Posted on 03/17/2014 9:08:13 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple's design chief helped transform computing, phones and music. The company's secrecy and Ive's modesty mean he has never given an in-depth interview—until now.
'Hello. Thanks for Coming'
We use Jonathan Ive’s products to help us to eat, drink and sleep, to work, travel, relax, read, listen and watch, to shop, chat, date and have sex. Many of us spend more time with his screens than with our families. Some of us like his screens more than our families. For years, Ive’s natural shyness, coupled with the secrecy bordering on paranoia of his employer, Apple, has meant we have known little about the man who shapes the future, with such innovations as the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. But last month, he invited me to Cupertino in Silicon Valley where Apple is based, for his first in-depth interview since he became head of design almost 20 years ago.
The gods — or was it the ghost of Steve Jobs? — seemed against it. Jobs didn’t like Apple execs doing interviews. It had not rained properly in California for months but that morning the clouds rolled off the Pacific, turning the Golden Gate Bridge black. Interstate 280 South to Silicon Valley was a river of water, instead of the usual lava streaks of stop-start SUVs. But just after 10AM, an Apple tech-head appeared in an all-white meeting room on the first floor of building 4 of the firm’s antiseptic headquarters with strict instructions to find an Earl Grey tea bag.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Saw an article from, I forget where, that they connected, IIRC, 42 devices to all the available Mac Pro ports. If one were to be doing serious video work, one would think that having a muti-terabyte external RAID storage system, wouldn’t be a big deal. And having a DVD burner connected to it even less of an issue.
What Leonard210 then immediately claims:
ONE suicide, ONE YEAR LATER has Steve Jobs claiming that there were THIRTEEN suicides in the FIRST SIX MONTHS of the FOLLOWING YEAR.
Clearly, Leonard210 lies. Over and over, every source says "attempted", while Leonard overlooks it. Suicide means dead. Attempted means still alive. Leonard210, please stop your nonsense, it's ridiculous.
I got a chuckle out that one. So true. I like a few of the Apple products, but the Apple fanboy worshipers just crack me up. If their marketing came up with an "iTurd", 200,000 idiots would buy it.
I was in a backpacking store a few years ago, picking up some supplies. One item you need for long treks is a 3-4 inch plastic trowel for burying your poop. They are lightweight and help you bury it at the appropriate depth for nature to best decompose the poop.
I looked at one that met my approval, and checked the tag for the price. The brand name was iPooed.
I just HAD to get that one.
Thank you, I overlooked that. It’s clear that Steve Jobs was concerned about suicides at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. The number wasn’t my issue, it was Swordmakers. His premise all along has been that everyone except Apple had a problem, but Steve Jobs was clearly saying that Apple was involved.
iPad and iPhone production was in overdrive at the time and all fingers were pointing to Apple and their last minute production requirements along with the natural tendency for the Communist Chinese managers to over promise and push teenage workers beyond their limits. That’s what I’ve been finding in my research. Maybe you’ve found something different. Let me know.
For the record, I know that Apple isn’t the only one involved in all the issues I’ll be discussing in the coming months. It’s the mindless belief that Apple, and particularly Steve Jobs, was pure as snow in all these matters. Worse, that he possessed messianic characteristics that I only ascribe to Christ. And I’m sorry, that is exactly what Swordmaker has been implying for years.
Let's have cooler heads in these matters. There is no "mindless" belief. No one, absolutely no one on the planet believes Steve Jobs was pure as snow. Even Jobs himself said as much to his biographer.
What I do know is that Apple has been unfairly maligned, because they are "King of the mountain" and the media tend to ignore other corporations that have far dirtier hands. Practically every computer manufacturer that has ties to Foxconn/HonHai is overlooked, despite contributing to the problems that the media focused on. Because Apple had the limelight shone on them, they did something about helping Foxconn alleviate the "problems", problems that in fact are not serious as compared to other manufacturing areas. This is a relatively clean industry that thousands want to work at performing, as compared to mining and other far more stressful jobs. If you want to fix the world, then complain about diamond mines. Apple and Jobs spoke because of media attention foisted upon them, not because they're guilty of anything.
You're making mountains out of molehills.
” Let’s have cooler heads in these matters. There is no “mindless” belief. No one, absolutely no one on the planet believes Steve Jobs was pure as snow. Even Jobs himself said as much to his biographer.”
I’m sorry, you are wrong. I was maligned for years because I used Apple products. Here and other places. But what I found here was a singular obsessive belief that Steve Jobs was pure in motive and in deed. It is that obsession and the invective by which it is defended by Swordmaker that has attracted trolls to these threads for years.
“What I do know is that Apple has been unfairly maligned, because they are “King of the mountain” and the media tend to ignore other corporations that have far dirtier hands.”
That’s funny, because I heard the same thing 20 years ago because they were NOT king of the mountain.
“Practically every computer manufacturer that has ties to Foxconn/HonHai is overlooked, despite contributing to the problems that the media focused on. Because Apple had the limelight shone on them, they did something about helping Foxconn alleviate the “problems”, problems that in fact are not serious as compared to other manufacturing areas.”
Come on, I had no interest in this stuff a month ago but since then I’ve pulled hundreds of articles from as far back as 2007 and no one has been saying that Apple is the only one involved. Here at FR, however, Swordmaker has been saying that Apple is the only one who IS NOT involved.
Just on this one issue on this very thread he said that nothing was happening at Foxconn Apple, it was all those other evil doers who were having kids jump from roofs. Then, just a few posts up, he said there was only one suicide at Foxconn Apple and everything else was those other evil doers. But Steve Jobs said, as you pointed out, there were 13 (if you count attempted) suicides in 6 months. What does that mean? There were 7 and 6? 1 and 12? Regardless, it was Steve Jobs saying APPLE was all over the problem. Not my words, I sent you a video of Steve Jobs being interviewed by two very sympathetic journalists.
“This is a relatively clean industry that thousands want to work at performing, as compared to mining and other far more stressful jobs. If you want to fix the world, then complain about diamond mines. Apple and Jobs spoke because of media attention foisted upon them, not because they’re guilty of anything.”
See, that’s the point. You don’t know that. Apple said for years that they were on top of their suppliers, but who was over there in 2007, 2008, 2009? This may be an enterprise zone, but it is still located in Communist China. Independent groups, all of which you and I would consider leftist, were the only groups that ever tried to get eyes into Foxconn. They were saying that even though Apple was claiming oversight, there was none. Suicides, or attempted suicides, brought American cameras. It has happened in every industry in history. You can only push people so far, no matter how much you pay them. Apple and Foxconn are learning what the limits are only because of national attention. For a company that claimed the high ground, they sure seemed to be taking a low road to get there. That’s why the attention is on Apple. They claimed moral superiority.
I promise, we’ll discuss these issues in the coming months. In the mean time, if you want cooler heads, why not drop the pejoratives. I respond the way I am responded to. That’s not going to change.
He lies by claiming I never post links because my facts are lies. LOL! He must be blind. I've linked and proved my facts. He keeps posting and linking the same things, over and over. . . and calling names. Since he refuses to give me the dignity of mine. . . he looses the courtesy in return.
". . .It’s clear that Steve Jobs was concerned about suicides at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . .
which I keep pointing out, providing linked article after linked article, WITH ACTIVE LINKS TO ORIGINAL SOURCES IN THE TITLES (which Loonard is too inept to notice, or doesn't want to find), as a matter of fact, as he keeps citing and claiming as fact,—except for a single suicide related to a case of industrial espionage involving a lost iPhone prototype in July of 2009—there have been no
" . . .suicides at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . .
None, ZIP! NADA! ZERO! That is an easily checked fact. And that espionage case was at an Hon Hai Company engineering facility, involved a mid-level engineer, and not a FoxConn manufacturing facility. . . I.e., not analogous to the assembly line issues.
These facts have been reported in many news reports. I've posted and linked many of them on this forum and even this thread. . . But Loonard can't seem to comprehend the quotations from sources, find the links, or be bothered to read them. . . or if he does believes I'm a Svengali and I've somehow convinced the authors to lie for me.
Yet, despite the fact that these suicides occurred at a plant manufacturing Microsoft X-Boxes and Nokia Phones and NOT any kind of Apple products (proven multiple times in HUNDREDS OF SOURCED ARTICLES EASILY FOUND IN GOOGLE SEARCHES!!!!!), Loonard has the Gaul to claim, against all facts:
"iPad and iPhone production was in overdrive at the time and all fingers were pointing to Apple and their last minute production requirements along with the natural tendency for the Communist Chinese managers to over promise and push teenage workers beyond their limits. That’s what I’ve been finding in my research. Maybe you’ve found something different. Let me know."
Loonard is making up his "facts" just like those who owned those pointing fingers Made up their facts that are contrary to reality. . . and completely ignores news reports in favor of propaganda. . . how do we know? Because the people who killed themselves DID NOT COMMIT THEIR
" . . .suicides at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . .
so, logic dictates, that any production pressure brought by FoxConn management for the of the products at that plant, were brought on behalf of MICROSOFT and NOKIA!
He prefers to ignore published financial reports, sworn testimony, published documents, and instead to go-round-the-barn to find HIS truth in innuendo and hints found in his interpretation of phrases and comments taken out of context and his mis-construed distortions of the meanings of technical terms to come to any off-the-wall conclusion after mixing those with his pre-conceived myths and propaganda he's heard through the "everyone knows network", so long as it makes Apple look bad.
". . .It’s clear that Steve Jobs was concerned about suicides at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . .
It's absolutely amazing that Loonard finds "clear" something Steve Jobs does not say in the entire interview when he discusses the suicide issue at FoxConn. Not once did Steve Jobs say one word that even implied the suicides were
". . . at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . .
No, gentlemen, I re-watched the interview twice. Jobs did not. In fact, far from "incriminating himself," as Loonard has proclaimed, Jobs rather discussed the problems of another company in Apple's supply chain (and referenced others), and commented on the steps Apple was taking to see what help they could offer to this other company , "in Apple's supply chain." There was a distinct differentiation between "them" (the other company - FoxConn) and "we" (Apple) in Jobs' comments that Loonard cannot seem to comprehend, arguing to me and others this interview segment was proof Apple somehow built, owned, managed, and misused FoxConn factories.
Loonard is quite specific in his altered history. The suicides our resident Loonard claims are:
". . . suicides at plants that were manufacturing Apple products."
Except for the one suicide that I documented for Loonard, involving the lost iPhone prototype in July 2009, simply DID NOT HAPPEN
". . . at plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . ."
and instead, there actually were
". . . suicides at plants that were manufacturing. . ."
Microsoft and Nokia products several hundred miles away from any FoxConn
". . . plants that were manufacturing Apple products. . .
It’s the mindless belief that Apple, and particularly Steve Jobs, was pure as snow in all these matters. Worse, that he possessed messianic characteristics that I only ascribe to Christ. And I’m sorry, that is exactly what Swordmaker has been implying for years.
The degree of scholarly research being demonstrated by Loonard, is abysmal. Demonization is not a good approach. . . nor is it very Christian. Having posted and linked articles that held both viewpoints and neither over many years doing the mostly thankless job of maintaining the Apple/Mac/IPhone/iOS PING list and putting up with the attacks from Jackasses such as Loonard, his inferring something I have NEVER implied nor claimed is HIS problem, but his DISTORTION of history to put words in a dead man's mouth IS reprehensible. As a factual historian, given his apparent inability to comprehend written English and the plainly written facts in literally hundreds of articles chronicling the events surrounding the Hon Hai/FoxConn events, and his proven tactic of distorting easily quoted actual words into something that WAS NOT said or implied, and his misrepresentation of data, he sucks. As a propagandist, frankly, he's not good at that either.
It's very obvious that Loonard sees things either black or white. . . no shades of gray. I hope he gets the help he so desperately needs.
Loonard is like the fellow who is down on his hand and knees frantically searching the grass under the light post in the park late one night. . . A man and woman come along and the woman says "What are you looking for?""I was on my way to ask my girl to marry me!" The frantic man says, scratching through the high grass. "I took the diamond ring out of my pocket to look at it and it flipped out of my hand! I've got to find it! It cost me $5000!!" And I can't as my girl without it!
"Oh, my god!” Said the woman, dropping to her knees. "We'll help!"
The man with her soon organized them into searching specific areas, being an organized type. Soon, there are a half dozen people searching.
After a half-an-hour of fruitless searching, the man said, "We've looked everywhere. Let's talk this through."
He turns to the distraught young man. "Exactly where were you walking and how did you move when the ring flipped out of your hand?"
The young man looked puzzled. . . Scratched his head. . . Then said, "Lemme see, I pulled the ring out of my jeans with my right hand and it sorta flipped toward the right. . . and I was walking about two hunnert feet over that away, down by the pond!"
"What!?!?" cried the first woman. The man just stood there, dumbfounded. "Why were you looking for the ring HERE????"
"I couldn't see. . . There ain't no light down there!”
“Kara: Do you have any comments about what’s going on at Foxconn, because of all the press.”
“Jobs: Oh sure, we’re pretty on the top of that. I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry and maybe in any industry of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain. We’re extraordinarily diligent and extraordinarily transparent about it. You can go on our website and read our report that we publish once a year. And we go into these suppliers and we go into their secondary and tertiary suppliers. Places where nobody’s ever gone before and audited them before. We’re pretty rigorous about it.”
So I can tell you a few things that we know. And we’re all over this. Foxconn is not a sweatshop. I mean, you go to this place and, it’s a factory, but my gosh, I mean they’ve got restaurants, and movie theaters, and hospitals, and swimming pools, I mean it’s a, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory. But they’ve had, if you count the attempted suicides, 13 so far this year. And while that is still, they have four hundred thousand people in this place, so 13 out of four hundred thousand is 26 per year, so far, for four hundred thousand people or you know lets say 7 per hundred thousand people. That’s still under the US suicide rate of 11 per hundred thousand people but it’s really troubling.”
Full-length interview of Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D8 conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, June 7, 2010 (Steve Jobs asked about Foxconn by Kara Swisher at 19:06)
http://live.wsj.com/video/allthingd/70F7CC1D-FFBF-4BE0-BFF1-08C300E31E11.html
Roadcat pointed out that Steve Jobs used the word “attempted” suicides. So Steve Jobs was not copping to actual dead teenagers (I stand corrected), he was copping to 13 teenagers who “tried to be dead” from January to June 2010. That’s a cluster and Steve Jobs knew it. And he knew that you don’t blow off a suicide cluster even if the kids didn’t make it to dead.
He attempted to minimize the importance of the numbers, just as you did, but you don’t erect suicide nets and set up suicide hotlines if you don’t think there is, at the very least, a massive PR problem should any more kids hit the cement.
And you don’t self incriminate.
Steve Jobs was not talking about Nokia or Microsoft or HP or Sony, he was talking about Apple Inc’s response to the suicide “attempts” in Apple Inc’s supply chain...at Foxconn.
When I began checking your sources in 2010 I asked off your precious ping list because I noticed what you were saying and what your source was saying didn’t match. I have plenty of time, so there’s no need to get your panties in such a bunch. We will be examining all your assertions in due time.
Where I am wrong, I will correct myself. But you are much too hotheaded and dishonest to trust. I’ll check your sources thoroughly and post what I find in the same respectful manner that you have exhibited toward me.
No, Leonard210, you do not respond as a normal person does. You are unhinged and psychotic. Your brain is fried and has short circuits. I responded that no one believes Steve Jobs was pure as snow. Your response is that you found a singular obsessive belief that he was pure in motive and in deed, and that attracted trolls like you to these threads. Yet you offer absolutely no proof, none whatsoever.
You are a troll, evil in motive and deed. You're a troublemaker who twists statements given to you, and spits them back in unrecognizable form.
Because you do not respond in normal fashion (despite your lies to the contrary), this will be the last time I respond directly to you. You are beyond hope, you are pathetic. Crawl out from under your rock, I will step around you, as I do not wish to soil my shoes. Pejoratives enough.
I post in context and link every one of my quotes to their source. I realize that’s something that you are not familiar with in Nikkoland. You started by posting pejoratives, found a minor flaw in my reading and I have since corrected it. Yet rather than debate Steve Jobs actual words, you revert to pejoratives.
“Kara: Do you have any comments about what’s going on at Foxconn, because of all the press.”
“Jobs: Oh sure, we’re pretty on the top of that. I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry and maybe in any industry of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain. We’re extraordinarily diligent and extraordinarily transparent about it. You can go on our website and read our report that we publish once a year. And we go into these suppliers and we go into their secondary and tertiary suppliers. Places where nobody’s ever gone before and audited them before. We’re pretty rigorous about it.”
So I can tell you a few things that we know. And we’re all over this. Foxconn is not a sweatshop. I mean, you go to this place and, it’s a factory, but my gosh, I mean they’ve got restaurants, and movie theaters, and hospitals, and swimming pools, I mean it’s a, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory. But they’ve had, if you count the attempted suicides, 13 so far this year. And while that is still, they have four hundred thousand people in this place, so 13 out of four hundred thousand is 26 per year, so far, for four hundred thousand people or you know lets say 7 per hundred thousand people. That’s still under the US suicide rate of 11 per hundred thousand people but it’s really troubling.”
Full-length interview of Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D8 conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, June 7, 2010 (Steve Jobs asked about Foxconn by Kara Swisher at 19:06)
http://live.wsj.com/video/allthingd/70F7CC1D-FFBF-4BE0-BFF1-08C300E31E11.html
Roadcat pointed out that Steve Jobs used the word “attempted” suicides. So Steve Jobs was not copping to actual dead teenagers (I stand corrected), he was copping to 13 teenagers who “tried to be dead” from January to June 2010. That’s a cluster and Steve Jobs knew it. And he knew that you don’t blow off a suicide cluster even if the kids didn’t make it to dead.
He attempted to minimize the importance of the numbers, just as you did, but you don’t erect suicide nets and set up suicide hotlines if you don’t think there is, at the very least, a massive PR problem should any more kids hit the cement.
And you don’t self incriminate.
Steve Jobs was not talking about Nokia or Microsoft or HP or Sony, he was talking about Apple Inc’s response to the suicide “attempts” in Apple Inc’s supply chain...at Foxconn.
Your argument is with Saint Steven of Cupertino and Chief Inspector Jacques Clouswordmaker, not me.
There’s a new thread about called “Beyond Rosy Jobs Forecasts”:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3155057/posts
Wonder how long before this troll jumps on it, saying there were never any truly rosy forecasts by Jobs? Slow day.
"He attempted to minimize the importance of the numbers, just as you did, but you don’t erect suicide nets and set up suicide hotlines if you don’t think there is, at the very least, a massive PR problem should any more kids hit the cement.
And you don’t self incriminate.
Steve Jobs was not talking about Nokia or Microsoft or HP or Sony, he was talking about Apple Inc’s response to the suicide “attempts” in Apple Inc’s supply chain...at Foxconn.Who erected suicide nets? Who set up suicide hotlines? Steve Jobs? Apple? Loonard claims that Steve Jobs admitted somewhere in the penumbra of this interview that it was Apple and he that erected the suicide nets and established suicide hotlines at FoxConn . . . Perhaps it was in the uplifted left eyebrow twitch at 20:34 into the interview that these admissions can be interpreted by adepts of the South Eastern Indian eyebrow tic code language that Steve Jobs learnt while in the Ashram, but which has been forgotten to conscious mind because it was only shortly after having been initiated into the arcane eyebrow code, that Steve took his first pink LSD sugar-cube which dropped those eye-brow code skills into his subconscious, where they surface occasionally to reveal his deepest thoughts such as 2003's revolutionary Apple product the iGame rumor which took the world by storm, THE 2004 rumor of the iFM add-on for the iPod, the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 rumors of the iTV, and this "true fact of Loonard's."
According to Loonard, Steve Jobs admitted erecting the suicide nets at Apple Inc's FoxConn manufacturing facility. You know, the manufacturing plants Apple "built," "owns", "manages," and where, according to Loonard, Apple lords it over its wholly-owned iSerfs and probably disciplines with an OSX-o-nine-tails, if they misbehave.
Loonard's hallucinogenic premise is that Steve Jobs admitted this culpability, and "self-incriminated," to use Loonard's erroneous canard, by erecting, or ordering the building of, these anti-suicide nets at "their" factory in a video interview. He infers, using LoonardLogic (TM), because these jumper catcher nets were erected, that "Apple" must have done the erection, then further that "Apple" in erecting the nets, are demonstrating by that act, knew that "Apple," and "Steve Jobs" had a problem at this "Apple's manufacturing plant." He then extends this to be "self-incrimination." I.E., a criminal knowledge that should not be admitted, which an attorney would have, should have somehow prevented the utterance. This, in essence is Loonard's premise and argument, stripped of numbers and details. . . Basically, Steve Jobs self-incriminated, himself by (1) talking about the suicide issue, and (2) erecting anti-suicide netting to prevent workers from committing suicide; thereby showing that Apple knew about it, was concerned, and he said they were considering what to do about it. . . and something was done. . . Ergo, Apple must have done it.
Therefore, using LoonardLogic (TM), it must follow that since this is certifiably truly a photo of the man who actually DID erect the anti-suicide nets on his company's, FoxConn's Szhenschou Factory buildings, then according to LoonardLogic's (TM) distorted viewpoint, which requires that Steve Jobs and Apple erected the nets, this absolutely must be a photo of Steve Jobs:
Steve Jobs. . . according to LoonardLogic (TM)Wait, hold on a minute, students of LoonardLogic! That doesn't look like Steve. No wire rim glasses. . . No buzz cut hair. . . No two day beard? NO TURTLE NECK! He doesn't look like death-warmed-over! He looks too damn healthy! It can't be Steve Jobs! This guy's not even Caucasian! He's Asian! It's a fake Steve!
Oh, it isn't Steve Jobs? Nope. 'Tain't. Only a deluded person would make that mistake!
Oh. . . Wait. . .
We have one of those. . . around here somewhere. . .
Since it isn't Steve Jobs. . . then who DID erect the nets on FoxConn buildings? Who else. . . One of the owners. . . and the CEO. . . and the man who SHOULD do it, not one of his customers! "Who?" You ask.
Why, I answer, only the founder and CEO of the largest electronics manufacturer in the world (< — that's a link to the source article of the photograph), who Loonard would have you believe is incapable of doing anything without the permission of . . .who? One of FoxConn's many customers? Apparently.
Still laughing. . . Self-made Multi-Billionaire Terry Gou needing Apple to install nets on his company's buildings. ROTFLMAO! And Loonard claiming Apple owns and controls Gou's businesses. . . That's the funniest of all.
Wanna bet Loonard will STILL deny it? What will he claim? That Apple owns Gou? Gou's a puppet? Is he their token Asian? Will he claim Apple owns a controlling interest in Hon Hai. . . or in FoxConn Group? Uh uh. Won't fly. Gou by himself owned 15% worth about $5.9 billion in 2010, Taiwanese pension funds owned approximately 60%, and another 18% was owned by financial institutions (banks, insurance companies). . . balance of 7% was in other hands. Could it have been Apple's hands? That's not been reported, but even if it was, it's not a controlling percentage, nor has such an investment ever shown up on Apple's 10-K, and it would have to, nor is it listed as an asset, and again, it would have to be listed. Ergo, no evidence Apple holds any equity position in Hon Hai or FoxConn.
“I’ve decided to ping the Apple ping list to let you folks see, again, what damage a true TROLL does to polite discussion.” Swordmaker from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3134377/posts?page=260#260
In which Swordmaker pontificates on suicide rates amongst the entire Foxconn workforce, the entire Chinese population, the entire teenaged population in the United States and a college that he attended. He provides no sources, however, except one link which makes an erroneous connection to Cornell University.
If people across China were killing themselves in such massive numbers, Steve Jobs should have anticipated jumpers and demanded placement of suicide nets well before they started jumping from the buildings making his products. In fact, they should have been covered in bubble-wrap as they entered the facility.
There is no one who knows exactly what went on in those factories except the people who were in them. And contrary to what may have been implied, the press is and has been as Apple friendly in the past 10 years as the media has been toward Barack Obama. They become complicit when they repeat specious comparisons designed by Apple to misdirect your attention from a suicide cluster at facilities that were making their products, or as Swordmaker contends, NOT making their products but we need to make suicide comparisons none-the-less.
HP! Microsoft! Nokia! Sony! Squirrel!
We’re asking a company, which is known for its secrecy, to have their CEO, who is known for his pathological dissembling, to tell us what he knows about some damaging reports allegedly linked to factories making his products, in highly secured electronics facilities, located in a Communist country. You know, just like Cornell.
Here is the entire section of the interview from the D8 Conference in June 2010 when Steve Jobs was asked about Foxconn. This was an slow pitch softball interview. Besides the fact that these were Apple friendly journalists, Steve Jobs was about a year away from his death, and he looked it. They didn’t press him, nor do I believe they should have.
Kara: “Do you have any comments about what’s going on at Foxconn, because of all the press.”
Jobs: “Oh sure, we’re pretty on the top of that. I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry and maybe in any industry of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain. We’re extraordinarily diligent and extraordinarily transparent about it. You can go on our website and read our report that we publish once a year. And we go into these suppliers and we go into their secondary and tertiary suppliers. Places where nobody’s ever gone before and audited them before. We’re pretty rigorous about it.”
“So I can tell you a few things that we know. And we’re all over this. Foxconn is not a sweatshop. I mean, you go to this place and, it’s a factory, but my gosh, I mean they’ve got restaurants, and movie theaters, and hospitals, and swimming pools, I mean it’s a, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory. But they’ve had, if you count the attempted suicides, 13 so far this year. And while that is still, they have four hundred thousand people in this place, so 13 out of four hundred thousand is 26 per year, so far, for four hundred thousand people or you know lets say 7 per hundred thousand people. That’s still under the US suicide rate of 11 per hundred thousand people but it’s really troubling.”
Kara: “Right. It’s in one place too, it’s in one...”
Walt: “It’s not like a whole country...”
Jobs: “Well, measured by numbers of people. So we had this in my home town of Palo Alto, we’ve had some copy cat suicides where high school kids have committed suicide by throwing themselves in front of Amtrak, and it’s very troubling. So we’re over there trying to understand what’s happening and more importantly trying to understand how we can help, because it’s a difficult situation. They’ve got a lot of workers who are leaving very poor rural areas, coming to these factories, away from home for the first time, 19 years old, they’re probably less prepared to leave home than your typical high school student going to college in this country. So I think there’s some real issues there.”
Kara: “And you all are bringing in psychiatrists or...”
Jobs: “We’re trying to understand right now, before we go in and say we know the solution we need to understand what the problem is.”
Walt: “So you have teams of but what kind of folks do you send over there, I mean do they have to be some kind of social workers or what do you send over there to find out, or just lawyers, or what.”
Jobs: “No, not lawyers. [laughter] We send over, first of all, our own people that have been going over there for a long time and are very familiar with them and second, we’ve hired some outside folks as well.”
Walt: “OK”
Kara: “OK”
Full-length interview of Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D8 Conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, June 7, 2010 (Steve Jobs asked about Foxconn by Kara Swisher at 19:06)
http://live.wsj.com/video/allthingd/70F7CC1D-FFBF-4BE0-BFF1-08C300E31E11.html
It’s clear that Steve Jobs was trying to deflect this issue away from Apple. It’s also clear that it wasn’t working and that Apple had to give the appearance that they were “all over it” for public relations purposes. They started to challenge him on his false equivalence but stopped out of reverence, or something. And then there’s this explanation.
Implausible Deniability
“As Steve Jobs said, “We”, the FoxConn customers, including Apple, in fact most importantly Apple, from the BOARD OF DIRECTORS viewpoint, using the Royal and Corporate We, speaking for the board “are on top of it.” That does not mean from an OWNERSHIP perspective. . . but from an interested party view. And, I repeat, Steve Jobs referred to “their” FoxConn’s suicide problem, not “our” Apple’s suicide problem.” Swordmaker from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3134377/posts?page=279#279
When someone parses words like Jim Jones looking for verses to justify a Kool-Aid party, you know something’s wrong.
If my associates and I hire Goomba’s Inc. to explain some accounting error to you, and THEY send two guys to explain our financial arrangement, but THEY get a little over zealous and allegedly throw you off of a roof, you’re going to be rather disturbed at US, assuming you survive. But WE had nothing to do with THEM allegedly throwing you off the roof. THEY may have gotten caught up in the moment. THEY were victims of a difficult childhood, after all. THEY were just reenacting a rather effective scene from a De Niro movie and had no intention of causing you any harm. WE have a crack team of investigators looking into this, but you can’t blame US for a problem that THEY obviously have in controlling THEIR employees.
I will bet that when and if YOU recover YOU’RE still going to blame the Royal WE and sue the t-shirts off of US.
Apple Lexicon
Extraordinarily Transparent: Incredibly Taciturn
from The Apple Lexicon (™) Interpreting Apple Theology Since 1994
Why are you here?
You are on a dead thread. If you’re here and not a Swordmaker groupie, welcome. If you read the verbose tirades that Swordmaker posts about me, I ask only that you take the time to find my actual words and compare them with his twisted description. He rarely provides a link, but if there is one, go there and see if it says what he claims.
The premise of this branch of the thread was that Apple pays Democrats (directly and indirectly) to OVER regulate American business and then shelter themselves from those regulations by producing their products in China (and other countries).
Rather than creating better factories in the United States, with more innovative approaches to labor and the environment, or to push back against regulations that they felt were too intrusive, they moved to China. Instead of employing half a million Americans in modern, clean, high quality facilities, they chose to employ 10 million Chinese fingers in massive Cabrini Green style campuses in China. Instead of brilliant 21st century solutions employing American workers, they chose a return to the production standards of the 1800’s with a few swimming pools, a coffee shop, and better landscaping. In return you got an iPad with an OS that harkens back to the 1980’s, and Barack Obama.
This thread focuses on Apple. The same could be said of any tech company, or for that matter, most companies. Apple groupies, however, have assured us that Apple is singularly moral in all its ways. While other companies made decisions based on greed and the desire to spread human misery, Apple and Steve Jobs were a paradigm of virtue; elevating the human condition, saving the planet, redeeming the very soul of mankind. And they’re a Conservative company to boot!
I challenged this version of Apple and Saint Steve Jobs which has been promulgated by Swordmaker and Apple groupies worldwide. He refused to provide ANY documentation for ANY of his proclamations and told me several times to look into them myself. Here’s a sample:
“I told you, I am not going to hand you everything I know, or the sources on a silver platter. . . you would STILL find some nit to pick even if I presented it with everything wrapped up with a red satin bow! Find it for yourself, then you’ll know its a fact! I’m not going to spend the time digging it out for you.” Swordmaker from http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3134377/posts?page=182#182
Gee, I’d hate for someone to make authoritative declarations, highly seasoned with insults and invective, and actually provide, you know, sources to back them up.
I appreciate the challenge however. It will keep me busy in my old age. You will find that I post my sources, in context, including quotes from Swordmaker, while he prefers long tirades, out of context and sparsely sourced. C’est la vie.
So that’s why I’m here. Why are you here?
Well, some people who reply to you about Apple and their products are simply idiots ... and that’s the beginning and the end of the explanation.
Well, Star Traveler, that certainly explains the last post from Leonard210 on this thread, does it not? Who else but an idiot could have come up with this gem:
"If people across China were killing themselves in such massive numbers, Steve Jobs should have anticipated jumpers and demanded placement of suicide nets well before they started jumping from the buildings making his products. In fact, they should have been covered in bubble-wrap as they entered the facility."The entire post is an exercise in idiocy. When you read it, you can feel neurons dying. . . murdered by non-existent "facts," repetitious links to the same limited sources—as though echoes of the same mis-interpreted information helps his case, and blind leaps off the precipice of illogical conclusions based on his distortions of what was written.
My problem with Leonard's whole position remains that it has been very well established and documented that except for the first suicide in July of 2009 of a mid-level engineering associate at a FoxConn engineering office that involved the apparent disappearance an iPhone prototype in what was probably industrial espionage, ALL the other suicides occurred at manufacturing facilities manufacturing Sony PlayStation game consoles, Nokia cellular phones, and Microsoft X-Box Game Systems. If Leonard is seeking prescience in CEOs, where is his high dudgeon that Kazuo Hirai, CEO of Sony, Stephan Elop, CEO of Nokia, and Steve Balmer had not ". . . demanded placement of suicide nets well before they started jumping from the buildings making (their) products. . . " The facts support that conclusion MUCH better than Leonard's conclusion that Steve Jobs should have pre-ordered nets on building where no suicides ever had or ever would occur, except in Leonard's and the press's cynically confabulated imagination. As has been pointed out numerous times, the press uses Apple to generate clicks. Man when doesn't work for FoxConn kills himself. Apple's Fault?
“Well, some people who reply to you about Apple and their products are simply idiots ... and that’s the beginning and the end of the explanation.”
The response you received makes your point quite well. Who on earth believes that you own every aspect of the “Foxconn suicides,” as Steve Jobs did, if this company wasn’t even producing your products?
You better hide now, Swordmaker has a tendency to call out the entire Apple ping list if he catches anyone actually reading my posts. Afraid yet?
Brilliant Swordsy! Post a link to an article about suicides in 2013 when referring to a post about suicides in 2010. You are absolutely correct in your assumption that none of your groupies will actually follow the links you post. You rock!
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