I see that Apple are being criticised for getting products made overseas by what we see as slave labour. As bad as it seems for Chinese workers on the electronics production lines, it is probably a better life than they would otherwise get. I know that it is a poor excuse, but that is the way things are and have been for a considerable while.

When it comes to health and safety in the West, we are not always shining examples either. The excuse we use is that there are not enough people to police it all. A poor excuse too, wouldn’t you say.

It’s not just Apple. Say hi to other MAJOR customers of Foxconn..

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)  Apple Inc. (United States, ASRock (Taiwan) Asus (Taiwan)  Cisco (United States) Dell (United States) EVGA Corporation (United States) Hewlett-Packard (United States) Intel (United States) IBM (United States) Lenovo (China) Logitech (Switzerland) Microsoft (United States) MSI (Taiwan) Motorola (United States) Netgear (United States) Nintendo (Japan) Nokia (Finland)[28] Panasonic (Japan) Philips (Netherlands) Samsung (South Korea) Sharp (Japan) Sony (Japan) Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden) Toshiba (Japan)

So why pick on Apple? Because they made ‘loadsa money’ recently on the backs of workers who have little control over their working conditions? Is that a new concept? I think not..

How many don’t buy products from the above list because of Foxconn’s  treatment of its workers? I suspect not too many.

How many would be willing to pay maybe double to get production back into the USA or Japan? I suspect hardly any.

For my part, I think that the worst of the Apple uproar is that customers are paying premium prices for stuff coming out of the same production lines as the cheap stuff. How is the price split between quality and image? Now that is a scary thought..