Monthly Archives: June 2007

So, who makes the iPod?

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(And who makes most money from it?) There’s a fascinating article by Hal Varian in today’s New York Times summarising the findings of a detailed investigation by three University of California (Irvine) researchers into the making of the iPod. Excerpt:

the researchers examined the major components of the iPod and tried to calculate the value added at different stages of the production process and then assigned that value added to the country where the value was created. This isn’t an easy task, but even based on their initial examination, it is quite clear that the largest share of the value added in the iPod goes to enterprises in the United States, particularly for units sold here.

The researchers estimated that $163 of the iPod’s $299 retail value in the United States was captured by American companies and workers, breaking it down to $75 for distribution and retail costs, $80 to Apple, and $8 to various domestic component makers. Japan contributed about $26 to the value added (mostly via the Toshiba disk drive), while Korea contributed less than $1.

The unaccounted-for parts and labor costs involved in making the iPod came to about $110. The authors hope to assign those labor costs to the appropriate countries, but as the hard drive example illustrates, that’s not so easy to do.

This value added calculation illustrates the futility of summarizing such a complex manufacturing process by using conventional trade statistics. Even though Chinese workers contribute only about 1 percent of the value of the iPod, the export of a finished iPod to the United States directly contributes about $150 to our bilateral trade deficit with the Chinese.

Ultimately, there is no simple answer to who makes the iPod or where it is made. The iPod, like many other products, is made in several countries by dozens of companies, with each stage of production contributing a different amount to the final value.

The real value of the iPod doesn’t lie in its parts or even in putting those parts together. The bulk of the iPod’s value is in the conception and design of the iPod. That is why Apple gets $80 for each of these video iPods it sells, which is by far the largest piece of value added in the entire supply chain.

Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.

The full research report is available as a pdf from here

Pinch yourself: Blair goes out on a high

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It is an indictment of our system of government that Tony Blair was able to remain in office despite Iraq. Even if he was not culpable of deception, as he insists he was not, even if he only ever did what he thought was right, he was guilty of the grossest misjudgment – one that has led to the deaths of at least 118 British service personnel, along with as many as 655,000 Iraqis. For that mistake alone, even if it was an honest one, he should have paid with his job. It is a badge of shame for the parliamentary Labour party and the cabinet (and indeed his successor), who between them could have driven Blair from office, that they did not do so earlier. But it also reflects a moral failure by Blair that he leaves today believing himself to be a star, going out on a high.

Jonathan Freedland, writing in yesterday’s Guardian.

Blair’s meejah

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Following Tony Blair’s description of the British media as like unto a “feral beast”, Bill Thompson had some badges made and was handing them out at breakfast this morning. I put one on and promptly forgot all about it — and then wondered why shop-keepers were giving me such funny looks all day.

Shakespearean coinage

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From Shakespeare’s Word & Phrases…

In all of his work – the plays, the sonnets and the narrative poems – Shakespeare uses 17,677 words. Of those 1,700 were first used by Shakespeare. Writers often invent words, either by creating new forms of existing words or coining new words outright, because they are unable to find the exact word they require in the existing language. Shakespeare is the foremost of those. He was by far the most important individual influence on the development of the modern English that we speak today.

Look at this short list of words that we use in our daily speech and ask yourself if you could pass through a day without needing to use at least ten of them. There are many more and you use them without knowing that they were given to you by England’s national writer…

The list includes accommodation, aerial, amazement, apostrophe, castigate, dislocate, dwindle, frugal, generous and inauspicious…

Imagine being Shakespeare’s English teacher…

Later… Quentin asks: “So did Will S actually invent those words, I wonder, or were they in fairly common usage and his is simply the first written record we have?”

Don’t know. But I know a man who does… Stay tuned.

Xerox Enters Search Market

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From TechCrunch…

Xerox announced its entry into the search market this week with FactSpotter, document search software that is claimed to go beyond conventional keyword search.

FactSpotter is text mining software that combines a linguistic engine that allows users to make queries in everyday language. FactSpotter looks for the keywords contained in a query along with the context those words have.

According to Xerox, FactSpotter is capable of combing through almost any document regardless of the language, location, format or type; take advantage of the way humans think, speak and ask questions; and discriminate the results highlighting just a handful of relevant answers instead of returning thousands of unrelated responses…

Sounds interesting. But…

FactSpotter will not be coming to a browser near anyone, anytime shortly. Xerox plans to launch FactSpotter next year as part of the paid Xerox Litigation Service platform and has no plans for a wider or public release.

Social class and social networking

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Ah — just as I thought. BBC News reports that:

Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like, suggests a study.

A six-month research project has revealed a sharp division along class lines among the American teenagers flocking to the social network sites.

The research suggests those using Facebook come from wealthier homes and are more likely to attend college.

By contrast, MySpace users tend to get a job after finishing high school rather than continue their education…

Climbing walls about to become easier

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Phew! As someone who often feels like climbing walls (e.g. when listening to Tony Blair or George Bush), I am relieved to learn of this new development…

Researchers have developed a carbon-nanotube-based tape that could prove useful for creating robots that climb walls and special adhesive gloves for astronauts. Unlike ordinary tape, which eventually loses its stickiness, this new material sticks like a permanent glue, but it can be removed and reused. It can also stick to a wider variety of materials, including glass and Teflon.

Dubbed “gecko tape” by researchers, the material works by imitating the nano- and microscale structures on geckos’ feet that allow them to quickly scale walls and run across ceilings. The tape is reusable and will not dry up or slide off the wall because, unlike ordinary tape, it does not use viscoelastic glues. Instead, it employs carbon nanotubes to make use of microscale van der Waals forces that occur at very short ranges between surfaces. Bundles of nanotubes conform to the slightest microscopic variations on a surface, the same way that the bundles of nanoscopic keratin fibers that make up the hairs on gecko feet allow them to conform to walls.

Like ordinary tape, gecko tape clings strongly when pulled parallel to a surface; it can support just under 10 pounds per square centimeter. But the tape can be peeled off relatively easily when pulled perpendicular to a surface.

Elliott Erwitt’s portfolio

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This is just lovely — a Flash portfolio from Magnum of Elliott Erwitt’s personal best. Make some coffee, draw up a chair and marvel at his wonderful photographic instinct.

There’s a nice profile of him by Rose George here.

Erwitt has a reputation for quietness. A journalist once wanted to write 12,000 words on the man, and a fellow photographer said, “In all the years I’ve spoken to him, Elliott hasn’t spoken 12,000 words.” Actually, he speaks easily. He smiles and twinkles. He is one of the few people who can treat an interview as a conversation. […] “Photography is very simple,” he says. “People make it so technical, so complicated, to disguise the fact. They overcompensate.”

The Magnum show contains a few really memorable quotes. For example:

You don’t study photography — you just do it.

And,

Dogs are people with more hair.

(Erwitt is the greatest living photographer of dogs — and their owners — IMHO. His technique: “I bark; they jump”.)

Rose George’s profile has some nice stories. Sample:

Not that he won’t supply the funny anecdotes of a 50-year veteran: The Shah of Iran wore platform heels (“You could tell from the pant creases”). Che Guevara was good-looking but not charming, Marilyn Monroe the opposite. One notorious image – the “kitchen debate” of Richard Nixon and Nikita Kruschev arguing at a Westinghouse exhibit – almost didn’t happen because he was laughing too hard: Kruschev told Nixon to “Go screw my grandmother” in Russian, which the child of Boris and Evgenia understood perfectly.

I’ve always wondered what Kruschev was saying in that exchange. Nixon was presumably lecturing the Soviet boss on the superiority of American refrigeration technology. Elliott’s anecdote confirms that the truth is usually more amusing than the official version. For example, as a kid I was addicted to the Lone Ranger who — older readers will remember — had a faithful Indian companion called Tonto. Whenever the (White Anglo-Saxon) Ranger spoke to Tonto, he replied “Kemo Sabay” which — in my innocence — I assumed to be the Native American equivalent of “Yes, Boss”. But one day I ran into a guy who claimed to be an expert on native American languages and swore that “Kemo Sabay” actually meant “Horseshit”.

Many thanks to Brian for the link.

Later… Harry Metcalfe writes:

“Khrushchev certainly wouldn’t have involved himself in the insult to “MY” grandmother, it must have been “YOUR” grandmother: as the French have it on record ” …et ta soeur”.

I bow to his superior expertise.