"An e-mail arrived this week from a reporter with a San Francisco newspaper, the SF Weekly. The journalist, Matt Smith, asked if I knew that an NPR freelancer [David Pogue] had accepted services from a computer company, which he then did a story about for NPR's Morning Edition. I didn't. I looked into the matter, and here's what I found."posted by ericb at 2:16 PM on February 24, 2012 [3 favorites]
"Journalists are accustomed to seeing public relations pitches in their inbox. I was surprised, though, when I recently got one on June 8 touting tech columnist David Pogue’s speech to P.R. professionals in which he credits P.R. with providing most of his ideas.posted by ericb at 2:20 PM on February 24, 2012 [1 favorite]
The pitch revealed that for $159 I could view a video of Pogue’s 'Pitch Me, Bab' speech set for an online airing on July 11. The speech is derived from an earlier appearance at a public relations conference called the Media Relations Summit, staged by Ragan Communications.
Fast-forward a bit and here is the upshot of that pitch: my inquiry into it has led to a Times internal review and, as a consequence, Pogue is barred from making any more speeches like this one to public relations professionals.
The decision came because such appearances are explicitly prohibited by The Times’s ethics policy. Excerpts of the relevant portions: 'Staff members may not advise individuals or organizations how to deal successfully with the news media (though they may of course explain the paper’s normal workings and steer outsiders to the appropriate Times person)….They should not take part in public relations workshops that charge admission or imply privileged access to Times people.'"
And when manufacturing gets expensive in China it's going to move to Vietnam or Indonesia or Botswana. Look at the esoterica's link too. This is how the world works.Ugh, this such a dumb thing to say. The U.S. is the worlds largest manufacturer. We manufacture more then china, on a dollar basis. Germany and Japan combined export more then China, and up until a few years ago Germany alone did.
But what would totally rebuilding the global technology supply chain add to the cost? The whole reason Apple doesn't manufacture its own stuff, but gets Foxconn or whoever to do it, is because then the practically infinite streams of parts is Foxconn's problem, not theirs. Which they can do because there's a vast system thereExactly: China (and Korea, another high-wage country) have the infrastructure to do this. China has the infrastructure because they are enormous, and even though their per capita GDP is low, they have enough money to fund these projects. The same is not true of Vietnam, or pretty much any other smaller poor country. Only India could do something similar. But, they're a democracy which means they face the same NIMBYism and regionalism factor in the way they do in the U.S. And the government can't just seize people's land.
This tech manufacturing won't come to the U.S. for the same reason it won't go to botswana or wherever. Infrastructure.Expecting manufacturing to return to the US is a pipe dream. It's never going to happen.I would be interested in hearing you defend this statement.
Levi's are available made in the USA for $198 & made somewhere else for $58-$64.They're more expensive because they are premium versions. Clothes are one of the easiest things to outsource to poor countries, But American Apparel makes t-shirts in the U.S (very high quality, for a t-shirt) that are only a about $2-3 more expensive then regular t-shirts.
An American Standard Stratocaster is $1000, non-US is $500
There's some cachet attached to the US versions and there might be materials differences, but I'd love to see other examples.
Apple, and other companies using foxconn, are thinking fairly short term here. They should be investing in automated and environmentally conscious manufacturing techniques that could be implemented here in the US.Well, it depends. If their goal is to be a patriotic American and help build our economy, then yeah. If their goal is to maximize wealth for the people who run the company* Then they Are doing a good job. Apple's value is it's brand. Mac loyalists go on and on about the quality of the hardware, but obviously it isn't anything Foxconn couldn't produce for any other customers. (actually Apple uses a different subcontractor for macbooks, Quanta)
Didn't Steve Jobs say exactly that to Obama?The problem with bringing jobs to the U.S. is the political climate. No one wants to do stimulus, everyone wants to cut budgets.
And also tried to cure his cancer with woo.
It's still weird how all of this is marketed as an Apple specific issue, even when it's been shown they are leading the industry in a way of (at least on paper) responsibility. I'm not saying the situation is right or justified, but I'd want to find a cellphone made in better working conditions than Apple's. -- mrzarquonIt's because Apple is most valuable brand in the world. People have an emotional response to it that you don't get with HP or Motorola. Nokia and Sony used to have something like that, but no where near the same level.
Two points: 1. They are going to continue manufacturing in countries where the labor is cheap, and that is probably not going to be the U.S. -- mcstayinskoolAs I said earlier, it's not all about labor costs. I just did some googling on Nokia and read that they is closing a plant in Romania and opening one in South Korea I'm doubting they'll pay lower wages. They're doing it to get a shorter supply chain since all the parts are made in that region.
it kind of seems like Daisey is being a little axe-grindy. Sure, he's been to China more times than I have, but once again, is he really an expert on Chinese factory conditions? --KokuRyuYeah, imagine someone who actually saw human suffering first hand might be 'ax-grindy'. And how exactly do you go about becoming an 'expert' in Chinese factory conditions without actually running a Chinese factory? China is a totalitarian autocracy. There's no free speech. You can't operate as an investigative journalist there the way you can here. Upton Sinclair didn't have to worry about 'harmonization'. The Chinese Upton Sinclair is in Chinese Jail. That’s why Mike Daisy is doing it.
But thats the thing, Apple sold 37 million iPhones last quarter, great. But Nokia sold 110 million [pdf] cellphones, and while not all smartphones, Apple definitely is not the company getting the largest number of electronic devices assembled in China. -- mrzarquonPeople who own dumbphones don't spend time talking about them online.
Nobody's going to buy an iPhone that costs $3,000. People might say they will, but when push comes to shove they will not.First of all, what's with the bizarre assumption that stuff made in the U.S. will fall apart? It makes no sense at all. Most of the Toyotas and Hondas you see driving down the streets in the U.S. are made in the U.S. As other people mentioned, the cost increase of increasing wages at foxconn plants to US levels. Would be more like $60 or so, which is less then the profit apple makes on them.
Especially not an iPhone where the glass falls out of the front after three months. -- Fnarf
That said, these people have alternatives. They could starve. Or toil in even worse conditions for even less money. To demand that Foxconn implement Western standards in their factories is to tell their workers that we know what's best for them. "Head back to the rice paddies where there's no hope for your future." -- PhreeshThat's complete bullshit. People go on and on about how Apple products are beautifully designed and high quality. One way to cut corners is to use cheaper materials, but Foxconn doesn't do that because that's not what's in the contract. Apple pays for the materials, they get high quality materials. They pay for precision construction, they get high quality construction. Foxconn is happy to make cheap low quality crap for other customers, if that's what they pay for.
Their goal should be to maximize wealth as well as ensure the long term sustainability of the company. -- Ad hominemThe goal of a company is the goal of whoever is running it. Could be money, could be power, could be prestige, the desire for legacy, or maybe to make the world a better place. They care about shareholders to the extent that they are shareholders, balanced by other possible perks (like salary, or maybe blowing however many billion dollars on a super swank luxury office building with curved glass windows in a large green space in the one of most expensive real-estate market in the world or something)
My editor, John, recently visited Foxconn city. He reported on the trip for us here. I wrote about Daisey's crusade here and the recent Foxconn flare-up here. -- BlackLeotardFrontFrom your article:
Now, I’m not going to get all Das Kapital on you. The idea here is simpler and closer to home than some grand idea of political and economic metatheory. The basic fact is this: an “ethical” iPhone would be too expensive. That’s literally all there is to it (replace iPhone with your device of choice). Everything follows from our own unwillingness to pay for the true cost of a device. People want a better world, but they don’t want to pay for it. Nothing new there, really.Seriously dude, as has been pointed out over and over again in this thread. That's just false. It's a lie. You could make an iPhone clone in South Korea or Taiwan and sell it for less then an iPhone and still make a 'standard' 10% profit.
2) Do you really think that if Steve Jobs hadn't died anything would have been done to change it? Despite the image of Jobs as some huge Buddhist, the man had no fucking heart for the others. It all mattered how things looked to him in detail right here in his space, but he could give two shits about the people making the products, and if he did, he'd justify it like the Apple fans who whine about it also being a Microsoft, Dell, Acer, etc... problem. -- symbiodPeople forget just how long Jobs was not at Apple. He left apple in 1985. Sculley took over as CEO in 1983. He came back in 1996. 11 years, but practically a lifetime in the personal computer industry. A hell of a lot more happened between 1985 and 1996 then has happened from 2002 to 2012.
The problem won't be solved, but at least they'll feel better. And in the end, for most people that is what's most important.*yawn* Apple defender 'defends' Apple. Except it's not even really much of a defense "it's really all of our fault!" Obviously if Apple products were not made in these conditions, people would have at least one supplier they could buy something from that weren't made that way. So the problem of their own culpability would be solved.
The problem won't be solved, but at least they'll feel better. And in the end, for most people that is what's most important.Ironically, this is the same motivation for the "b-b-but everyone does it" squealing from the Apple Fanboys.posted by fullerine at 8:02 PM on February 24, 2012
How is Apple a fashion brand? This time you just expect to sell that same tired argument that they charge a premium for the logo to idiots?How is not a fashion brand? People carry it around. They show it off. People see you use it. It's functional, but so is a watch. Everyone understands that any watch that costs more then maybe $20 is a fashion statement. People buy preposterous spring driven mechanical watches when a dirt cheap quartz watch would be much more accurate (gaining or losing a minute over six years, apparently). Sometimes bedazzled with Jems, sometimes with extra mechanical 'complications' that serve no purpose at all.
Expecting China to enforce its own labor laws might be naive, but that's a very different story than "what do you want, we're all addicted to our gadgets."You don't even need them to do that. Since cellphones are all about fashion, you just have to make sure that only phones that are made with good labor standards are fashionable. Shoes are obviously a fashion item, and that's what killed Nike. But if the company was making air conditioners, or tires, or NYC manhole covers or whatever. no one would care. It's only due to the emotional attachment, and people's of brands as part of the identity they project to the world (i.e. a fashion item) that anyone cares at all.
In short-term thinking, we of course have the responsibility to ask for better conditions for our fellow human beings who just happen to have been born in China and work in difficult conditions making gadgets for our pockets and purses. We like to care for our neighbors, and would demand that Apple (or whoever) should spend an extra few of its (or our) dollars to make the lives of 1 million Chinese people better.Mmmhmm...
In long-term thinking, we have the responsibility to ask for better conditions for, say, all 1 billion people in China. Immediately making all the Foxconn employees in China better will do nothing at all to help the other 99.9% of the population. However, buying Apple products made by Chinese workers working jobs they're willing to take will help create snow-ball effects of growing the middle class, taking people off back-breaking sustenance farm work and into cities and industries, and eventually help them become consumers and not just producers of these very gadgets. --haykinson
No “useful idiots” of the kind who had made the Soviet Union under Stalin appear the savior of humanity emerged from the trip. The parade held in Beijing to mark the fifth anniversary of the People’s Republic reminded the philosopher A. J. Ayer of the Nuremberg Rallies. Though impressed by the “dedicated and dignified” Mao, the trade unionist Sam Watson was dismayed by Chinese talk of the masses as “another brick, another paving stone.”Anyway, that's ridiculous of course. Foxconn workers working 8 hours a day, for higher wages will actually mean even more jobs for Chinese people today and more economic benefits for the country. Which is exactly what the Foxconn exec said in the interview when they asked him about paying higher wages if apple wanted them too.
If everyone here who has an iPhone/Pod/Pad gave them up it wouldn't make a lick of difference, not because they've already been made, but because nearly anything in your house that plugs in has gone through a Foxconn-like place, if not Foxconn itself, as well as most of the things in your house that don't plug in. Apple is the popular whipping boy for this but the fact is, it's so pervasive that nothing short of going Amish is likely to make any kind of difference.Yeah that's not really true either. Nokia makes some phones in Germany at least. They also made some in Romania. The idea that every phone is made by Foxconn or at least some random Chinese manufacturer is wrong. It would be nice if you could figure out which phones were made where, but I'm betting that even the same model of phone was probably made in multiple factories around the world.
Not impossible at all, but we don't really have any reason to believe it's just going to happen. On the other hand, I don't think anyone will be surprised if these people are all replaced by robots within 10 years.I'm not sure. Apple today is using people where machines could already be easily used. It seems like a big part of it is flexability the ability to rapidly change designs production steps. It takes time to setup and program all the robots to engage in production. With phones changing and going obsolete in a few months that's a big deal. On the other hand 'dumbphones' and stuff that doesn't change as quickly will be able to be made by robot.
You forgot the shipping of all parts to the states. I have no idea what markup would be on macbook pros, iPads and iPhones, but it would be there. So now Apple, who is in a fight with Android in the smartphone market, has to add 65 dollars to the price of their phone.Or it could reduce it's profits by $65. In any event, iPhones are premium product. They already cost more (for the latest rev) then random android phones (unless you're getting a Galaxy Note or something)
So you'd have a small percentage that decides to stay Apple products. You'd have a very small percentage of non-Apple users switching to Apple, and you'd have a large segment of Apple users that will move on to other products. Apple is already a company that gets accused of having high prices, sometimes fairly, sometimes not. But the idea that people will flock to Apple for doing the right thing is nothing but a fantasy.
As usually delmoi, you don't understand Apple and the average consumer, which is why you've been wrong for so long (or you're letting your hatred of Apple cloud your thinking, pick one).Wrong for so long about what, exactly? Obviously you disagree with me about apple selling fashion -- but it's not exactly clear why that is. I explained the "apple as fashion" in more detail in this comment which you don't seem to have read (since you're not responding to anything I wrote there)
I guess it's difficult for people now to remember how unfashionable Apple was. They didn't suddenly decide that 'hey, our products sucks, let's become a fashion company'. They changed their products, and made them better. Yes, Apple not only makes great products, they market them better than any other company. So in the end, you have solid products that also are seen as fashionable.Okay, before Jobs came back their systems were pretty ugly and unfashionable, sure. But I'm talking about post-jobs. Clearly the original iMac was all about design. It was absolutely about fashion and style. Technically, it was nothing special. It still ran OS9. But it obviously had a big impact because of it's design, both in terms of sales as well as cultural impact. People talked about it. For a while, everything from blenders to microwaves tried to go for the same 'look'
In your mind you see the tech details as super important. You don't buy anything without knowing how fast the CPU is. But you're a dinasaur. Most consumers couldn't care less how fast their HD spins. They only care if the product does what they want it to, and if it looks good, even better.How are you even disagreeing with me? That's exactly what I said. Did you even read what I wrote? The very thing you quoted said Now you're saying that -- people don't buy Apple products because they are more technically tech-y. Well duh! That's what I just said! That's the whole point! People buy them because they are pretty and to show that they are the kind of people who buy apple products. Same reason they buy any other fashion item.
To believe the iPad was the first successful tablet because it was fashionable, or that Apple became the biggest tech company in the world because they simply sold fashion, is so completely ignorant you should be embarrassed to claim so. -- justgaryOf course you are apparently so sure of this that you're not even bothering to try to argue against it as far as I can tell. So far all you've done is restate what I wrote and then claim that it's the opposite of what I actually did say.
You claim that all this is coming back to bite Apple in the ass. I don't see it that way at all. I see a great opportunity for Apple to lead the way to change. So not only will Apple be able to claim their products 'just work', or sell 'fashion', but they'll be able to sell their company as doing the 'right thing'. Maybe they'll fuck this up, but I'm betting not. -- justgaryIt's obviously biting them in the ass at this point in time. Maybe they will fix the issue and 'lead the way'. If they do, that would be a good thing. When did I ever say it wouldn't be a good thing?
Also, at the moment, if you edit video for a living and you want to use your thunderbolt raid to serve HD footage at a decent bandwidth to your laptop, then really, its only mac that allow this. And a fully kitted out Mac Pro can be matched by a nice HP workstation, but the combination of the Mac hardware and the OS and the additional software does still work the best in my experience -- C.A.S.I think that's a pretty small subset of people.
But there is no reason the components have to be made outside the US, either. There are no impenetrable Asian secrets to making any of those components.No, no reason except that's where all the plants are nowadays. It's not that there aren't fabs in the U.S. The super-high end chips are made all over the world anyway (Intel has 7 fabs in the U.S, one in China one in Israel, and one in Ireland. AMD's fab spinoff, Global Foundries has fabs in Germany, NY and several in Singapore)
Shipping is a red herring, anyway. The separate parts of an iPhone take up, what, twice the volume of the iPhone itself, when shipped? Especially as the individual parts can be more "carelessly" packed since they aren't as fragile, in all likelihood, as the assembled machine.The problem is the time it takes to ship. If you're in Shenzen you can get parts from multiple suppliers just down the road. If you have to have them shipped to the US, unless you're going to do it by plane, there is going to be long turnaround time. It might be possible to fly the parts in, though. I have no idea what the cost would be.
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If they stick with it long enough, they become PR hacks for their subject(s). This is commonplace and it's not going to get you anywhere if you tell them their baby is ugly.
posted by jsavimbi at 1:45 PM on February 24, 2012