Apple founder dies - Steve Jobs

[donna]

It's a sad day for Apple computer enthusiasts - Steve Jobs just 56 succumbs to cancer.....

There are news items everywhere - but I love NZ Herald so here is one from them - article

[speights boy]

[spaceman]

meh

An exploiter of the poor and downtrodden dies ..... IMHO that makes the world a better place

Cheers
Spaceman

[The_Dog]

does that mean we will be able to use Flash on the iPad?

[kapitibeanman]

meh

An exploiter of the poor and downtrodden dies ..... IMHO that makes the world a better place

Cheers
Spaceman

What do you mean, Spaceman? Perhaps I should ask, would you care to expand on that?

[Winston001]

What do you mean, Spaceman? Perhaps I should ask, would you care to expand on that?

Perhaps...

"Earlier this year, Apple released the findings of a probe into its suppliers' labor practices. Although Foxconn was not specifically named, Apple did admit it found "more than a dozen serious violations of labor laws or Apple's own rules at its suppliers that needed immediate correction," the AP writes. Among other violations, Apple found that some of its suppliers had employed child labor in their factories."

Foxconn (Apple supplier) has had 14 employees commit suicide as at 6 August 2011.

[spaceman]

^ This pretty much ......basically the fan-boys are making Jobs out to be some kind of saint..... yet his company exploits 3rd world workers in terrible conditions to generate a slightly higher dividend for his shareholders. Would Apple still be a profitable company if they didn't use what amounts to slave labour???? I think so yet one of the richest men in the world would prefer not to take that risk and instead eek out a few more precious dollars on the back of human misery.

So IMHO whatever else Jobs did was outweighed by the way he chose to run his company.

Though to be honest my first post was 80% troll

Cheers
Spaceman

[donna]

Not sure you can lay any blame on Steve Jobs personally. Foxconn are suppliers to lots of the top companies including Sony, Dell etc. That's a bit lame IMHO. The man was a genius and that's how he'll be remembered. I don't hear anyone saying he was a 'saint' - quite the opposite. He was a tough operator and certainly didn't suffer fools.

Cheers,

Donna

[speights boy]

Though to be honest my first post was 80% troll

Yeah, we knew that Mr Spacely



Can you give us the list of electronic companies you use, in order to avoid these rotters.

[spaceman]

^^ He was the top dog so the buck has to stop with him ..... a parallel can be drawn with Mike King in NZ and the pork issue. When it was made clear to Mike what was going on did he shrug his shoulders and keep taking the bucks or did he stand up and do the right thing......... Jobs if he didn't know what was going on in the first place ( which I highly doubt) did sweet F A when it was made clear to him exactly what was going on and it's not just Foxconn there's more to it than just that.

True other companies are doing it as well. That doesn't make it right and it's unlikey that their CEO's will get the same eulogies as Jobs is getting.

After Hitler died there wasn't a whole load of people saying yeah but what about the autobahns they're pretty neat...... it's not a proper troll job with at least one Hitler reference

Cheers
Spaceman... PS you can call me Cosmo SB ..... I approach the issue in the same way as I do being green. I do what I can recycling and what-not without being rabid about it. I certainly don't walk everywhere to save on fossil fuels. Would I buy " fair trade" consumer electronics if I could????...... yes, with the obvious caveat that if they cost me 4 times as much and were an inferior product then to hell with it just sling a few more suicide nets up.

[speights boy]

Apple's Foxconn Predicament
How do we square our desire for cheap products from Apple, Amazon or Dell, with the controversial working conditions at this massive Chinese factory?

....
While Foxconn created a frenzy of media coverage attempting to discern exactly what is causing the suicides -- brutal working conditions seems to be the most popular answer -- a bit of digging shows that there are other explanations completely unrelated to Foxconn that have gone largely unmentioned.

According to some, China’s rapid transition from communism to quasi-capitalism has created changes some people are unequipped to handle.

“With the reforms, society has become more complicated,” Dr. Huo Datong, the first psychoanalyst ever to practice in China, told the Straits Times in 2008. “Individualism has become more pronounced and psychological problems have become more and more serious.”

Traditional family structures have broken down over the course of just one generation, as young people increasingly started to migrate from rural areas to far-away factories where they could earn more money.
.....
“We see more patients in psychiatric hospitals who are there because the economic development has caused old family bonds to dissolve. People are more isolated from others,” Huo said.
.....
Such a small number of qualified therapists is troubling in light of a study in the British medical journal The Lancet, which estimated that about 173 million Chinese -- 17.5% of the population -- have some form of mental disorder, and 158 million have never received professional help.

Psychiatrist Zheng Zhanpei from the Shanghai Mental Health Center said, “It's quite common to hear discriminatory remarks like 'insane' or 'lunatic' on TV or other media. Lots of people dare not seek medication because they have concerns that they might be labeled 'mad.’ They just endure their mental illness until they explode.”

http://www.minyanville.com/special-features/articles/Foxconn-apple-dell-china-manufacuturing-foxconn/3/22/2011/id/33114

[speights boy]

Gee...what a surprise.

Foxconn Auditor Finds ‘Tons of Issues’

Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) -– The Fair Labor Association, a watchdog monitoring working conditions at makers of Apple Inc. products, has uncovered “tons of issues” that need to be addressed at a Foxconn Technology Group plant in Shenzhen, China, FLA Chief Executive Officer Auret van Heerden said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-17/foxconn-auditor-finds-tons-of-issues-.html

[spaceman]

^ nex minnit

Van Heerden said later in an interview with Reuters that Foxconn’s plants were “first class.” He said he was surprised “how tranquil it is compared with a garment factory.”

Is it wrong of me to suggest that the first statement about "tons of issues" was simply a way of bumping up the price of the following statement????

Cheers
Spaceman.....???? why is the quote box split in two....can anybody tell me how to fix it???? [ed - I put the font and colour start tags inside the quote and deleted the duplicate quote tags - cube]