China outrage grows
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
China outrage grows, from all quarters — Apple is on the brink of becoming the poster child for worker abuse. Journalists and rights organizations are increasingly drawing attention to the enormous contrast between Apple’s quarterly billions in profits, and the desperate plight of abused workers in China.Cult of Mac reckons it knows how Apple can solve the problem (pic). (It's not like Apple doesn't have the money and power!).
A Chinese manufacturing hub named 'Foxconn City' after the contractor which builds Apple’s iOS devices among other electronic gadgets was described by the NYT as a company town where employees live in barracks and work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, for less than $17 a day, and the story has finally been gaining some real traction.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was outraged – as his customers increasingly are – by a recent report from The New York Times that provided a detailed look at the poor working conditions for Chinese factory workers assembling our Apple gadgets.
The BSR, a leader in corporate responsibility which works with Apple to develop sustainable business strategies, has labeled the report “inaccurate” and “misleading,” and has requested that it is corrected by the NYT.
The BSR, established in 1992, “uses its expertise in environment, human rights, economic development, and governance and accountability to guide global companies toward creating a just and sustainable world.” Its CEO, Aron Cramer, wrote to the NYT on January 27 – a day after its report was published.
[Where there's smoke ...]
HP shamelessly copying Apple — The well-named HP Envy 15 is a laptop that Engadget says “unapologetically copies the MacBook Pro” but “stumbles in several critical areas” including being heavier than the MacBook Pro and having a worse display, touchpad, keyboard and battery life.
HP shamelessly copying Apple — Cobook is an alternative to Apple’s Address Book, and it takes away all the pain and makes organising contacts a painless, even enjoyable task for the first time ever, writes Cult of Mac.
It syncs with your existing Address Book database, so everyone you already know will be inside Cobook from the start.
But it does so much more: connect it to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, and it can import your contacts from there. It can find relevant data on those services and add it to existing contacts.
If you want to see what the fuss is all about, grab your beta copy now.
First-time attendees weigh in on iWorld conference — Today’s crowd — not surprisingly — was the most diverse of the three-day event due to the “weekend factor”, and among the crowd were a lot of first-time attendees who were pretty happy with what they saw.
Australian microphone for Mac — The Microcone is an intelligent microphone that is unbelievably simple to use and can help anyone manage group conversations.
Another Mac 'superbundle' — Cult of Mac's Mac SuperBundle contains Parallels 7, Little Snapper, iStat Menus 3, Flux 3 HTML5 designer and six other apps. It represents US$471 dollars worth of software for only US$49.
