APPLE iPhone and Ipad made in China

#Apple Fair Trade #Apple supply chain #APPLE Display components, #Apple LCD panel, #Foxconn China plant, #touch panel Wintek suppliers, #Apple iPad security Breach

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
Washington Republicans and Democrats all agreed that it was best to have the U.S. worker design and make high end products, whether it was R&D at Apple, or heavy machinery at Caterpillar. But assembling widgets and putting puzzles together, in essence, was not where the U.S. wanted its workers to be in the global labor pool. The U.S. government has been doing away with that kind of labor for nearly two generations now, and it has accelerated clearly under globalization. China's strategy was and remains full employment. American's don't want boring repetitive low wage factory line work. No one on earth would want that job, if they had an alternative - it's for robots.
nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html

#Think Fair Trade

"Think Fair" is the better kind of killer marketing.

Apple has high margins in the 40% plus range, so it can easily absorb a couple of points or more in higher supply chain costs.

- "Think Fair" would provide an additional cache for Apple products that would easily justify their higher prices.

- "Think Fair" would sell a lot of Apple gear and it's a considerable barrier to competitors.

What about Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Amazon whose operating margins are in the single digits? They have to do it too or you don't buy from them.

AMERICA

June 23, 2012 Apple's Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay By DAVID SEGAL
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/business/apple-store-workers-loyal-but-short-on-pay.html
Last year, during his best three-month stretch, Jordan Golson sold about $750,000 worth of computers and gadgets at the Apple Store in Salem, N.H. It was a performance that might have called for a bottle of Champagne — if that were a luxury Mr. Golson could have afforded. “I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, 'This is great. I'm an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.' But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it's kind of tough.” America's love affair with the smartphone has helped create tens of thousands of jobs at places like Best Buy and Verizon Wireless and will this year pump billions into the economy.
Within this world, the Apple Store is the undisputed king, a retail phenomenon renowned for impeccable design, deft service and spectacular revenues. Last year, the company's 327 global stores took in more money per square foot than any other United States retailer — wireless or otherwise — and almost double that of Tiffany, which was No. 2 on the list, according to the research firm RetailSails.
Worldwide, its stores sold $16 billion in merchandise.
But most of Apple's employees enjoyed little of that wealth. While consumers tend to think of Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as the company's heart and soul, a majority of its workers in the United States are not engineers or executives with hefty salaries and bonuses but rather hourly wage earners selling iPhones and MacBooks. About 30,000 of the 43,000 Apple employees in this country work in Apple Stores, as members of the service economy, and many of them earn about $25,000 a year. They work inside the world's fastest growing industry, for the most valuable company, run by one of the country's most richly compensated chief executives, Tim Cook. Last year, he received stock grants, which vest over a 10-year period, that at today's share price would be worth more than $570 million. And though Apple is unparalleled as a retailer, when it comes to its lowliest workers, the company is a reflection of the technology industry as a whole.
The Internet and advances in computing have created untold millionaires, but most of the jobs created by technology giants are service sector positions — sales employees and customer service representatives, repairmen and delivery drivers — that offer little of Silicon Valley's riches or glamour. Much of the debate about American unemployment has focused on why companies have moved factories overseas, but only 8 percent of the American work force is in manufacturing, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job growth has for decades been led by service-related work, and any recovery with real legs, labor experts say, will be powered and sustained by this segment of the economy. And as the service sector has grown, the definition of a career has been reframed for millions of American workers. [snip]

CHINA

Ironic: In China it is illegal to form Unions when it was Mao who spent the early 1920s traveling in China, finally returning to Hunan, where he took the lead in promoting collective action and labor rights.

Fewer hours, more pay for workers at iPhone factories
Foxconn's factories are the last step in the manufacturing process of iPhones and other Apple devices, most of which have hundreds of components. Research firm IHS iSuppli estimates that Apple pays US$8 for the assembly of a 16-gigabyte iPhone 4S and US$188 for its components, according to The Associated Press. It sells the phone wholesale for about US$600 to phone companies, which then subsidize it to be able to sell it for US$200 with a two-year service contract. Foxconn's moves are likely to have an impact across the global technology industry. iSuppli's figures suggest that if Apple were to absorb a Foxconn wage increase that keeps salaries level while cutting average working hours from 60 to 49 per week, it would pay less than US$2 extra to have an iPhone made. Other electronics companies, particularly PC makers such as Dell and HP, earn less profit on what they sell and could see a deeper impact. Thomas Dinges, an analyst at iSuppli, told AP that Apple's competitors will probably have to accept the price increase too, since it's framed as a moral issue.

THE average wage of Chinese mainland workers is less than half of the world average when measured by purchasing power, a recent UN report shows. The report released by the UN's International Labor Organization found wage earners on the mainland made an average equivalent of US$656 a month, ranking 57th out of the 72 countries the report covered. The world average was US$1,480 a month, while Luxemburg had the world's richest workers, who earned an average US$4,089 a month.China's Hong Kong and Macau were listed in the 30th and 52nd spots, with average wages of US$1,545 and US$758, respectively, the BBC reported.
The salary is not calculated in normal US dollars but in purchasing power parity dollars. The value of one PPP dollar equals what a US dollar can buy in the United States. According to the calculation, Chinese mainland individuals who earn 6,000 yuan (US$952) a month have purchasing power equal to the world's average. But the results are believed to be partial as the report was made on 2009 data and did not include a large part of the labor force such as self-employed workers, independent farmers or people living on social benefits.
"It tells you something about the quality of life of the middle classes," ILO economist Patrick Belser told the BBC. "What it shows, also, is that the average salary is still pretty low, and that the worldwide level of economic development is in fact still pretty low, in spite of the huge affluence that we see in some places." Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China showed that average income for urban residents was 1,998 yuan a month in 2011. In Shanghai, the situation is much different. The city's statistics bureau said in March that average salary for employees in the city was 4,388 yuan a month in 2011. shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=498184

According to the recently released report of a joint investigation of Foxconn carried out by several universities over the last year and a half, non-compliance with China's labor laws was found in its branches in many provinces, but the local government agencies did not take any action. In other words, the local officials responsible for upholding the labor laws and workers' rights have failed to do their duty.
Such a failure cannot be justified. The Fair Labor Association and media outlets can label such plants as sweatshops and workers can protest at their treatment, but the working conditions they have to endure will never be improved if the responsible local officials choose to stick their heads in the sand. No local government agency has made any response.

Music History Project on West Virginia Labor Wars
Mine War on Blackberry Creek
The US Supreme Court ruled that Blankenship's financial relationship with West Virginia Supereme Court Justice Benjamin "had a significant and disproportionate influence on the outcome" of a $50 million verdict against Massey Energy Company that the West Virginia court had thrown out.
A long and bitter United Mine Workers of America strike in 1984 against A.T. Massey, America's fourth largest coal company with corporate ties to apartheid South Africa. While strikebreakers work inside the mines and security men with guard dogs and cameras patrol the compound, miners on the picket lines detail the history of labor struggles in the region and their determination to hold out until victory.
A.T. Massey CEO Don Blankenship, listed on AlterNet in 2006 as one of "the 13 scariest Americans," addresses capitalism, social Darwinism, and the global economy, while Richard A. Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer and currently running for President of the AFL-CIO, expresses union values.

Dreamwork China giving a voice to China's migrant workers. Their interviews with Foxconn workers in Shenzhen examine candidly the dreams and aspirations of their incredibly young labor force, many of whom depressingly deny they have any "big" dreams .

1/26/12 Li Qiang, 39 , is the founder of China Labor Watch , a nonprofit group in New York City that seeks to improve labor conditions in China. In the late 1990s, while studying law in southwest China's Sichuan Province, he began supporting striking workers and taxi drivers. Later, he moved south, to China's biggest factory zones near Shenzhen. He worked at several electronics, toy and shoe factories, where he investigated labor conditions, and tried to expose what he saw as unjust and inhumane conditions. Now, Mr. Li works from a small office near the Empire State Building, employing a team in China that sneaks into factories, smuggles out photographs and publishes reports of illegal or abhorrent labor conditions at suppliers to some of the world's biggest corporations. David Barboza, the Shanghai bureau chief of The New York Times, interviewed Mr. Li after doing the reporting reflected in his article, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad,” written with Charles Duhigg.
The account of how Apple's factories substituted n-hexane, a neurotoxin with well-documented long term adverse health effects, for alcohol to wipe those shining screens clean, gaining a miniscule advantage in drying time but exposing workers to a lifetime of disablement is impossible to understand.
While not in any way approving of such practices, these are *not* "Apple's factories". These are factories contracted by Apple and dozens or hundreds of other companies to manufacture all of these phones, tablets, and other electronic devices that *WE* choose to purchase. If you want to be horrified, fine... but it's MANY companies that are choosing to use these factories, not just Apple. Speaking of "do no evil", Google's Chromebook is made by Samsung and Asus (at least those two), and various phones are made by HTC and others. What are Samsung's factory conditions like? Or Asus'? Or HTC's?
Manufacturing cost according to isuppli.com the Samsung Chromebook manufacturing cost is $12.20, for the iPad 2 it's $10.00, and for the Kindle Fire it's $7.10
Foxconn comes up "Notable products which the company manufactures include the Amazon Kindle, iPad, iPhone, PlayStation 3, Wii and Xbox 360."

See:

10/11 Go to any gathering, and you'll find nearly every person carrying an iPhone or an iPad, despite the Apple Computer's dismal record on labor practices. Apple executives must be laughing all the way to the bank — their Swiss bank, that is. In its fourth quarter earnings report released last week, Apple Computer revealed that 2/3 of its on-hand cash - some $54 billion — is squirreled away outside the boundaries of the United States, presumably to avoid paying its fair share of taxes. In the meantime, reports Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior ( SACOM ), a Hong Kong-based group, Apple's major manufacturing contractors routinely subject employees to forced overtime, wage theft and no breaks — and even unprotected exposure to toxins. Apple, together with rival tech firm Google, have been lobbying for a “tax holiday” that would allow them to bring some of those billions into the U.S. at a lower tax rate, promising that to do so would create jobs. But, as we reported , a similar measure tried in 2004 created few jobs, and instead rewarded companies that had kept their money overseas. Where Apple has created jobs is in China, where the workers who make its slick products are made to work in deplorable conditions. A new SACOM report, “ The iSlave Behind the iPhone: Foxconn Workers in Central China ,” examines conditions at the Apple Computer contractor's plant since the suicides of nine workers last year made big news . One thing that has changed: workers were given a raise — to all of $1.18 an hour. But workers are often shorted overtime pay, SACOM reports, and Foxconn even illegally withheld, during the Chinese New Year, payment for overtime already worked in order to prevent workers from taking the traditional holiday to visit their families. Most workers in these factories are migrants; the corporations deliberately build facilities in lower-populated areas where wages are lower. Not that labor costs account for much of the cost of an Apple product. According to Sophia Cheng, writing at the SACOM Web site:

Take the iPad, for example, which is the sole item produced at Foxconn's 100,000-worker factory in Chengdu. Industry analyst iSuppli estimates that Apple spends only $9 on labor for every $499 iPad. PDF

iPhone manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group formalizes its plans to construct an automated worker manufacturing plant with a letter of intent laying out a soon-to-be-built "intelligent robots kingdom" in Taiwan. Terry Gou, the President of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (FoxConn's parent) has signed a letter of intent to build a robotic manufacturing hub in the Central Taiwan Science Park . Get used to the name Foxconnn, as its corporate logo will almost certainly be printed on the chests of our future machine overlords. The Taiwanese company (although one of China's largest employers) responsible for (among other things) assembling Apple's various iPhones is moving ahead with plans to fill its workforce with a larger number of machine minds

Foxconn Those who claim that the company is essentially trafficking in modern slavery are ignoring the fact that the company exists in order to serve a Western audience.
The kitchen at Foxconn is important because, like the company, it is a black box. I saw a model of the facility, carefully laid out on a piece of plastic turf and complete with little LED lights tracing the path of any one of those nearly 200 pigs from loading dock to loading dock. It's like a circuit diagram or a model of a digestive system. There, in the course of the day, nearly 400,000 meals pour out into the campus. There a cooker the size of two truck trailers cleans, cooks, and cools hundreds of pounds of rice, and some of those pigs (slaughtered off campus because that's one thing the kitchen at Foxconn isn't allowed to do) are stir-fried or stewed and sent out to one of the many campus cafeterias. Back at the kitchen I wanted to confirm how many pigs actually went into Foxconn's mess hall. After a bit of back and forth, the kitchen staff concurred. "About 90 here and 80 at the other kitchen. Sometimes more," said our guide. "90 what?" I asked. "Pigs. Whole pigs." Even the waste disposal systems are massive. The waste water - 3,000 tons daily - that comes from the kitchen is treated and reused in the sewage system, thereby reducing the load on the surrounding infrastructure. The oil used in the cooking facility is converted to biofuel to power some of the facilities, including many of the systems inside the kitchen.

Federal Fair Labor Standards Act

INTERNSHIPS

Unpaid Internships At Non-Profits that are arranged by schools Principles are NOT DIFFERENT for unpaid internships at non-profit organizations or for those sponsored by educational institutions for which the intern receives academic credit. SEE "for-profit" entities, and this is the sector upon which Fact Sheet # 71 focuses. Unpaid internships are "generally permissible" for a non-profit charitable organization in the right circumstances . The publication further implies that the relationship is more likely not to be viewed as FLSA employment if it is "structured around a classroom or academic experience . . . ," such as "where a college or university exercises oversight over the internship program and provides educational credit . . .."
Whether an unpaid internship occurs under the auspices of an educational institution, in a non-profit organization, or at a for-profit business, in the end the FLSA question still gets down to some version of this: Do the circumstances clearly show that the relationship is for the purpose of generalized learning, education, and training that imparts to the participant significant knowledge of a broadly-applicable kind, or do they instead indicate that the idea is to have the person perform work? In other words, if the motivation is something like, "We could sure use help from an intern this summer," that is a danger sign - whether the setting is for-profit, not-for-profit, school-related, or any other.

HIRE AT WILL

And when 'at will' is used in a contract with an independent contractor it generally means that there is no requirement for notice or reason in terminating the contract. Not commonly used in contracts as legal folks have better ways of saying that, but small organizations sometimes cut corners on their contracts.

Contracting or consulting is a TYPE of employment, "at-will" is a policy position that reflects the state interpretation of the "at-will" doctrine.

1) An independent contractor or consultant is self-employed , works for his/herself and receives a 1099 MISC income form at the end of the year -- THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS CONTRACTING FOR AN AGENCY. There are statutes that govern this as well that apply to the company or employer (for example, if the independent contractor or consultant does or cannot exercise free will in determining work hours, billing, etc., it can be argued that they are an employee not an independent contractor -- you must read the entire statute for clarity, but again this applies to the employer/company and is for the contractors protection).

2) "At-Will," (referred to as an American employment doctrine), is an employment status whereby the state (not an individual company) says that employers within its borders has the right to terminate employment (a) with no notice, and (b) with or without cause or explanation. By the same token, workers in that state also have the right to terminate/end their employment or "quite" their job (a) without providing the employer written or verbal notice, unless otherwise specified in an employment contract, and (b) is not required to provide the employer a reason or explanation - again, unless otherwise specified in an employment contract. It defines the working or employment relationship between a firm and an individual.

Here is a link if you need further clarification:
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/01/art1full.pdf

So there is a significant difference between the two. DC, MD, and VA are all at-will states (for lack of a better description) and of the 50 states, at last count approximately 43 are "at-will" states.

beware YELLOW DOG CONTRACT

Worker's Rights
An employer-employee contract, no longer legal , by which the employee agrees not to join a union while employed. Employment contract expressly prohibiting the named employee from joining labor unions under pain of dismissal. Most state constitutions guarantee the right to union affiliation and to collective bargaining . Federal and state statutes now generally declare that such contracts will not form the basis for legal or equitable remedies.

SLAVE LABOR
VS FAIR TRADE

If conditions at Winteks factories are anything like those at Foxxconns iPod facilities, most of Winteks employees earn less than fifty dollars a month, and work 15 hours a day.

Apple has admitted that child labor was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones.

Laptops

technoserf

We tend to think state-of-the-art robots must do the intense, detailed work needed to make our laptops - work that can mean completing the same action every three seconds for hours on end. But why would you bother when human labour is so cheap? While the material and distribution costs are pinned down, the wages of the millions of Chinese workers on the global electronics assembly line are seen as the elastic part of the supply chain where the contractor can make some margin. These workers have been dubbed technoserfs. They live and work in mammoth electronics factories (Foxconn, the giant that manufactures for Apple, houses 400,000 workers in dormitories at its Longhua plant), earning a basic wage that cannot sustain them (in part because they are charged for countless expenses including bedding and rent). A report by NGO China Labour Watch (CLW) assessed 10 major manufacturers producing for blue-chip giants, including Dell, Sony, Apple and HP, between October 2010 and May 2011, and found there were multiple violations of basic Chinese labour laws. Technoserfs were left standing for 10 consecutive hours, working at high intensity on assembly lines, and that doesn't include overtime, which many are forced to work. Conditions are degrading - in one instance, factory workers were permitted one 10-minute loo break in the middle of the day, which sparked a virtual stampede to just a few toilets, so that many didn't make it in time.
In the summer, a spate of suicides at Foxconn cast further light on the life of a technoserf. "Twelve hours of work = standard" and "One year and I'm dead" were found in the notebook of one young man who took his own life. Suicide nets were put up to catch any would-be victims, which is as far away from addressing the root cause as it's possible to get. While Apple attracts the lion's share of attention for outsourcing to Foxconn, CLW concludes that "the failings of Foxconn exist in the majority of electronics factories, and are representative of the policies and behavioural norms found throughout the electronics industry".
The alternative Part of the pressure put on workers has been traced to the way global brands dictate ferocious production schedules after whipping up consumer frenzy for new devices.

Stop buying trend-driven electronics, keep using your old ones for as long as possible and buy secondhand if you need to upgrade.

Cheap fast fashion is becoming less palatable as consumers are increasingly aware of how it is made; it's time we put the same thought into electronic purchases.

51 cents an hour is apparently too much
On the 10th of each month, Foxconn workers have their only good day. That's because they get the Chinese equivalent of $130. That's $130 for about 240 hours of work. The math is disturbing. These workers make about 51 cents an hour. It should be noted that Apple's Foxconn workers used to work longer hours, as much as 70 hours a week. Apple mandated that the maximum overtime be 20 hours a week, so Foxconn workers now only work 60 hours a week. Of course, they're still making only 51 cents an hour. By contrast, according to Forbes , Mr. Gou has a net worth of $5.5 billion. Steve Jobs has a net worth of $6.1 billion.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/government/is-apples-suicide-factory-outsourcing-to-even-cheaper-chinese-peasants/9537

Money / Greed / Technology / Slavery vs Starving / Fair Trade Apple has 295 stores world wide. The low-end iPad sells for $499. If it were built by Americans, it would have to cost $14,970. No one would buy an iPad for $14,970. No one would buy a mid-level laptop for $23,970. No one would buy a smartphone for $5,970.

Chasing Slaves The World Over : The sad fact is the average salary worldwide is $7,000 per year. Given how much we make in America and the number of very rich worldwide, that means that there are a tremendous number of people on the planet who make a lot less than $7,000. In China, the average employment income per person, per year, is $4,325. According to Wolfram Alpha , the median American wage is $42,270 per year. That means each worker generally costs American employers about $15.57/hour. For the sake of this exercise, let's leave out the high cost of benefits. Even so, the typical American worker makes 30 times more than the typical Foxconn worker.

Human Rights in China

Apple Censors Dalai Lama IPhone Apps in China
Apple appears to have blocked iPhone applications related to the Dalai Lama in its China App Store, making it the latest U.S. technology company to censor its services in China.

Working conditions in the global electronics industry. All the large tech companies such as Apple, Nokia, Dell, etc have agreements with their suppliers that they do not employ children, and that they will abide by certain standards to protect workers. But it's not clear how these are monitored, enforced, or how much in common they share across the electronics industry. What is common across the electronics industry is a relentless focus on reducing manufacturing costs, and the largest manufacturing cost is labor; which is why employees are pushed to work faster, while maintaining high quality work, and at the lowest wages acceptable.

Name malcolmmoore Shanghai Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph "We have managed to confirm two jumps today , a man and a woman, at Foxconn. Neither died. The other two we still don't know.

Apple is Taking Care of Foxconn Now

TAIWAN'S Foxconn Technology Group on Wednesday announced a 30-percent pay increase for workers at its plants in Shenzhen and other mainland cities starting June. From now on, the company said, it will no longer pay $14,600 to the families of employees who kill themselves.
The basic salary for assembly line workers was raised from 900 yuan (US$132) to 1,200 yuan per month, it said. The salaries of workers and foremen higher than 900 yuan were also boosted by at least 30 percent. Goldman Sachs Foxconn International price target to HK from 5.90 down to 5.20 Hong Kong dollars. Goldman Sachs to Foxconn 2010-12 earnings per share down 12% -15% to reflect the rising labor costs, as well as during the first half of 2010 revenues and margins weak factors. http://paper.sznews.com/szdaily/20100604/ca2932393.htm

Apple Providing Subsidies For Foxconn Workers ?

One Foxconn employee who says the reason for the suicides at the factory is because life there is so meaningless. http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Foxcon-Suicides-China-Hon-Hai-Precision,10597.html
Suicide Worker's relatives claimed the engineer died of stress, the result of working 34 straight hours shortly before his collapse.
http://www.examiner.com/x-39728-Tech-Buzz-Examiner~y2010m6d5-iPad-manufacturer-Foxconn-installing-safety-nets-admits-another-worker-death

Apple will provide financial subsidies to Foxconn's employees, the amount will roughly be 1 to 2% of the profits from Apple products. Apple has conducted investigation on Foxconn, and they believe the main reason for the suicide jumps is related to the employees' low wages. In order to solve the problem, Apple decides to offer a direct financial subsidies for the workers in Foxconn, it will first start from the iPad production line. It was reported that Apple paid Foxconn about 2.3% of the total price of iPad, after the subsidies, it will expected to reach 3%, which is equivalent to the producing cost of the iPad aluminum shell-case.

June 4 1010 Foxconn Fund Scandal should have paid at least 2,500 yuan into the housing fund for every worker every year.

A FOXCONN factory latest scandal to hit the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer after 10 suicides at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant highlighted long working hours and low pay. The Foxconn factory in eastern China's Shandong's Province Yantai City refused to pay into the housing provident fund, a compulsory social welfare, for its 80,000 workers in five years. It could save more than 200 million yuan (US$29 million) every year by holding back its workers' housing funds, says the Beijing-based Economic Information Daily Zhang Xiang, an official with Yantai Housing Fund Management Center, told the newspaper that Foxconn Yantai did not pay into the housing fund. Zhang said the authorities were incapable of doing anything because Foxconn was the biggest tax payer in Yantai.

may 28 3010
A Chinese company has cloned the iPad and dubbed it the iPed. Just about all of its features, right down to the box and icons, have been ripped off. Its priced at $105 in Japan.
http://www.tektion.com/2010/05/iped-the-chinese-ipad-knockoff/
And Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry plans to raise workers' salaries by about 20% at its Foxconn unit in China, as it struggles to stop a spate of worker suicides and quell rising public anger. iPhone maker to raise salaries 20% after worker suicides http://bit.ly/9PWzCJ

The Forbidden City of Terry Gou
His complex in China turns out iPhones and PCs, powering the biggest exporter you've never heard of. With a work force of some 270,000 -- about as big as the population of Newark, N.J. -- the factory is a bustling testament to the ambition of Hon Hai's founder, Terry Gou.

Terry Gou Hon Hai Precision Industry chairman Taiwan's Richest man
Tours his company's 300,000-employee compound in Shenzhen. The Wednesday trip to Foxconn (a subdivision of Hon Hai) Longhua Science & Technology Park was, in part, damage control. That complex--a high-pressure place with both dormitories and factories that manufactures products and parts for Apple, HP, Dell, Sony, Nokia and others--had seen 10 suicides and two suicide attempts since January. Several of Foxconn's big-name customers including Apple, HP and Sony, worried about the suicide spate, have apparently already launched investigations into the company's working conditions. These doubts pose a risk to the strength of Gou's efficient, productive business model--which has made Hon Hai the world's largest contract manufacturer- Hon Hai is also currently the exclusive supplier of Apple's iPhones and one of the few makers of iPods, Taiwan-based analysts say. Apple acknowledged that Hon Hai is a supplier but declined to comment further. At the center of Mr. Gou's empire is his walled Shenzhen facility, the Longhua Science & Technology Park, which covers about a square mile.

The Real Truth Behind Foxconn's Suicide Cluster
According to Southern Weekly, everything we wanted to know about “life inside the factory” is finally been uncovered by their amateur reporter who disguised as a Foxconn worker. The Foxconn suicide mess is all started from job stress. Within half a year, there are 9 suicides with 7 confirmed-deaths in Foxconn's factory of China, Shenzhen. In order to find out what's really going on in that factory, the Southern Weekly, described by The New York Times as China's most influential liberal newspaper, has sent an amateur reporter to slip into Foxconn's factory to pretend as a worker and the mission is to find out the truth of the suicide cluster.

May 2010 For the eighth time this year, a worker has apparently committed suicide at a factory in China operated by Foxconn Technology , the world's biggest contract electronics manufacturer and a major supplier to Apple , Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other global companies. It was the 10th time a Foxconn worker has apparently committed or attempted suicide this year. Suicides were between the ages of 18 and 24; six were male and four female; and most were migrant workers who had moved to southern China in search of jobs. Two massive Foxconn factory sites, which together employ about 420,000 workers in Shenzhen, China. Foxconn, a unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry of Taiwan . Chinese state-run media have published articles saying that working conditions were harsh at Foxconn factories, with extraordinarily long working hours, overcrowded dormitories, strict enforcement of discipline on the assembly lines and heavy fines for minor work infractions. Employees were forced to work long periods standing, sometimes for eight hours nonstop. Last year, a 25-year-old worker named Sun Danyong committed suicide after Foxconn security personnel questioned him about whether he was to blame for a missing iPhone prototype. Shortly after he was questioned, Mr. Sun jumped from the 12th floor of an apartment building and died. He had complained to friends that the security personnel had beaten and humiliated him.

Young, Exhausted & Disposable Teenagers Producing / Prison Like Factory Conditions
Company Dorms, cafeteria food, Military like Discipline, State and Corporate Factory Audits a Complete Failure, Wages below subsistence level.
Apple Manufactures in China - that means somewhere there is a factory with 1000's of migrant women working 70 - 80 hour a work for the lowest wage you can imagine, who maybe get 1 sunday off a month. There is No health care! It's Simple: Get sick-> lose job.
A study in the mid-1990s by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found 78% of female migrants in the Pearl River Delta had a junior-high-school education, while among rural women nationwide it was only 43%.

Apple plant run by Wintek a Taiwanese company in Suzhou Jiangsu province in China. Their business plan doesn't care about people's rights, again that doesn't come into play.

Monday, January 18, 2010
Touch panels manufactured at United Win (China) Technology Ltd Co. The company is a subsidiary of Taiwan-based Wintek Corporation, one of the world's leading producers of small mobile phone panels and touch panels. "The truth has been hidden from public view. There are people dying from long-term exposure to the toxicant used in the factory but no one is paying attention to that. There needs to be further investigation."
Wintek said n-hexane was commonly used in the technology industry , and that problems had arisen because some areas of the factory were not ventilated properly.
Hexane is known to create extensive peripheral nervous system failure in humans. The initial symptoms are tingling and cramps in the arms and legs, followed by general muscular weakness. In severe cases, atrophy of the skeletal muscles is observed, along with a loss of coordination and problems of vision.
Zhu also complained of work overload and low pay at the factory , which he believed had driven many migrant workers like him to suffer from poor health and poverty. "We had long been dissatisfied with the management, pay and even food provided by the company," he said.

Did the manufacture of your iPhone make someone sick?
All the workers interviewed said n-hexane the chemical that made people sick was used in making touch screens for Apple, particularly the iPhone and iTouch. Apple rejected repeated interview requests, refused to confirm whether its products were involved and directed questions to its 2010 Supplier Responsibility audit, which does not address chemical poisoning.

supply chain:
Production

SUPPLY CHAIN - Ugh Oh

Reuters reported that the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) published a critical report on the Apple supply chain, accusing the company of only caring about the "price and quality" of its products. "We've found that Apple isn't honoring its commitment in ensuring its supply chain's work safety and environmental responsibility and giving dignity and respect to the workers," Ma Jun of IPE told Reuters. "In some ways they drive the suppliers to cut corners to win their contracts." In response, Apple said that its own supplier responsibility reports "document the progress of our extensive auditing program since 2006."

Apple works with overseas partners to create and assemble its devices .
The El Segundo, California-based iSuppli revealed that 9.7-inch screen of the Apple iPad is manufacture by the South Korean firms LG Display and Samsung Electronics, and the Japanese firm Seiko Epson.
Apple tablet will be powered by a processor designed by P.A. Semi and built by Samsung. Analyst Maynard Um said it would likely be a complex system on a chip design.
Last year, an audit of factories Apple contracts with in China showed that more than half were not paying valid overtime rates for those that qualified. In addition, 23 of the 83 surveyed factories weren't even paying their workers China's minimum wage.
Wintek, in particular, came under fire in 2009, as workers at the company took their case directly to Apple over what they saw as illegal and abusive working conditions. Members of the National Federation of Independent Trade Unions in Taiwan protested in front of Apple's Taipei offices last May, hoping the Mac maker would influence Wintek.

Ex-WINTEK Workers Joined in Protest of Poor Working Condition and Apple Under Fire in Taiwan

China Labour Bulletin: Global Post: Silicon Sweatshops
China labor law experts said the document which was not given to GlobalPost by Lis family reads like a standard compensation contract given to families of men who die in coal-mine accidents. The amount is typical for a workplace death. This contract has a twist: it specifically says the company is not liable for his death. In Suzhou, where dozens of workers have fallen seriously ill with nerve damage in the past year from chemical poisoning, a factory workers health is worth about 130,000 yuan ($19,046) by the government's calculation.

fair trade:
Electronics Industry

Steve Jobs - Apple
Terry Gou Foxconn

Billionaire Terry Gou owns Taiwan company Foxconn which makes components for Apple Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Intel, Nokia, Cisco & Motorola in Senshen China

Would you pay extra because it does make a difference in the lives of many people?

fair trade:
Change the World

Change the Electronics Industry

Would you buy a Fair Trade iPhone or Android smartphone? Would you buy a Fair Trade Dell or HP PC if there were such choices? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairtrade_certification

Americans will when some company understands the added value of promoting that, set it up so that it is transparent. We will wnat to know how to check that the company really is offering the worker a better wage, decent hours and living conditions. Americans will support that. They will want to buy Fair Trade brand. Only THEN will the Chinese want copy it.

Make the The Biggest Difference In the World

Fair Trade Electronics could help tens of millions of people around the world without making much difference to our wallets. Our digital gadgets and gizmos are becoming very cheap, almost disposable yet the working conditions for millions of workers in the global electronics industries are deplorable. Noble goals are important but what will drive the growth of Fair Trade electronics is that it will be an excellent way to make money. It's a great way for companies to differentiate themselves in the market place. ~ Tom Forenski

Fair Trade: Fight global poverty. Social Sustainability Starts with Education .

According to Save The Children , two-thirds of the world's 880 million illiterate adults are women. Girls are more than 70 percent of the 125 million children who don't have a school to attend. "If you teach a boy, you educate an individual. But if you teach a girl, you educate a community." An educated boy tends to leave the community and/or use the increased earning power for more "selfish" purposes (sorry gents). On the other hand, an educated girl tends to stay, spend her money on family/children, and become a catalyst for positive change. Ensuring that all citizens have access to food, shelter, clean water and the means to make a decent living - there's ample evidence that education provides a catalyst that can lift millions out of poverty.

... books, notebooks and pencils - the tools of socioeconomic well-being*

The education of girls leads to smaller family sizes. Girls marry later and have fewer children, which leads to lower (more sustainable) population growth.
Education leads to better female and child healthcare and lower mortality rates, which in turn reinforces the smaller family size.
Educated women have higher economic value (i.e. they can earn money), and are therefore generally treated better. They have more of a voice in family concerns, such as family size and healthcare.

Apple iPhone and iPad Made in China

APPLE iPhone and Ipad made in China

#Steve Jobs sjobs@apple.com #APPLE Display components, #LCD panel, #Foxconn China plant, #touch panel Wintek suppliers, #iPad security Breach

AMERICA IS THE CONSUMER AND SHARES RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EWASTE
E-waste laws, state by state by Tony Schick, May 9, 2016
With no federal standards regulating what electronic items get recycled or how, the state-by-state approach has left this patchwork of inconsistent regulations. Half of all states have laws for electronic recycling. Some states' programs cover only households, ignoring businesses and schools. Many programs cover laptops and tablets but exclude common items like printers or e-readers. EarthFix on NewsHour: Many "recycled" electronics not really recycled The U.S. leads the world in e-waste, & while electronic recycling is increasingly popular, what happens to our devices is less clear. Many devices may not be recycled at all. KCTS 9 & EarthFix report.

Steve Jobs Tells Us A Secret

2015 Group puts Apple in the spot over brutal worker abuse at China supplier's factories . Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior say Lens Technology, which makes touchscreen glass, used forced overtime, withheld wages and risked worker health. They investigated three of its factories. Company founder Zhou Qunfei, herself a former factory worker, became China's richest woman after Lens Technology's debut on the Shenzhen stock exchange in March.

2013 U.S.-based Fair Labor Association released an audit report , pointing to steady improvements made to the working conditions at Foxconn factories in China.

2013 Apple has published its seventh annual Supplier Responsibility Report in which it details efforts to curb child labor and environment damage at its partner companies.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/428015/20130125/apple-report-foxconn-child-labor-iphone.htm

Benjamin's Franklin's argument against slavery was economic as well as moral . He said:

It is an ill-grounded opinion that, by the labor of slaves, America may possibly vie in cheapness of manufactures with Britain. The labor of slaves can never be so cheap here as the labor of working men is in Britain. Any one may compute it. Interest of money is in the colonies from six to ten per cent. Slaves, one with another, cost thirty pounds sterling per head. Reckon then the interest of the first purchase of a slave, the insurance or risk on his life, his clothing and diet, expenses in his sickness and loss of time, loss by his neglect of business (neglect is natural to the man who is not to be benefited by his own care or diligence), expense of a driver to keep him at work, and his pilfering from time to time, almost every slave being by nature a thief, and compare the whole amount with the wages of a manufacturer of iron or wool in England, you will see that labor is much cheaper there than it ever can be by Negroes here. Why then will Americans purchase slaves? Because slaves may be kept as long as a man pleases, or has occasion for their labor; while hired men are continually leaving their masters (often in the midst of his business and setting up for themselves).[2]
The Negroes brought into the English sugar islands have greatly diminished the whites there; the poor are, by this means, deprived of employment, while a few families acquire vast estates, which they spend on foreign luxuries, and educating their children in the habit of those luxuries; the same income is needed for the support of one that might have maintained one hundred. The whites who have slaves, not laboring, are enfeebled, and therefore not so generally prolific; the slaves being worked too hard, and ill fed, their constitutions are broken and the deaths among them are more than the births; so that a continual supply is needed from Africa. The northern colonies, having few slaves, increase in whites. Slaves also[Pg 43] pejorate the families that use them; the white children become proud, disgusted with labor, and, being educated in idleness, are rendered unfit to get a living by industry. [ The Works of Benjamin Franklin , II, p. 316.]

By the end of 2012 it's likely that Apple will have more than $100 billion stashed away in offshore accounts.

Inside Foxconn: Exclusive look at how an iPad is made

Hilarious IP iPad trademark Suit and China : IPAD, letters standing for Internet Personal Access Device.
Pudong New Area People's Court in Shanghai China ruled in Apple's favor rejected request by a Proview Technology (Shenzhen) to stop Apple Inc selling its iPad tablet computers in Shanghai. The is part of a wider battle for Apple over the use of the iPad trademark. Proview produced a thin, flat computer about the size of the front of a microwave oven, packed in a cardboard box, and said it was its IPAD, or Internet Personal Access Device. Apple's lawyer said Proview's IPAD had never been marketed and claimed it was "fake evidence." The companies are feuding over whether Proview sold the rights to the iPad trademark for the Chinese mainland to Apple in a deal in 2009.
The dispute, which dates back to a disagreement over what was covered in the deal, has seen iPads seized by authorities in some Chinese cities, and some retailers removing them from sale. Apple disputes Proview's ownership of the trademark, saying that it bought the global rights to the name from Proview in 2009. Top retailers, including the country's biggest electronics retailer Suning, Carrefour, and major online retailers Amazon.cn and 360Buy.com, had also halted sales of iPads. Apple China, which declined to comment on ongoing cases, is continuing to sell iPads in its retail and online stores. APPLE can continue to sell its iPads in Shanghai after a city court rejected a Chinese company's request for a ban on sales. China is important to Apple not only as a consumer market, but also because the country is a major production base for the iPad and other Apple products.

2/29/2012 Lawyers for Apple Inc produced a letter signed by Proview Technology (Shenzhen) Chairman Yang Rongshan at a court hearing in south China's Guangdong Province yesterday, claiming it proved the company was involved in a 2009 deal which transferred rights to the iPad trademark on China's mainland to Apple. However, Proview Technology (Shenzhen) told the court it had never transferred its right to the iPad trademark on the Chinese mainland to anyone. The US firm appealed to the court after a lower court in Guangdong ruled in favor of Proview. The court's verdict is usually final under Chinese law, and will set a precedent for other cases in the Chinese mainland.
Apple said it bought ownership of the iPad trademark in 10 countries and regions, including China, from Proview in 2009 but the Shenzhen company argued that the US firm dealt with only one unit of Proview and that it retained rights to the iPad name on the Chinese mainland. Proview also contended that Apple intentionally misled it when it bought iPad trademarks through a company called IP Application Development Ltd that concealed it was acting on Apple's behalf.
"Apple meticulously formed a band of lawyers to buy the trademark, but the transacted amount was given to Taiwan's Proview, not Shenzhen's Proview," Xie Xianghui, a lawyer for Proview, told the court. Xie said Apple had dealt with wrong subsidiary in relation to the rights for the mainland.
Apple claimed the letter signed by Yang, who is also chairman of the Taiwan-based parent group Proview International Holdings, proved that the Shenzhen company was involved in the 2009 deal. Apple said the letter was compelling evidence against Proview. "The deal was established between IP Application Development and Proview International Holdings. The money was transferred to Taiwan's Proview because it was acting on behalf of the Proview Group, including Shenzhen's Proview," a lawyer for Apple said. The lawyer told the court: "In the eyes of the consumer, iPad is associated with Apple. If the court decides that Proview wins the case, then this will confuse consumers and hurt their interests."
Proview announced it was seeking to regain worldwide rights to the iPad name and is suing Apple in the United States, according to The Associated Press. Apart from having the trademark sale voided, it is seeking compensation, a share of Apple's profits from "unfair competition" and for Apple to stop using the trademark.

Foxconn, the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer, has nearly 1.2 million employees at Chinese mainland plants.

Foxconn, founded by chairman Terry Gou in 1974. Louis Woo, chairman of Foxconn's retail division which employs more than 1.2 million people in 18 countries, most of them in China. In addition to Apple, customers include Microsoft Corp., Sony Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. Looking for work?

Apple's Chinese labourers get 1.6% of iPad loot. Foxconn employees in its suppliers' Chinese factories get just $8 of the $499 sale price of each iPad 2. Several news sources cite a Korea Daily report which claims that, based on average salaries, workers in the region get a 1.6% slice of the pie, while Apple creams off $150 or around 30% of the tablet's retail price. < source >

Welcome to Foxconn Factories: How Bad Is It Video?

6/12 Dozens arrested after riot at Foxconn plant in Chengdu

2/2012 Foxconn raised Chinese workers wages by 16-25% from this month on which is the third rise since 2010. The pay of a junior level worker in Shenzhen, southern China, had risen to 1,800 yuan ($290) per month and could be further raised above 2,200 yuan if the worker passed a technical examination. It said that pay three years ago was 900 yuan a month."As a top manufacturing company in China, the basic salary of junior workers in all of Foxconn's China factories is already far higher than the minimum wage set by all local governments," the statement said.

Karl Marx explains that employers will pay as little as they can to their labor. He also pointed out that this was limited by the availability of workers. If there was that large reserve army of the unemployed then capitalists could pay very little for labor. Anyone agitating for a greater share of the profits could simply be fired and replaced. He also pointed out that when there is no such reserve army then employers will have to bid up wages to attract the labour they desire. Yes, capitalists are in competition with each other for access to the labour they require to make profits. So, as productivity rises, as the reserve army shrinks, then wages for workers will improve as capitalists attempt to hire the workforce they desire. So a labour shortage has developed and thus companies must bid up wages to get the workers they want. We're buying so much stuff from China that they're running out of the people to make it all, so it's entirely possible that we'll see an increase in onshoring in coming years.

The frenzied desire for an iPhone in China has generated this saying:

"The 1st apple had tempted Eve into Serpent's conspiracy and opened up human's eyes to good and bad; the 2nd apple had inspired Isaac Newton to discover the law of universal gravitation; and the 3rd apple, brought Chinese worship of face, pretentiousness, and machiavellianism to full play."

Chinese teenager 'sells kidney to buy iPad and iPhone
Chinese scalpers hired groups of migrant workers to wait in line for iPhone 4S.
a girl offered 5 nights of sex fo an iPhone 4S.
A 17-year-old teenager together with 4 of his friends robbed 330,000 yuan from a hotel with the common wish - getting their girlfriends an iPhone.

Phone Story : An iPhone educational game. Now banned from the AppStore

Fair Labor Association : Apple's Foxconn Plants Not So Bad
FLA president said other factories in China are much worse, and that Apple's Foxconn plants are "first-class" After The New York Times released a report on the poor treatment of Apple's suppliers' workers, weeks of Apple bashing ensued. But a new study from the Fair Labor Association (FLA) takes the opposite stance, saying that workers at factories like Foxconn are not being pushed to their limits -- they're just bored.It's more a function of monotony, of boredom, of alienation perhaps ."

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling commissioned The Fair Labor Association (FLA) Foxconn management audit. A 30-person inspection team would interview 35,000 Foxconn employees via meetings with small groups of randomly picked workers, chosen to reflect the demographics of the campus in terms of age, gender and skill levels. As part of the process, workers log answers to questions on tablets connected to association servers so they can be tabulated. Heather White, the founder of Verite, who is also a fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, said group meetings on Foxconn's premises might not yield honest responses. She said that she found it more productive to talk to workers in their homes or other off-site locations. "It is very hard to get people to speak openly about very serious issues," she said.
taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2012/02/19/2003525831

Foxconn allegedly hid underage workers from inspectors. Non-profit claims iPad-maker cheated in factory audit. Local governments in China "repay" Foxconn's decision to locate in their area by shipping off vocational students to work in the factories as interns in order to help cope with the high turnover of employees. Debby Sze Wan Chan, a case worker at Hong Kong based non-profit Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) alleged to The Register that these students are sent to these factories even if their chosen subjects bear no relation to the work they will be "forced" to undertake. "We describe the internships as involuntary or forced labour because if they don't go to the factory they may not be able to graduate or they may need to drop out of their courses." She added that according to conversations with Foxconn workers, the recent high-profile inspection of the hardware giant's Shenzhen factory by the Fair Labor Association (FLA) was flawed. She said her group had received information in the form of allegations that the company had prepared for it by hiding illegal workers.

Arun Gupta "iEmpire: Apple's Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think," which states: "Behind the sleek face of the iPad is an ugly backstory that has revealed once more the horrors of globalization. The iPad they are holding is assembled from child labor, toxic shop floors, involuntary overtime, suicidal working conditions, and preventable accidents that kill and maim workers.
"It turns out the story is much worse. Researchers with the Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) say that legions of vocational and university students, some as young as 16, are forced to take months'-long 'internships' in Foxconn's mainland China factories assembling Apple products. The details of the internship program paint a far more disturbing picture than the Times does of how Foxconn, 'the Chinese hell factory,' treats its workers, relying on public humiliation, military discipline, forced labor and physical abuse as management tools to hold down costs and extract maximum profits for Apple.

China workers push back bosses sack-or-move plan
themilitant.com/2012/7604/760451.html
Protests at Foxconn Factory in Wuhan, China, employs 32,000 workers drew worldwide attention to the unsafe conditions, speedup and company treatment of workers in the plant and their determination to do just about anything to confront it. Around 150 workers gathered on the factory roof threatening to jump to their deaths if their demands were not met. The protest began Jan. 2 after the company said it was closing down one of its production lines and moving some workers to jobs elsewhere in the country. "Foxconn initially offered severance pay for those that wanted to leave rather than be transferred, but then reneged, angering the workers"
guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/12/xbox-assembly-workers-threaten-mass-suicide "We were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal," "The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it."
telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9006988/Mass-suicide-protest-at-Apple-manufacturer-Foxconn-factory.html
Some workers had been forced to move from Foxconn's southern Chinese coastal city of Shenzhen to Wuhan. The company then backtracked on the wages they had promised to pay. Instead of getting $450 a month, including overtime, they received one-third less, reported the New York Times . In a statement released Jan. 12 Foxconn claimed, “The welfare of our employees is our top priority.” Yet their record over the past two years tells a different story. Last May three workers died and 15 were injured from a “combustible dust” blast at Foxconn's iPad factory in Chengdu. Another explosion seven months later at another Chinese iPad facility run by Pegatron Corp. injured dozens of others. Foxconn has a bleak record of workers committing suicide at its plants. In 2010, 18 workers threw themselves from the factory's top, with 14 deaths, according to the Telegraph . That year Foxconn, feeling some heat, more than doubled wages for some workers, reports Bloomberg News . In a Jan. 12 statement, Foxconn said 45 of the workers in Wuhan resigned and the rest agreed to return to work, though settlement details have not been released to the media. In another development, city officials in Zhengzhou, capital of the mostly rural Henan province, is offering to assist Foxconn in recruiting more than 100,000 workers at much lower wages for its local factory there.
Labor costs in Zhengzhou are about two-thirds of those in China's coastal cities , Deputy Mayor Xue Yunwei told Bloomberg News. “You can't find entry-level workers in Shanghai offering only 1,500 yuan ($237) of monthly salary. But we can,” he said. Part of the local government's plan is to encourage the 21 million migrant workers who have left the province in search of work in coastal cities to return.

Why isn't more manufacturing taking place in the U.S.?

In-depth report by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher of The New York Times, is based on interviews with, among others, "more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors, many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs." The piece uses Apple and its recent history to look at why the success of some U.S. firms hasn't led to more U.S. jobs and to examine issues regarding the relationship between corporate America and Americans (as well as people overseas).

Jennifer Rigoni , Apple's worldwide supply demand manager until 2010: "They could hire 3,000 people overnight," she says, speaking of Foxconn City, Foxconn Technology's complex of factories in China. "What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?"

Fear Factory 1/16/12 by Jon Stewart

How do we get Apple Jobs Back to America?

[Ask Steve mailto:sjobs@apple.heaven.com ]
By creating a convenient ecosystem, China's Foxconn workers do 35-hour days at 31 cents an hour and trying to form a union might get a Chinese worker 12 years in jail. He was moved to hear that some workers try to commit suicide. "I would expect if we were working people to death we'd be getting, like, 30-35% savings," mused Stewart.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Trade and industrialisation after globalisation's 2nd unbundling : How building and joining a supply chain are different and why it matters
Richard Baldwin Graduate Institute, Geneva

China's Foxconn comes under attack for its poor working conditions
For the first time, Apple has disclosed the identity of 156 suppliers, and said it will become the first tech company to join the Fair Labor Association (FLA). This means that the FLA will investigate Apple suppliers and issue regular reports on their labor practices.

Fair Trade Apple Computer revealed that 2/3 of its on-hand cash - some $54 billion and creates thousands of Chinese manufacturing jobs, what US jobs has Apple created? Other than retail... Not that labor costs account for much of the cost of an Apple product. According to Sophia Cheng, writing at the SACOM Web site:

Take the iPad, for example, which is the sole item produced at Foxconn's 100,000-worker factory in Chengdu. Industry analyst iSuppli estimates that Apple spends only $9 on labor for every $499 iPad. PDF

"I believe that what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy. ... What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good? Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.' "-- Apple CEO Steve Jobs , speaking to an education reform conference in Texas just before he was tackled and dragged off by members of Apple's education sales unit.

Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.
"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.
Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules, " noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/steve-jobs-biography-obama_n_1022786.html

fair trade in china

Outsource to China Karma: Pay Back's a Bitch: Real thing? No !

A demonstration of how easy it is to browse and install applications at Google's Android Market, using the Orphan aPad iRobot Tablet PC. The iPad like Orphan aPad is the best edition aPad available. Now also available with a built-in camera.

Apple admits using child labor

Hands mauled and maimed and can no longer use them.

Why Apple is committing a great sin against humanity.

Is Apple poisoning Chinese workers? Chinese environmental groups ranked Apple dead last in a survey of 29 tech companies' green records. How bad an Apple is the iPhone maker? 1/21/ 2011
- Apple came in last in a ranking of 29 IT companies based on their responsiveness to environmental and health issues in Chinese factories.
- Apple came in last in a ranking of 29 IT companies based on their responsiveness to environmental and health issues in Chinese factories.
Photo: Getty SEE ALL 28 PHOTOS
- A coalition of leading Chinese environmental groups claims that Apple has the worst record, out of 29 major tech companies, when it comes to handling environmental and pollution concerns in Chinese factories. "Behind their stylish image, Apple products have a side many do not know about — pollution and poison. A side hidden deep within the company's secretive supply chain," reads a statement by the groups that released the report, titled "The Other Side of Apple." Here, a brief guide to the claims and Apple's reaction (or lack thereof)

2/18/11 Apple Inc. admitted for the first time that 137 workers exposed to n-hexane , a toxic solvent used to clean touch screens.suffered health problems at the factory of United Win Technology Ltd, a Wintek subsidiary on the Chinese mainland.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/sci/2011-02/18/c_13738378.htm

2011 Apple factories accused of exploiting Chinese workers Poorly paid workers are said to work excessive hours and suffer humiliations in the drive to produce iPads and iPhones

Wintek refutes all poisoning claims
An Apple computer supplier has denied forcing employees to quit after they were poisoned following exposure to a toxic chemical at a factory in eastern China. Jia Jingchuan, a worker at Wintek Corp's factory in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, signed an agreement with the employer before he resigned, which stated the company won't be held liable for any health problems he has. Jia told the newspaper he didn't want to resign and wanted to be transferred to other positions, but the company did not responded to his request. He said he had no other choice but to quit the job and wouldn't receive the compensation unless he signed the agreement which cleared the employer of any future responsibilities.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=464147

China bosses battle it out for workers 2/12/2011
CHONGQING/GUANGZHOU - COASTAL and inland cities are fiercely competing to attract migrant workers as China's labour shortage spreads to less-developed central and western regions. In south-west China's Chongqing, many firms have set up booths at railway and bus stations to persuade workers to stay home instead of returning to the coast. Tens of millions of migrant laborers travel by train or bus during the Spring Festival break, which ends on Feb 17. At the city's North Railway Station on Friday, about a dozen workers told China Daily that they will stay in their hometown if they can get similar wages. Jiang Haitao, 21, who worked at Foxconn Technology Group's Kunshan plant in East China's Jiangsu province last year, said the corporation's Chongqing operation offers a base salary that is only 'slightly less'. 'I'd feel happier working in my hometown,' he said, adding that earning 200 yuan (S$38) more outside 'cannot buy the same happiness'. Migrant workers in the east earned an average of 5% more than those in western regions in 2009, yet the disparity was 15% five years earlier , show figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_634230.html

SECURITY

January 2011 Possible iPhone 5 Product Drawings Leaked From Foxconn

Apple's Worst Security Breach : 6/10 2010
114,000 iPad Owners Exposed. AT&T API that returned the email address of an iPad 3G user based on a unique identifier associated with the SIM card... so, while Apple should demand an accounting for this, it's not Apple's disclosure but AT&T's. Of course, while some 3G iPad users may guard their personal email addresses with care, many do not (I stopped trying a long time ago). If all that was breached is the email address and the fact that one owns an iPad 3G, neither of those facts seem very sensitive. So, a minor affront to some, a substantial inconvenience to others.

Suicides

FOXCONN Billionaire chairman Terry Guo told investors that the company had broken no laws. Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs called the suicides "troubling", but added Foxconn is not a "sweatshop." Xiao, the labor activist, said raising the salary is a good start, but that Foxconn managers "should treat the workers as people, not animals." Ji Shao, a labor expert at Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing, said that salaries of factory workers need be raised across China, and that even Foxconn's new monthly salary of 2,000 renminbi (293 dollars) is too low. Ji said that China's labor laws are routinely violated and that workers are offered very little protection. Last year during a trip to Dongguan, an industrial city in Guangdong province, Ji and her team found that 80 percent of companies were violating labor laws; many companies refused to sign contracts with workers and were paying a salary below the minimum wage. Laws are useless.
http://www.themadisontimes.com/news_details.php?news_id=190
http://www.docresume.com/foxconn-letter-demands-workers-can-sign-or-jump-uhh-corporate-suicide-disavowal-china.html

After a series of suicides rocked iPhone maker Foxconn's factories , the company has held a huge rally to boost morale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C6vSzKtkn0

iPhone-maker rallies workers after China suicides. In Shenzen China, workers who typically spend their weeks putting together iPhones and other gadgets packed a stadium at their campus on Wednesday, they shouted slogans as they rallied in an attempt to raise morale after a pattern of suicides at the company's factories. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddU8rV7_Qis

2010 Foxconn Technology Group has announced that in 2010, the company's export value from its Shenzhen processing and trade enterprise reached USD48 billion, a year-on-year increase of 50%.
At the same time, Foxconn boasted new technology breakthroughs during the past year. In 2010, Foxconn applied for 16,000 global patents and 7,000 were approved; and it applied for 6,000 patents on Chinese mainland and nearly 3,000 got approved.
Since a spate of suicides last year at its factories in China, the company has become very sensitive to media exposure and how it is perceived by consumers. A representative from Foxconn told local media that with Foxconn's continuous distribution on the Chinese mainland in recent years, its Shenzhen plant still gained outstanding results, which shows its significance for the company. At present, nearly half of the world's top branded computers are made by Foxconn. The company also makes mobile phone for Nokia and Motorola; it makes playstations, laptops, and LCD TVs for Sony; and it makes iPods, iPhones, iPads for Apple.
Foxconn Shenzhen Longhua campus has become the manufacturing base for the latest technology products, including smartphones and tablet computers; and the volume and speed of shipments from this plant influence the prices in the global IT market.

Code of Conduct

APPLE is supposed to observe the supplier code of conduct.

Electronic Industry Code of Conduct http://www.eicc.info/
"Recognised standards such as International Labour Organisation Standards (ILO), Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Social Accountability International (SAI), and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) were used as references in preparing this code" .
The code of conduct includes a commitment to uphold the human rights of workers, and covers matters including discrimination, harsh treatment and harassment, involuntary and child labour, working hours, remuneration and freedom of association.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Taiwanese manufacturer Pegatron has confirmed that its subsidiary Kaedar Electronics did pay kickbacks to an "intermediate trading company" in order to help land contracts with Apple between 2005 and 2008. It was unable, however, to confirm that Apple global supply manager Paul Devine, arrested late last week over the scheme, was the ultimate recipient of the funds.

NO UNION IN CHINA

Utah Philips tells the story . . .

GREEN CHINA TECH

iPad and its ilk get a new big tax break in China, more profit for Apple.
Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council of China 1/31/2011
Starting from January 27, 2011, the import tax of some information technology products, including computers and video camcorders, has been lowered from 20% to 10%. This means the tax of some popular imported products like Apple's iPad will be decreased from the previous CNY1,000 to at most CNY500. The current import tax includes the tariff, value added tax, and consumption tax. The commission did not reveal the reason for the tax adjustment, and the paper, signed on January 24, 2011, has been sent to the General Administration of Customs of China. A representative from the customs duty collection division at the Beijing Capital International Airport told local media that they have received the related notice. Staff from Shanghai Pudong Airport, Fuzhou Customs, and Shenzhen Customs also confirmed the issuance of the notice and said the tax rate has been adjusted.
http://www.chinatechnews.com/2011/01/31/13028-china-lowers-import-tax-for-it-products

Foxconn Factory Shut Down in Tamil Nadu, India 300.00 per month tech slaves.

The true reasons for the Chinese government's tolerance of workers' demands for increased pay are

California Labor Laws protect the rights of California employees to receive overtime pay for working more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. You can still be entitled to overtime even if you are paid on a salary basis, even if your salary is $100K per year, even if your company labels you a "part time" employee, even if your company improperly labels you an "independent contractor," and even if you supervise other people. The only people who are not entitled to overtime pay are those people that meet all of the requirements for one or more of the narrowly defined Exemptions .

Foxconn Plans To Hire 400,000 Mainland Workers August 23, 2010 The Taiwan-based technology outsourcing giant said it aims to increase its employee base to 1.3 million from the current 1.2 million. In the meantime, the company also plans to cut employee numbers at its Shenzhen plant to between 300,000 and 350,000 from the current 450,000. This plan is in line with the company's decision to improve works quality and increase production efficiency.The company said it will shut its Shenzhen plant, where a spate of suicides among workers took place in the first half of this year, and it will build factories closer to employees' homes so that they will be able to maintain contact with their families.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479.htm

CHENNAI: An independent fact-finding team of social activists has questioned the government inaction against Foxconn India for its alleged criminal negligence and disregard for workers' safety and health by allowing fumigation of its factory at Sriperumbudur, where a mysterious poisonous gas leak caused the mass fainting of workers on July 23. http://expressbuzz.com/cities/chennai/malathion-caused-fainting-of-foxconn-workers/205179.html

June 30, 2010 100, 000 pupils forced to work at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant who were visiting vocational schools in the province of Henan. Ordered to undertake a three month 'internship' at Foxconn factories headquartered in Shenzhen. The order as it were, comes from high on up in the government, with the 'Provincial employment promotion office' claiming it will help boost employment. We call it an order because, apparently, the students must either accept or drop out, it doesn't seem to be a decision they can say no to.

January 2010 Shenzhen: More Than Just A Good Place To Jump To Your Death 12 Foxconn employees have attempted suicide since
Taiwan's Honhai Group, the parent company of Foxconn, said the business will focus on expanding its existing operations on the mainland, including Foxconn's Longhua plant in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Since the suicides and attempted suicides at the plant, Foxconn has compensated victims' families and raised salaries by as much as 66.6 percent, driving up overheads. But the company said all promised operations on the mainland have nothing to do with the rising costs and will not be changed.
http://cnbusinessnews.com/were-not-leaving-the-mainlandfoxconn/

“If a worker in Taiwan commits suicide because of emotional problems his employer won't be held responsible, but we are taken to task in China because they are living and sleeping in our dormitories” - Terry Gou, CEO of Foxconn
http://www.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/06/08/china.foxconn.factory.ft/index.html

Foxconn Spends Nearly 100 million for Dormitory Construction Foxconn Beijing has successively invested totaling RMB0.11 billion Yuan to build the dormitories that could accommodate six thousand persons for its employees without any charge. Additionally, Foxconn Beijing spends tens of millions of RMB every year to rent outside apartments owned by the government for its employees free of charge, or provide allowance for them to rent houses by themselves.
http://www.szcpost.com/2010/06/foxconn-spends-nearly-100-million-for-dormitory-construction.html

6/14/2010 The Foxconn Group, after announcing wage hikes for employees at two production bases in Shenzhen, southern China in early June, has been shifting a large portion of the production lines from Shenzhen to its production bases in Tianjin, northern China, and Wuhan and Chongqing, western China, according to a Chinese-language China Times report. The two production bases in Shenzhen currently have 400,000 employees in total and will be combined into one, with only a few relatively profitable production lines to remain, the report pointed out.As the minimum monthly wages in Tianjin and Wuhan are currently 920 yuan (US$135) and 900 yuan respectively, the moves are to reduce labor costs because Foxconn may not raise wages for workers in the two places, the report analyzed. According to other China-based reports, Foxconn began to stop recruiting new employees in Shenzhen on May 29.

6/2010 TC. Gou of Gou's Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co.the brother of Terry Gou plans to open 100 stores to sell Mac computers and iPod music players in China. Cheng Uei currently operates more than 20 “Studio A” Apple Premium Reseller stores in Taiwan and Hong Kong as a 51 percent owner of Studio A Inc. A supplier of components for Apple's iPhone and Microsoft Corp. games consoles, Cheng Uei President and Chairman T.C. Gou, 56, has followed Foxconn into the final-assembly business, including manufacturing handsets for Huawei Technologies Co.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the flagship of the Foxconn Technology Group, plans to open retail stores in China, and in April won a bid to operate the Guanghua Electronics Market, Taipei's largest retail venue for electronics.

Gou's Cheng Uei Precision Industry Co. jumped its 6.9 percent limit in Taipei trading after the company confirmed plans to open its first Apple retail outlet in Shanghai by yearend. Taipei-based Cheng Uei aims for 100 stores in China within three years, investor relations spokesman T.P. Liu said by phone today.

Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) Propaganda Department has ordered local media outlets to refrain from reporting on the Foxconn suicide issue without prior permission.

Workers do not have enough power to bargain with private companies or state-owned enterprises to secure the wages they require to satisfy their basic needs. Corporations and government have monopolized the right to distribute wealth as they see fit. China's economic development has failed to benefit all the people in China. The riches flow to the corporate heads, shareholders and the ruling party, which has resulted in a shocking daily increase in the gap between the rich and poor, creating enormous and destructive social divisions.
Justice can only be won when corporations are held legally accountable to respect the checks and balances of workers rights. Need a worldwide anti-sweatshop movement, and where workers in every country have the right to freely organize a union and to bargain collectively with corporations.
Taiwan's high-tech companies are the product of a special type of labor system that has its roots firmly in the past. They provide welfare with a patriarchal mentality, but lower wages, suppress workers' right of association and ask for preferential rental taxes to accumulate company capital. The only solution to this dilemma is to allow dialogue on an equal footing between workers and management through the establishment of labor unions.
Foxconn's management system is a microcosm of Taiwanese society. The firm provides a far better environment than other companies, paying salaries and making social security contributions in accordance with the law. Dormitories, canteens, holidays and entertainment centers are all provided. However superficially impressive, such a patriarchal mentality does not allow labor unions and cannot tolerate “disobedient” employees or external criticism.
This approach to management is not unique to Foxconn. The same situation exists at Young Fast Optoelectronics in Taiwan, where employees were laid off recently after trying to organize a labor union. When the government intervened and asked the company to rehire the fired employees, the firm's leadership resisted, choosing to spend money on lawsuits instead.
It is also common to see companies organize their own “in-house” labor unions as a way of “taming” employees. Independent worker-organized labor unions do not exist in Chinese factories. The deputy factory director is often the union chairman and is also frequently sent by local government, with no interest in speaking up for the workers. ~ Wang Hong-zen is president of the Graduate Institute of Sociology at National Sun Yat-sen University.

STRIKE

Is Apple A Cult?

Billionaire Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was adopted by a working-class couple. He dropped out of Reed College when he couldn't afford tuition. Jobs started Apple computer in his parent's garage in 1976. This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs , CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

VIDEO of 2000 people who went on strike in Suzhou and the riot police arrived
APPLE'S supplier code of conduct PDF
Apples' propaganda machine PDF

AFTER THE STIKE AND GETTING CAUGHT
Apple has released its Supplier Responsibility 2010 Progress Report PDF , revealing that audits of its suppliers turned up 17 violations, including hiring underage workers, falsifying records, and improper disposal of hazardous waste.

iPod Fires

iPod fire August 16, 2010 An unidentified, malfunctioning iPod brought a Tokyo subway train to a halt for an eight minutes during this morning's rush hour.Around 8:20AM passengers complained about a burning smell, forcing the train to come to a halt while officials went searching for the source. A female passenger then came forward to show that her iPod had burst apart after overheating.

SCREENS

LG Display will likely supply most of the screens, with AUO being a second source.

Other parts noted by UBS were:

Hon Hai Precision Co. as the manufacturer for the tablet Connectors from Chen Uei and Hon Hai Wintek, Sintek and TPK as touch suppliers Batteries from Simplo and Dynapack NAND flash memory from Samsung Broadcom to provide a "combo" chip for connectivity

iPhone 4 screen yellowing could be a temporary problem from assembly June 24 2010 New iPhone 4 devices plagued with a yellow discoloration of the screen could be the result of a temporary problem that will alleviate itself in a matter of days. Apple is using a bonding agent called Organofunctional Silane Z-6011 to bond the layers of glass

Apple May Have IPad Screen Shortages Amid Production By Connie Guglielmo and Arik Hesseldahl
Apple Inc., which delayed selling the iPad outside the U.S. because demand is outpacing supply, may be struggling to get enough of the touch screens used in the tablet computer. The touch-sensitive, custom-manufactured glass screen is the iPad's most expensive component. The display accounted for $95 of the $259.60 the firm estimated it costs Apple to build the device. Apple doesn't disclose which suppliers provide parts for the iPad or who manufactures it, though it has said most of its products -- including the iPhone, Mac and iPod media player -- are made by partners in China.

iPad's touchscreen assembly, made by Wintek and estimated to be worth $30. Then comes the iPad's flash memory -- worth about $29.50, for the 16GB version -- and its battery, a 3.75-volt lithium polymer pack valued at $21.

APRIL 2010 This is Apple's Next iPhone 4 found a bar in redwood city disassembled Gizmodo is making arrangements to return an errant device that is believed to be a prototype of the next iPhone, following a request from Apple's legal department.

2009 an employee at Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that is one of Apple's biggest suppliers , committed suicide after being accused of stealing a prototype for the iPhone.

China is the E-Waste Computer dump for the world

Cell Phone Security and Secrets

Censorship in China Apple will censor everything since it wants to do business in China.Apple will be selling their phones inside CHINA, and they pay a price for that. Make no mistake about it. APPLE will censor their technology for marketshare. (remember search is censored) Their business plan doesn't care about people's rights - that doesn't come into play.

China's 2nd largest Carrier - China Unicom is Apple's iPhone 3G partner in China , is the world's largest mobile phone market. China Unicom has 130 million subscribers before which Apple can push the iPhone, as compared to AT&T's 77 million subscribers.This iPhone is made to work with a homegrown 3G standard used only by China Mobile. The chinese refuse to allow Apple to sell the Wi-Fi-enabled phone in China for fear that consumers might be tempted to illegally load VoIP apps and make calls over the Net, undermining carriers' interests.

China Crippleware Glenn Fleishman says that China uses WAPI, a homegrown proprietary extension to Wi-Fi that only a handful of Chinese manufacturers have access to, and that equipment sold in China must have WAPI support and chips made in China. Fleishman speculates that China's WAPI standard contains backdoor technology to allow China to monitor any communications sent over 'secure' links."

Apple stupidly rejects Tweetie 1.3 for foul language in Twitter trends Mar 10th 2009 3:22PM
Apple's just reached a whole new level of stupidity in App Store approval shenanigans: the Tweetie 1.3 update was just rejected for displaying "offensive language" in its Twitter trend search view. Right, not for offensive language in the app itself, but for offensive language on Twitter -- an insanely strict new standard that could conceivably be used to reject each and every iPhone Twitter client out there. Hell, Apple might as well reject the next versions of Safari and Mail, since they can display dirty words too -- and let's not forget the awful things people are doing with Notes and the camera. Better lock it down.

Israel bans imports of Apple's iPad
BAD FREQUENCY: Apple IPad and Isreal don't Mix
Israel bans imports of Apple's iPad, saying it could disrupt other wireless devices. The ban prevents anyone -- even tourists -- from bringing iPads into Israel until officials certify that they comply with local transmitter standards. "If you operate equipment in a frequency band which is different from the others that operate on that frequency band, then there will be interference," said Nati Schubert, a senior deputy director for the Communications Ministry. Although Israeli standards are similar to those in many European nations, Israel is the only country so far to officially ban imports. In the meantime, confiscated iPads will be held by customs -- for a daily storage fee -- until their owners depart the country or ship the gadgets back to the U.S. at their own expense.

An iPhone that needs to be replaced every 18 to 24 months
The ultimate goal is recurring income!

PAD/KINDLE

The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow Nightmare - Harriton High School Used Apple Laptop Webcams To SPY On Students At Home

UNSAFE CODE

From iPad Developer's Agreement:

"3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to >Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application >except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s)."

comments:

<snip> the requirement about "original source language" being C, C++, or Objective C. All three of these development languages are unsafe, and Apple is actually going so far as to *prohibit* (by exclusion) the use of more modern, safe, programming language technology. Why should languages like Ada, Java, C#, Scheme, O'Caml, or Haskell, any of which are dramatically more reliable than the languages listed, be prohibited? Apple doesn't market compilers for those other languages, so one speculation is that this is about extracting revenue from developers.
In an era when computer vulnerabilities are such a serious threat, proscribing the use of safe languages is not merely passive negligence. By imposing these terms, Apple *prevents* third-party software developers from acting according to the current state of the practice in secure software construction. It does, at least, suggest a great defense for the iPhone/iPad software developer: "I wanted to implement a more secure application, but I couldn't, because Apple's development and distribution terms prohibited that. Don't sue me, sue Apple." Worse, the Apple policy justifies the software developer in failing to invest in modern, safer language technology: when a major platform doesn't accept safer languages, development cost considerations tend to prevent the adoption of those languages elsewhere as well. Anybody who thinks that Apple platforms are secure simply doesn't understand what's going on technically. Based on their behavior, neither does Apple.</snip>

<snip> C and C++ run a lot faster than the other higher level languages. uTorrent for example was written in very tight C code and it took over the BitTorrent market in a matter of months because people value tight/fast code. </snip>

SDK license terms. Those read:
"Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."

Section 3.3.1 makes developers wholly reliant on Apple for software engineering innovation.

iPad-ish Walled Gardens
Content providers in a future of such iPad-ish Walled Gardens: Does Apple, which maintains control over what iPad apps are made available, have the unilateral right to remove these journalism organizations' news apps if the apps deliver information to audiences that Apple considers unacceptable for any reason?"

Jakob Nielsen on iPad Usability: First Findings From User Testing 4/26/2010
Summary: iPad apps are inconsistent and have low feature discoverability, with frequent user errors due to accidental gestures. An overly strong print metaphor and weird interaction styles cause further usability problems. iPad UIs suffer under a triple threat that causes significant user confusion:
+ Low discoverability: The UI is mostly hidden within the etched-glass aesthetic without perceived affordances.
+ Low memorability: Gestures are inherently ephemeral and difficult to learn when they're not employed consistently across apps; wider reliance on generic commands would help.
+ Accidental activation: This occurs when users touch things by mistake or make a gesture that unexpectedly initiates a feature.

INDUSTRY CHASING SLAVE LABOR AROUND THE WORLD

COTTON MILL MAN by Joe Langston

I was born in the shadow
of a cotton mill smokestack
down in Alabama's bottom land
where my Grandpappy broke his back
pullin' on a cotton sack
to raise my pa to be a cotton mill man.

I've got lots of memories
of government commodities
when all our meat came in a can
while the bossman on the hill
bought his steak and ate his fill
and called upon to clean his grill
a cotton mill man.

Lord, don't let my son grow up
to be a sweaty cotton mill man.

I grew up in the gloom
of a cotton mill weave room
with weaver's glue and callouses
all over my hands.
I didn't have a honeymoon
I couldn't leave my cotton loom
I swore my son would never be
a cotton mill man.
I watched my woman cry
when our baby daughter died
I couldn't make her understand
why a doctor never came
the lack of money was to blame
and I cussed the day that I became
a cotton mill man.

Lord, don't let my son grow up
to be a sweaty cotton mill man.

The company taught us all the rules
on how to work with spinning spools
so the bosses' son could drive a big black sedan.
The company owned the houses
and the compnay owned the grammar school
you'll never see an educated cotton mill man.
They figure you don't need to learn
anything but how to earn
the money that you pay upon demand
to the general store they own
or else they'll take away your home
and give it to some other homeless
cotton mill man.

Lord, don't let my son grow up
to be a sweaty cotton mill man.
(repeat)

Share & Cite This Page

Share

Cite This Page

APPLE iPhone and Ipad made in China

#Apple Fair Trade #Apple supply chain #APPLE Display components, #Apple LCD panel, #Foxconn China plant, #touch panel Wintek suppliers, #Apple iPad security Breach

Apple Providing Subsidies For Foxconn Workers ?