Wanna Bite the Apple?
I follow a guy named Nate on twitter.
He’s been my friend since I was 15 (that’s 7 years running, folks). You can usually find him tweeting about technology usually having to do with the Android system. I’m a Mac guy, myself. I’ve owned my 15″ Macbook Pro for close to a year and a half. He knows more than I could ever hope to in terms of technology, the way the market works, and everything in between. I trust his judgement because of his brain and because he’s my friend. He shared a link the other day that made me think. Here are the two videos I watched.
Apple products (iPhone specifically) are being made in a province in China with a company called, “Foxconn”. Foxconn is using sweatshop worker methods to build the products. At one point, Mike Daisy says someone died after a 32 hour shift. He saw mangled hands and other injuries from the machines that weren’t being tended to because of inadequate healthcare. If you google Foxconn and Apple, you’ll find articles of suicide rates, injuries, and nets being built around the housing dormitories of the workers in order to catch them when they jumped to their death. The last article I saw was from mid to late 2010 saying Apple is independently investigating the matter.
I own an Apple product. So what do I do?
Nate pointed out the obvious answer: not buy an Apple product. I agreed, but even as I type this on my plastic and aluminum, I have this pull to keep it. Like Frodo with a ring. The industry standard now is something by Apple. Logic is used in recording studios. Final Cut Pro is used in major film productions. IPhones are top-notch, used by more and more companies(Sprint’s Evo and the Droid X are pretty spiffy, but they don’t have that idolatrous quality). It seems like it’s easy to lay down something that clearly butts heads with our morals, but I keep feeling that pull of, “But it’s SO good!” Now, I haven’t found anything by way of Google news or anything about Macbook Pro manufacturing, but I don’t feel very secure about it being an honest trade. As a Christian (hell, as a human), there’s an obligation to speak up and say, “I’m not okay with this. I’m going to try and stop this or at least tell people about this. This isn’t okay.” There’s some type of fire alarm in the nature God gave us to go off when we see things like this.
What can you do? The crime is so vocal, and our protest is a whisper. Our goal should be our morals directing our lives and actions. Rainer Rilke once said, if you’re a writer that is, your life, “must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it (pg. 2, I think).” Obviously, as a Christian, the life should be a testimony to “it”. What “it” is is this discontent with how life is supposed to be. This isn’t necessarily a fundamentalist point of view. Fundamentalists, progressives, left, right, moderate, should all have this feel of, “This isn’t right.”
I know I won’t buy an iPhone. I’m not going to support those methods, and I don’t want to support that company. I don’t think any of us should until something changes. I’m not saying all of Apple is evil. What I am saying is that Apple is clearly in the wrong and we need to point that out. I love technology as much as the next person. I’m a Music Technology MAJOR. I love guitar effects, pedals, amps, guitars, keyboards, drums, mixers, all that junk. Technology does great things. I’m not suggesting any barbarian retraction. But people are dying.
For nothing.
