that selling out your integrity for clicks was such a complex skill.
I especially like reading this in the context of the last eight Foxconn stories. It seems Apple is willing to ignore the most egregious events until the truth comes into the public eye. that is the story.
if you want entertainment read the book of Jobs. I depend on the big eye for stories like this that big media sites don't seem to care about.
Unless there was some form of exclusivity agreement between Foxconn and Apple that prevents such activity on a recognized patent or copyright, Foxconn could reproduce these parts; perhaps they were part of a test run that Apple rejected, or a continuation of said test run.
The idea that I am only anti-Apple because I want the clicks is another fanboi claim. "Heaven forbid that Apple must be crap... he must only be saying these things for clicks."
Er, no I am not. I don't really care if people read it, clicks are the advertising department's concern ... it is just that ordinarly people should have the chance to be informed and not shouted down by marketing, bollocks from a big company who controls the media.
Then when their iPhone 4 cuts out because they did the difficult thing of trying to make a phone call on it, at least they were warned by someone. I think most Apple fanboys would buy what ever turd Jobs dumped in their laps, it is the ordinary people who need to know that there are iOptions.
Your grandstanding would be amusing if it wasn't so delusional. It's sentences like "I think most Apple fanboys would buy what ever turd Jobs dumped in their laps" that show that you are not after the truth, you're just trying to stir up empty controversy. And plese let go of the fanboy meme. It's childish. And incorrect. I find positive and negative things with every company, but at least try to base them on facts.
I also note that you have not chosen to answer to any factual issues I had with your article. But guys like you never let facts get in the way of a good hit piece, right?
The idea that there is "one born every minute" ever occur to you? A large number of people followed the Nazis it does not mean it was a good idea.
You know what, it makes no sense to argue with someone who suffers from an apparent pathologic delusion of grandeur, so I'm gonna stop now.
Oh, and you had to bring in the Nazis into a smartphone discussion, didn't you?
Classless prick.
No story.
You want a white phone don't you?
But you have bought into the 'ethos' of you can only have what we supply. Furthermore we sue the ass out of anyone who might be 'serving your needs' better than we do today.
Are you still reading?
Why can't you have a white iphone today?
The same damn reason that DVDs are marketed by region...You are controlled by a marketing driven company, and, what's worse you fight tooth and nail to defend that same practice.
Wake up morons.
The only reason you cannot have it today is because, as anyone who works in a totally marketing driven environment knows...
first you create the need,
...then you force the need to grow through denial,
...then when your moron customers are fit to burst,
...then you give them the white phone.
Why is this guy being visited and threatened?
Because he is ruining Cupertino's little psychology experiment.
Are you saying we don't have no manufacturing capacity? :)
Mike
I also did not mind the voice of the writer. Good article.
We do however do white conversions, at a charge of 249.99. Questions will be addressed through www.iExpertStudio.com
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What's crudely expressed is that after anyone has successful demonstrated a large and profitable market niche for a specific product range, the factories where the components were sourced at, or any of their competitors, could duplicate the designs in a variety of qualities and/or prices, and retail them directly to the second generation of adopters, with better specs or at cheaper cost.
There's just a mite too much
Apple egocentrism in Jobs' world!
Well, more than a mite.
Any customer can have an iPhone 4G any colour that he/she wants, so long as it is puritan black. But there shall be no Aftermarket Proactive Supplier of Owner Added Value accessorising to be done to the iPhone 4G Apple walled garden, because that would be unforgivable blasphemous sacrilege and grievous trespass, and lest the owners may discover their nakedness and become ashamed.
Fei "Phil" Lam is the serpent in the garden, according to Apple, and that chafes Steve Jobs as he pants twisted ifruit seeds from the tree of nads.