That's because we humans are the virus.........we need to let the machines take over! 

The Miller test (product of a Supreme Court decision) is used to determine "obscene" material in the US...the first condition is:

"Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards (not national standards, as some prior tests required), would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest"

This is just one example, but I think it is fair to say that much of our law is exactly forcing one group's norms on another...

Why is rape, murder, and theft illegal?  When you get down to it, it is simply the law expressing the morality of the majority -- most people find those things wrong and thus support legislation that condemns such acts...the moral standards of a people are intensely reflected in their legal system, and thus obeying the law is submitting to the "moral norms"...

Seleuceia: Those acts of violence you enumerated violate the norms of EVERY sane person. Therefore, no one is being forced at all. Therefore there is no violence.

My point exactly.  Fortunately, our society contains few who consider murder, rape and theft morally acceptable (except for the latter, in the form of taxes, natch) so most are not being 'forced to submit' to anything in obeying laws against them.

Tom. I've had an iphone and ipad for years and also a Macbook Pro Retina for awhile. They are all top notch products that put many of the competition to utter shame. Tell me, what hands on, significant experience do you have with Apple that gives validity to that statement?

It's no accident Apple is the most profitable company on the planet...

Easy to do...

Step 1.  Don't pay taxes....

Step 2.  Exploit cheap workforce....

Step 3. Install catch nets for suicides....cheaper than cleaning blood of concrete...

Step 4. ....

While I agree on the rest, which is not hard to do, given its blotted record with regard to 'profit above ALL else' and effectively sweeping employee suicides under the carpet, Apple does make good products and is a tech leader when it comes to quality and innovation.  However, it doesn't matter how good the products are if owning them leaves a sour taste in your mouth because the company's practices are distasteful... at best.

I have an interest in Apple's new Mac Pro, which is wholly designed and built in the US, but as for the iPad, iPhone and other Apple stuff made in China while exploiting 'near' slave labour... won't touch it with a very elongated pole.  However, while my distaste for Apple's employee 'abuse' rates high up there, my other reason for boycotting those products is that Apple, at no time, considered passing the savings it made from exploiting 'slave labour' on to its customers.  Now I'm not suggesting that anyone should benefit from ill-gotten gain and the 'abuse' of workers, no, far from it. 

No, my point is more that Apple's greed sees no bounds to how its profit is derived: from essentially ignoring worker suicides and their obvious causes [extremely poor working conditions] so as not to have to pay to fix it; to robbing its customers blind with over-inflated prices.  Yes, companies need to make a profit in order to survive, but Apple, being the most profitable company on the planet, has gone to great extremes to turn a fast AND slow buck regardless of how it comes... from exploitation, over-inflated prices and tax evasion.

Oh, and before anyone says other companies do it - and I see someone already has - it don't make it right.  More to the point, Apple does it on such a grand scale - hiding its Australian; US; European and UK earnings in offshore tax havens - that it is more than just criminal. 

No, this is theft of Biblical proportions and requires divine intervention, a wrath from upon high, which hopefully is delivered when Bill Gates comes out of retirement, retakes the reins at Microsoft, and plucks Apple from its tree.

Apple can't raise it's prices infinitely.  They are constrained by the market place.  But not to worry there will always be people who stand in line for several days in inclement weather for the latest model of iPhone.

Sigh.  

We are living in a period of time reminiscent of the robber barons.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist)

In social criticism and economic literature, Robber barons became a derogatory term applied to wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen that appeared in North American periodical literature as early as the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly^[1] magazine. By the late 1800s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth.^[2] These practices included exerting control over national resources, accruing high levels of government influence, paying extremely low wages, squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices^[2] to unsuspecting investors in a manner which would eventually destroy the company for which the stock was issued and impoverish investors.^[2] The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic).^[3]

We hear now on all sides the term "Robber Barons" applied to some of the great capitalists. ... The old robber barons of the Middle Ages who plundered sword in hand and lance in rest were more honest than this new aristocracy of swindling millionaires.^[1]
—Lida F. Baldwin, quoting the August 1870 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, writing in 1907 about how little business had changed in 35 years.

It's okay to win, but the way we win matters.

backs out of the room slowly...  

Actually Phoon, I started with Apple products back with the Apple IIe (yeah, I'm 63). I have had iPhone's that are overpriced with no storage expansion capabilities (what a waste). I had an iPad for all of 3 days and I took it back as I didn't like it overall.

Basically though any company that abuses their workers is trash to me, and that makes Apple's products trash also. I have no use for any company that takes jobs out of this country and puts them overseas just to save a few bucks, and I try to avoid their products when I can. They are assisting in ruining our economy here in the US, and that's very sad. 

I appreciate your views Tom and while I agree on several aspects of them we will just have to agree to disagree on the "trash" aspect.

Truth is, Apple assists in the ruination of any economy where it sets up shop, by taking the money and running... to any tax haven where it can't be touched by authorities trying to recover unpaid dues, etc.  In other words, Apple does not contribute anything of worthy of mention to the economies gracious enough to host it. 

As for my interest in the new Mac pro, while it is an impressive piece of equipment that would look good on my desk, I very much doubt that I'll ever be able to afford one at the over-inflated price being asked, so it's not likely that I will be contributing to Apple's ever growing coffers/exponential greed.

If Apple is evil, why do millions of people voluntarily give Apple money?

Clever marketing.

You stick an 'i' infront of a bucket of shit and 'I' MUST have it....

....and I ain't one of those 'millions' ....

Apple had about two hundred million customers in 2011 according to TechCrunch. 200 million people voluntarily giving Apple money.

Marketing is all it takes?

Some would venture to say Microsoft is just as evil. Recall back when they would buy out their competitors just to force IE on the masses?