Keep pulling the thread on Patrick McGee.
Patrick McGee asserts that Apple is fundamentally incapable of producing the iPhone at scale outside of China.
Terry Guo's strategy for Foxconn was to partner with Apple, even at a potential financial loss, because he believed the manufacturing expertise gained would enable them to serve any other client.
Criminal scalping organizations in China, known as "yellow cows," created a massive grey market for iPhones by hiring thousands of people to purchase devices from the four official Apple stores and reselling them across the country.
On the day after Xi Jinping assumed power, China's state-sponsored media outlet CCTV launched a public attack on Apple for allegedly discriminatory warranty policies.
In a May 2016 meeting in Zhongnanhai, Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged to invest $275 billion into Chinese factories over the subsequent five years.
Apple instituted a "50% rule" for its suppliers, requiring them to ensure that no more than half of their business was dependent on Apple to prevent their collapse if Apple's product designs changed.
The rise of Chinese smartphone brands like Huawei was fueled by Apple's suppliers seeking new customers to comply with Apple's 50% dependency rule.
In late 2018, Apple issued its first revenue warning in 16 years because Chinese consumers were choosing Huawei phones, which had superior specs at a lower price, over the iPhone XR.
A Chinese blockade or annexation of Taiwan would be a "meteor strike" on the businesses of both Apple and NVIDIA due to their heavy reliance on TSMC.
The United States is utterly dependent on China for rare earth metals, which are critical for defense systems like the F-35 fighter jet that contains approximately 900 pounds of them.
Patrick McGee argues that Apple's near-bankruptcy in the mid-1990s was caused by failures in manufacturing, logistics, and distribution, rather than having an inferior product to Windows-based PCs.
Upon his return to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs rejected CEO Gil Amelio's strategy of using standardized parts, believing that with only 3% market share, product differentiation was essential for survival.