go to the Apple website, they’ve replaced their normal self promo page with a page dedicated to helping the survivors of the recent Tsunami with links to the Red Cross and other assistance sites
now there’s a classy company with good moral character, say what you’d like about their products, love them or hate them, at least they have the moral character to turn their website over to the recovery effort
on the other hand, microsoft’s website is business as usual not even a mention of the Tsunami
no platform wars intended, just an observation
mods, if this thread becomes a platform war feel free to lock/delete it, THIS IS NOT A THREAD FOR PLATFORM WARS
Not to be a spoilsport, but why is this a good thing? If I want to do something to help the tsunami victims, I’ll go to the Red Cross or USAID or some similar organization’s site. If I’m at Apple’s site, it’s probably because I want information about one of their products. All they’re doing is trying to look caring without actually doing anything substantive to help.
true, to a point, it could be seen as a marketing ploy, i.e. “we care about world events so buy from us”, but this isn’t the first time Apple’s done this sort of thing
and no, they didn’t have to do it, but they did, i still attribute their reasoning to being socially responsible
I would argue that Apple’s obligations are not to the poor tsunami victims but to it’s customers, employees and stockholders (note the tiny link to a recall on exploding laptop battaries just below the Red Cross). Companies are in the business to make money by providing products and services. There are other organizations out there who’s role is to provide disaster relief. If Apple produced bottled water or MRE meals or the disaster victims needed iPods or something, I suppose an argument could be made for providing those services free of charge.
Yes, it gives people like MacTech a warm and fuzzy because they feel their product is made by people who care. I would rather that companies be more “socially conscious” in their behavior as it relates to their effect on the environment or their treatment of their employees than to champion causes because it makes for good PR.
I think it’s great that these companies care enough to put this information on their websites. It just might prompt someone who might not have donated money otherwise to do so. Doing something like this doesn’t always mean a company has an ulterior motive. At least I’d like to think so! It also might prevent someone who wants to help from donating money to the wrong type of organization … one whose motives aren’t quite so good.
FYI, the Amazon.com and yahoo homepages also have links to places where people can help. There are probably more. These are just sites I’ve been to in the past couple of days.
Question: Do a lot of Mac folk use the Apple site as their default home page? That’s the only instance I can think of where the Apple site would be seen before someone has been presented with multiple other places directing them on where to give.
Purely anecdotally: I’d been meaning all morning to go to some website and make a donation, and reading this thread finally kicked me off my duff to do so. Now, granted, I probably would have remembered anyhow. But it’s certainly not impossible that there are some basically well meaning people who could use the extra reminder. And every little bit helps.
well, it is the default home page in Safari and IE, so unless the end-user has taken the time to change the home page to something else, yes, the Apple website is the default home page
takes all of 5 seconds to choose another site as the default page though
i only discovered it this morning because i had to log on to GSX (Apple’s online parts database) to check stock levels on a repair part i needed to order…
I don’t, but I visit apple.com more often than, say, cnn or other major news sites. News-wise, I get most of my info, or at least most of my heads-ups from SFGate or the SDMB.