Don't forget, in the capitalist world the annual "loss" of money does not necessarily mean loss in the strictest sense of the word. It can also mean making LESS money than the year before, because capitalism is based on the false idea of infinite and growth based on arithmetic progression.

If you spend more time gaming on your iPhone than any other system I sincerely feel sorry for you.....

read through a lot of comments. weird. the writer keeps excusing himself from any discussions by saying his blog had nothing to do with whatever people are talking about. and instead of explaining what it was about, he tells them to read his blog again, as if people are too dumb to understand anything. did it occur to you that maybe your writings are a bit unclear when that many people who read it misinterpret?!

First off this artcile is flawed in many ways but what is the point is that governments don't spend money accordingly and there are other provisions other entities want to grab at with all that government spending, so the money we donate doesn't actual go to what is the actual purpose of why we are actually donating, due to this FACT, our government continuously lies to us because they have no interest in a public outcry. They want to shove eveything under the rug so they can perform operations that have no similarity to why we are donating, so enjoy the fact your not giving your money to a courpt government and your not being able to know what they're doing with it because it isn't going to help the people in need, so feed your hunger for entertainment, though video games are more than just video games, it is an art form.

wrong pic. everybody's immune to photos of starving african kids now.

Your argument - if I understand it correctly, since you don't actually state one - is flawed. The vast majority of hunger in the world exists, not because of a lack of charity, but because of the failed governments that hold power over so many. For example, in Africa, there isn't a single country that lacks the natural resources for its people to survive, but many of its governments are incompetent, corrupt, or too weak to stand for long enough to stabilize. The charity of Americans can do nothing to solve these problems. As for the US domestically, total government welfare spending is almost eleven times this number ($646 billion according to usgovernmentspending.com). Let's assume that goes to, say, the poorest 10% - that amounts to over $20,000 in spending for every man, woman and child in that group. If people are going hungry in the US, it's certainly not due to a lack of funding meant to prevent it. I'd argue it has a lot to do with the government in this case as well, but that's a different topic. The point is, let's all enjoy our hobby without burdening ourselves with unearned guilt - money doesn't fix everything, and giving it away instead of buying an app won't save any lives.

Lots of excuses and justification. The article may be flawed, but lets not pretend that giving to charity is a bad thing. It isn't.

GREED!!!!! YUM YUM YUM YUM !!!!!

The problem with giving them our charity is we just allow more to live in an area where the population shouldn't be growing to sustain itself. They live in a poorer part of the world for no other reason than it not having the natural resources to support anything else. All we've done is gone in, caused aids, giving them guns, caused the population to grow and caused the death of many species. 

We need to leave that part of the world alone, they've been surviving there way before Europeans raped the land in the US and South America and way before Europeans or any other cont got raped by migrating humans. 

Listen, man, your on the internet. Unless your cause involves starving cats your not going to get sympathy donations.

Totally agree with you. We are helping each other in here by game though and hints .. beside spend alot of money on games some ppl some where didnt find food to eat so in my opinion few $ for them wont tear the bocket ;) thank you for writting this and at least you have humanity sense this the minimum you can do.

At first I read: Who needs food when as long as you have abs?

The onus is on Apple to relieve some of the imbalance across the world - not their customers. While everyone praised Steve Jobs for tinkering with plastic and microchips, it was Bill Gates who bothered to at least pour some money into the imbalance.

*yawn*

Just to clarify, Apple didn't "lose" $60 billion dollars. Their market capitalization (which is equal to # of shares * share price) dropped 60 billion dollars. In theory, their market capitalization could be 0 dollars, and they'd still be perfectly fine.

The only people who "lost" money here are the investors who held the stocks.  Even then it'll only be an actualized loss if they're selling. As Apple is represented in a huge number of mutual funds and mutual funds tend to be the favorite vehicle of individual investors, I suspect this loss will eventually be coming out of the little man's pocket.

In fact, Apple's products have until recently largely catered to a Western audience, yet the lion's share of its job creation is in other countries AND it recently released a huge amount of money via dividends to investors all over the world. Apple is actually exporting (i.e. redistributing) wealth from the West into those countries. When you ponder the matter further, you would not be wrong to suggest that Americans (and other Westerners) are trading an increased standard of living NOW for a (relatively) decreased economic global standing in the future.

On the plus side, a more equalized distribution of wealth correlates with lower crime, less corruption, and more peace.

Your argument is fundamentally flawed. You used the fact that apple lost money to support your claim that entertainment is everyone's priority, when that same evidence would support the argument that the global economy trouble going on is making people more focused on priorities such as food, fuel and clothes.

Most of the rest of you are commenting on what you personally believe about the supposed subject matter, rather than actually analyzing anything he really said.

Trust me when i say that smartphones are used for much more than games, as an ultra light aircraft pilot i often rely on my smartphone for navigation because the maps are much more accurate along with some of the indicators such as wind speed and aircraft speed.

Smartphones are much more powerful than most people think, it is fascinating what kinds of software you can find on there no matter if its android or apple. I use my android HTC one x for navigation when on my plane but i when i am sailing i usually use the isail app on my ipad, it is better than any navigation system available on any watercraft floating out there today.

Getting tired of people showing starving africans and tell us that OUR priorities are !@#$ -up.....what are THEIR countries doing about THEIR problems? Why should I help them? I help my own, and those that I can help right here at home. And it's just not electronics, I would say the NFL alone makes and has more money then APPLE.......easy. Lets not get into all sports combined. Life has been this way since you and I were born, and way before and after.........the only solution to population issues; is to stop it! This earth was designed to feed and hold only 1 billion humans, China alone is over the earths max population, so yeah, priorities are !@#$-up, from those who keep bringing starving babies into this world, and the countries who don't do anything about it, not AMERICANS who buy electronics.

By the way, since the non-philanthropy having Jobs passed away, Tim Cook has been very generous IMO to charities....he recently just gave over 100 million dollars in donations. It's those who don't give......that you should be pointing a finger at, how do you know that all the people that buy electronics don't also give to the less fortunate? Should we give all of our money? and suffer too?

Why is this being discussed on a video game website...?

Getting tired of people showing starving africans and tell us that OUR priorities are !@#$ -up.....what are THEIR countries doing about THEIR problems? Why should I help them? I help my own, and those that I can help right here at home. And it's just not electronics, I would say the NFL alone makes and has more money then APPLE.......easy. Lets not get into all sports combined. Life has been this way since you and I were born, and way before and after.........the only solution to population issues is to stop it! This earth was designed to feed and hold only 1 billion humans, China alone is over the earths max population, so yeah, priorities are !@#$-up, from those who keep bringing starving babies into this world, and the countries who don't do anything about it, not AMERICANS who buy electronics.

By the way, Apple spends millions in donations each year helping millions of people from all over the world.

my nationstate is classified as "Iron Fist Consumerists" Its hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical population of 23 million are kept under strict control by the oppressive government, which measures its success by the nation's GDP and refers to individual citizens as "human resources.

This is how apple think of its customers as do many other large firms, usually controlled by the Rothschilds

the iphone is killing society and thats a fact.