The willful ignorance of Apple's disciples

Firstly, let me say that Steve Jobs was an effective business man that did for Apple Computers what many if not all thought would be impossible as early as ten years ago.

Secondly, I am not a fan of Apple Computers, Steve Jobs or Apple products. There was a time in my life that I had thought about making the switch from PC to Apple, but I didn't have the money and so never did. That was part of my problem with Apple it was over priced for what was in the box, but of course that didn't matter because Apple is as much (or perhaps more) a brand than it is a computer. They make a quality product, I don't deny that, I just can't stand the posturing that Apple owners partake in by virtue of simply owning an Apple. Far too many think that by virtue of overpaying for an Apple they are somehow smarter, more tech savvy or more socially worthwhile than their PC using contemporaries. It was this unfounded arrogance that really turned me off of Apple in the beginning, their Orwellian style (despite their legendary TV commercial to the contrary) business practices concerning their products just helps to keep me from ever thinking of spending my money on their products.

But this isn't about Steve Jobs perse or about the unthinking cult mentality that has grown around Apple products. Rather this is about the seeming hypocrisy of the cult of Apple.

Recently I was invited to join a boycott of Nestle products due to their harmful business practices, especially as it concerns children working on cocoa plantations. Fair enough. The boycott is not new, it actually began in 1977 and I have to assume hasn't gained the necessary traction to force changes in Nestle's labor or contracting policies. If you do a Facebook search for 'boycott Nestle' you come up with more than thirty groups promoting the idea that Nestle is worthy of boycotting due to their actions.

Today, the BBC posted an article and video report documenting the continuing practice of child labor in the Ivory Coast cocoa farms.

So what does this have to do with Apple Computers and Steve Jobs?

Well, 2010 reports came out that Apple was using some of the same business practices as companies such as Nestle.

At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple.

The company did not name the offending factories, or say where they were based, but the majority of its goods are assembled in China. 

Apple also has factories working for it in Taiwan, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, the Czech Republic and the United States. 

Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used, or are no longer underage. "In each of the three facilities, we required a review of all employment records for the year as well as a complete analysis of the hiring process to clarify how underage people had been able to gain employment," Apple said, in an annual report on its suppliers. 

Apple has been repeatedly criticised for using factories that abuse workers and where conditions are poor. Last week, it emerged that 62 workers at a factory that manufactures products for Apple and Nokia had been poisoned by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause muscular degeneration and blur eyesight. Apple has not commented on the problems at the plant, which is run by Wintek, in the Chinese city of Suzhou.

Well Apple said they stopped the practice in 2010 and so that was the end of it right? Not quite.  This is from February 2011.

Apple said that 91 children under the age of 16 were discovered to be working last year in ten Chinese factories owned by its suppliers.

By comparison, in 2009, Apple said eleven underage workers had been discovered.

“In recent years, Chinese factories have increasingly turned to labour agencies and vocational schools to meet their workforce demands,” said Apple’s report.

“We learned that some of these recruitment sources may provide false IDs that misrepresent young people’s ages, posing challenges for factory management,” it added.

In response, Apple said it had “intensified” its search for workers under 16, the minimum legal working age in China. In one factory it had found 42 children working on the production line and has now terminated its contract. Apple said it decided that the management “had chosen to overlook the issue and was not committed to addressing the problem.”

Here is an excerpt from an investigative report that was conducted in 2010 concerning the goings on at the factories contracted by Apple to make their famous and costly products.

New recruits at Foxconn are subjected to weeks of military-style drilling in order to build discipline. This is intended, as Gou puts it, to 'agglomerate them to act in unison and in concert' so that he can build a 'unique Foxconnian culture'. 

As well as slogans on the walls, Gou orders staff to wear jackets bearing slogans such as: 'Together everyone achieves more.' 

Strict discipline is enforced, with pay docked for any breaches under a bizarre points system. Points are deducted for crimes such as having long nails, being late, yawning, eating, sitting on the floor, talking or walking quickly. 

During a week-long investigation, which involved dodging the security guards who constantly patrol the Foxconn complex and who beat up a Reuters photographer earlier this year, we spoke to dozens of workers on condition of anonymity. 

On top of the living conditions, they all complained of intolerable pressure to hit targets for booming Apple sales, with managers exhorting what Gou calls his 'family' to work until they are ready to drop. 

'There are just three points to your life when you work at Foxconn,' says Huang, 21, who finally quit last month because of the pressure. 'Going to work, coming-home from work and sleeping.' He added: 'You are totally isolated from the outside world. I walked the same path from dorm to factory and back to dorm. That was my world. 

'There's no entertainment and no TV. There were 12 workers in my dorm, with some doing days, others nights and there was not a single person to talk to.' 

Ma Xiangqian, 18, who killed himself earlier this year after just three months at Foxconn, was too scared to give up his job, despite the pressure, knowing poverty awaited as thousands compete for a single post.

He slowly cracked. First, he was 'fined' from his wages for breaking two tools by accident. After being exhorted to work harder, he was eventually taken off the production line and forced to wash toilets for several weeks as punishment. 

He told his sister he was 'ashamed' of the way he was being treated. On January 23, he was found in a pool of blood at the foot of his dormitory block. His sister, who also worked at Foxconn, was told he had fainted and was recovering in hospital. 

In reality, her brother was already in the morgue. She was then told that Ma was a victim of unexplained 'sudden death'. 

After she took the highly unusual step of protesting and demanding a post mortem, Foxconn officials later changed the cause of death to 'falling from a great height'. 

Like Jobs, Gou dismisses claims that working conditions at the complex are to blame, saying the spate of suicides were due to ' personal' reasons' such as broken relationships.

In the wake of Steve Jobs' death, the media has been heaping praise on him like few others in recent memory. He had an impact to be sure, but don't we owe it to ourselves at least to be honest about those we hold up as worthy of public and societal praise?

A bit skewed to be sure but there is an distinct element of truth there. Steve Jobs was a very complex individual who did both good and bad things while leading a company that did good and bad things. It's my contention that if we are going to hold up a person for societal praise, as a role model for people everywhere shouldn't there be some sort of vetting process beyond the fact that he made computers shiny and smaller?

In the immediate aftermath of his death many were passing around a video of Steve's 2005 commencement speech from Stanford University. 

He offers up good advice to be sure, but at what point does Marshall McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" take over or get ignored? At what point does who Steve Job was affect how we perceive him? This isn't pointed out to needlessly denigrate Steve, nor to simply bash on his products, but rather to prompt people to look deeper than the veneer of popular media and to put in their proper context those who we would idolize. I'm not going to argue that there is nothing in Steve's life that people can't learn from, but we shouldn't pick only those things we see as positives as examples, but rather his faults as well.

Indeed there were things Jobs did while at Apple that were deeply disturbing. Rude, dismissive, hostile, spiteful: Apple employees—the ones not bound by confidentiality agreements—have had a different story to tell over the years about Jobs and the bullying, manipulation and fear that followed him around Apple. Jobs contributed to global problems, too. Apple's success has been built literally on the backs of Chinese workers, many of them children and all of them enduring long shifts and the specter of brutal penalties for mistakes. And, for all his talk of enabling individual expression, Jobs imposed paranoid rules that centralized control of who could say what on his devices and in his company. 

[...] 

The internet allowed people around the world to express themselves more freely and more easily. With the App Store, Apple reversed that progress. The iPhone and iPad constitute the most popular platform for handheld computerizing in America, key venues for media and software. But to put anything on the devices, you need Apple's permission. And the company wields its power aggressively. 

[...] 

Before he was deposed from Apple the first time around, Jobs already had a reputation internally for acting like a tyrant. Jobs regularly belittled people, swore at them, and pressured them until they reached their breaking point. In the pursuit of greatness he cast aside politeness and empathy. His verbal abuse never stopped. Just last month Fortune reported about a half-hour "public humiliation" Jobs doled out to one Apple team: 

"Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?" Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, "So why the fuck doesn't it do that?" 

"You've tarnished Apple's reputation," he told them. "You should hate each other for having let each other down."

Jobs ended by replacing the head of the group, on the spot. 

[...] 

Jobs had his share of personal shortcomings, too. He has no public record of giving to charityover the years, despite the fact he became wealthy after Apple's 1980 IPO and had accumulated an estimated $7 billion net worth by the time of his death. After closing Apple's philanthropic programs on his return to Apple in 1997, he never reinstated them, despite the company's gusher of profits. 

[...] 

Steve Jobs created many beautiful objects. He made digital devices more elegant and easier to use. He made a lot of money for Apple Inc. after people wrote it off for dead. He will undoubtedly serve as a role model for generations of entrepreneurs and business leaders. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on how honestly his life is appraised.

We live in a global world where our actions can have global consequences. Just as purchasing Nestle products tells the company that their business practices don't matter to you (whether that is true or not, that is most likely the message that they take from your continued patronage), so does the continued idolization of Steve Jobs and the continued purchases of Apple products.