Inside an Unofficial Third-Party Lightning Connector Production Facility

neat...

No safety i can see, with all the noise.

At least CRT monitors are still good for something in this day and age.

coolfactor said:

I know Asians tend to look younger, but at 0:36 in the video, it totally looked like at least one underage worker and the cameraman quickly moved the camera away.

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Yeah, Asians do tend to look younger. Heck, even I get fooled sometimes.
I would have guessed mid-20s.

... they also young age too.

Advil said:

Shenzhen China... probably literally next door to where the real ones are made.

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And it's likely the engineer's from the "official" plant walk next door with samples and drawings saying "make it just like this".

Damn, that machine at the end pressing parts wouldn't cut it in all the factories I've worked at. It only requires one hand to cycle, which makes it too easy to get your hand caught in the machine. In all the places I've worked at I've had to use both hands on 2 separate buttons to cycle the machine, making it impossible to get your hand stuck. Something tells me this is the norm in China.

Why take a chance on such 3rd party peripherals? Better to wait for when Apple releases official products in 2016.

Still think this ranks as one of Apple's most ham-fisted marketing moves. A month from Christmas and still barely a trickle of iPhone accessories. It's like they went on vacation and forgot to water their ecosystem.

"Ah yes, let's put the worker bypassing the safety features on his device with a toothpick in our promotion video."

Justinf79 said:

Damn, that machine at the end pressing parts wouldn't cut it in all the factories I've worked at. It only requires one hand to cycle, which makes it too easy to get your hand caught in the machine. In all the places I've worked at I've had to use both hands on 2 separate buttons to cycle the machine, making it impossible to get your hand stuck. Something tells me this is the norm in China.

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The machine works as supposed, but he bypassed it.

I bought two 3rd party connectors from eBay to keep one at work and in the car for when my iPhone 5 arrived. One didn't work out of the box and this is what happened the working one two days later when I pulled it out of the USB charger by the cable:



You'll also see that the iOS device end of the cable isn't constructed to the same standards as Apple's. There are gaps in the side of the connector - Apple's are completely sealed and waterproof.



I know you get what you pay for, but the savings (which aren't huge) on buying these 3rd party cables sometimes can be a false economy.

I just received one of their new black desktop charge cradles, the one with the removeable insert to allow docking with a case on the phone. I use a black slim TPU case and it fits perfectly. The connector is very smooth like the stock connectors so I'm not concerened with it causing problems. I also used their cable to connect the dock to a USB charger and it works perfectly.

I was skeptical but this looks and feels very nice, the phone slips in cleanly and is guided well so there won't be any scratching or wear to the bottom of the phone.

wrkactjob said:

I notice some of the workers in the noisy factory were not wearing ear defenders?

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Just goes to show that every company uses cheap labor without adequate working conditions.

I will be grabbing a few cables from them and not apple

cool look inside the factory though reminds me of the show on the discovery channel about how things are made..

I don't see a single piece of PPE (personal protective equipment) worn by any personnel in the video or in the photograph of the person holding the soldering iron.

They need PPE or other station safety equipment like adequate ventilation-suction to remove the poisonous vapours as well as eye-wear to protect from solder splash.

Is this what you all want? To buy stuff like this from pirates who care nothing for their labourers?