Reflecting on the Real Cost of Owning Apple

totally unidentified iPad owner

Update March 17th: ‘This American Life’ has issued a retraction of the episode which we shared with you (below) back in January, saying that it was ‘partially fabricated.’ You can read more about this on marketplace.org, and TAL has devoted its entire episode this week to detailing their errors.

The This American Life podcast always makes for an interesting soundtrack for my Mondays. I’m a big fan of their story-telling, though it seldom touches on technology, the topic of this blog. But this week was different. This week, TAL tells the story of Apple fanboy Mike Daisey [1] and his quest to find out more about where his favorite gadgets come from.

He traces his iRoots all the way back to Foxconn in Shenzhen, a city he says that looks “like Blade Runner threw up on itself.” Foxconn of course is the manufacturer of not only well-known products like the iPhone and iPad, but also other devices almost every company you can think of in the electronics industry.

It’s an interesting story, that prompts you to reflect on or question the true cost of owning the latest gadget which is almost certainly made in China. Mike’s talk, as presented in this episode of TAL, is pretty dramatic as you might expect. Though I was glad to see that some of his account was fact-checked and examined in the second act of the show.

I own Apple computers, and I do feel conflicted when I hear the many negative headlines about conditions at Foxconn. I guess I’m hoping that the increased spotlight will prompt the company to improve conditions. Will I buy another Mac? I confess I probably will. But I’ll try to push my old Macbook as far as I can before I do.

If you’d like to check out this week’s podcast for yourself, drop on over to the TAL website and give it a listen.