On September 12, Apple Special Event was held at Apple park, California. Whether you are an apple user or not, you must pay attention to it more or less. One of the bright spots of iPhone X is that the disappear of home button. Actually this is not the first time that Apple did such big change on iPhone, and if we look back, it is clear that Apple is keeping altering their products: iPhone 7 dropped the 3.5mm headphone jack; iPhone X abandoned the home button, which is one of the significant symbols of iPhone; for MacBook 2016, it replaced the top keys (F1-F10) by Touch-bar, and the lightening ports took the place of USB interfaces. So why did Apple make

those changes?

First of all, Apple concentrates on changing their users’ habits for a long time. For example, the disappearance of 3.5mm headphone jack will push the sales volume of AirPod — to be able to listen to the music while the phone is charging. To be precise, Apple is trying to lead a revolution covering the whole smart phone market. What the company did was forcing people to accept them. When users start to get used to new technology or new products, then the company then reach its goal. Apple wants to make itself different or specialize itself with other phone companies, and they are trying to be unique, and they are trying to be “Apple”.

On the other hand, changes will bring profits. Substituting the USB interfaces by lightening ports is a good example. Apple owns the patent of lightening ports, thus only the companies authorized can produce this device by paying for the license, which would make more profits for the company.

Apple is devoting it self to create a “Wireless Future” that connect all the devices without any cables. In the future, Apple may remove all the buttons on iPhone, including side button, mute button and volume button, etc., to make the products look like a whole when the technology grow mature. If we imagine the future more boldly, we can even say that the current changes Apple made are just a beginning of the revolution. Can Apple achieve “wireless future”? Time will give the answer.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/31/16233998/apple-iphone-8-event-september-12th-invitation

https://www.apple.com/ca/apple-events/september-2017/

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/iphone-7-headphone-jack-the-story-so-far-1324866

https://me.me/i/iphone-7-no-headphones-iphone-8-no-home-button-iphone-18728048

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/technology/iphone-7-apple-headphone-jack.html?mcubz=1

http://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/iPhone-8-Full-Vision-Display-iFanr-mockup-001.jpg

Talking about social responsibility of business, it actually should be called “the social responsibility of businessman”—since only people can take responsibilities. So what are the social responsibilities of businessman? To eliminate discrimination? To avoid pollution? I would like to say that these “responsibilities” are just floating on the surface; what businessmen really do is that take social responsibilities as “a cloak for actions that are justified on other grounds rather than a reason for those actions(Milton, 2007)”.

In September 2015, Volkswagen claimed that there were 11 million diesel cars carried the  software which were able to cheat while testing the emissions, and it influenced both American and European markets and led to billions-of-dollar loss of the company. The profit of that year was impacted terribly, and it’s shares dropped by 35 percent at the end of Friday, with a shrink of value of stock market of 25 billion pounds within just 2 days(Ewing, 2015).

Just as Milton says: “one man’s good is another’s evil(Milton, 2007)”, what Volkswagen did was to pursue the maximum profit for their own good—by cheating on the emission test to reduce the cost of the cars, which would result in the pollution of air(Milton, 2007). Here, I want to talk about the social responsibilities that Volkswagen (or its corporate executives) should take. As for an automaker, the primary responsibilities are to produce cars with safe devices, avoid pollution, etc.. However, the cheating behavior of Volkswagen shows that it does not have “social consciences” as a part of this society, or “social responsibilities” for the public.

In my opinion, all of the companies, not only for Volkswagen, need to find a balance between the pursuit of profit and social responsibility, and compete with each other in a fair and righteous way, otherwise it may bring unexpected consequences.

References:

Ewing, Jack. (2015 Sept 23). Volkswagen Says 11 Million Cars Worldwide Are Affected in Diesel Deception. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/business/international/volkswagen-diesel-car-scandal.html

Milton, Friedman. (2007). The Social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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