Might make more of a social comment if Hugh visited the factory where ipohnes get made. They are made in a city in China called Shenzen, a huge city that resembles Hong Kong, except no building is more than 35 years old. In 1979 Shenzen was just a small village of a few dozen people, now it's a city of 14 million people and it's where 90% of the worlds electronics get made. It's a manufactured city full of electronics factories, that employ millions of impoverished Chinese on slave wages, who work horrendous hours in monotonous, repetitive jobs that often leave the workers with vision problems and carpel tunnel syndrome. This is because your iphone is hand made. Every single microscopic component is attached to the motherboard by hand. Nothing in Shenzen gets made by robots if it can be made by hand. People are cheaper than robots. The company that makes the iphones for apple (and many others) is called foxconn. Foxconn, who you've probably never heard of, is the worlds largest maker of electronic components. Their factory in Shenzen employs FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND people. It has eight canteens, each capable of feeding 10,000 people at a time. Workers are required to work their 16 hour shifts in silence. The workers sleep in dormitories, rooms 12' x 12' stacked with 16 bunk beds each. Suicides are so common at the factory, foxconn have erected nets all around in an attempt to catch the jumpers. Most employees at he foxconn factory have never seen an iphone actually switched on.
[video=youtube;ddU8rV7_Qis]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddU8rV7_Qis[/video]
The suicide nets....
Do you think the exectives at apple are aware of these conditions? Of course they are. It's not just the iphone though. Pretty much everything you own that is electronic, is made in Shenzen and all the factories are the same. Now you know too. Think about it next time you buy something that runs on batteries.