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Reader question: Please explain the following paragraph, particularly “running rings around iPad”: Within a year, though, rival tablets had entered the market and started running rings around the iPad—at least, in terms of performance and features, if not ease of use and elegance of design. My comments: The iPad, Apple’s latest iFad, had been setting standards for nimble tablet computers. Within a year of its launch, however, other companies have caught up. Some even produced better tablets than the iPad, that is, “in terms of performance and features, if not ease of use and elegance of design.” The iPad, in short, is a great gadget, but some rival products are also good, even better. For rivals to run rings around the iPad is for them to have brought about gadgets that outperform the Apple product. This, by the way, is a good reason why you should seriously consider not buying another product from Apple, the company which has been able to make outrageous profits due in part to its sweatshops. Or, precisely, due to the fact that it effectively allowed contractors such as Foxconn to run those sweatshops for them. A series of worker suicides at Foxconn factories have put Apple on the spot, leading to widespread media calls for consumers to boycott Apple. Consumers, they argue, have enormous powers to bring changes to ill corporate cultures which have hitherto cared nothing but the bottom line, i.e. profits over people. | 
