Bird’s Eye: As Apple set all-time records for profit this week, we learned that in the last quarter year Apple made more iphones made than humans made babies. The process of making them appears to be a lot less fun, however. The lead This American Life is their most downloaded podcast, and has been linked to all over the net in the past month. It’s about how Foxconn, the Chinese company, makes iStuff, and about the lives of the people who work there. Brilliantly presented (Mike Daisey does stand-up) and memorable. The Times has a follow up article, and we offer Apple’s reaction. Worth noting is that while this focuses on Apple, most other computers (Sony, HP, Dell, Samsung, etc…) are made in the same factory under the same conditions. If you need a piece for your next ideas discussion group, this might be a good one to consider.
* Mr. Daisey And The Apple Factory This American Life (60 minute audio)
Mike Daisey was a self-described “worshipper in the cult of Mac.” Then he saw some photos from a new iPhone, taken by workers at the factory where it was made. Mike wondered: Who makes all my crap? He traveled to China to find out.
* Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class New York Times
Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.
A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.
“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”
* Apple ‘Attacking Problems’ At Its Factories In China Telegraph
In an email allegedly sent to Apple’s 60,000 or so employees, Tim Cook, the company’s chief executive said that Apple “cares about every worker in its supply chain”. The letter appears to be in response to a series of articles in the New York Times cataloguing the company’s problems in China and divisions within Apple about how to handle the issues.
Mr Cook’s letter, which was reproduced on the website 9to5mac.com, promised that Apple would “continue to dig deeper” into problems in China and that it would “undoubtedly find more issues”. “What will not do, and never have done, is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain,” he added. “Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are,” he said.
