Buying Apple Products

[Ojingeo]

Hey fellow FOTs. Last week's episode (March 27, 2012) Tom mentioned almost in passing the This American Life episode about the Foxconn factory in China. And Tom mentioned that even if a lot of what was in the Ira Glass show was fabricated, that doesn't mean that a lot of what was talked about WASN'T true. Anyhow, all of us have been hearing about the deplorable working conditions in the Foxconn factory for years.

However, this article got me thinking: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/03/apple_foxconn_how_the_world_s_most_valuable_company_turned_its_labor_crisis_into_a_way_to_beat_its_competitors_.html

The gist of it is that Apple conceded that they needed to improve conditions at Foxconn, and that it won't matter much because Apple charges so much for their products that they can afford the changes. (They give the example of the iPad vs the Kindle Fire--Amazon loses money on the Kindle Fire, but iPads are profitable for Apple) Qualitatively, I don't know how substantial the changes will be for workers at Foxconn. But the fact is, is that Apple users are generally more interested that they are buying a premium product--and therefore, theoretically, have an emotional investment in their Apple products and therefore are concerned that the people that make their products are treated well. THEORETICALLY. I know there's plenty of people who don't give a damn. But I think there's enough of us who pay a premium price because we expect a high-quality piece of equipment--and one that was made without violating human rights.

The counter-argument is that if Apple starts charging more for its "fair-trade" computers, then other manufacturers will fill in the gap for a really well-made computer. But at this moment, there isn't really a better option--as long as you have money to pay for Apple products (for those of us that aren't computer experts.). And the optimistic view is that products made in humane ways will be in vogue and most computer makers will go that way. That's making a lot of uneducated assumptions, I know.

So my question to my fellow FOTs who love their Macs but also want to be ethical, would going to Linux computers made who-knows-where really improve the situation? Or, rather, as long as the people who have money to buy Macs and want their computers made by people who are being treated well, wouldn't it be better to stay with Apple and put consumer demand on the corporation to continually improve the situation for the workers? Foxconn is huge, and it would set a standard for other firms in China. It already sets the standard for speed and quality control.

Or is this silly talk; a champagne (well, premium beer) socialist trying to justify expenditure on his toys?

What do you guys and gals think?

[SJK]

The show is very good, especially the points made by Times reporter Charles Duhigg at the end. I think the only way the labor situation could improve in China is for people to organize themselves the way Americans did in late 19th and early 20th century. Probably just around the time when Chinese workers gain a footing in wages and a decent standard of living, the manufacturing industry will be exported to another unregulated/exploited labor force. We vote with our dollars. I too am guilty of enjoying Apple products. Apple is just the tip of the iceberg. If you truly want to be depressed, read No Logo by Naomi Klein. She'll ruin all of your fun. If you want to be depressed and inspired at the same time, A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. The only solution to purchasing consumer goods ethically, is simply not to purchase them(WTF, amirite?!)...spend more time with your friends/family/pets instead of your computer.

[effecT]

You should probably keep purchasing Apple products and if you really wish to you can demand better labor conditions.
To be honest: I do not think this is a big issue for you as a consumer. This is an issue that the workers should take up if they can. There are lots of choices of other factories and companies around hiring unskilled/semi-skilled labor and overall the impatience with low labor-standards will grow as the median househhold income grows. Yet that doesn't mean that automatically companies will then move on from China as they are dependent on their already existent infrastructure of skilled labor (industrial engineers and so forth) that are very readily available for the quickly changing demand of the electronics market in the first world. To move on to another country will require a lot of individual investment by the companies but also a skilled labor force and lots of investment in infrastructure by the state.

Concerning the ethical issue: It might be an antiquated stance to take and certainly modern economists like Dani Rodrik would disagree, but in the end we will see the Chinese profiting long term from this development. Their purchasing power already rose and will continue to. The development will simply take more time.

Also if you think about "The Story of a Pencil" (a famous tale in economics [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vjrzUplWU]) you can grasp the monstrosity of interconnectedness a little better. The raw materials or certainly parts of them are probably mined under horrible conditions in Africa, that are way worse than the conditions the Chinese at Foxconn have to endure.
So if you start to examine every little part of your computer and what produced it and what produced that and so on ad infinitum, you will simply get nowhere.
Buy ethically, if there is such a thing. But that will never end the problems you have with certain parts of production and the economy.
The only thing that might eventually stop what we commonly call exploitation is technology.

Addendum:
Probably the more appalling purchase you (and probably all of us) make/made are clothes or more specifically dyed clothes. You can be sure that some poor Bangladeshi or Indian will encounter a case of cancer from dyeing your shirts or pants by stomping their feet into toxic dyes.

Yet the list is endless and the problem systemic, because the costs of surmounting it are too high even for the most concerned of us.

[thom]

I support Good Design above all else.

[CSW]

I haven't heard the show you talk about, although I suspect that all the major Tech firms as as bad as each other when it comes to things like this.

I do take issue with what I took to be your implication that only Apple make premium tech products though. To answer Tom's question about leaving Apple from this weeks show - no Windoows in not terrible and is perfectly secure if you are a sensible user.

There are a myriad of excellent products made by HP and Sony and Samsung in the laptop/ultrabook space that can compete with a MacBook.

There are also many Android (and now Windows) phones made by HTC, Samsung etc. that can compete with iPhones

I honestly believe that somehow Apple's marketing department has managed to convince legions of folks to over pay fro products that are no greater than the competition but are 25-50% more expensive.

[cavorting with nudists]

I agree.  I bought this iPhone and there's nothing very special about it at all:

[nec13]

I haven't heard the show you talk about, although I suspect that all the major Tech firms as as bad as each other when it comes to things like this.

I do take issue with what I took to be your implication that only Apple make premium tech products though. To answer Tom's question about leaving Apple from this weeks show - no Windoows in not terrible and is perfectly secure if you are a sensible user.

There are a myriad of excellent products made by HP and Sony and Samsung in the laptop/ultrabook space that can compete with a MacBook.

There are also many Android (and now Windows) phones made by HTC, Samsung etc. that can compete with iPhones

I honestly believe that somehow Apple's marketing department has managed to convince legions of folks to over pay fro products that are no greater than the competition but are 25-50% more expensive.

Apple is a luxury brand and also a status symbol. HTC, Sony, Samsung, etc aren't. It's true that those companies may make devices that are as good, if not better, than the devices that Apple produces. But they just don't have Apple's brand equity. The reality is that in many instances, for the average consumer, style and brand cachet often supersede substance. What's made Apple untouchable is their ability to produce devices that are not only aesthetically pleasing, but also highly functional. And it's that convergence of design, functionality, excellent marketing and overall brand value, which has enabled Apple to leave its competitors in the dust.

(I own an Android and a PC, FWIW.)

[yesno]

I bought my first Mac when Apple introduced OS X, because before I had been using Linux, and OS X was the first really viable desktop Unix system for me.  Ubuntu is getting close now but I think the recent drastic UI changes don't really work; for Linux you're better off running a "vanilla" distribution like Debian.  Anyway, I stay in the Apple-verse because all their products integrate so well together.  I am very good at computers but I hate messing with them. 

Microsoft has a lot of pieces but hasn't been able to pull them together--Windows Phone + desktop Windows + XBox (for all living room media, not just games) might eventually cohere but they don't yet.  There needs to be a coherent ecosystem of products that are designed to integrate, not just random things that may or may not work together.   I generally still hate the disorganized mess that is Windows--how applications scatter files hither and yon across your hard drive, the centralized binary blob of the registry, "installing" and "uninstalling" programs, etc etc.  Microsoft is smart but hobbled by their need to not "break" anything for either OEMs or third-party developers which means their systems are always full of compromise.  I am selling my crazily fast gaming PC because the various pieces never cohered right and I got tired of fiddling around in the laughably primitive BIOS settings just to make, for instance, an external eSATA RAID case work.  When I want to play a few games I will just boot my Mac into Windows even though Mac hardware (except for the Mac Pro) usually has piss-poor GPUs.  As an example of the disorganized mess of Windows, many games need to install their own specific set of DirectX drivers.  So you might have 10 games and 10 redundant sets of DirectX drivers because a particular game might only work with version xyz and not version abc.  I'm just bothered by things like this.  Anyway, Windows 8 looks good and might be a break from the past.  I'm just disappointed that Microsoft is not doing more to deprecate old technologies--when thousands of shitty old applications stop working, that's a good thing.  Businesses that still need to run their shitty line-of-business software can keep running old OSs.

[buffcoat]

I use both Apple products and Windows products.  I find Apple computers more reliable and faster moving and less crash-prone, but it doesn't feel awful to jump from my MacBook to a Windows desktop, especially with Windows 7 (I use 7 at home and XP at work).

I have to say, though, that in the tablet space Apple is a completely different experience from any of the other tablets out there, and I think there's more of a difference in the iPhone vs. Android comparison than some people presently believe.

I think it's mostly the screen.  Touch-screen on the iPad and iPhone is effortless and flowing - your finger swipes are really making the device work.  On Android phones (even the "really good ones"), it feels like a swipe wakes up a tiny monkey who lives behind the screen and can only dimly see (and guess at) what you want him to do.