[danudey]

One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China.

The supply chain is also important. One person who worked in Shenzhen commented that, as a manufacturer, if you suddenly discover you need a certain kind or size or shape or length of screw, you can have a shipment at your door the same day, because the factory that produces a thousand different kinds of screws is just down the road.

To move to the US, they'd either have to replicate most of that manufacturing in the US, which would take decades and be extremely expensive, or deal with a week of latency every time they need a new or different part as they get it shipped from China anyway, making most of this process moot.

Yes, Apple should do something about this issue, and yes it's horrible to imagine them profiting off this with their "nice guy" image, but keep in mind that if they did this and increased the cost of the iPhone, other companies wouldn't, and it would put Apple at a huge disadvantage.

One thing we've seen over the last century of western civilization is that cheaper wins over better. Cheaper toasters that don't last, cheaper fridges that break down after their three-year warranty is up, cheaper laptops that come infected with bloatware and adware. If Apple refused to manufacture in China because of forced labour issues, then they'd lose out on sales to companies who kept benefitting from it, because consumers, as a whole, just don't give a shit.

I mean, if anyone cared about what it takes to provide them with cheap products, they'd be enraged that Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world even though the workers that run his company are subsisting on food stamps and burnout quotas.

That said, Apple is working on moving production to India, and I'd wager that the more they can do that and expand their operations there, the less and less they'll deal with China for manufacturing, but right now no one who manufactures electronics in large volumes can do so without involving China.

In the meantime, they can work on cutting this supplier out of their supply chain; the article is talking about only one of their suppliers, though a long-term supplier, and not actually people working for Apple or manufacturing iPhones directly, so hopefully they can draw a line in the sand and force Lens to either stop using forced labour or lose the contracts.

Fingers crossed.

[slovette]

You’re going to get cherry picked apart for this, but as someone who has ran supply chains, been apart of product dev that involved early hardware design & dev and the necessary chain dev to build that design, you hit the nail on the head.

Everyone wants a bad guy here, and apples logo with the billions behind it enable people to easily assign blame to that logo (not that they shouldn’t). But what’s forgotten is the massively complex “stack”, if you will, that brings everything together. Just saying “oh this billion dollar company is terrible!” Is being lazy and doesn’t contribute to a solution, all it does it make people feel entitled and validated because it doesn’t take much real thought.

The real problem at root is human/consumer behavior. Turning a logo into a fitting evil character borrowed from childhood cartoon narratives is not real.

Thanks for taking the time to write this up.

[throwawaygh]

> The real problem at root is human/consumer behavior. Turning a logo into a fitting evil character borrowed from childhood cartoon narratives is not real.

If the real problem is human/consumer behavior, then any real solution requires changing how humans/consumers behave.

A coordinated campaign to spoil good-will in any company that uses forced labor is an attempt at changing how humans/consumers behave, no?

[barnacled]

I think that's a very unfair assessment of my original comment and very dismissive.

Do not make the mistake of thinking everybody who criticises a company like apple is naive as to the complexities and difficulties around supply chains at scale. I certain don't.

Having literally worked for one of apple's suppliers who they bankrupted to bring the process in-house I have given this probably a lot more thought than you imagine.

They have been trying to vertically integrate all suppliers as much as humanly possible for reasons of control, margin and competitive advantage. This has been apple's approach for many years and they have been utterly ruthless in doing so.

If they had the will to start to take the steps to actually divest from a literally genocidal state, they could do it. They simply do not care.

The part I do agree with you on is that they also know their customers do not care, and consumer awareness and action is a key part of pushing back on this kind of thing.

But please do not absolve apple of guilt by waving your hands and saying the supply chain is too interdependent and complicated.

If they can take steps to fuck over suppliers for profit and control, they can take steps to avoid slave labour.

[oarsinsync]

> One thing we've seen over the last century of western civilization is that cheaper wins over better. Cheaper toasters that don't last, cheaper fridges that break down after their three-year warranty is up, cheaper laptops that come infected with bloatware and adware. If Apple refused to manufacture in China because of forced labour issues, then they'd lose out on sales to companies who kept benefitting from it, because consumers, as a whole, just don't give a shit.

Apple customers have made it very clear that as a whole, they are not price conscious. Better beats cheaper, or they’d be all using cheapo Android phones.

Apple has very high profit margins compared to their competitors in the same industries. Apple can pay their suppliers more, rather than driving them down to the bone, which of course results in workers being exploited.

Or they could be more transparent that the only thing that matters is the size of their profits, instead of cultivating a good guy corporate image, as the hypocrisy stinks.

[racl101]

> One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor. It would have taken them years to hire enough industrial engineers to handle the scope and scale and volume that the iPhone required in the US, if they could even manage it at all, but only weeks to do so in China.

So, potentially, if the phones were made in the US they'd be like Ferraris? Very expensive and only a few made at a time?

[nubb]

And yes we see how well this is working out with the recent uprising at the Indian iphone plant.

[guessbest]

This doesn't sound like they are using skilled labor.

> It suggests that iPhone glass supplier Lens Technology has been using Muslim minority Uighurs, who were given the stark choice of working in the company’s plant or being sent to detention centers which have been likened to concentration camps

[barnacled]

Absolutely it would be very costly, absolutely the expertise might not even exist at scale in an alternative country, absolutely it would take effort and pain and a long time.

But apple appear to, in the decades since the iPhone made them richer than many countries, have made zero effort whatsoever to address these issues.

Having worked at an apple supplier that they bankrupted in order to make the process entirely in-house (one of many they've done that to) I just do not buy that they could not have taken steps to divest. Some. Any.

Of course the issues are true of many other companies, but as I said in my original comment, the fact they portray some woke mentality (under which every single microscopic thing somebody does can be considered 'problematic') while continuing to take little to no action in divesting from a literally genocidal state which harvest organs says something about them.

The combination of their outrageous markups (which _could_ permit a more costly but more ethical supply chain) due to which they'd not have to increase prices (and thus making them one of the most able to actually divest like that), their utterly ruthless business practices and their woke and patronising pandering makes them a particularly egregious case, so in my opinion far worse than the likes of amazon, etc. (not discounting bad things they do, just a matter of perspective).

[justapassenger]

> One of the reasons Jobs cited as being an important factor for locating in China is the availability of skilled labor

Highly skilled forced labor?

Let's not kid ourselves - it's all about cost cutting. They're trying to diversify and move to another low wage country, India.

Not - I'm not saying that China or India lacks skilled labor, or highly paid experts. But that's not why companies like Apple are there. They're there for cheap labor, and close to non-existent labor protections. But China is starting to change, so Apple is looking for new places.

> Yes, Apple should do something about this issue, and yes it's horrible to imagine them profiting off this with their "nice guy" image, but keep in mind that if they did this and increased the cost of the iPhone, other companies wouldn't, and it would put Apple at a huge disadvantage.

It's like saying that Google and Facebook should continue to disregard privacy, because their huge margins relay on that?

[nicoburns]

> Not - I'm not saying that China or India lacks skilled labor, or highly paid experts. But that's not why companies like Apple are there.

I think it is partly. China in particular seems to have a depth, quality and volume of hardware engineering skills that isn't available anywhere else in the world. Maybe the US had this once, but as far as I can see: not anymore.