Just saw this rant on FB and now I wanna rant too.

“Apple expects to sell 250 million units with the iPhone 5 release on September 21. That’s 250 million units x the 650 dollars that they cost = one hundred sixty-two billion five hundred million dollars, and that is just for the day they release the fucking things. WAKE UP AMERICA! IS A FANCY CELL PHONE REALLY WORTH WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO FEED/CLOTHE/EDUCATE AN ENORMOUS GROUP OF HUMANS? Our priorities in this country are pretty fucked up.”

Point 1-Apple created a product, created a demand, and is supplying that product. They’re not forcing anyone to buy it and they can charge whatever the fuck they want. YA DON’T HAVE TO BUY IT.

Point 2-Apple isn’t ACTUALLY making 2.5 billion dollars off of these phones. Some of this money is being used to pay for the actual cost of the phone, paying the employees who make and sell the phone, replacing faulty models, and investing money back into the company to innovate new products. Actual profit on a iPhone (at least the older models) is actually not so much as you might think.

Point 3-Apple’s iPhones and the whole smartphone fad has actually helped to create jobs and innovate great new technology. There’s an entire business in the creation of apps, apps which besides being used to play shit like Angry Birds, are being used in classrooms and in hospitals. Just search for app innovations and uses of apps and you can see that they’ve actually done a lot of good for some people.

Point 4-I hardly see how a company making a profit is related to feeding, clothing, and educating the masses. A company in this country has a right to make a profit. It’s not their responsibility to take care of the citizens in this country, unless you count the taxes they pay and the taxes you pay buying their products. And they don’t control the taxes they pay, the government does. Unless the government is spending 2.5 billion to buy those 250 million projected units, they’re quite unrelated.

Point 5-I agree that this country has its priorities out of whack, and I would also agree that big businesses are more and more becoming the problem. I would also say that I don’t see this as Apple’s fault at all. I may be Apple fan-girling, but Apple is a decent company. They make good products and they charge a little more for them because they created them. The manufacture products overseas because it’s cheaper and if they manufactured those same products here, they would cost a TON more money and they wouldn’t sell shit. And yes, there have been reports of bad condition in their facories, and they’ve tried to FIX IT. After public pressure, yeah, but that’s more than you can say for companies like Nike who have been blasted for years with NO intention of changing. All things which are actually something I see more as being the fault of our government for helping to making it easier to manufacture products and do business overseas than it is to do it here.

But Apple also has domestic retail stores full of employees all over the country, call centers that aren’t based overseas, and they’ve been a leader in technology creation for years. They’re not perfect, but they actually have a pretty decent balance of taking advantage of what America has to offer, adding to what America has to offer, and advancing because of opportunities specific to America.

Basically, I don’t feel this rant holds much water, but I do agree with the sentiment.