Apple Shuns The New York Times in OS X Mountain Lion Coverage Over Foxconn Reporting

[faroZ06]

NYT is playing sensationalist reporting, making Foxconn problem appear to be an Apple exclusive problem.

The NYT article title "In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad" says it all.

Yes. There are plenty of things made in China. A lot of them are made by underpaid employees. Maybe there needs to be some kind of trade rule where goods sold in the US must be created by workers who have good enough working conditions.

I guess once Apple silenced the whole "antenna issue" (which I tried and could never replicate the problem), they ran out of things to report on. Maybe it's time to lay newspapers to rest.

 

[KiwiAdventure]

Yes. There are plenty of things made in China. A lot of them are made by underpaid employees. Maybe there needs to be some kind of trade rule where goods sold in the US must be created by workers who have good enough working conditions.

I guess once Apple silenced the whole "antenna issue" (which I tried and could never replicate the problem), they ran out of things to report on. Maybe it's time to lay newspapers to rest.

How about making goods back in America and other western countries. This is bloody crazy sending all the jobs to China.

 

[the8thark]

If Apple bans the NYT iPad application from being downloaded anymore then the NYT would stand up and take notice. And it's idiots like this reporter who take things way out of proportion and bad things to happen.

If Apple did suspend the NYT app from the App Store then serves the NYT right. And that reporter should be fired on the spot. And respectable newspaper would have done that. Ah but that's why I do not read the NYT. They've not proven to me they are a respectable newspaper.

Yes I am Australian but I do read the international papers from time to time.

 

[jlc1978]

Good that the NYT is getting what it deserves. A healthy serving of "comeuppance". Nice of them to single out Apple for all of Foxconn's factory conditions and not mentioning a single other computer manufacturer. Now the NYT gets to feel how it is being the lone "black sheep".

I'm sure the NYT really cares about Apple having hissy fit (something I doubt happened anyway). If anything, doing something like that only makes the editorial side more likely to print negative articles and dig deeper; as the saying goes don't get into a fight with people who buy paper by the ton and ink by the barrel.

Apple, as a major, recognizable high profit margin Foxconn customer happens to be a natural target that quite a few readers would identify with since they probably use an Apple product. It's a great hook.

 

[lifeinhd]

Plus, if you truely believed and cared about what the NYT was reporting it doesn't seem to have stopped you from supporting Apple and the conditions at foxconn based on your list of devices in your signature.

A second glance and you may notice that none of the devices in my sig actually exist.

 

[germinator]

NYT is playing sensationalist reporting, making Foxconn problem appear to be an Apple exclusive problem.

Not at all. Have you even read the report? It was a well-written, well-researched, and eye-opening article. Not sensationalist. I am glad that the NY Times practices quality journalism as this one.

If Apple is displeased about this, it's their fault.

 

[Leonard1818]

A second glance and you may notice that none of the devices in my sig actually exist.

ha ha touchee

 

[Mr. Gates]

Apple acts like a spoiled brat.

They do the same thing to Leo Laporte

 

[ixodes]

Of course David Pogue tweeted that he had been running it for over a week which makes this whole article moot.

Pogue is a hypocritical, ex Steve Jobs suck up. Now that he's drifting as Steve's ex yes-man & writer of glowing Apple reviews of the past. He's taken a page out of his masters playbook & is out for himself.

The poor Dolt, is lost in space.

 

[blipper]

Think back to the 1984 commercial. Like most revolutionaries, Steve wasn't looking to eliminate oppression. He was looking to change who was doing the oppressing.

He wore the same outfit every day to present himself as an icon, as an Apple "uniform".

Yes, the right Orwellian reference would have been to "Animal Farm" and the scene where the animals stare in the window and notice they can no longer distinguish the pigs from the humans.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Speaking for myself, if I hire a company to do work for me and they abuse their employees, that's on my shoulders -- either I correct their practices, or I find another subcontractor. When I choose what to pay my employees, I base it on what is fair and humane, not just on the lowest possible price I can get away with (and yes, you can still make a profit being fair). And when I am caught by others doing something wrong, I don't whine that it's no fair to focus on me because other people are just as bad. That's the logic of a 5-year-old. If it's wrong, it's wrong, and close attention is just what you should expect if you are the biggest company in the world. Apple should stick up for its principles without hiding behind NYT-bashing and "he did it first/worse" defenses.

Bravo. Your post makes me think there may be hope for some business owners yet. Too many people have forgotten what the word "fair" means. We get free trade instead of fair trade and we pay for it. Businesses want maximum profits at the cost of jobs in the country they live in (what happens when that country goes to hell in the end?) instead of fair profits. The consumer then has less money and he then has less to spend and companies make less sales. It's all connected and when something gets too top heavy, it tends to fall over on itself sooner or later.

 

[66318]

Gruber has an article about this now, completely debunking all of this. How?

By sheer coincidence, I can report that this is nonsense. When I left my briefing with Schiller last Wednesday in New York, waiting in the hallway for the next briefing was: David Pogue.

So we now even have a witness that David Pogue, of the New Your Times, was next after John Gruber for a presentation by Apple executives about Mountain Lion.

The rest of the article talks more about the Tim Cook interview the Wall Street Journal had published. http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/02/18/jumping-to-conclusions

 

[Fishrrman]

The paper wasn't perfect, and its reporters did not always understand the full extent of the famine in Ukraine -- but it's silly (at best) to suggest that the Times was an apologist. It distorts the historical record.

Two words for you (about "distorting the historical records"):
Walter Duranty.

 

[trainwrecka]

Link, please. Once you post that, this entire article should be redacted. It's clear MacRumors is engaging in the kind of Gizmodo sensationalism which it now accuses NYT of doing, and it needs to stop.

I'm sure you already have this, but the link is: http://5by5.tv/talkshow/79

 

[SockRolid]

Wait the Verge was skipped? Nilay mentioned on their newest podcast that he did get a demo and had been working on the article for a week. I think you're mistaken here.

Oops, sorry. I red elsewhere (in a blog by a well-known financial publication that tracks 500 high-profile U.S. companies) that Apple only "returned his call" or something like that. Don't read/view The Verge often enough to have noticed otherwise.

But my criticism stands. Don't like The Verge because they're all about maximizing viewership now. That means they can't be too critical of well-known products lest they alienate any of their audience and thus lose them as viewers. Their audience isn't a single group of Verge fans blindly loving any and all new technology. It's composed of non-intersecting factions of technology fans. People buy into a brand and/or technology with their hard-earned money and don't want to feel bad about their purchases. So The Verge needs to watch what they say. And that waters down their content.

And it leads to shilling. For example, poor Joanna Stern's glowing review of a lineup of me-too Ultrabooks as a way of papering over Topolsky's "[Windows] is slowly killing me" remark. Relevant or not, Microsoft is still a force in the technology industry. And there are plenty of Microsoft fans and paid shills alike out there.

Your mileage may vary. I'm suspicious of anyone who claims they're an "unbiased" or "objective" technology reviewer / journalist / blogger. Everyone has favorites. Saying you don't is facetious, unless you've got a degree in journalism. It's like saying "I like all colors because they're all part of the fascinating rainbow of visible electromagnetic radiation." Or "I like all NFL teams equally because football is such a fascinating sport."

 

[CFreymarc]

The fact of the matter is that a story like that on the working conditions in Shenzhen could only be done by a print newspaper dedicated to high-quality investigative journalism.

That really doesn't exist anymore in the mainstream press. You need alternative views where board members don't also own shares in their advertisers. It has all gone downhill since Francis Pharcellus Church retried.

 

[charlituna]

The fact of the matter is that a story like that on the working conditions in Shenzhen could only be done by a print newspaper dedicated to high-quality investigative journalism.

While this is true, unfortunately the NYT and their slanted and half truth coverage is not an example of your statement.