China - page 28

Chinese ingenuity and resourcefulness is an amazing thing, and we see it in action every time we pick up an iPhone or iPad. We also sometimes see it when iPhones are smuggled into China. First, Chinese iPhone and iPad smugglers were using crossbows and ziplines to get over the border, and now they’re cutting open glass beer bottles, stashing iPhones inside then gluing them shut.

This woman was caught trying to smuggle over 200 iPhone 4s and iPhone 4Ses at the Sha Tau Kok border this way. Wonder what she did with all that beer. And imagine finding an iPhone at the bottom of your brew. Usually the only thing I see there is pink elephants… and maybe the occasional dead mouse.

[via MIC Gadget]

When people ask why Apple doesn’t make its iPads in America, the usual explanation is that labor costs are so high, there’s no way an iPad could be made in the country for less than $1000. That answer has always lacked weight, as the manual labor of constructing an iPad is actually a very small portion of its overall build cost: building an iPad in America would cut down margins, but not double the price.

No, there’s a better reason why every iPad gets made in China, and you can find it on your local periodic table. Every iPad is made with a sizable number of rare earth metals… all of which can only be mined in China.

Apple is set to expand its environmental concern by teaming up with China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs to audit its Chinese supply chain for pollution. Joint investigations are expected to start “in the next few weeks,” according to one report, with “a maker of printed circuit boards” the first of Apple’s suppliers to enter the spotlight.

Apple has granted Rob Schmitz of Marketplace direct access to the Foxconn supply chain following his debunking of Mike Daisy’s inaccurate claims regarding Chinese working conditions. This makes Schmitz the second reporter to ever take a video crew behind the scenes at Foxconn. ABC News and Bill Weir previously visited China for a Nightline segment.

This 2 in a half minute video briefly takes you though the iPad manufacturing line and Foxconn life in general. Schmitz offers a very different take than that of Mike Daisey, highlighting how much people actually want to work at Foxconn.

Five people in southern China have been charged with intentional injury after a Chinese teenager sold his kidney to purchase an iPhone and an iPad last April. The group includes the surgeon who removed the kidney from the 17-year-old, who now suffers from renal deficiency.

Firefighters in China’s Yunnan Province have rescued a two-year old toddler from a 40-foot well with the help of Apple’s iPhone. After the child kept slipping out of a rescue harness that was designed for adults, an iPhone was lowered into the well so that the rescue team could use its camera to see the boy’s position.

Bleeding hearts the world over are very happy with the news that Apple and Foxconn are working together to make employee working conditions better in their Chinese factories. But there is a group of people who aren’t so pleased about the reductions in working hours: the workers themselves.

A mall war has broken out in China, as one mall is upset at another for working to open the world’s largest Apple Store. Yesterday, Apple put up posters advertising its new Store in the massive Parkland Mall in Dailan China. Neighboring mall Dalian Department Store quickly became concerned and sent its security team to knock the signs over. As you can see in the video below, havoc quickly ensued.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been spending some time in China this week, meeting with officials and even posing with fans at the company Xidan Joy City retail store. He also paid a visit to Foxconn’s new plant in Zhengzhou, where the company employs around 120,000 employs, some of whom are assembling Apple’s iPhone.

The first iPad was debuted by Steve Jobs to thunderous applause on March 12, 2010. Many media pundits criticized the tablet for its ridiculous name and called it a huge flop. Fast forward two years later, and we couldn’t imagine a world without the iPad. It has shaped what Apple has dubbed the “post-PC era.”

Over 50 million iPads have been sold to date, and Apple just sold 3 million third-generation iPads over launch weekend. Most tablet manufacturers dream of selling 3 million units in a year, but analysts estimate that Apple will sell an upwards of 66 million iPads in 2012 alone. That is an absolutely astounding figure.

A new report from app analytics firm Distimo takes a look at the iPad and its App Store footprint two years later. Let’s take a closer look:

Mark Shields’ petition on Change.org sparked by Mike Daisey’s This American Life story earned over 250,000 online signatures and led to protests outside Apple stores across the country.

That doesn’t sit well with Paul Dost, who launched a counter petition after the TAL story was debunked. Cult of Mac reached out to Dost via email for the story behind the anti-petition petition.

The Chinese will celebrate Tomb Sweeping Day on April 4, a ceremony which encourages them to remember their ancestors by laying out food at their grave sites, and burning paper replicas of daily necessities, such as clothes, money, cars, and houses. This year a few new items have been added to that list of necessities: the iPad and the iPhone.

Apple recently announced the winner of its 25 billionth App Store download contest. Fu Chunli from Qingdao, China won a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading the free Where’s My Water? iPhone game.

After she won, Apple flew her to the Beijing to accept her award. Chunli was escorted to Apple’s Chinese corporate headquarters and then taken to the Sanlitun Apple store to accept her gift card and talk to the press.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Beijing today, meeting Chinese officials as the Cupertino company eyes up further growth in China. It’s his first trip to the country since he took over from Steve Jobs as CEO, and he got himself noticed with a visit Apple’s Beijing store where he stopped to pose for photographs with fans.

Apple’s main supplier pal Foxconn is massive. With multiple mega-factories that can include up to 400,000 workers living on a cramped “campus,” it’s no surprise that Foxconn has quickly become one of the biggest companies in the world. They employ more people than Apple. Not only that, but they’re actually the 10th largest employer in the world, which is freaking enormous when you consider that the US Department of Defense is the world’s largest employer with 3.2 million employees. Foxconn, on the other hand, is just a few notches below them with 1.2million employees. Amazing!

Those clever Chinese people are great at copying anything. Fake iPhones. Fake Louis Vuitton bags. Fake Gucci sweaters. Fake Disneyland. The list is endless. We’ve even seen quite a few fake Apple Stores pop-up in China over the years. Some even looked like an exact replica of the real thing. Well now some clever Chinese citizens have moved on and are now opening up fake Android stores. The only problem is, Android phones don’t sell so well, so they sell genuine iPhones and iPads

With all the recent protests outside Apple stores, you might think this placard-carrying duo was taking the Cupertino company to task about labor in China.

Nope: it’s a publicity stunt for a play called Robot the Rock Opera. Members of the merry troupe of the Planet X Players descended on the Cherry Creek Mall store in Denver to promote the upcoming play.

Despite the fact that it was the day of the new iPad launch, they were allowed in and given the boot (albeit cordially) by Apple employees after handing out a few flyers about liberating Apple’s robot voice assistant Siri from “slavery.”

Cult of Mac talked to writer/director Seth Iniguez Bertoni about how services like Siri are leading to “digital servitude,” whether Siri considers the work fair labor and how the actors got that mesmerizing silver sheen.

Apple’s new iPad has been available to purchase in the U.S. and nine other countries for just four days, but over 200,000 units have already been smuggled into China for sale on the grey market. Natives are reportedly importing the device into the city of Shenzhen, a city that borders Hong Kong, for a profit of around $20 on each device.

Mike Daisey, the man behind the hugely popular show that highlights Apple’s manufacturing environment at Foxconn, has received heavy media criticism since This American Life revealed that he had lied and given inaccurate information about his trip to China. Daisey continues to perform his show at theaters in the United States, and he says he still stands by his work.

Since the Retraction episode of The American Life aired, Daisey has elaborated further on the issue surrounding Chinese manufacturing and his public scandal.

Mike Daisey’s NPR monologue may have misrepresented his experience at Foxconn in China, but his main findings about working conditions there ring true.

Underage workers, health hazards and debilitating overtime are findings echoed by sociologist Dr. Boy Lüthje, who has spent the last decade researching labor conditions at China’s contract manufacturers where U.S. tech giants including Apple, Dell and HP make the electronic devices that populate our homes.

(You can read Cult of Mac’s exclusive interview with him here.)

Along with a team of researchers, he’s the author of a forthcoming academic work titled From Silicon Valley to Shenzen. The data here, Lüthje notes, is from late 2009 (before the wave of suicides hit Foxconn) but the general conditions remain largely unaltered. When it hits shelves, the book will include updated comments on Foxconn and Apple, he says.

Publisher Rowman & Littlefield granted Cult of Mac permission to publish an excerpt from Chapter 4, which similarities between electronics assembly plants in Mexico, China and Eastern Europe.

Performer and monologist Mike Daisey has been all over the news since the This American Life radio show retracted its most downloaded episode ever in which Daisey talked about visiting Foxconn, the Chinese factory that Apple products are made in. This American Life said that Daisey’s story contained “significant fabrications.” The New York Times also edited an article it ran by Daisey to reflect the inaccurate re-telling of his experience at Foxconn in China.

To put it plainly, Daisey said he saw things he never saw and met people he never met. He’s been feeding his audiences false information for many months. For the first time in the show’s history, This American Life has run a special retraction episode to clear up the mess. If you’ve been following the Apple/Foxconn issue, you should really give it a listen.

Apple fans and journalists asking them why they stood in line overnight weren’t the only ones outside retail stores for the debut of the latest iPad.

Consumer groups protesting labor conditions at the factories in China where those shiny new tablets were made were also out making their voices heard.

iOS devices are big business in China, and not just for Apple. Gangs of scalpers queue up to get their hands on the latest devices on launch day so that they can later be sold on through the grey market for a sizable profit.

Back in October, when the iPhone 4S launched in Hong Kong, police were called to break up the riots that occurred outside of Apple retail stores as scalpers attempted to force their way into the lines ahead of genuine customers. To ensure it doesn’t happen again, Apple has warned scalpers not to queue up for its new iPad on Friday.

Watchdog group SumOfUs has launched a new petition asking Apple to prove that workers at Foxconn factories in China weren’t subject to illegal overtime to make the iPad 3.

Specifically, they’re looking for Apple to turn over individual worker hours from November 2011-February 2012 to prove they’re not violating China’s labor laws which prohibit more than 36 hours of overtime per month.

Cult of Mac talked to SumOfUs founder Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman about what the group hopes to achieve with this latest petition, launched the morning of the iPad event as of this writing reached 41,500 of its 50,000 signature goal.

Apple is putting a squeeze on the air freight industry with a massive order of iPad 3 shipments, according to multiple reports today. As Wednesday’s announcement draws near, Apple has singlehandedly bought the majority of air cargo space coming out of China at premium rates. Other companies are reportedly scrambling to buy what little space Apple hasn’t already claimed.