Opinion

Bad Apple

It's time to face the human cost of my Apple addiction -- and yours.

By Crawford Kilian, 30 Jan 2012, TheTyee.ca

Bad apple

Hidden by every smooth exterior, a 'terrible sin.'

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When Apple announced its last-quarter numbers on Jan. 24, you would have thought Steve Jobs had risen on the third day.

The business media responded as if to a religious experience. The Wall Street Journal breathlessly reported Apple's earnings of $13.1 billion or $13.87 a share -- both doubling last year's numbers. The Globe and Mail crooned about the "750,000 iPhones, iPads, iPods, and Macs" sold every day. In fact, the Globe couldn't stop talking about it for days.

The news came just days after Apple released a free app, iBooks Author, that seems likely to transform (or destroy) the $10-billion U.S. textbook industry, just as Apple had transformed movies with Pixar and music with iTunes. A company given up for dead in the 1990s has changed technology out of all recognition, and seems likely to change itself as well: The desktop computer is clearly on its way out, and the laptop could follow as the iPad increases its power.

I became a Mac user over 20 years ago, teaching myself Word 4.0 as I converted my class handouts into electronic format -- and eventually into an often-updated textbook. I've written hundreds, maybe thousands, of articles on Macs, and found it amazingly easy to compile books just by dragging files and folders around on a screen.

After years of defending my oddball taste in the Mac-PC tribal wars, it's a kind of vindication to see Apple bestriding the world like the colossus it is. Having just finished Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, I'm keenly aware of how Jobs created that world... and how easily he could have failed.

So I'm feeling pretty good about Apple, and I look forward to grabbing an iPad 3 when it becomes available to the yearning masses. I'm thinking about a Mac Air too, if Apple still wants to make laptops.

But I'm also feeling pretty bad about Apple, because I realize that it has created a deeply addictive technology.

The message is jolts

This is not a recent insight. Teaching in Capilano College's Mac-based Infotech program even before the web, I could see that we write and read differently on the computer screen. The medium really is the message online, and the message is jolts.

Jolts are the little sensory rewards the computer gives us. They come when we turn on the machine and it bongs at us. Jolts come with every alert, every new window, every avian squawk and porcine grunt in Angry Birds. Jolts come with every email and text message. Isaacson doesn't use the word, but his description of Apple packaging shows that jolts of pleasure are designed right into the boxes that your Mac and iPhone come in.

Jolts also come in the form of verbal abuse, which inspired the email and forum flame wars of the 1990s, the ongoing hysteria of today's political blogs, and the punchlines of Twitter.

Like lab rats with electrodes wired into their brains' pleasure centers, we learn what gives us the strongest online jolts, and we keep doing it. We forget that the lab rats preferred to push their jolt button until they starved to death, but in our few lucid moments we realize that we're well and truly addicted to the jolts that Apple gives us.

Hence our rapt anticipation of the next jolt machine: the iPhone 5, the iPad 3, or something completely novel that Steve knew we'd want before we ourselves did. (In one of my 1980s SF novels, I imagined something like the iPad, but assumed it wouldn't arrive until circa 2080.)

Giving addiction a bad name

Addiction does bad things to you, and not just because you can't get through a class without texting your sweetie or listening to your prof with your iPod providing the soundtrack.

Centuries ago, Europeans and then North Americans learned to like sugar in their tea and pastry. To get it at a reasonable price from the plantations of the Caribbean, they agreed that part of what they paid would cover the costs of capturing black Africans, transporting them across the ocean, and working them to death.

Sugar addiction made Saint-Domingue, today's Haiti, the richest piece of real estate in the world. When Haiti's slaves revolted, European and American sugar addicts were outraged and punished the slaves with two centuries of bullying and outright occupation.

Similarly, North America's drug addicts may be vaguely aware that their spending on marijuana, hashish, and cocaine is funding a civil war in Mexico that has killed an estimated 47,500 people since 2006. They may also be aware that Lower Mainland drug retailers are shooting one another dead for the privilege of feeding the addicts' habits, but no addicts seem ready to quit over the issue.

And by the same token, no one addicted to Apple products is going to give them up just because young Chinese workers might be suffering and dying to build those cool, designed-in-California machines.

Concern about working conditions in Chinese factories has been growing for years. Anyone who has seen Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes is aware of the enormous factory system that China has created to feed our general addiction to cheap consumer goods. The specialized addiction to consumer electronics, however, has largely escaped scrutiny.

That is beginning to change. An American journalist and performer named Mike Daisey several years ago visited Chinese assembly plants, run by Apple contractor Foxconn, where workers have leaped to their deaths from their dormitories. His resulting one-man show traces his journey from Apple fanatic to facing up to how that makes him complicit in the misery of others -- and how Steve Jobs' celebrated brilliance ensures he and his corporate colleagues all along must have been fully aware of their "terrible sin."

Just as Apple was announcing its superb sales and profits, The New York Times began a series on Apple and its reliance on Chinese industrial power and flexibility. The first article argued that the U.S. would never have a workforce that could be rousted out of its dormitory bunks to make last-minute changes in a product.

Another NYT article reported several recent explosions and chemical accidents in the factories of Apple suppliers. These have caused deaths and serious health problems.

The authors wrote: "Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products."

'Foxconn is one of the best'

The New York Times backed up its reporting by interviewing Li Qiang, founder of China Labor Watch. Li pointed out problems with pay and working conditions, and paid Foxconn a backhanded compliment:

"Foxconn is not good. But if we compare all industries, electronics, textile, toys, Foxconn is one of the best. The biggest problem for Foxconn is the workers are working under a lot of pressure. They're standing 10 to 11 hours a day. Foxconn treats the workers like they are machines. They think about how many products they can produce, not about giving the workers a rest. But in the electronics industry all the companies are the same."

The Macosphere, blogs that follow Apple with obsessive attention, are also talking about the conditions under which our iPads and iPhones are being built. Some, like MacDaily News, have responded angrily to the NYT reporters, calling them "slanted, biased yellow journalists." MacDaily News also ran a letter from Apple CEO Tim Cook in which he called the New York Times articles "patently false and offensive."

9to5Mac, meanwhile, ran a three-minute video of Steve Jobs talking last September about the problems with Foxconn and saying, "For a factory, it's a pretty nice factory." MacRumors cited former Apple executives as saying the company has few alternative suppliers, so it has to put up with issues that in theory it doesn't tolerate.

And that applies to Apple addicts as well. If we don't want to buy tainted goods, what do we buy that hasn't been built under the same conditions? Li Qiang argues that "in the electronics industry all the companies are the same."

Apple, and all electronics manufacturers, are going to have to prove that their addictive toys are at least made by people working under humane conditions. Until then, we should remember an old test of morality:

A man in China is strapped into an electric chair. You are sitting here, in front of a button. If you press the button, the man will die. You won't see it, and you'll never meet any of his family or friends. But you will get a large amount of money, or something else your heart desires.

Do you press the button?

Or do you tap the screen?

[Tags: Science and Tech, Rights and Justice.] [Tyee]

Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.

12 Comments:

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  • edward01ca

    16 weeks ago

    Mr.Killian Forgets

    that Apple now makes gadgets and uses a monstrous advertizing budget to make us buy things we want rather than things we need. They do not really make computers. As for the desktop computer dying, well not as long as I can look at a 24" LED screen to make my books. In 1988, I made a conscious decision to not buy and Apple computer because it was not only much more expensive than a PC but it was not equally equipped, would go out of date very quickly, was not backwards compatible in its operating system, and all of the programs were more expensive, if available at all, than for a PC. Apple has sent millions of dollars overseas as well as thousands of jobs. Maybe all you Apple users should think about the 1% who control the world, including Apple, and stop constantly staring into their Apple gadget telling other people what they are doing at that precise moment. Nobody cares.

  • Gawdknows

    16 weeks ago

    Apple

    Crawford neglected to tell us if he has unplugged his Apple computer.

  • lyle

    16 weeks ago

    Before and after?

    So what was life like before the factories came? What would it be like there if tomorrow we all stopped buying anything made in China?

  • emmryss

    16 weeks ago

    Grabbing an iPad 3

    Well, that's the whole point, isn't it. You have to already be looking forward to grabbing a product that doesn't even exist yet because of course it is going to be so much better than the one you are using right now and are probably perfectly satisfied with, except you can't be because you already know the next one's going be even better but of course the process doesn't stop with the iPad 3, does it, no sooner will you get your grabby hands on one of those than you will be breathlessly awaiting the iPad 4, soon to be superceded by the iPad 5 and so it goes.

  • Langley

    16 weeks ago

    Never owned an Apple product

    I considered buying an iMac about 10 years ago but just didn't bother, too costly. Bought a Dell PC instead.

    Nowadays I don't want to buy anything they make because everyone else is buying it. I never follow the majority. I even sold a $25 iTunes gift card for $15. I simply don't want to feed the giants along with everyone else

  • Lexicon

    16 weeks ago

    This is a fantastic article,

    This is a fantastic article, and I couldn't help be surprised that there are so few comments.

    Seen from the right angle, it shows the beginning of a collapse between the false dichotomy of the political left and right. To generalize (and generalizations exist for a reason), many people who own Apple products are hipsters, artists, people who see themselves outside the mainstream, outside the box, someone creative, someone who can't be hemmed in by crappy PCs, someone who doesn't like traditional office work. Let's call them lefties.

    To continue generalizing, let's call the right the PC guys. They're fine with something everyone can use that is exactly the same, it's efficient, productive and everyone can use it.

    There is actually no real difference between these two groups. Despite different areas of focus, they still do not think of something that works for the whole community. Some things that work for the left are from the right. Some things that work for the right come from the left.

    If someone like Kilian - another guy who falls into the creative, outside the box thinker category - starts to write an article about how they too are complicit in a huge human rights issue, regardless of your side you can't help but be presented with a choice. What is the best option?

    a) Continue with Mac and downplay their human rights record (maybe hypocritical, but hey...you got a Mac so all is good with the world)

    b) Continue with Mac and condemn their human rights record (may show you as choosing the lesser of two evils. Except for the fact that the average standard of evil is not rising, but dropping so soon it will be ok to stab your neighbor in order to get your iPad first...technological survival of the fittest)

    c) See that all computers are evil, likely due to the conditions in which they were made, so totally give up on trying to make anything better because you can't fight something so big that it surrounds you like air.

    The same arguments above could apply for PCs. Either way, these options suck. Our standards of what we're willing to accept from gov't, corporations, etc need to stop dropping. There are ways to fight for what you believe.

  • pwlg

    16 weeks ago

    E-Production=E-Waste

    Mr. Killian mentions problems with Apple's production contractors and worker's conditions. If he included the other side of story, computer and cell phone waste, readers would have found a more sordid story.

    Even recycling e-waste has its problems with worker conditions as developed countries still send their e-waste, illegally according to the Basel Convention, to developing countries that have no or inadequate worker or environmental protection.

    It appears that industry was and still is ill-prepared for the volume of recycled e-waste. However, most e-waste is still sent to garbage dumps and incinerators creating a chemical soup and hazardous waste.

    Like auto batteries and tires, perhaps there should be a real price, not a token price, attached to electronic goods to deal with this waste in the country where it is produced.

    Greenpeace produced a report in 2009 which is worth a read. I doubt that matters have gotten better.

    In Latin America I saw recycled phones from wasteful countries being sold and used which is one way to reuse these products.

  • Lajo

    16 weeks ago

    Decisions, decisions...

    If you really want people to realise just what they are buying into, be it
    Apple or Microsoft, or anyone else, why not go the way of cigarette packages, and require manufacturers to place very large pictures of workers in their squalid working and living conditions as well as listing their real wages prominently on the front of the packaging?

    Who knows, perhaps forcing consumers to view the results of their purchasing practices will make at least a few people stop and think whether or not they 'have' to have that product, or if the price they are paying is fair - not just the cheapest!

    Conscious consumerism is really the only way change will happen, and we must all acknowledge that in order to keep living like we do, there is a cost, and what we're paying isn't the real one!

  • greenmonkey

    16 weeks ago

    @ Lexicon

    "many people who own Apple products are hipsters, artists, people who see themselves outside the mainstream,[....] Let's call them lefties."

    IMO that's one of the main reasons for the unchallenged leeway Apple bashers get including major news outlets in criticizing Apples manufacturing sins. Because Mac is for lefties, and the PC is for righties, (as the meme goes) its fine to highlight Apple's faults because, hey, they are supposed to know better somehow. But the PC manufacturing plants, of which there are many times more of, are not mentioned.

    For that matter there are thousands of other tech products made in Asia for North American companies under dubious conditions, that are not even computers. Toaster ovens, DVD players, televisions, etc etc etc...

    Reminds me of the MSM giving Republicans/Conservatives a pass on unethical behavior because, hey, they are not bleeding hearts, they can't be expected to play fair. But a liberal/progressive getting charged is so much worse because they SHOULD know better. Double standard.

  • Granville

    16 weeks ago

    I have a good, old-fashioned cell phone like Gradma had.

    Who needs a "smart phone"? It is all *beep*. Contrary to the publicity, having a smart phone does not improve your sex life, and neither does beer.

    There is nothing worse than a badly-timed cell phone call. Smart phones are the first step on the road to hell. Touch screens are terrible. There ought to be a device that fries every cell phone within 100 metres. There is, but it is probably illegal to rig a microwave oven as a raygun.

  • Ramone

    16 weeks ago

    Hypocrisy or ignorance?

    Foxconn workers also assemble the XBox 360 (Microsoft) and products by Dell, Hewlett Packard and other computer and gadget companies - yet reading the press one gets the impression that Apple is somehow unique in its use of cheap Chinese labour.

    Why all the focus on Apple? Do owners of Microsoft or Dell products, for example, really believe that these companies have more concern for workers than big bad Apple does? The same workers who put together iPads also put together XBox units and computers for other manufacturers. It's rather baffling that Apple is constantly singled for its unsavoury business practices out while other companies are barely mentioned. Weird.

  • mimby

    16 weeks ago

    It's a Piss-Pot!

    Apple vs Microsoft, tablet vs desktop, iPhone vs iPod : blah blah blah...

    ...they're all just iterations and re-iterations of the fine print of a fundamental quandary that modern humankind has yet to resolve: Capitalism [and ultimately Death of a planet] ? Or Something Else
    [hopefully something Life-friendly and sustainable forever] ?

    Piss, or get off the Pot! We choose.

    In regards to Chinese labour exploitation, What's New? That's been happening somewhere, somehow on the planet every single day since the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Sometimes it's "them", sometimes it's "us." Think again if you believe it will ever stop.

    Yes, Applemania is insane consumerism. So what? Insane consumerism is sane materialism. I recently learned that my own sweet grandma has got herself in iPad to use in the care home! Sheesh! For what?! She goes nowhere, sees almost nobody, reads only Readers Digest and never cooks anymore!

    Granny bought her iPad because she's seen so many Apple TV ads, she figures she MUST need one!

    This is what we've chosen, so far.

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