Security officer suspended over iPhone engineer's death Following yesterday's news that a Chinese engineer committed suicide after misplacing a 4G iPhone prototype, a security officer involved in the death has been suspended from his job, and his case has been turned over to Chinese authorities. The engineer worked for Foxconn, which manufacturers iPhones on behalf of Apple, and …
Ouch, this seems to be taking an ugly turn, let's hope they get to the bottom of this and stamp this out as someone jumping to their death over the loss of a gadget is just ridiculous, especially if he got the gestapo treatment first.
iPhones have always been expensive but now it seems they are worth more than a person's life ?!?
So what happened was that after the prototype was misplaced/taken, and the engineeer was roughed up by the security guard for having not found it, the engineer went and told the board.
The board and the engineer both congenially concorded that the most appropriate thing the engineer could do (and this was just a matter of politeness) under the circumstances, would be to commit suicide.
There would be a cursory investigation to assure the media, and then it would all blow over.
Meanwhile, the protoype programme would be scrapped, and a new model with new features would have to be built.
" statement that Foxconn did not "authorize any person or department to violate the law" in the case of 25-year-old Sun Danyong " ???
Does this mean that Foxconn is able to authorise people to violate the law? Whao, things are certainly different in China, in the UK only the police have the right to violate the law (not really but they act that way).
This whole thing reminds me of the premise for the film I.Robot. Brilliant scientist in shiny white but strangely sinister organisation leaps to his death in mysterious circumstances.
What 's required is a Will Smith type character (someone with an intense dislike of Apple products) to investigate.
If you are a geek these days. Everything, or nearly everything you own is made in a Chinese sweatshop. Hard drives, motherboards, power supplies, virtually every MP3 player.
I can't vouch for Europe in general. But trying to buy any consumer electronics in the US, NOT made in China, or with Chinese parts is virtually impossible. The rare exceptions are not affordable for anyone of middle to moderate income.
So all the finger wavers about Apple the evil exploiter need to grow up and deal with the fact that 99% of our consumer goods are paid for with sweatshop blood. Everyone wants fair treatment for workers, but not if they can't buy $50 Microwave ovens or $200 televisions. Too many people don't remember when a watch or a TV or even a Vacuum cleaner "made domestically" was a serious expense you had to save for or buy on time payment plans.
There is a company in the US that makes a color TV. Its $2800. "doubtless with Chinese internals" The world is NOT beating a path to its door. A lot of us remember when a good computer cost as much as a decent car. But somehow you don't hear anyone here howling for the blood of the company that made their motherboard in the same or worse conditions than Foxconn.
So don't just look at Apple, Look at ALL the companies who sent the work to China and gave the economy of the world to a totalitarian dictatorship. NO company in the field of mass market consumer electronics is innocent. We all talk a good talk about it, but when push comes to shove, we gave up any pretense of humanitarian ethics long ago in the name of cheap consumer goods. We are ALL guilty.
Once upon a time there was a company called Curtis Mathes. They made electronics, including TVs. It was their proud boast that they were 'the most expensive TV in America... and worth it'. They built their stuff well, they built their stuff using local labor and not Asian sweatshops, they had four-year warranties which they honored without any fuss at all... and they went bust. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mathes>.
People don't want quality. People don't care how the workers making the products are treated. People merely care about the price.
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