• @[email protected]
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      3 months ago

      Bold of you to assume that Trump and Company won’t put the average American to work for almost nothing. The planned economic recession is to convince the people to do so.

      The new generation of American children will not spend most of their time studying in school, but rather working in factories for a handful of peanuts. That’s Trump’s America.

    • @[email protected]
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      43 months ago

      China has a lot more leverage to increase this price. Export tariffs on US listed companies to US, and perhaps to countries that choose to further increase sycophancy to US empire. Prevent US manufacturing with more export controls.

      The problem with decades of propaganda/smearing is that too many people believe it. Bessent yesterday said “They only have a pair of 2s” as cards. No one in the room has not been programmed to “repeat that China is on brink of collapse for all of the last 20 years”. Hitler couldn’t win war because generals had to be loyal to every syphilis inspired thought of the dotard.

    • @[email protected]
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      53 months ago

      shouldn’t affect sales though because apple fanboys will sell their grandmother to buy the latest status symbol phone

  • @[email protected]
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    743 months ago

    Instead of Vietnamese children making t-shirts to sell to the USA, they want American children to make t-shirts to sell to Vietnam.

    This makes absolutely no fucking sense even from a nationalistic standpoint.

    • @[email protected]
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      203 months ago

      Nah man, they’ll start using the prisons for more then menial labor. You don’t have to pay them at all

      • @[email protected]
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        93 months ago

        But then they have to fill those prisons with more and more people. How can America just increase the crime rate on a whim?

        glances briefly to American history

        Oh right, shit.

        • Gormadt
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          3 months ago

          Slavery never ended in the US, it just got better PR.

          “Only prisoners can be sentenced to slave labor.”

          Makes a while bunch of stuff punishable by prison time and makes prison sentences longer.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    In the meantime, the Liberty phone seems to be the closest option for a US-made smartphone. While not entirely comprised of US-sourced components, the PCBs are manufactured in California, as well as device packaging and assembly.

    April 10 update: Right on time, the author of the OP’s linked article has now published an article on the Liberty phone.

    • @[email protected]
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      213 months ago

      Decade old specs for decade in the future price.

      I have not looked beyond the front page of the link you shared here, and I don’t mean my criticism to be more than tongue in cheek, but oh boy, $2k for that is… Something.

        • Echo Dot
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          13 months ago

          Obviously the CPU and GPU are made in China. You’d have to be an idiot to believe they were made in the US.

      • @[email protected]
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        63 months ago

        The fact they made it possible is impressive in itself. Sure it’s not competitive for the latest games or such, but society is more and more reliant on smartphones, so having a local option is valuable in itself.

        It’s a bit like countries making their own planes instead of buying the F-35, which is better and cheaper. They looked stupid at the time, until Trump came back and it turned out strategic autonomy had value.

        As for the price, probably it is due to small production ; but also simply underlines how we got used to not paying the “true” price of things, by moving production to places with cheaper costs & labor.

        • @[email protected]
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          23 months ago

          Plus, AFAIK, Purism is one of the few companies that pays their developers to write FOSS code, which produced the Phosh UI, basic call and text apps, and mobile-friendly UI library.

        • @[email protected]
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          73 months ago

          That last part for sure resonates. I can’t remember if I said it here or elsewhere, but our prices have been subsidized by substandard working conditions in China, there is no way around it. And all because large corporations wanted to make more money. And we, as consumers, shouted a resounded “hell yeah” to those Chinese suicides at Foxcon, because we wanted cheaper components and cheaper phones.

          And so I basically don’t know how I feel about anything. I try to be more cognizant about what I buy, where it’s from, how it’s made, but the speed and ease, and basically not having to think, sometimes trumps those thoughts.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        5-10h battery life. Their goal list includes 20h idle time and recording video. It seems to be using some nonstandard SIM and only has GNSS, not GPS. Which is probably fine functionally but apparently they weren’t able to source a GPS chip to use the US system that met whatever their standards are? Large list of negatives for something the price of a shiny new foldable, or several non-foldable smartphones.

        They also seem to be doing the usual dance of “Made in USA!!!*”

        * what you think of when you think “electronic components” sourced from Asian countries, mostly we’re talking about assembly and that this is where it’s put in the consumer packaging.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          By “nonstandard SIM” do you mean one of two common SIM sizes that are not “nano”, which is preferred by current phones?

          GNSS means it’s global. Which includes US GPS, as well as Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s BeiDou. Wikipedia

  • @[email protected]
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    303 months ago

    This guy just spews his bullshit, Would it be nice if they could be made in United States? Yeah sure but the thing is an iPhone would cost like $3500. And I know damn straight I’m not paying that much for a phone. And I’m pretty sure you guys wouldn’t either and that’s coming from someone that sometimes makes some stupid financial decisions and that is not one I would make

    • @[email protected]
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      13 months ago

      I mean I would pay a premium for a made in America phone. Probably about 2 times as much. Iphones just suck ass so I’d never pay for one at all

    • @[email protected]
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      3 months ago

      If Apple didn’t try to make 400% markup on their underpowered trash, it would probably just cost what it costs now. Except the child slave labor part would go away.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        underpowered trash

        I hate to say it, but it’s actually quite powerful trash that they produce.

        • Darren
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          123 months ago

          Yeah, I’m in the process of shifting all of my workflows over to Linux/Android from all-Apple, but my Macs are a huge sticking point. My main computer is an M2 Macbook Air, which is ridiculously quick. I’m basically just waiting for Asahi to gain display port over USB, at which point I’ll ditch macOS. But until then…

          • @[email protected]
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            23 months ago

            Lol I agree. The value is horrendous when you spec one of their products to have decent storage/ram, but nevertheless can’t fault the speed of their ARM chips.

            • @[email protected]
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              13 months ago

              My Linux system uses about 1 GB idle and yet I’m glad to have 16 GB - not because I wouldn’t mostly be fine with 8, but because it just keeps more doors open. Can run more demanding programs, more programs simultaneously, can host something in the background, …

              The OS itself is more efficient than Windows, yes. But that’s not a hard task, and it’s less efficient than many Linux distros. No matter how efficient you are, 8 GB non-expandable RAM is not enough nowadays.

      • @[email protected]
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        83 months ago

        My almost five year old piece of under powered apple trash cost me less than 45 US cents a day, still has regular OS updates and works between eight to ten hours most days running my entire life. I might even splurge out and buy a new one if they ever release an overpowered non trash handset…

      • @[email protected]
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        213 months ago

        Except the child slave labor part would go away.

        That’s the neat part, the republicans are trying to repeal child labor laws.

  • @[email protected]
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    2183 months ago

    Good luck getting all the materials needed for that now that China has stopped exports to the US.

    IPhone 17:

    Brick phone

    • @[email protected]
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      53 months ago

      Don’t threaten me with a good time.

      I’d looooove a return of the brick phone. Modern phones feel small and dainty in my giant hands. Meanwhile, battery life absolutely sucks. I’d love a modern brick phone that does calls, text and nothing else. And a battery life of a fulm week.

        • @[email protected]
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          53 months ago

          Sure, plenty of small phones with good battery life back then. Owned a new phone every three months or so, innovation went that fast in the 90’s.

          But those small phones have a few drawbacks. Too small for my hands and you can’t really shoulder it like we used to with landlines.

          I also mis proper flip phones like the Motorola Startac. You could snap those closed with authority. Can’t quite do that with those modern folding screen flips.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          Oooh! I had this back in the day. It was absolutely fantastic. I would love for this to come back again. I miss physical buttons and being able to do everything on the phone with one hand.

      • @[email protected]
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        13 months ago

        I’ll take my Motorola Razr back from the early 00s.

        Whether I do Captain Kirk impressions with it in the privacy of my own home is my business…

    • @[email protected]
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      Only $4000 for the entry model. That’s how much it costs once the tariffs on the semiconductors that you simply cannot produce in the country for at least 10 more years even if you tried has been covered, the salaries high enough to motivate people to willingly work the assembly lines now that immigrant workers are gone, and the markup needed to cover the cost of completely creating an entire supply chain from scratch as well as paying back the insane debt that results from the outrageous high risk investments this would require and that frankly no investor would want to touch with a 10 foot pole.

        • @[email protected]
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          23 months ago

          Or the Google tax of a few hundred bucks for the OS. Which could happen. Google is worse than Micro$uck at this point and I say this as someone who returned their OEM license before. See Revolution OS https://youtu.be/k0RYQVkQmWU

          Even Linux is now weaponized for profits over anything else…:.::.

          So argument invalid

  • @[email protected]
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    533 months ago

    people screwing in little, little screws

    it’s going to be automated

    Sure that’s not automated yet?

    • @[email protected]
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      333 months ago

      Nope, I’ve long worked in designing for North American electronics manufacturing, it’s still manual. We just outsource as many of those sub assemblies as possible to cheaper countries and design things with as few fasteners as possible.

      That really is the least of the worries, there just isn’t the manufacturing infrastructure for all the raw material and individual parts, manufacturing those parts just isn’t feasible to do at a reasonable cost or schedule outside of Asia. China is still popular not due to cost, they are no longer cheapest, but because they have the infrastructure in place.

    • @[email protected]
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      193 months ago

      Apparently jobs like that, which require fine motor skills, are extremely difficult to automate.

        • @[email protected]
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          13 months ago

          Musk has quite famously admitted that robots can’t do everything, and humans are extremely good at problem solving.

      • @[email protected]
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        83 months ago

        Weird. Not like pcb fabs haven’t been doing that for ages. And not necessarily the solder flood type chip mounts either.

        • @[email protected]
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          123 months ago

          Pick and place machines are one thing, but plugging in tiny connectors, screws that need a little wiggle to go in the hole, things like that are a different story.

          • mle
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            33 months ago

            Probably also a factor is that you would be spinning up a whole production line and automation systems for phones that will only be in production for 12 to 18 months, after which you’d have to adapt or redo everything for the new model.

  • @[email protected]
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    13 months ago

    Toyota is able to build Camrys, Highlanders, Tundras, etc. in the US. So I don’t see why we can’t have a factory in the US to build the iPhone?

    Does building an iPhone require more manual labor than building a car? Maybe it requires more precision than cars, but I don’t see why we can’t train and equip people to do it here.

    There are microchips being made in the US today. See Intel. Maybe not the latest process node but it is not an outdated node either.

    • @[email protected]
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      53 months ago

      You absolutely can, but the price of the workers for these kinds of things are way higher in the US as opposed to China. Also, if Apple could automate away manual labour to the point it would be economically viable they sure as heck would’ve done so already. Price increases using US-based manual labour are inevitable - its one of the major reasons why the global market is as it is today, cheap labour in developing countries.

          • @[email protected]
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            13 months ago

            I 100% agree, and hope that remains to be an option. But also… things can change, and they can change fast. We are all only a few days of missed meals or missed mortgage payments from having very different standards.

            • @[email protected]
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              23 months ago

              Step 1 - Create a depression unlike we have ever seen and make people desperate for any job they can get.

  • @[email protected]
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    not to mention one of the reasons we eagerly off-shored electronics fabrication in the first place is because it’s a toxic nightmare

    • @[email protected]
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      Do they have tariffs on second hand goods from Asia being imported to sell to poor Americans who cant afford local?

      • @[email protected]
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        93 months ago

        the kicker will be when new-from-China plus 100% tariff is still cheaper than American made …

        • @[email protected]
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          13 months ago

          Exactly. US manufacturing will have to gut wages in order to compete. Hope they enjoy their $12/ dozen eggs. After rent and insurance and petrol, they may not even be able to afford those imported Chinese goods either. Outside of the US bubble though…

    • @[email protected]
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      163 months ago

      The Trump base will blame Obama/Biden/Clinton, I guarantee it.

      It must be so freeing to live a life more divorced from logic or reality than an indoor dog.

      Maybe eliminating natural selection was a mistake.

      • @[email protected]
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        13 months ago

        The year is 2039, life is hard.

        Just used the last of the clean water, food is almost unobtainable.

        “Thanks Obama”