The "but other companies are worse" is an old and dilapidated argument. Retire it already.
The argument is that all company work in the SAME MARKET. Apple has more money, and paying more already, anything else puts them eventually at a competitive disadvantage long term and affects their stock. That's it.
That they have loads of cash for 3-4 years is just a blip in tech history and lets not forget they were close to being kaput in 1996-1997. Plenty of companies with huge profits once are now dead or dying,
The argument also is that by saying Apple's conditions are horrendous, your calling all non first world conditions slave labor and project your own notion of horrendous on to them. That's the kind of condescension that doesn't get you any sympathy from the "victims" themselves. Try it on them before taking up their "cause"... Most of the people working there come from truly horrendous conditions in the countryside and know the difference.
Do you know that one of the reason a lot of the workers wind up in huge dorms under the thumb of the factories is that they can't get residency permits to actually live in the cities. That's one thing that depresses their wages somewhat since their not actually living in the high wage area around them. It is also bad for employee morale since they can't be with their family.
That's not Apple's fault; but, the China's fault. If you want to improve their conditions, you could ask the US government to put pressure to change this; I'd expect that this won't make much difference though since China still imprisons dissidents despite the US's meek objections...
BTW, If you truly want to be live your words, don't buy anything fabricated in similar or worse factories, or with material from those mines, or coming from countries with oppressive governments with worse conditions than Apple (essentially 99% of factories, mines, farms in Asia and Africa). I'm betting you'll live a really sparse life... Maybe you won't even have a house over your head, or a car... Any other thing just makes you a bigger hypocrite even than Apple.
I'm going to be that YOU won't do it; because you like your comfort built on those "victims" and are only offended when it suits you, or when the "offender" suits you.
Most people in China prior to 1980 were living in abject poverty with famines a regular thing and people dying much younger. Its our "dirty" money and capitalism and us that looks to get the best bang for its buck that got them, and many countries there, out of the hole. That dirty word for the ultra-left and ultra right : globalization. Globalization on the whole decreases disparities in wealth between countries (while often increasing it inside countries).
It uses the fact that people in Asia in Africa were willing to work for less (often because they could live with less) to THEIR advantage (as a whole, if not at the micro level). Money sadly is not distributed evenly inside countries when it gets there.
What we most of all watch out is not per say Apple's factories, but the factories that produce the less sexy, but plentiful products that we buy at places like Wallmart or Targets. These are the factories and yes true sweatshops were the masses of Asia work. The building in Bangladesh were 1000 people lost their lives is a prime example. Those hundreds of thousands of factories with no scrutiny at all are those that should get the attention of the BBC and others because that'S were the true horror show is. But, of course, its not Apple, a big brand, so they get no attention despite the 1000s of losses, almost nothing has changed in those bottom rung factories.
