Apple has produced nothing of actual societal value. -Denninger Rant

So folks, after a month or two of ranting and raving (but mostly linking) I have decided to return to posting on my blog. I know i don't really have readership base but I'm having fun so I might as well continue. Without further adieu I present to you Karl Denninger who posted about Steve Jobs' resignation as the Apple CEO. Most of the post is pretty vitriolic, but I loved this part.....

Apple has produced nothing of actual societal value. Jobs is not Edison or Einstein, although I heard comparisons to both this morning. Utter balderdash. He invented nothing other than a consumer cult that has driven both the abuse of workers in China (Foxconn anyone?) to the point that they attempt suicide by throwing themselves off the building parapets and the acquisition of more more more by Americans (and others) through the use of cheap credit - that is, excessive leverage. Worse, the company embarked on an intentional act of exploiting that consumer cult through the embedding of non-replaceable consumables inside their products (specifically, batteries) which is nothing more than an attempt to guarantee repeat sales for products through intentionally destroying their economic value. I attack banks all the time for having done this with explodo-mortgages that effectively forced you to come back for a refinance in two years and I reserve the same disdain for corporations that do this with their so-called "consumer products." Embedding a component in a non-replaceable fashion that has a known 500-cycle approximate lifetime when each "cycle" is typically one day for the average user essentially embeds in the device a two-year ticking time bomb, exactly as did an "explodo mortgage." That consumers are starry-eyed and willfully put up with that crap doesn't change what was done - or why. Would you buy a car that had an engine that intentionally self-destructed at 100,000 miles? Then why did you buy an iPhone or one of the "ultra nice" iMacs that has a non-replaceable battery in it that will wear out, on average, in a couple of years? Aren't you in fact a few points short in the IQ department doing the latter, when it's exactly the same as doing the former?

Keep in mind Henry Ford really brought this idea of making things that break to the mainstream when he started the Model T line, Apple has done an even better job by literally making products that you can't fix when broken.


Steve Jobs: Do come on.