In a recent report by Beijing-based NGO, the Institute for Environmental and Public Affairs, Apple ranks dead last on a watchdog survey of 29 global communications and IT companies on transparency on health and environmental issues (British Telecom, Hewlett-Packard and Samsung rate tops in transparency and addressing environmental problems linked to their suppliers; I was somewhat relieved to see that Lenovo wasn’t too far down the list). ‘But’, as Eric Loomis of Lawyers, Guns and Money put it (and thank you, Eric, for the links): ‘at least Apple workers in China are forced to sign pacts to not commit suicide’. Of course, this kind of poor performance on environmental and labour issues is not exactly a new story for Apple (here is the original Daily Telegraph article and op-ed), but it is one that requires much by way of retelling.
To me, the phenomenon of Apple fanboy-ism is a rather laughable one. Apple, partly on account of its top-down corporate structure, poor customer service, closed architecture, et cetera, lives and dies on its image; to be fair, they have projected that image masterfully. Even to the point of convincing its fans that everything they do must be above-board.
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Great post. I agree with you. I thought some of the reactions to the passing of Steve Jobs were very odd to say the least, especially as many progressive OWS types were among his most animated mourners. Given the actualy practices of Apple, this just made me more depressed about the actual state of the Left in America.
ReplyDeleteI was going to write a blog post on the whole hipster cult around Apple and Jobs, complete with a video of Black Sabbath's "Computer God." A bunch of other things got in the way and I never wrote the piece, so now I have to wait for another opportunity to plug that song into a post!
Hehe... that would be a fun post!
ReplyDeleteIt has actually struck me that the true hero for the OWS movement ought to be Richard Stallman, the brain behind the GNU OS systems (and thus, indirectly, Linux).