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- Apple Supplier Audit Reveals Child Labor, More Violations
Apple has been criticized in the past for not doing enough to ensure that labor conditions in its supplier factories were up to international humanitarian standards. Today, it released its 2010 Supplier Responsibility report (PDF), in which it provides the details of audits it conducts at those supplier facilities, in order to gauge the degree to which violations are or aren’t taking place.
This time around, the report details no less than 17 violations at its supplier facilities, and more than a few of them are fairly serious indeed. Underage worker serious, in fact. Apple’s inspectors found that 11 employees were employed prior to being of legal working age in the countries in question.
According to the report, the age issue was moot at the time the audit was conducted, since the employees in question had either reached legal age by then, or were no longer employed at the supplier. Kind of convenient if you ask me that all of these violations just happened to be past offenses and required no action. Plus, I can’t imagine Apple’s audits come as a surprise to suppliers, so who knows the extent to which the violations might truly go.
Besides the age violations, inspectors from Apple also found that more than 50 of its supplier’s factories forced employers to work more than 60 hours in a given week, a maximum cap set by Apple themselves. Many of the facilities were also found to be not paying staff correctly. 48 facilities were using improper calculations to determine overtime pay, and at 24 workers were receiving less than the minimum wage for regular working hours. In those cases, the reason given was largely that employees needed to meet strict attendance requirements before becoming eligible for the minimum wage rate.
Other violations included depriving staff of benefits like sick leave, and the falsification of records. Many of the falsification violations occurred in conjunction with other types of offenses, which makes you wonder how many times falsifications were “successful” and went unnoticed. At least one facility was found to have definitely covered up hiring underage employees in the past, and another was found to have hidden records of overworking and underpaying employees.
Apple’s audit this year was the largest on record improving on the 83 facilities covered in the report covering the 2008 period:
In 2009, Apple conducted audits at 102 facilities, including annual audits of all final assembly manufacturers, first-time audits of component and nonproduction suppliers, and 15 repeat audits of facilities where a core violation had been discovered. During most of our audits, suppliers stated that Apple was the only company that had ever audited their facility for supplier responsibility.
It’s excellent to find that in some cases Apple is basically acting as a regulatory body where none would otherwise exist, but what are the consequences if facilities are found to have actually perpetrated violations? Especially in the case of child labor violations, one might expect to see Apple ending professional relationships, particularly when repeat violations become apparent. Not necessarily so, though. The section detailing the “corrective action process” informs as to what the actual consequences are for these suppliers:
When a violation is found, Apple requires the facility to implement a corrective action plan that addresses not only the specific violation, but also the underlying management system needed to prevent its recurrence. We track completion of each corrective action to closure, with an expectation that all violations will be corrected as quickly as possible, but not later than 90 days after the audit.
If, after a follow-up audit to determine that corrective action has been taken, the company is still found to be in violation, Apple works further with them to ensure that the fix really is put in place. Finally, as a course of last resort, “Apple may have no choice but to terminate the business relationship.”
I respect Apple’s efforts regarding this responsibility report. No one is forcing them to do this, and it does seem like Cupertino is attempting to bring its considerable pressure to bear in improving the working conditions of some of its most vulnerable employees. But without actual consequences implemented in a swift and consistent manner, it just seems like a public relations exercise instead of a measure genuinely concerned with the welfare of human beings.
Переслать - Quick Tip: Search the Trash in OS X
At the moment I’ve got 1,303 items in the trash bin in my OS X Dock — not that much compared to the usual pile that accumulates there when my normal maintenance has me only cleaning it out once every couple of months. Usually, it’s not a problem. Occasionally, though, I’ll throw something away by mistake, at which point I’m reminded that you can’t just click on the bin and search through the trash like you can with other folders in your Dock.
It may sound like a small annoyance, but if I’m digging through the trash, it’s because I really need to find that thing I tossed out. Without a chance to search for it I’m left with no other option but to browse through a pile of files that typically number in the thousands. All this turns a small annoyance into a rather large one. There’s got to be a better way to deal with all this Trash.
Ordinarily when searching for files in the Finder you can choose to limit the scope of your search to the current folder by selecting it from the search bar. This is a big help when you know the file you want is somewhere in this folder, but you’re not entirely sure what its name is.
But trying this approach after clicking on the trash icon leaves you searching the entire system with no way to limit your scope. I suppose I could just do a better job regularly taking out the trash — this would leave me with fewer files to browse through when the time comes — but I know myself and that’s just not going to happen. Another option would be to write a script to handle trash maintenance, but that might just make a bad problem worse if my script gets rid of something I accidentally threw away before I have a chance to retrieve it.
The best solution, it seems, is also the easiest one. I use “Go To Folder” in the finder to navigate to the otherwise hidden trash directory at
~/.Trashand drag that folder into the Dock. Now when I accidentally throw something away I won’t have to browse through thousands of items looking for the lone needle in the haystack. I can just use .Trash to limit my search scope as I would with any other directory in the system.View screencast of how to do this.
Переслать - Macworld Expo 2010: Cool Product Finds From the Show Floor
I saw some great products at the recent Macworld expo. Here are a few items that grabbed my attention.
Navigon for iPhone: The latest release of Navigon MobileNavigator for iPhone has added a new panorama 3D view that uses terrain elevation data from NASA. The feature is available via in-app purchase. I also got a hands-on demo of the MyRoutes feature which will show you three different route choices to find the best combination of speed and distance for you.
DJay Software with Spin Controller: The thing I love about the Djay Software with the Spin hardware controller is that it is a real DJ system for the Mac. It’s not a game like DJ Hero or something. You can spin records right from your iTunes library. You get some added digital benefits like automatic tempo matching so you can concentrate more on the music and less on the technical bits of DJ-ing. Here Karim of algoriddim (and the man behind the DJay software) demonstrates a few aspects of the controller.
Batteries: My iPhone was nearly dead at the end of every day at the Expo. For the first time, I started shopping for an extra battery. I like the ones that plug in to the dock connector with a cable like the Richard Solo and HyperMac batteries. The HyperMac stuff is not cheap, but really nice looking. I think I’m about ready to splash out for the HyperMac Micro. With this bad boy, I could play iPhone games for much longer on a weekend camping trip. Hmm, I wonder if that’s a good thing?
VESA mounts: I’ve been wanting to mount my screen on an adjustable arm for a long time, if only to clear some desk space. If you need an arm, then you should check out the top-quality products from Flatscreen Arms. These are unique in that they connect directly to the built-in pivot in the 24″ and 27″ iMacs rather than relying on the Apple VESA-mount adapter. It is a much cleaner look than what is normally available and the gas-shock arms will hold a 27″ iMac without drooping. You’ll find cheaper arms out there, but I do not know of anything better.
MacSpeech Scribe: This new product from MacSpeech lets you transcribe recordings to text. You can “train” the software to learn a certain voice from recordings by correcting the transcription. I see a lot of uses for this software where the full MacSpeech product does not always make sense. For example, a professor can use MacSpeech Scribe to create a transcription of a lecture podcast to make the lecture searchable on the web.
Microvision ShowWX: $499 for a tiny battery-powered ShowWX microprojector sounds like a great deal for all the road warriors out there. I’d much rather throw this in my bag instead of taking another carry-on. Check out the demo of the infinite focus. The scan lines and hot spot are an artifact of the camcorder and are not visible in person.
What did you see at Macworld Expo that you thought was cool?
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Новинки каталога интернет-супермаркета SoftKey - самого популярного в Рунете продавца софта.
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