Tim Cook's response to NY Times claims of Apple factory worker mistreatment

Tim Cook, in an email to Apple employees:

Team,

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.

For the many hundreds of you who are based at our suppliers’ manufacturing sites around the world, or spend long stretches working there away from your families, I know you are as outraged by this as I am. For the people who aren’t as close to the supply chain, you have a right to know the facts.

Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain. As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people.

At the same time, no one has been more up front about the challenges we face. We are attacking problems aggressively with the help of the world’s foremost authorities on safety, the environment, and fair labor. It would be easy to look for problems in fewer places and report prettier results, but those would not be the actions of a leader.

Earlier this month we opened our supply chain for independent evaluations by the Fair Labor Association. Apple was in a unique position to lead the industry by taking this step, and we did it without hesitation. This will lead to more frequent and more transparent reporting on our supply chain, which we welcome. These are the kinds of actions our customers expect from Apple, and we will take more of them in the future.

We are focused on educating workers about their rights, so they are empowered to speak up when they see unsafe conditions or unfair treatment. As you know, more than a million people have been trained by our program.

We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word. You can follow our progress at apple.com/supplierresponsibility.

To those within Apple who are tackling these issues every day, you have our thanks and admiration. Your work is significant and it is changing people’s lives. We are all proud to work alongside you.

Tim

Whilst it is clear that Apple are far from perfect, it is also clear that they are trying to do something about it. Let’s hope that Apple keep taking big strides forward in improving the working conditions for all their workers - regardless of where in the world they are. And let’s hope too that other manufacturers don’t think they can get away with things simply because they are not as under the microscope as Apple.

Fascinating insight into the relationship between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

Mary Riddell in The Telegraph:

The atmosphere changed in 2007 when Gates left Microsoft to set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife. “Steve and I did an event together, and he couldn’t have been nicer…I got a fair bit of time with him in his last year. Some months before Jobs died, Gates paid him a long visit. “We spent literally hours reminiscing and talking about the future.” Later, with his old adversary’s death imminent, he wrote to him. “I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know.”

That last gesture was not, he says, conciliatory. “There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.” After Jobs’s death, Gates received a phone call from his wife, Laurene. “She said; ‘Look, this biography really doesn’t paint a picture of the mutual respect you had.’ And she said he’d appreciated my letter and kept it by his bed.”

I find it somewhat heartwarming to see the genuine friendship that - in the latter years at least - seems to have existed between these two tech leaders.

Why I confidently predict this recession won’t be as ‘severe’ as the last

Helpful and measured piece by Martin Lewis aka the Money Saving Expert.

Olympic mascots made by Chinese workers in exploitative conditions

Stop The Traffik:

…the cuddly toy versions of the Olympic mascots, Mandeville and Wenlock, have been made in factories in China where workers are paid just 18p per a cuddly toy. Undercover investigators from Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), exposed the situation after visiting the Rainbow factory in Dafeng City twice. SACOM report that the workers in the factory are forced to work up to 11 ½ hours a day, with no holiday rights, fined a day’s wage for leaving their workspace untidy and told to lie to investigators about their conditions.

Let’s hope the Olympic committee take swift action.

Economic crisis mustn't eclipse battle against poverty

Bill Gates, speaking at the London School of Economics:

There are many things going on in terms of the eurozone crisis and budget cutbacks that would make it easy to turn inward and reduce financing. The answer is to remind people not only about the needs of the very poorest but also that we are making incredible progress in … the daily battle that is poverty.

Whilst I was never a fan of Bill Gates in his role with Microsoft, I continue to be hugely impressed with his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I hope that he will be listened too and that, even though things are tight financially for us, we won’t lose sight of the fact that our experience doesn’t come close to the experience and living conditions of countless others in much poorer parts of the world.

Larry Page’s “Beautiful” New Google

Sarah Lacy at PandoDaily:

I think we’d all consider “simple” and “easy to use” as hallmarks of Google’s product aesthetic, as is “clean,” “spartan,” “stark” and even “geeky,” given the multi-colored logo and large, whimsical sculptures that dot the campus.

But the emphasis on “beautiful” seems a departure. Particularly from Google’s more gritty throw-it-out-in-beta-and-see-what-sticks past.

Is it just me or does it seem like the Google brain trust all got copies of the Steve Jobs biography for Christmas?

This whole article is a really great look at the changes taking place at Google. And it asks some very important questions about what this means.

This question in particular seems very relevant in terms of how Google are changing their search results:

Is Google moving from being a company that organizes the world’s information to one that organizes the information of “your” world?

The integration of social to search results has the effect of changing everything. No longer do we all see the same thing when we search for something. It’s supposedly more relevant but it’s undoubtedly less neutral and less trustworthy.

Sarah nails it with this final paragraph:

As someone who goes to Google more times a day than any other site, I hope I’m wrong about how deep this change in philosophy is among Google’s leadership. I already have two companies who make sense of my world for me: Twitter and Facebook. I don’t need a third. I need a clean, reliable search engine and email service I can trust.

Comparing The Daily Mail To The New York Times Gives You Cancer

Fun write up on the sad reality that the Daily Mail is now the most read online news source in the world.

Apple by the numbers

Some helpful perspective on Apple’s financials. In short, no tech company has ever produced a quarterly result like it. I guess Apple is no longer the underdog!

The year of the iPad...again

Tim Cook:

“Last year was supposed to be the year of the tablet. I think most people will agree it was the year of the iPad for the second year in a row.”

Nice quote from the new Apple CEO during a conference call about Apple’s stunning last quarter. I think this year will be the third straight year of there being an iPad market but no true tablet market.

Absolutely stunning quarter for Apple

Wow, wow, wow. Apple just announced over $46 billion in revenue and over $13 billion in profit. Stunning. Blew away even the most optimistic analysts’ expectations. Oh, and a cool 37 million iPhones sold. And did I say that this was for ONE QUARTER?

Britain's national debt tops £1 trillion

Julia Kollewe in The Guardian:

Britain’s national debt has risen above £1 trillion for the first time on record, underlining the size of the task faced by the government in bringing the public finances under control.

Official figures released on Tuesday morning showed the total public sector net debt (excluding the impact of the banking bailouts) rose to £1.004 trillion in December, the highest since records began in 1993 and equivalent to 64.2% of GDP.

Oh joy. And there I was thinking Osborne’s austerity was bringing down debt!

Break the reassurance habit

Seth Godin:

Developing the reassurance habit is easy to do and hard to kick. The problem is this: there are some ventures where no reassurance is possible. There is important work for you to do where no proof is available.

We all have a tendency towards comfort and the path of least resistance. The more we look for comfort - for reassurance - the more we need it. This is a good post by Seth encouraging us to break the reassurance habit in order to stop it holding us back from being the bold, daring, fearless people we need to be if we’re going to push boundaries and do the impossible.

Apple’s education event: Everything you need to know in one handy list

This is a nice, quick summary of the key aspects of Apple’s education event yesterday. If you missed it, this is a great way to get up to speed.