This story is also about Apple not publicly acknowledging that they had to honor a 2 year warranty and doing that by default as well.
Apple is a manufacturer and also a seller. As manufacturer, they have no obligation to talk about sellers' obligations. As a seller, there isn't very much they have to say. In the UK, I think every store, Apple or anyone else, mentions somewhere that you have statutory rights, and sometimes they have to use words like "we don't accept returns on sales goods, but this doesn't affect your statutory rights". No obligation to say what these rights are.
The one situation where this is different is apparently, at least according to some Italian court, the case of selling AppleCare (or extended warranties). Apple always stated quite clearly what rights you have after buying AppleCare, but should have said more clearly (according to an Italian court) which rights you had without buying AppleCare, not in order to inform you of these rights, but in order that you can judge correctly what additional rights you get.
You also need to be aware that these EU guaranteed rights aren't worth much if your seller goes bankrupt, or if you move to a different country so making use of your rights is difficult. And of course, unlike the stupid article is stating, nothing has actually changed. When you buy a Mac at PCWorld, Apple just told you what rights you may have against PCWorld; you still have to judge for yourself how much effort it might be to make them fix your problem, compared to AppleCare.
Apple employs more than enough lawyers to help them determine whether offering their products for sale in a particular market would produce a fair result or not, so yes, the EU should force Apple to provide whatever it requires other manufacturers to provide to their customers.
Which is exactly zero. The EU doesn't force manufacturers to give any warranty at all. So Apple's ONE year warranty (read that, you idiot submitter? ONE year, not two!) is completely voluntarily (of course once you buy the product that warranty is part of the deal).
The EU does however the seller of a product to fix problems under certain conditions. So if you buy an iMac at PC World, the EU gives you rights against PC World, not against Apple. If you buy a Canon printer at an Apple Store, the EU gives you rights against Apple, not against Canon.
Not only an idiot, but a bloody f***ing stupid idiot of the highest magnitude.
Apple hasn't given in to any pressure, and Apple hasn't made any changes whatsoever. What Apple has done is presenting on a website what rights Apple customers have towards the seller of a product (whoever is the seller, and whoever makes the product), what rights Apple as the manufacturer voluntarily gives to buyers of Apple products (One year. ONE year. Not TWO years you bloody idiot submitter), and what rights Apple gives you if you pay for AppleCare.
So there is a serious bug in Adobe's Flash. An incorrect call to memcpy (not malloc). In my experience, at least 80% of all crashes and hangs on my Mac are due to Adobe Flash, so I'm not surprised.
iOS lives quite happily without Flash. Mac users live either quite happily without Flash, or they live quite happily with Flash crashing sometimes.
Alternative history of Apple: Apple engineer speeds up memcpy implementation. Does some serious application testing for compatibility. Talks to Steve Jobs. "So what have you been working on?" "I made the C library a few percent faster, which benefits all users. It makes Adobe Flash crash". Steve Jobs: Dies laughing.
So if I do something illegal and it would cost me time and/or money to just to stop being illegal then I don't need to stop! I guess I should start stealing stuff because if I stopped I would lose money compared to when I didn't steal!
I have in my past worked with German health and safety officers, and if there are problems where things happen that are against the law, but not an immediate danger, then companies will always be given time to fix problems, then they will be re-inspected and they will be fine as long as there is improvement, even if not all of the problems have been solved.
The reason why this is done is that German health and safety officers are probably more intelligent than the average slashdotter and they know that their job is not to uphold the letter of the law, but to create safe working environments. And to do that, they demonstrate not that they can punish companies that break the law, but that they can help companies to stay within rules that are there for a reason, and not just because they are the law.
And I may be the first to post this here, but in cases of emergencies where the company would suffer direct consequences if people cannot work overtime, then exceeding this 48 hour limit is actually legal in China. So starting from the f***ing article, the assumption that continuing with overtime while more people are getting employed would be illegal, is just wrong. It's like going over the speed limit is bad, but braking so hard that the car behind you crashes into you, just to get below the speed limit, is even worse.
So because Apple is trying to investigate and help, they are being attacked. If I ran Apple, it would be - lesson learned, don't try to help. At least if I didn't have any moral qualms...
You are making the false assumption that Apple gives a rats ass about people's opinions. They do that only to a tiny degree. Like with environmental issues, Apple was always a leader because (a) it is good karma and (b) it often saves cost to be environmentally friendly. They just didn't care about publicizing things. The same with treatment of workers: Apple has been doing a lot in the last years, long before anyone talked about it. One area has actually never been mentioned by the press at all: Employment agencies charging foreign employees several monthly salaries to get them a job. Apple actually made companies pay back many million dollars in such charges to their employees.
Summary: Apple doesn't work to improve working conditions because of anything the press, or some blogger, or some lying bastard on a radio show is saying, but because they want to improve working conditions. And they won't stop working on improving working conditions because of some 5troll 5flamebait article on Slashdot either.
As others have noted Foxconn is a sub-contractor of multiple companies so really Apple should not be the fall guy. But, this is China and personal freedoms are just not as valued and China is not a democracy.
Foxconn isn't anyone's subcontractor. Foxconn is a contractor. And only an idiot would put blame on Apple here because Apple is the company that hired FLA to do audits at Foxconn exactly for the purpose to find if everything is up to scratch there and to find and fix problems.
However, what is even more stupid is your claim "personal freedoms are just not as valued in China". Show me a Western country where working 48 hours a week is illegal.
I wonder which company asked FLA to perform an independent audit at Foxconn. That wouldn't be Apple. That couldn't possibly be Apple. Guess what: It was Apple.
Interesting choice of words, "overtime criminality". So people are working 60 hours a week and get paid for overtime. So what are things like in IT in the USA? I hear there are people working 60 hours a week as well, and not getting paid for overtime. In the games industry, there are people working 80 hours. In the medical profession, 80 hours seems to be the average in the USA (at least according to Wikipedia).
And you will find that Apple doesn't actually advertise the new iPad as having 4G in Europe. Only "super fast internet" which HSPA+ or whatever it is called should do. If you read the small print you then find that if you travel to a country with 4G, and buy a SIM card, then you can have 4G.
BTW. You can get a refund in Australia if you return the device. So you won't get any money back if you keep it. Basically Apple says "we are accused of misleading you. If you feel misled, then you can return the iPad. If you want to keep it, you are now informed what it does and what it doesn't do". And I think ITU has declared that HSPA+ now counts as 4G.
The media actually hardly ever publish what was written in cases like these. It's easier for the public to accept the judgement if they don't know the details.
It's a difficult matter. On the one hand, if we want to decide whether this judgement looks fair or unfair we'd need to know exactly what was said. On the other hand, reporting what he says does come close to repeating the crime.
He's an ass, and he's a racist, but I fail to see how this is "inciting racial hatred". Doesn't "incite" refer to encouraging an action? Like a riot, or lets do bad things to some people or something like that?
Use a dictionary: "incite" = encourage or stire up.
"hatred" = intense dislike or ill will.
No need to incite racist actions. Inciting hatred without action is enough.
You can be fired in most jurisdictions for lying on a resume, if it's proven, so I'd be carefull with that.
In Germany, you can't be fired for lying about things that the employer shouldn't have been asking. For example, if a female is asked in a job interview whether she is pregnant, instead of saying "I don't want to answer this" (no job), or saying "you shouldn't be asking this" (no job), she can just say "no" and get the job.
Anybody who feels comfortable demanding extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about assuming that anybody who isn't as transparent as the norm probably has something to hide.
Anybody who feels comfortable providing extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about providing strangers access to company confidential data, and should not be hired.
So how do you install the FOSS project for iOS without getting it approved by Apple, a company subject to U.S. patent law? Or are you going to go ahead and claim that $1,395 for a MacBook Air plus a four-year iOS developer license is still cheaper than what the patent holders are charging?
Apple isn't going to check whether some software is infringing on some patent. They will react if some patent holder makes claims, but they cannot proactively check for patent infringement. Especially since there are so many patents around that practically every bit of software will infringe on some patent.
If someone knows details, they could post what Apple's legal obligations and liabilities would be (a) if someone claims that some software on the App Store infringes on a patent they own, and (b) if someone actually proves it.
Again, just from the sake of probability, it's batshit insane to claim that out of the 25 PB of data, none of it was both legal and the only extant copy accessible to the uploader.
When you do any business with any company, there are risks involved. Your storage provider could just go bankrupt. The storage facility could be wiped out by a meteor. The storage provider could be accused of doing something illegal and there might be consequences affecting you. That's your risk. In the case of megaupload.com, the third risk should have looked quite high.
I used to work at Motorola. About twelve years ago, the president of the company (Chris Galvin) was upset at the number of employees who worked there who had cell phones from other vendors - Nokia being the chief sore spot at the time. Word came down from management that it was not a good idea for one's career to be using a non-Motorola phone for either personal or corporate use. To be fair, they did give us excellent discounts ongoing on Motorola phones, so it was pretty much a good thing.
That's quite idiotic. If they worried that too many Motorola employees bought non-Motorola phones with their own money, then they should have tried to make better phones.
Isn't it unreasonable to require a warranty longer than a year for a consumer product? Realistically, if the device you bought is defective you should realize it within a few months. But certainly a year is long enough to notice a defect and get a replacement/repair.
"Defective" doesn't mean "not working". Let's say a car manufacturer uses engines that will normally last for 200,000 miles. Unfortunately, the engine in the car that you bought has a tiny hair fracture which will cause it to fail after 100,000 miles. That engine will work without apparent problems for many years, but it is defective from the day you buy it. Or lets say the fan in your MacBook runs too slow, which means the wear and tear on the computer is higher than it should be, and as a result it fails within two years of normal use. The defect (fan running too slow) was there from day one.
Two things need to happen in the UK. We need better education of consumer protection laws, starting at school but also through government advertising and we to crack down on retailers who tell consumers it is out of warranty when legally it isn't.
And if we had better education then you wouldn't have written the second part as you did. First, you are confusing "warranty" with the Sales of Goods act. "Warranty" is whatever the manufacturer gives you voluntarily, which is whatever they decide, according to whatever rules they decide. The Sales of Goods act gives you statutory rights, which may be less or more than the manufacturers warranty, and it is the store which is responsible.
The important things are: The store is responsible to fix defects that were present when the item was sold, for a reasonable amount of time, and "reasonable" depends on the nature of the product. And after six months, _you_ have to prove that the product was defective when sold to get it fixed, while during the first six months, the store would have to prove that the product was not defective.
From the Apple Store: "De voordelen van het AppleCare Protection Plan zijn een aanvulling op de wettelijke rechten van de consumentenwetgeving die van kracht is in je rechtsgebied. " That's the same as in the UK Apple Store where it says "AppleCare Protection Plan benefits are in addition to any legal rights provided by consumer protection laws in your jurisdiction.".
This makes it absolutely clear what Apple is selling when you buy AppleCare: You have your one year warranty, you have whatever legal rights consumer protection laws in your country give you, and AppleCare provides the difference between these two rights and three years of warranty (plus a few other things). And I think it is obvious that Apple can sell whatever additional warranty they want to sell, at whatever price they want to sell it, and customers have the right to buy it or not to buy it. The important thing is that Apple states correctly what you get for your money.
The reason Apple labor is âoebest than the rest" is that Apple, thanks to these controversies (so some good came out of it anyways,) has made sure their assembly staff gets treated better. Foxcon has no reason to treat the assemblers for any other client any better, and they don't.
Total nonsense. The reason is that Apple has conducted a program for several years where they regularly audit companies to compare what happens with what Apple thinks should happen, with actual consequences (like forcing companies to pay back several million dollars that employees had paid to agents, quitting their contracts with companies that don't conform, etc. ). This is unlike for example Microsoft, which explicitly states that they rely on companies monitoring themselves whether they are compliant with Microsoft guidelines.
but here's the kicker: they're responsible for manufacturing defects forever! if the fault can be shown to have been a manufacturing defect(a defect present at sale) and it manifests itself 5 years later, they'll still have to fix it!
If it is an item that is reasonably expected to last for five years.
But AppleCare's warranties cover, what is already mandated by law, and the law requires that all warranties have to inform the prospective buyer about the legal protection he already has. And this is ommitted by AppleCare, thus it fraudulently sold a product to the buyer the buyer didn't really need.
In the UK, basically Apple would have to change their wording from "instead of the one year warranty you get a three year warranty", to "instead of the one year warranty plus your legal rights, you get a three year warranty plus your legal rights". They may have done that already.
I'd also say that it isn't "a product the buyer didn't really need", it is just "less than the buyer thought they would get". For example, if you take a MacBook from the UK to the USA and it breaks down there, you can have it fixed in the USA and AppleCare covers it. Your UK legal rights obviously wouldn't cover that, you'd have to wait until you are back in the UK. Or if the MacBook breaks and it was your fault but Apple cannot prove it, then Apple Care will fix it but your legal rights wouldn't cover that.
We also have the Sale of Goods Act (SOGA) which says that goods must last a "reasonable length of time", which for things like computers and TVs is considered to be around six years. If the device fails before that time you are entitled to a partial refund based on how much use you had out of it, or of course the retailer can choose to replace the item.
And what you forgot to tell people is that this is the case if the defect was present when the item was sold to you; and for the first six months it is assumed that this is the case, while after six months you have to prove it. So it is not "if the device fails before that time", it is "if the device fails before that time because of a defect that was present at the time you bought it, and you can prove it".
Slashdot Mirror
This story is also about Apple not publicly acknowledging that they had to honor a 2 year warranty and doing that by default as well.
Apple is a manufacturer and also a seller. As manufacturer, they have no obligation to talk about sellers' obligations. As a seller, there isn't very much they have to say. In the UK, I think every store, Apple or anyone else, mentions somewhere that you have statutory rights, and sometimes they have to use words like "we don't accept returns on sales goods, but this doesn't affect your statutory rights". No obligation to say what these rights are.
The one situation where this is different is apparently, at least according to some Italian court, the case of selling AppleCare (or extended warranties). Apple always stated quite clearly what rights you have after buying AppleCare, but should have said more clearly (according to an Italian court) which rights you had without buying AppleCare, not in order to inform you of these rights, but in order that you can judge correctly what additional rights you get.
You also need to be aware that these EU guaranteed rights aren't worth much if your seller goes bankrupt, or if you move to a different country so making use of your rights is difficult. And of course, unlike the stupid article is stating, nothing has actually changed. When you buy a Mac at PCWorld, Apple just told you what rights you may have against PCWorld; you still have to judge for yourself how much effort it might be to make them fix your problem, compared to AppleCare.
Apple employs more than enough lawyers to help them determine whether offering their products for sale in a particular market would produce a fair result or not, so yes, the EU should force Apple to provide whatever it requires other manufacturers to provide to their customers.
Which is exactly zero. The EU doesn't force manufacturers to give any warranty at all. So Apple's ONE year warranty (read that, you idiot submitter? ONE year, not two!) is completely voluntarily (of course once you buy the product that warranty is part of the deal).
The EU does however the seller of a product to fix problems under certain conditions. So if you buy an iMac at PC World, the EU gives you rights against PC World, not against Apple. If you buy a Canon printer at an Apple Store, the EU gives you rights against Apple, not against Canon.
Not only an idiot, but a bloody f***ing stupid idiot of the highest magnitude.
Apple hasn't given in to any pressure, and Apple hasn't made any changes whatsoever. What Apple has done is presenting on a website what rights Apple customers have towards the seller of a product (whoever is the seller, and whoever makes the product), what rights Apple as the manufacturer voluntarily gives to buyers of Apple products (One year. ONE year. Not TWO years you bloody idiot submitter), and what rights Apple gives you if you pay for AppleCare.
So there is a serious bug in Adobe's Flash. An incorrect call to memcpy (not malloc). In my experience, at least 80% of all crashes and hangs on my Mac are due to Adobe Flash, so I'm not surprised.
iOS lives quite happily without Flash. Mac users live either quite happily without Flash, or they live quite happily with Flash crashing sometimes.
Alternative history of Apple: Apple engineer speeds up memcpy implementation. Does some serious application testing for compatibility. Talks to Steve Jobs. "So what have you been working on?" "I made the C library a few percent faster, which benefits all users. It makes Adobe Flash crash". Steve Jobs: Dies laughing.
So if I do something illegal and it would cost me time and/or money to just to stop being illegal then I don't need to stop! I guess I should start stealing stuff because if I stopped I would lose money compared to when I didn't steal!
I have in my past worked with German health and safety officers, and if there are problems where things happen that are against the law, but not an immediate danger, then companies will always be given time to fix problems, then they will be re-inspected and they will be fine as long as there is improvement, even if not all of the problems have been solved.
The reason why this is done is that German health and safety officers are probably more intelligent than the average slashdotter and they know that their job is not to uphold the letter of the law, but to create safe working environments. And to do that, they demonstrate not that they can punish companies that break the law, but that they can help companies to stay within rules that are there for a reason, and not just because they are the law.
And I may be the first to post this here, but in cases of emergencies where the company would suffer direct consequences if people cannot work overtime, then exceeding this 48 hour limit is actually legal in China. So starting from the f***ing article, the assumption that continuing with overtime while more people are getting employed would be illegal, is just wrong. It's like going over the speed limit is bad, but braking so hard that the car behind you crashes into you, just to get below the speed limit, is even worse.
So because Apple is trying to investigate and help, they are being attacked. If I ran Apple, it would be - lesson learned, don't try to help. At least if I didn't have any moral qualms...
You are making the false assumption that Apple gives a rats ass about people's opinions. They do that only to a tiny degree. Like with environmental issues, Apple was always a leader because (a) it is good karma and (b) it often saves cost to be environmentally friendly. They just didn't care about publicizing things. The same with treatment of workers: Apple has been doing a lot in the last years, long before anyone talked about it. One area has actually never been mentioned by the press at all: Employment agencies charging foreign employees several monthly salaries to get them a job. Apple actually made companies pay back many million dollars in such charges to their employees.
Summary: Apple doesn't work to improve working conditions because of anything the press, or some blogger, or some lying bastard on a radio show is saying, but because they want to improve working conditions. And they won't stop working on improving working conditions because of some 5troll 5flamebait article on Slashdot either.
As others have noted Foxconn is a sub-contractor of multiple companies so really Apple should not be the fall guy. But, this is China and personal freedoms are just not as valued and China is not a democracy.
Foxconn isn't anyone's subcontractor. Foxconn is a contractor. And only an idiot would put blame on Apple here because Apple is the company that hired FLA to do audits at Foxconn exactly for the purpose to find if everything is up to scratch there and to find and fix problems.
However, what is even more stupid is your claim "personal freedoms are just not as valued in China". Show me a Western country where working 48 hours a week is illegal.
I wonder which company asked FLA to perform an independent audit at Foxconn. That wouldn't be Apple. That couldn't possibly be Apple. Guess what: It was Apple.
Interesting choice of words, "overtime criminality". So people are working 60 hours a week and get paid for overtime. So what are things like in IT in the USA? I hear there are people working 60 hours a week as well, and not getting paid for overtime. In the games industry, there are people working 80 hours. In the medical profession, 80 hours seems to be the average in the USA (at least according to Wikipedia).
And you will find that Apple doesn't actually advertise the new iPad as having 4G in Europe. Only "super fast internet" which HSPA+ or whatever it is called should do. If you read the small print you then find that if you travel to a country with 4G, and buy a SIM card, then you can have 4G.
BTW. You can get a refund in Australia if you return the device. So you won't get any money back if you keep it. Basically Apple says "we are accused of misleading you. If you feel misled, then you can return the iPad. If you want to keep it, you are now informed what it does and what it doesn't do". And I think ITU has declared that HSPA+ now counts as 4G.
The media actually hardly ever publish what was written in cases like these. It's easier for the public to accept the judgement if they don't know the details.
It's a difficult matter. On the one hand, if we want to decide whether this judgement looks fair or unfair we'd need to know exactly what was said. On the other hand, reporting what he says does come close to repeating the crime.
He's an ass, and he's a racist, but I fail to see how this is "inciting racial hatred". Doesn't "incite" refer to encouraging an action? Like a riot, or lets do bad things to some people or something like that?
Use a dictionary: "incite" = encourage or stire up.
"hatred" = intense dislike or ill will.
No need to incite racist actions. Inciting hatred without action is enough.
You can be fired in most jurisdictions for lying on a resume, if it's proven, so I'd be carefull with that.
In Germany, you can't be fired for lying about things that the employer shouldn't have been asking. For example, if a female is asked in a job interview whether she is pregnant, instead of saying "I don't want to answer this" (no job), or saying "you shouldn't be asking this" (no job), she can just say "no" and get the job.
Anybody who feels comfortable demanding extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about assuming that anybody who isn't as transparent as the norm probably has something to hide.
Anybody who feels comfortable providing extremely intrusive access to personal information will likely not even think twice about providing strangers access to company confidential data, and should not be hired.
So how do you install the FOSS project for iOS without getting it approved by Apple, a company subject to U.S. patent law? Or are you going to go ahead and claim that $1,395 for a MacBook Air plus a four-year iOS developer license is still cheaper than what the patent holders are charging?
Apple isn't going to check whether some software is infringing on some patent. They will react if some patent holder makes claims, but they cannot proactively check for patent infringement. Especially since there are so many patents around that practically every bit of software will infringe on some patent.
If someone knows details, they could post what Apple's legal obligations and liabilities would be (a) if someone claims that some software on the App Store infringes on a patent they own, and (b) if someone actually proves it.
Just because the government may have questionable privacy policies, doesn't mean that app developers shouldn't be held to the same standards.
I think what you wrote might not be what you actually meant. At least I hope so :-)
Again, just from the sake of probability, it's batshit insane to claim that out of the 25 PB of data, none of it was both legal and the only extant copy accessible to the uploader.
When you do any business with any company, there are risks involved. Your storage provider could just go bankrupt. The storage facility could be wiped out by a meteor. The storage provider could be accused of doing something illegal and there might be consequences affecting you. That's your risk. In the case of megaupload.com, the third risk should have looked quite high.
If anyone has a secure wi-fi spot, will the "I did not download that file, someone did by accessing my wi-fi" excuse remain valid?
If your WiFi is secured, then you don't need the defense because nobody will use your WiFi to download files.
I used to work at Motorola. About twelve years ago, the president of the company (Chris Galvin) was upset at the number of employees who worked there who had cell phones from other vendors - Nokia being the chief sore spot at the time. Word came down from management that it was not a good idea for one's career to be using a non-Motorola phone for either personal or corporate use. To be fair, they did give us excellent discounts ongoing on Motorola phones, so it was pretty much a good thing.
That's quite idiotic. If they worried that too many Motorola employees bought non-Motorola phones with their own money, then they should have tried to make better phones.
Isn't it unreasonable to require a warranty longer than a year for a consumer product? Realistically, if the device you bought is defective you should realize it within a few months. But certainly a year is long enough to notice a defect and get a replacement/repair.
"Defective" doesn't mean "not working". Let's say a car manufacturer uses engines that will normally last for 200,000 miles. Unfortunately, the engine in the car that you bought has a tiny hair fracture which will cause it to fail after 100,000 miles. That engine will work without apparent problems for many years, but it is defective from the day you buy it. Or lets say the fan in your MacBook runs too slow, which means the wear and tear on the computer is higher than it should be, and as a result it fails within two years of normal use. The defect (fan running too slow) was there from day one.
Two things need to happen in the UK. We need better education of consumer protection laws, starting at school but also through government advertising and we to crack down on retailers who tell consumers it is out of warranty when legally it isn't.
And if we had better education then you wouldn't have written the second part as you did. First, you are confusing "warranty" with the Sales of Goods act. "Warranty" is whatever the manufacturer gives you voluntarily, which is whatever they decide, according to whatever rules they decide. The Sales of Goods act gives you statutory rights, which may be less or more than the manufacturers warranty, and it is the store which is responsible.
The important things are: The store is responsible to fix defects that were present when the item was sold, for a reasonable amount of time, and "reasonable" depends on the nature of the product. And after six months, _you_ have to prove that the product was defective when sold to get it fixed, while during the first six months, the store would have to prove that the product was not defective.
From the Apple Store: "De voordelen van het AppleCare Protection Plan zijn een aanvulling op de wettelijke rechten van de consumentenwetgeving die van kracht is in je rechtsgebied. " That's the same as in the UK Apple Store where it says "AppleCare Protection Plan benefits are in addition to any legal rights provided by consumer protection laws in your jurisdiction.".
This makes it absolutely clear what Apple is selling when you buy AppleCare: You have your one year warranty, you have whatever legal rights consumer protection laws in your country give you, and AppleCare provides the difference between these two rights and three years of warranty (plus a few other things). And I think it is obvious that Apple can sell whatever additional warranty they want to sell, at whatever price they want to sell it, and customers have the right to buy it or not to buy it. The important thing is that Apple states correctly what you get for your money.
The reason Apple labor is âoebest than the rest" is that Apple, thanks to these controversies (so some good came out of it anyways,) has made sure their assembly staff gets treated better. Foxcon has no reason to treat the assemblers for any other client any better, and they don't.
Total nonsense. The reason is that Apple has conducted a program for several years where they regularly audit companies to compare what happens with what Apple thinks should happen, with actual consequences (like forcing companies to pay back several million dollars that employees had paid to agents, quitting their contracts with companies that don't conform, etc. ). This is unlike for example Microsoft, which explicitly states that they rely on companies monitoring themselves whether they are compliant with Microsoft guidelines.
but here's the kicker: they're responsible for manufacturing defects forever! if the fault can be shown to have been a manufacturing defect(a defect present at sale) and it manifests itself 5 years later, they'll still have to fix it!
If it is an item that is reasonably expected to last for five years.
But AppleCare's warranties cover, what is already mandated by law, and the law requires that all warranties have to inform the prospective buyer about the legal protection he already has. And this is ommitted by AppleCare, thus it fraudulently sold a product to the buyer the buyer didn't really need.
In the UK, basically Apple would have to change their wording from "instead of the one year warranty you get a three year warranty", to "instead of the one year warranty plus your legal rights, you get a three year warranty plus your legal rights". They may have done that already.
I'd also say that it isn't "a product the buyer didn't really need", it is just "less than the buyer thought they would get". For example, if you take a MacBook from the UK to the USA and it breaks down there, you can have it fixed in the USA and AppleCare covers it. Your UK legal rights obviously wouldn't cover that, you'd have to wait until you are back in the UK. Or if the MacBook breaks and it was your fault but Apple cannot prove it, then Apple Care will fix it but your legal rights wouldn't cover that.
We also have the Sale of Goods Act (SOGA) which says that goods must last a "reasonable length of time", which for things like computers and TVs is considered to be around six years. If the device fails before that time you are entitled to a partial refund based on how much use you had out of it, or of course the retailer can choose to replace the item.
And what you forgot to tell people is that this is the case if the defect was present when the item was sold to you; and for the first six months it is assumed that this is the case, while after six months you have to prove it. So it is not "if the device fails before that time", it is "if the device fails before that time because of a defect that was present at the time you bought it, and you can prove it".