How your iPads and iPhones get made

It isn't pretty. China's manufacturing juggernaut is enormously efficient, to the point where Apple can initiate a significant redesign in a matter of days, not months. No U.S. supplier can begin to compete. But there's a price to be paid, as the NYT reports:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple's products, and the company's suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers' disregard for workers' health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

The story notes that Apple, like other U.S. companies, have made notable strides in improving factory conditions. But this is a case of conflicting agendas: In the name of higher profits (not to mention customer demands), Apple makes enormous production demands on its Chinese suppliers - demands that might not be met without bending the rules.

Amazing quote:

"We've known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they're still going on," said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. "Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn't have another choice." "If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?" the executive asked.