にもかかわらず、だ。あるアナリストの iPad と iPad mini の 2013 年販売予測を使って複数のサイトが、マージンの高いフルサイズの iPad よりマージンの低い iPad mini の方が結局は多く売れることでアップルが心底驚くだろうといっている。
And yet! Several sites are using an analyst’s estimated split of iPad and iPad mini sales in 2013 to say that Apple is totally surprised that it could end up selling more of the lower-margin mini than it is the higher-margin full-size tablet.
The report the stories are using is from DisplaySearch. The full quote from DisplaySearch’s David Hseih is this:
「2013 年のアップルの販売計画では、iPad mini（7.9 インチ）を 4000 万台、iPad（9.7 インチ）を 6000 万台売り上げる計画だった。しかしながら現実はその逆で、iPad mini の方が iPad より人気がある。このためアップルは、2013 年の販売計画を iPad mini 5500 万台、iPad 3300 万台に修正したと我々は理解している。」
Apple had planned to sell 40M iPad minis (7.9”) and 60M iPads (9.7”) in 2013. However, the reality seems to be the reverse, as the iPad mini has been more popular than the iPad. We now understand that Apple may be planning to sell 55M iPad minis (7.9”) and 33M iPads (9.7”) in 2013.
That’s great. Only one problem: Apple never announced any such plans of any sort. I’m sure that Apple planned to sell a certain amount of both models, but it never reveals those estimates publicly. In fact, it has become even more conservative in its forecast reporting in an endeavor to halt projection inflation.
DisplaySearch estimated those numbers from what it saw as a shift in a specific split of component orders. In fact, these estimates based on a single component (TFT LCDs).
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Tim Cook の反論
単一の部品（LCD ディスプレイ）の数字を基に iPhone 5 の生産量が減っているというウワサについて、アップルの Tim Cook は遠回しながら次のように述べている。
Apple CEO Tim Cook, obliquely referencing rumors of the iPhone 5 slowing production based on a single component (LCD displays):
I’d also stress that, even if a particular data point were to be factual, it would be impossible to interpret what that data point means to our business. Our supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for our components. Yields can vary…supplier performance can vary. There’s an inordinate list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what’s going on.
If you’re going to flat out state, as a fact, that Apple’s plans are being upset, you should probably know what its plans were in the first place. If you’re going to guess what those plans are, just be honest and say so.
今日は John Gruber に電話して「Daring Fireball」１０周年のお祝いを伝えた。John はライターとしての私にも、「The Loop」のビジネスモデルについても大きな影響を与えている。
I took a minute today to call John Gruber and congratulate him on his 10th anniversary of running Daring Fireball. John has had a tremendous influence on me as a writer and on my current business model.
昨年９月、この「The Loop」サイトを再スタートさせたとき、「Daring Fireball」ソックリではないかという点を心配した。だからまず John Gruber に電話して、彼がどう考えるか尋ねた。John は私の新しいデザインを広い心で受け入れてくれただけでなく、そうするよう勧めてくれた。「The Loop」の経営的側面についてもこうしたらいいとアドバイスをくれた。
When I first re-launched The Loop last September, I was worried that it would be too much like Daring Fireball. Obviously, the first call I made was to John to get his opinion. Not only was he open to the new design, he encouraged me to launch it. He also gave me advice on the money side of how The Loop could work.
John にも、そして「Daring Fireball」にも、心から感謝したい。
Thanks John, for everything, including Daring Fireball.
Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains.
カリフォルニアの法人税率は8.84%。ネバダは？ ゼロ。
California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.
Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year.
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リノだけでなく、「世界を股にかけた税減らし」をやっており、事業収益をアイルランドの子会社、オランダ経由で（無税地帯の）カリブ諸国に移転させることで節税を行う「ダブルアイリッシュ＆ダッチサンドイッチ（Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich）」という会計テクニックまで開発したと微に入り細を穿っている。
Marketplace の上海支局長 Rob Schmitz は、アップルの中国製造工場 Foxconn に取材で入ることが許された２番目の記者だ。彼の独占取材ビデオによって、Foxconn 工場敷地内の組立ラインや諸施設、何百何千という労働者が暮らす労働環境や生活状況を知ることができる。
Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Chief Rob Schmitz is only the second reporter ever to gain access to visit the factory floor at Apple’s Chinese producer Foxconn. In this exclusive video, see highlights from his tour of the assembly line and the Foxconn campus and facilities to see what living and working conditions are like for the hundreds of thousands of workers there.
The first misconception I had about Foxconn’s Longhua facility in the city of Shenzhen was that I’ve always called it a ‘factory’ — technically, it is. But after you enter the gates and walk around, you quickly realize that it’s also a city — 240,000 people work here. Nearly 50,000 of them live on campus in shared dorm rooms.
メインストリートの両側にはファーストフード、銀行、カフェ、食料品店、結婚式写真店、自動図書館が並んでいる。工場敷地のど真ん中には、バスケットボールのコート、テニスコート、ジム、巨大なプールが２つ、それに人工芝のサッカースタジアムまである。Voice of Foxconn というラジオ局、テレビニュース局もある。Longhua のメインストリートには自前の消防署まであるのだ。
There’s a main drag lined on both sides with fast-food restaurants, banks, cafes, grocery stores, a wedding photo shop, and an automated library. There are basketball courts, tennis courts, a gym, two enormous swimming pools, and a bright green astroturf soccer stadium smack-dab in the middle of campus. There’s a radio station — Voice of Foxconn — and a television news station. Longhua even has its own fire department, located right on main street.
これは「中国工場」ということばから思い浮かぶのものをはるかに超えている。
This is not what comes to mind when you think “Chinese factory.” read the full story.
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徹底取材の詳細
Rob Schmitz の徹底取材は Marketplace のサイトに「Apple Economy」シリーズとして掲載されている。
Luo Guofen says his supervisor ignored his sick-leave request and forced him to work over the weekend.
Luo Guofen：１日たりと休暇をとらせてくれないのでホントに参っちゃう。頼み込まなければ認めてくれないんだ。たくさんの仲間が去年の旧正月に正月休暇を願い出た。何日もかけて頼んだけれど認めてもらえなかった。自分はムリヤリ休んだけれど、後が大変だったよ。
Luo Guofen: They won’t even let you take a day off; it’s very annoying. You have to beg! Last year a bunch of us asked for a holiday before Chinese New Year. We pleaded for days, but it was rejected. I left anyway and got in a lot of trouble.
Luo’s been here for two years. He installs Wi-Fi components in hundreds of iPads each day, and makes $378 a month. The money he’s made help put his brother through vocational school. And last year he sent $2,000 home. He says his parents are using the money to build an addition to their home. He’s proud of that. I ask him if I can visit his family back in his village. The next day I’m on a 12-hour bus ride headed for rural Jiangxi province.
Luo の実家の村は中国でも優れたみかんを産することで有名だ。実家を訪れると、彼の親戚はセメントブロックの家の外で親戚が焚き付け用にみかんの木を切っていた。家の入り口には腰の高さまでレンガが積んである。Luo の母親の Zheng Shuinu は腰に手を当ててその前で語る。
Luo’s village is famous for growing some of the best oranges in China. When I arrive, his relatives are outside their cement-block homes, chopping orange tree branches for kindling. Sitting at the entrance to Luo’s house is a waist-high pile of bricks. Luo’s mother, Zheng Shuinu stands in front of it, hands on her hips.
I ask: So these are for the addition to the house? Yup, she says. You must be proud of your son for sending the money for all this. She smiles and waves me inside the house. She offers a correction to her son’s story.
Zheng Shuinu: To be honest, the money he sends home isn’t very much. He spends so much on living expenses in that big city he lives in. Most of the money for fixing our home came from our savings, not his.
Zheng says a third of the young people from her village have left for factory towns like Shenzhen. She says it’s a waste. She and her husband have urged their son to come home. Compared to their son’s $2,000 in savings last year, they saved $10,000 farming oranges and doing odd jobs in the off-season. They’re certain he’ll be able to save more money here. But he’ll have to work hard, she says, and she wonders if he’s ready for that.
Zheng: Whenever he starts a job, he gives up halfway through. That’s why he never mastered any skills and that’s why he left to work in a factory. Being a factory worker is useless. They just do the same thing over and over! They don’t make much, and they don’t save anything. It’s time he came home.
Luo Guofen は夏に戻ってくることで納得した。たった２年村を離れていただけだが、現代中国にとってはこれは長い時間だ。留守中に村は景気良くなり、この秋には都市部の富裕層がみかんを買いにやってくる。道路は舗装され、四つ星ホテルもできた。農業だけが生計の手段ではなくなった。Luo の家族にとって、もはや汗水たらさなくても中国農村部の自宅でも稼げるようになったのだ。
Luo Guofen has agreed to come home this summer. He’s only been gone for two years, but in today’s China that’s a long time. In his absence, his hometown has prospered — tour groups from wealthy urban areas now come here in the fall to buy oranges. The roads are now paved. There’s even a four-star hotel. Farming is no longer the only option. And for Luo’s family, money earned at home in China’s countryside no longer has to be earned with sweat.
Last week, Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz actually got inside a Foxconn factory in the southern city of Shenzhen. He didn’t meet anybody who was poisoned on the job. He didn’t meet any 13-year-old workers. Nobody he talked to had been hurt in an explosion. He says the stories he heard were more about China than Apple.
これはカンタンだ。今年の第１位は Mike だ。理由もハッキリしている。ウソをつかなくても目的を果たすことができたハズなのに、自分の身を滅ぼしただけでなく、あまつさえ主張そのものがスッカリ色褪せてしまった。
This one is simple. You get the top spot this year, Mike, for one reason: You could have made your point without lying. But you ruined yourself and tarnished your case when it wasn’t necessary.
“We are worried we will have less money to spend. Of course, if we work less overtime, it would mean less money,” said Wu, a 23-year-old employee from Hunan province in south China.
“We are here to work and not to play, so our income is very important,” said Chen Yamei, 25, a Foxconn worker from Hunan who said she had worked at the factory for four years.
“We have just been told that we can only work a maximum of 36 hours a month of overtime. I tell you, a lot of us are unhappy with this. We think that 60 hours of overtime a month would be reasonable and that 36 hours would be too little,” she added. Chen said she now earned a bit over 4,000 yuan a month ($634).
ご存知 This American Life の最新のエピソードで最も印象的な部分は Mike Daisey が長い間沈黙するところだ。Michael Sippey がその部分を編集してオーディオクリップにしている。ジョン・ケージの『サイレンス』以来のもっとも優れた沈黙のオーディオクリップだ。
The long periods of silence by Mike Daisey were among the most compelling parts of the most recent episode of This American Life…you know the one. Michael Sippey edited together the silences into one glorious clip, the best audio of silence since Cage.
This American Life の「撤回」（Retraction）エピソードを文章で読んでも概要は分かるが、実際に耳で聴くと実に印象的で人の心をつかんで離さないものがある。最も印象的な部分は Daisey が沈黙するところだ。質問に答えられない気詰まりな様子が出ているだけでなく、リスナーがラジオ番組では沈黙を嫌うように仕向けられているせいもある — 沈黙はリスナーに信じ難いほどの気詰まりな不快感をもたらすのだ。
Reading the transcript of the Retraction episode of This American Life is one thing; listening to it is another. The most interesting bits were the silences, not only because Daisey is so clearly uncomfortable answering the questions, but also because we’ve been trained as radio listeners to abhor silence — it makes *us* incredibly uncomfortable.
So, when plugged in, the back of the new iPad became as much as 12 degrees hotter than the iPad 2 did in the same tests; while unplugged the difference was 13 degrees.
「12 度も熱く」って、待てよ、あまり大したことじゃないような・・・
“Hotter”. But wait… 12 degrees doesn’t sound like a big difference.
During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.
「いちばん熱いとき」だって？ まだ熱いという言葉を使っている。だからとても熱くなるように聞こえる。
“At its hottest” still uses the word hot, so that still sounds like it runs hot.
そのあとトーンがぐっと下がる。「とても暖かいが不快に感じるほどではない」だって。
But then the alarming tone sharply drops: “very warm but not especially uncomfortable”.
Wait. Is it merely warm, and not hot, like almost every computer and phone ever made when they’re under a sustained heavy CPU and GPU load for 45 minutes?
Most people don’t have a good idea of what a 116-degree surface feels like, the author kept using the word “hot” throughout the article, and it’s common knowledge that most people don’t read entire articles but merely skim the headline and first few paragraphs (at best).
Any reasonably competent, well-intentioned writer or editor would assume that most people reading this would think the new iPad gets hot, implying severe discomfort and a significant flaw that will affect nearly everyone who uses it, rather than merely warm, which would imply an occasional minor inconvenience for the few people who might notice and care.
どうやらコンシューマー・レポートにはそんな編集者がいないことは明白だ。
Clearly, no such editor is employed by Consumer Reports.
I made it through their similarly overblown iPhone-4-antenna drama, but last fall, after their awful smartphone comparison, I finally canceled my six-year-long CR subscription.
I’m glad I did. Whatever standards, prestige, and dignity CR previously held are long gone now, sold out with sensationalism for cheap web pageviews as they slowly realize that people don’t need them anymore.
アンチ「アップルファンボーイ」紳士録：Macalope
ひと, ジャーナリズム, tagged Apple Fanboy, Commentary, Fools of the Year, Journalism, Macalope, Macworld, Mike Daisey, Satire, Tech Writers へ投稿: 2012年 4月 3日 | 1件のコメント »
［架空の動物 Macalope：image］
ことアップルに関する限り、大手メディアより個人ライターの書くものがよっぽどオモシロい。
その一方で「アップルファンボーイ」（Apple fanboy）というレッテルを貼られることも多い。日本語でいえば「アップル教信者、狂信者」という感じだろうか。
架空の動物に託して毎週 IT 事象を切って捨てる皮肉屋「Macalope」がオモシロい特集をしている。アップルファンボーイをけなすアンチ「アップルファンボーイ」の紳士たちを列挙したのだ。
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１０人のおバカたち
今年のトップの座を奉られたのが Mike Daisey だ。これはまあ致し方ないだろう。
1. Mike Daisey
これはカンタンだ。今年の第１位は Mike だ。理由もハッキリしている。ウソをつかなくても目的を果たすことができたハズなのに、自分の身を滅ぼしただけでなく、あまつさえ主張そのものがスッカリ色褪せてしまった。
恥を知れ。
お前が今年のおバカの王者だ。
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２位以下に掲げられている名前もこれまた興味深い。
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アップルニュースを追いかけているひとなら思い当たることが多いのではないか。それぞれのコメントもなかなか強烈だ。
CNET から Macworld に移った後も、舌鋒鋭く毎週切って切りまくる。
それにしても、この Macalope とはいったい何者だろうか・・・
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