while at the same time
Telling us something about the ingrained racism of the NGO pehaps?
Some stories are so unusual, you immediately wonder if they're too good to be true. On Tuesday, a Western NGO in China posted a remarkable tale, reporting that ingenious Chinese retailers in a medium-sized provincial city called Kunming had cloned an Apple Retail Store, faithfully reproducing the staff T-shirts, furniture, …
Apple bashing aside; You'd be suprised how many people in China (at least in the major cities where I work) openly walk around with Apple gear.
12 of the 16 employees in our Shenzhen office have an iPhone 4, the numbers are similar in our HK and Taipei offices as well. The average salary for our staff is around £200 pm, not much higher than the minium for the area; the difference is that most of the workers live in much cheaper/family accomodation and living costs are low.
I still find it intresting how powerful the Apple marketing machine is even in a country with very little offical retail presence
Where in your story is there any indication that the story might be fake? As you point out, Resellers can't call themselves Apple Stores - the photos in the original story conspicuously show the Apple Store moniker.
So - you haven't been able to verify the story for yourself first hand, but so what?
Ok so there is still no dispute that there are fake Apple stores in China, copying Apple down to the staff uniform and using Apple's logo and name as if it was a real Apple store.
The only thing this new article shows is that that/those store(s) are not official Apple resellers? Well isn't that a surprise... official resellers can't do any of the above things.
But my main question is: just how does this make the original report fake?
The other question is should we accept that the owners of these stores are tricking customers and apparently even staff into believing their sordid little game? Well I don't think so.
Not sure I understand this article. The whole point of the original story was that all the evidence points to the fact that these are not authorised resellers but that they are trading with the Apple brand and trademarks and that the staff even think they are working for Apple.
One of the shops photographed was an "Apple Stoer" (sic).
How does that make it a fake story?
1) Astonishment at something different in another culture isn't necessarily criticism
2) Criticism isn't necessarily the result of Prejudice
3) Prejudice directed at anything other than an race/ethnicity isn't Racism.
For example if someone is critical of an NGO but that criticism isn't based on prejudice, then its definitely not racist. Being prejudiced against an NGO because of its national origin is xenophobic. Being prejudiced against an NGO because based on its ethnic makup would be racist.
Its also important to note that not all remarks that on the surface seem Xenophobic remarks are actually Xenophobic. For example if someone makes a remark about 'Merkins', its more likely thank not an expression of reasonable criticism of some narrow aspect of American culture and society rather than an expression of xenophobic prejudice.
Well... the first picture in this piece displays the familiar "Authorized Reseller" (in Chinese) Apple logo. The allegedly fake stores do not. Legitimate Apple resellers in Kunming and China in general have their own names (a couple of chains, mostly) with the added "Authorized/Premium Reseller" designation in Chinese (and feature on Apple's reseller list). The stores in question do not, they call themselves "Apple Store" or 苹果零售店/苹果商店.
So at best they are independent stores that don't have their own identity (unlike resellers) and try copy the Apple Store design to a tee (again, unlike every single legitimate reseller). They may or may not sell real Apple hardware, who knows.
I actually emailed Apple to complain about a shop in the Philippines because it's branded and styled exactly the same as a legit Apple shop but is only an authorised reseller. They have their own rules on returns/replacements which are much more restrictive than Apples' official shops.
"I'm not sure why we expect Chinese Apple resellers not to do so, too."
Didn't you get the 'all media who want to do business in USA-UK-AUS hegemony' memo?
ALL CHINA ARE LYING CHEATS WHO COPY STUFF AND RIP YOU OFF. LAUGH AT CHINA AT ALL TIME! IGNORE USA-UK-AUS CORPORATES WHO DO SAME THING WHILE PRETENDING TO BE GOOD HAPPY FRIENDLY CORPORATE CITIZEN! ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG RUPERT!
There, you've got the memo now.
It would be like complaining to HMV that you had seen a store going by the name "HMV", but which wasn't an HMV store.
And telling isn't the same as complaining, but you'd be fairly upset if you bought some HMV vouchers from that "HMV stoer" then found they couldn't be used in a genuine store. Or not, depending on how you feel about HMV.
They're authorised and given permission by Apple to sell their products under certain circumstances and their products come direct from Apple. So it's not like it's just some random guy who's writing 'APLE' on a bunch of dell laptops and trying to flog them.
Trying to deceive people into thinking it's a legit Apple store is probably against the conditions of being an Apple reseller.
So yeah, I emailed Apple after being unable to return a faulty ipod under the same conditions as a regular Apple store (there were fees involved and a very limited time allowance). If resellers deceive people into thinking they're official Apple stores then Apple should seriously consider revoking the permission they granted to the reseller.
These aren't counterfeit Apple stores - they clearly display the words "Apple Store" when they know that if they didn't they would appear to be an authourised reseller so they are making sure that they do not pretend to be that which they are not!
Simples!
PS. IANAL, in case you hadn't noticed
> The tale has been credulously reported around the world. The Guardian's blog has no doubts: "China's fake Apple stores: photos", with the subhead telling us, rather bossily, "Don't think for a minute that Apple will let this one go". It was "an astonishing piece of extreme bootlegging", according to Jemima Kiss.
How can you ever describe this as 'bossily'. Don't like the Guardian, fair enough, but things like this just make you look petty.