Apple already building iPhones at rate of 40 million a year? - Page 2

Yeah, I'm going to trust Apple on this. They only have a hundred billion dollars riding on the outcome of the investigation.


Ten cafeterias to serve the thousands upon thousands of live-in employees. These are labor camps and hardly a "campus" of the Apple Campus style. More like Google, maybe?


I think the only thing we can really conclude is the employees would like to EARN MORE, not necessarily work more. 20% isn't a lot, and that complaint is about the safest one an employee could express.



Are they overblown? Are they all overblown? How do you know? How would you like to live and work in a labor camp? If it was the only means of sustenance for you and your family (who live elsewhere), I'm sure you'd appreciate it. And if your answers to interrogation would be scrutinized by your supervisors, I'm sure you'd be ecstatic about the work conditions.

No, there isn't. at certain stages, people put circuit boards into the cases, and use an electric screwdriver to fasten them. There are other bits here and there, but most of the work is done by robot.

Most of the labor is involved in getting the materials off the loading docks to where they go in the warehouse and factory, and finishing the packing.


I was a partner in an audio design and manufacturing company for a number of years until we sold it. I know various people in manufacturing.

The number of devices made each year has nothing to do with the quality. That's a matter of doing things properly. You can make ten a year and have poor quality.

I've been saying this for days now, we have NO numbers, so we have no idea as to the true extent of the problem.

It could be from one production run. So we will have a "large" number of people complaining at once—they all bought their phones at about the same time, and encountered the same problems.

This doesn't mean that the problem runs across all production runs. It may, but we don't know that yet, because we don't know the distribution of the problem across time and region.

Last year we had a similar problem with screen cracks. A lot of people were reporting this at once. It turned out to be from one production run, where specs were off on some parts. It actually affected less than 1% of all early production phones, which Apple replaced.

You statements about this are as lopsided as you're complaining that those statements are. You seem to have some agenda here. What is it?

Prove it. I'm saying you pro-Apple people are commenting from a position of ignorance on the subject of foreign labor. One of the pro-Apple commentators used the term "slave labor," not me. That's a straw man argument, because I think we know they're not slaves. But those are labor camps, no question.


Truth.

I don't have to prove your rantings. You have to prove your rantings.

I'm trying to be rational about this. There has been no evidence to show what you're saying about labor camps.

I'm not saying that these companies run wonderful idyllic factories. That would be naive. But they aren't labor camps either.

This is a country that is trying to become equal to the industrialized countries in a couple of generations, where it took us 200 years to get here. there will be problems. The government over there isn't exactly run by flower children. It's run by a cadre of old men who are most interested in lack of unrest, so that their rule will not be disturbed, as it was in 1989, and couple of less well known times before that.

People over there, just like people over here a hundred years ago, are willing to put up with conditions that we won't put up with any longer, because they are still much better off than they were in the countryside, where most of them came from.

Nevertheless, Chinese factory managers, according to reports, are complaining that rising wages and benefits are costing them so much, that they are opening factories in lower priced markets in Vietnam.

These things are going to run their course, no matter how much people complain about them here.

Until people are willing to pay 50% more than they are paying for their products, or possibly even 100% more, or even 200% more, so that they can be manufactured here, the few complaints about labor practices abroad aren't of any importance.

You'd better learn that, because almost everything you own was made in some factory with labor practices you aren't happy about.



Bull! You're trying to prove something, and I don't know what.

Wow, we seem to have attracted some more angry trolls... an inevitable sign of Apple's success I suppose.

Anyway, I'm loving this... my prediction of 60 million iPhones by end of 2009 is looking pretty solid.

Toni Sacconaghi is still looking for 8 million this year. I'm shorting Toni's resume

Move the manufacturing plant to Redmond and hire laid-off Microsoft Mobile OS employees.

Start building a "dumb phone" that looks like a iPhone with only a 12 key touch pad running MS Mobile. Design this phone with a simulated crack in it. Then Steve B can't say Apple has a monopoly on phones.

Stock Price: Find out what Al Gore and Martha Stewart are doing and do the same thing.

I lived and worked in China for six years - dealing with factories frequently. Depending on what they are making, some can be dumps and others can be very nice. Brick yards are horrible, high-tech factories (and even not so high-tech) that make products for western companies are usually quite nice.

Quick note about recent Chinese History:

Until recently - ten years ago - ALL companies/factories/Banks/Schools/Every company in China - provided housing/cafeterias/ everything for their workers. This is still largely true in the countryside. All the workers for "X" bank live in the same housing complex. Every worker for the the local government of X city live in the same housing complex. They ALL have one exit/entrance for security/safety/keeping an eye on people reasons.

This is the way it's been in China for a long long time - it's not a slave camp or a labor camp or whatever. The Chinese gov't has been doing it this way LONG LONG LONG before any foreign company started buying from factories there.

I mostly can't stand the country - but many of you guys don't really know much about what you're talking about. Oh, wait - you watched 20/20 or nightline once.

You make some valid observations.

But there is no need to sound so sanctimonious, Mr. Pachomius! Many people on this forum are smarter and more worldly-aware that you might think yourself to be.

sorry for the tone, but I'm really really tired of people (mostly politicians) who "know" what's going on in China.

My comment was 95% directed at the guy calling them labor camps - by that standard, the whole country is a labor camp.

I have been buying Apple products for years now and LOVE their reliability, stability, and product performance.

- I first bought several iPods for myself and family and they worked for years with very few problems and if the problems occured, they were replaced or fixed to satisfaction by Apple
- I bought a MacBookPro a little more than 2 years ago and to this day it works perfectly with no problems.
- I bought a iMac a few months after the MBP for my upstairs desktop needs and it is an absolute gem of a purchase. Fast, Smooth, and reliable just like the day it first arrived
- I also have bought the original iPhone on launch day and still love it even today

I think the ONLY problem I have had with Apple is MobileMe. That really angered me because I did not sign up for .Me and my .Mac email got screwed up when they started the transfer and I suffered for 2 weeks with basically NO EMAIL.

As long as the 3G is being made to specifications, I am perfectly fine with what they are doing.