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Foxconn Thinks the iPhone 5 Is a Pain
pigrabbitbear writes "China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn, is now taking the fall for the iPhone 5 shortage that's annoyed consumers and worried investors in recent weeks. What's the holdup? They don't have enough parts? They're training new line workers? They're too busy trying to regain control of their factories after employees started rioting? Nah. According to the company, the iPhone 5 is just a huge pain to put together. That bit about the riots is a little bit true, too, though."
Foxconn may say the iphone5 is a pain, but I think the workers getting paid peanuts for 80 hours shifts might have a different idea of what 'pain' means. Besides, how much quality assembly is really possible when your workforce is bleary-eyed and exhausted? I bet there's a lot of QA rejects and extra controls required to keep quality from plummeting.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They can't build robots capable of the same wide variety of fine, rapid movements as people. Assembling the device robotically would require a large number of purpose build machines to carry out each step. That would add years to the amount of time it takes to bring a product to market, which is unacceptable in consumer electronics.
I have no interest in defending Foxconn or Apple for the conditions in their factories, but yes, this article (and others on that site) is so flawed and snarky it's barely worth crediting.
My favorite gems:
The company had been running an internship program that put 14- to 16-year-old children on the factory floor
And the link they reference in that quote (to anther article on their OWN site) says it was vocational interns (16+) and college students (18+). So more accurate would be "16 to 22". You'd think they could quote their own articles correctly.
Also from that article referenced: The suicide rate at Foxconn is still lower than that of the general population in China, but striking for its concentration among a group of workers at a single company.
Wha?? Someone failed basic statistics. If the rate is lower over a population (where "rate" = incidents/population), how is the concentration (eh, also incidents/population) striking? In fact, it's only striking because of the *anecdotes* sensationalized by stories like this...
Basic human rights and working conditions in China are a big problem, but it doesn't help the cause to make up facts and statistics that don't exist...
Contextualizing, it is likely that work environment should discourage suicide, maybe the rate is alarming compared against similar factories
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
Riiight that why all the assembly jobs are still in the US.
It's not really the money. China has something like a $70 price advantage on a US-built iPhone. Apple people would pay it.
What you get in China, is that the factory that makes those mini screws you need for the iPhone is just down the road. This doesn't happen in Oklahoma - the industries have all left. The logistics of doing it in the US are nearly impossible.
Second, if you wanted to build that screw factory, in China, you just grease the right palms and build a screw factory, maybe with State financial support. In the US you begin a 7-year permitting process.
In the city where my office is Red Lobster wanted to put a restaurant. One of their canned designs they've done a hundred of. After two years in the city planner's office, they were at a meeting and the planner decided that she didn't like the propane tank in the back of the proposed restaurant, because, she said, somebody could pull off on the Interstate and shoot it with a high powered rifle, and cause an explosion that would kill everybody in the restaurant. This has never happened, even in a Michael Bay movie, and there are a dozen other restaurants in the plaza with the same setup, but she decided that Red Lobster should bury an underground tank (in a flood plane) big enough for all the restaurants to share, and that would make the world a happier place. They told the planner to go to hell, walked out of the meeting, and never came back to town.
21st Century America - inexplicably uncompetitive.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
health care being tied to jobs hurts the USA for jobs and getting rid of that can give us more jobs hear.
Samzenpus, can you please do a better job on the submission approval process?
" China's largest electronics manufacturer, the already-loathed Foxconn ..."
First of all, Foxconn is from Taiwan, not China.
Second, no matter how much the submitter pigrabbitbear loaths Foxconn, the ill-feeling pigrabbitbear has towards Foxconn is NOT related to the story of TFA, and Samzenpus, the mod who approved the submit, should have known better than allowed "the already-loathed Foxconn" to pass through the approval process.
Slashdot is faltering, and it's not the users who has brought it down.
It's the moderators, such as Samzenpus, who have failed to carry out their job duty, in a professional manner.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !