Don't overlook the messenger: 4 protesters show up at Apple store to deliver 250,000 signatures

Interesting. I read your interview with Mike Daisey. Now, I have nothing to do with Apple or China or what-have-you but....the facts on Foxconn are pretty straight up. Apple would never get away with their "business practices" in China anywhere else in the 'civilized' world. Here's an American company that employs roughly 40,000 people in the USA and approximately 720-900,000 outside the USA. So, while Apple is so ingrained in American life we all play a part in the misery of the Foxconn worker. Used, abused, exploited and underpaid.....but it's okay.

It's okay Apple. We need your iPads and iPods and iPhones. Go ahead and let them commit atrocities in your name in China. We don't care. Screw them. We don't care. Just have my updates ready when I need them bitch. Third world commies. Treat them like the dogs they are....right Apple?....Apple?.....

Oh yeah...don't move your factories here to America and employ Americans. You'd have to pay them a decent living wage....a 40 hour work week....insurance!....and you would never get away with your inhumane working conditions and your totalitarian workplace. You just keep paying the Chinese a dogs wages and continue to get your tax breaks here so..... America can't even count on you for that.....

If I'd known about this protest I would have shown up.....

Because Apple has worms.....lots of them.

You have to love that typical Gizmodo headline that includes the non sequitur "world's most awful Apple store".

Apple would place itself at a huge competitive disadvantage by moving manufacturing to the US unless all other electronics manufacturers did the same thing. Apple stockholders would have the board and management team replaced in a heartbeat if they considered such a thing.

In the end, there would be no improvement in the lives of the Chinese workers. They would either be moved to manufacture products for other Foxconn clients like HP, Dell, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft or whomever or they would be laid off and return to more poorly paying jobs.

Simplifying the problem into an Apple/Foxconn issue does little more than generate page hits for the writers. And, of course, it motivates a whopping four people from a claimed group of a quarter million to show up at an Apple store on the opposite side of the country from Apple's headquarters. Effective.

A boycott by those signators would be a better way to actually express an opinion that meant something. But, where are they going to find a cell phone that was not built in China. Where are they going to find a computer? Televisions? Home theater systems? Music players? Home appliances?

http://www.outsaurus.com/2011/08/01/outsourced-apple-500000-jobs/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46143670/ns/business-us_business/

You asked where I got my numbers. I didn't make them up. If you don't want to look then don't.

You asked where I got my numbers. I didn't make them up. If you don't want to look then don't.

If its so important, do the leg work and pull the quotes, citing the links.

Some fun math: Apple makes A LOT of money. (Selling millions of electronics from $500-$2500 and paying $130 a month per employee to make them will do that.) So much so they actually have more cash on hand then the United States of America.

From the article: According to the latest statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance Wednesday of $73.8 billion. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s less than what Steve Jobs has lying around. Tech juggernaut Apple had a whopping $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June, according to its last earnings report.

To give you an idea what that could buy: 2,050,000 American jobs at $36,000 a year. This would bring the unemployment rate down roughly 2.5 points. 1 company could have such a HUGE impact. Amazing.

Amazing indeed.

It is also worth mentioning that Apple is a public company. Its cash reserves are not Tim Cook's little stash. That money could be returned to the stockholders in part or in full through dividends.

An adult needs to confiscate the crayons from whomever wrote that article.

#1.12

Amazing, but also patently absurd. Do you honestly think that what is said in the last paragraph is realistic? So, Apple is to spend every last penny of its cash on hand hiring 2,050,000 people at $36,000 a year. Beyond the goofy idea that they should dump all of their cash to do so...

I think they were just showing how much cash money Apple had by giving an example of how many jobs at a salary of 36,000 a year that would buy. They weren't suggesting doing it. Hence the "to give you an idea"....