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Apple Donating Millions of Masks to Healthcare Professionals in U.S. and Europe

Apple has been prioritizing the pandemic ever since it’s inception back in February, and Cook has been doing a great job in terms of creating alternative paths to supply the necessary tools and trying to protect his staff/customers.
 
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From the outside this looks like a great thing and which probably from that point of view it is. The other side though is where Apple got these Facemasks from. Apple if you ask me most likely got a huge amount in China of these from a supplier at a huge discount. Apple May have then imported these tax free to the US. This does not require Einstein to see how Apple made out on this one. By giving them away Apple actually profited. Someone smart could have figured this one out easily.
 
This is good, but i wanna see others being first for once as well..

Perhaps Tim can also force the price down on masks too :)
 
stylinexpat said:
From the outside this looks like a great thing and which probably from that point of view it is. The other side though is where Apple got these Facemasks from. Apple if you ask me most likely got a huge amount in China of these from a supplier at a huge discount. Apple May have then imported these tax free to the US. This does not require Einstein to see how Apple made out on this one. By giving them away Apple actually profited. Someone smart could have figured this one out easily.
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Even if this is how it came to be, it wouldn't change the outcome, would it? There are now 2 million more masks to use for medical personnel.
 
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this is a drop in the bucket. They should be buying the machines and making huge numbers of these in the USA, buying them isn't the problem, its getting them that is. 2 million isn't anywhere near enough. There will be need for billions of these masks worldwide before this is over
 
newdeal said:
this is a drop in the bucket. They should be buying the machines and making huge numbers of these in the USA, buying them isn't the problem, its getting them that is. 2 million isn't anywhere near enough. There will be need for billions of these masks worldwide before this is over
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I really don't think Apple should buy machines to produce face masks.
 
Just a week ago we invented the iMask. The lightest, thinnest, magical mask ever made. I am humbled to say our customers absolutely loved them. The response was overwhelming. Available in classic Apple white with a rose gold edition in the fall if any of us are still alive.

The numbers are off the charts. Pay attention to next earnings call and look at wearables in particular.
 
G4DPII said:
I love the fact that you all think masks for protecting construction workers from dust and debris will actually protect medical staff.

Someone who is not infected gains almost no benefit from wearing a mask. The benefit comes from making people who are infected wear them. So when they cough or sneeze the water vapour is captured.
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There is a difference between respirators and masks. The N95 standard applies to respirators:

 
stylinexpat said:
From the outside this looks like a great thing and which probably from that point of view it is. The other side though is where Apple got these Facemasks from. Apple if you ask me most likely got a huge amount in China of these from a supplier at a huge discount. Apple May have then imported these tax free to the US. This does not require Einstein to see how Apple made out on this one. By giving them away Apple actually profited. Someone smart could have figured this one out easily.
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.

Since you don't know, why stir up the pot with a bunch of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)?


"Someone smart could have figured this one out easily."

And you're the only smart person in the room? Do you really think Apple is going to risk their hard-earned reputation on doing something sketchy in this crisis?

Is your conspiracy theory based on zero evidence really something we need now?

I'm glad Apple is doing something positive trying to help people get through this extraordinary situation everyone is now facing. What have you done? At the minimum, try showing a bit of gratitude that others are stepping up.
 
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newdeal said:
this is a drop in the bucket. They should be buying the machines and making huge numbers of these in the USA, buying them isn't the problem, its getting them that is. 2 million isn't anywhere near enough. There will be need for billions of these masks worldwide before this is over
Click to expand...

The masks are likely made by Foxconn given the government required each company to secure their own mask supply before restarting factory production in February.

Everybody knows they should be buying mask production tools. The problem is, the material used to produce N95 is melt blown plastic. You need about six months and a few million dollars to build a machine.
 
citysnaps said:
.

Since you don't know, why stir up the pot with a bunch of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)?


"Someone smart could have figured this one out easily."

And you're the only smart person in the room? Do you really think Apple is going to risk their hard-earned reputation on doing something sketchy in this crisis?

Is your conspiracy theory based on zero evidence really something we need now?

I'm glad Apple is doing something positive trying to help people get through this extraordinary situation everyone is now facing. What have you done? At the minimum, try showing a bit of gratitude that others are stepping up.
Click to expand...
With that mentality one can claim or accuse others of conspiracy theories in order not to question anything.

That aside I did note in a follow up post that "This was one of the positive sides to it*. Surely donating 2 million masks has a positive side to it. Alibaba's MA donated 1 million masks and 500,000 test kits and sure there was a positive side to that as well.
 
konqerror said:
I don't do bio simulations, but Google, Facebook, and in many cases Amazon's infrastructure is poorly suited for many kinds of scientific applications because they don't have huge amounts of RAM and their storage is slow. In many applications, particularly where you're searching for things, storage is critical. Simulations utilize ultra-low latency interconnects (Infiniband) to share that data.

Google and Facebook are built for huge numbers of small tasks, like running facial recognition on a photo. They don't have TB of RAM per computer, they use high-latency Ethernet, and they don't have low-latency all-flash storage (relying on the cheapest mechanical HDDs they make).
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FB I agree. Google, Amazon, Microsoft I disagree with.

They could easily freeze customers spinning up new VMs and utilize their GCP, AWS, Azure infrastructure where RAM and NVMe is abundant.
 
Westside guy said:
My wife's hospital started implementing 1 gown + 1 mask per worker-patient because of shortages - meaning you have a different gown and mask for each patient, but if you see a patient 8 times on a shift you're reusing the same gown and mask eight times (unless they get soiled of course).
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Please thank your wife from me for her service. These people are true hero’s. Stay safe.
 
So why does Apple even need to do this? Why can’t the US government do this? Don’t they have the resources to secure supplies?
 
If they really wanted to help, they should donate one of their top operations people to run management of the US response. That's what's really needed, in this vacuum of competence.
 
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Glideslope said:
Please thank your wife from me for her service. These people are true hero’s. Stay safe.
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Thank you; you stay safe as well.

My wife hasn't had to return to floor nursing yet as part of this pandemic, but they've all been warned that's coming unless this levels off soon (we're in Washington state). She did floor nursing for many years - cared for AIDS patients back in the early days when they didn't know a lot about the disease, then worked on a floor with terminally ill cancer patients for a long time. More recently she's been mainly working with newly-diagnosed diabetes patients.

I know there's no way I could handle it. I'm in awe of the people who choose to devote their lives to caring for others.
 
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