Status Updates From Apple in China: The Capture...

Sony in Japan built better laptops than Apple. But JP was no longer an affordable manufacturing base + good at taking instructions but bad at collaborating (failed collaboration with Sharp).

Apple newton was an unloved division > freedom > decide to contract manufacturers in Taiwan. TW was colonised by JP for 60y until WWII > skill transfer + cheaper + better collaborators @ Inventec

Chapter 2: Apple’s adventures in outsourcing to Japan and Taiwan. Started with laserwriter with Canon in JP, a printer that could print fonts designed in MacOS > Adobe (postscript software that allowed users to play with typefaces) & page maker > allowed publishing books.

Apple‘s biggest issue in the early days is that they did not have a government strategy in China. The company was orchestrating vast production networks but doing so under the radar with not a single manufacturing site, bearing apples‘s name. Apple cracked the code on how to manufacture the products without doing any of the manufacturing itself. It wasn’t really outsourcing in a normal sense.

2013: CCTV charged Apple for treating Chinese customers unequally and unfairly, citing warranty service differences (China: replace broken parts, overseas: wholly replaced)

Xi hardened conditions in the country and twisted the arms of corporations to give back to China in 2013. Beijing deliberately accused apple of something new, wasn’t true to demonstrate its power.