If you're looking for coverage of working conditions at Foxconn and other Apple manufacturing partners, there's plenty to go around. The drumbeat of sharply critical stories continued today with CNN's interview of a Foxconn worker; this follows a scathing New York Times story from late January that explores the gulf between electronics companies' best intentions regarding working conditions at contract facilities, and the incessant pressure to innovate and squeeze costs out of the process.

Fairness, though, requires a few reminders. There's social and political argument over the ultimate value of 'sweatshop' labor conditions in developing countries, with the pro-sweatshop side citing enormous economic benefits for countries that can capitalize on an inexpensive and inexhaustible labor force. Of course, Apple isn't the only Foxconn client by a long shot, and the electronics manufacturing sector may actually be one of the brighter lights for worker's rights in China, but the company's high-profile and highly profitable products combined with its longstanding penchant for product secrecy have made it a lightning rod for 'Applerousing' activism and anger.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, the man most responsible for assembling Apple's supply chain into a strategic advantage for the company, reportedly sent a very strongly worded email to all Apple hands, noting that "any suggestion that we don't care [about the welfare of workers in our supply chain] is patently false and offensive to us.... accusations like these are contrary to our values. It's not who we are." In addition to the company's annual Supplier Responsibility Reports and auditing programs, Apple has recently taken another couple of steps that put it out in front of other consumer electronics firms; it released its supplier list for the first time, and it's the first sector company to join the Fair Labor Association. These changes should, in theory, make it easier for third parties to look into workplace issues within the Apple supplier universe.

You can get a very different take on the relative impact of Apple's policies, and the human cost of making insanely great products for entirely sane prices, by spending an evening at the Public Theater in New York City with monologuist Mike Daisey watching The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. Be warned, however, that it is not so easy to leave the show with the same nonchalance about Apple's products and their origins as you might have when you arrive.

The first thing that audience members will notice as they take their seats before the start of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is the cubical and spare set. With rectangular frames in a back LED wall and a glass/chrome desk atop a glass platform, there's a definite echo of a familiar retail aesthetic; it's as if the designer was instructed "Make it look a little like an Apple Store, but don't spend much."

The mood is also evoked, carefully, with sound. The music playing before the show includes both the OS X Leopard post-installation track "Exodus Honey" and Jonathan Coulton's geek anthem "Skullcrusher Mountain." Coulton's song even gets a nod during the monologue itself, when Daisey refers to Apple as a company full of "mad geniuses" who, after Steve's involuntary departure in the 1980s, could finally realize their plans to combine a monkey with a pony.

The next thought, as the show begins: Mike Daisey is a large, loud, sweaty dude who sits in a chair and talks at you for two hours. Although this may sound like a rough session of detention with an angry phys ed teacher, or an afternoon with your conspiracy theory-obsessed uncle, the performance Daisey delivers is heartfelt, intelligent and ultimately completely watchable. His show, which was excerpted on the January 6 episode of the public radio program This American Life, recounts both his decades-long fascination with Apple, including the unforgettable arc of the late co-founder Jobs, and also Daisey's half-cocked but surprisingly effective gonzo investigation of labor conditions at Foxconn and other electronics manufacturing contractors in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Referring to his handwritten notes as he goes -- the performance is extemporaneous, so there is no canonical scripted text and the narrative has evolved over the 18 months that the show has been touring -- Daisey wants to make one thing abundantly clear. If you cut him, he would bleed six colors. To establish his bona fides as a true member of the Apple faithful for a civilian audience, he claims that sometimes after a show he relaxes by "field-stripping my MacBook Pro into its 43 component parts," cleaning each one before reassembling the laptop. "It soothes me," he purrs, stroking his chest with his fingers.

While I don't know that many Mac geeks who relax by taking apart their MBPs, it's evident from Daisey's frequent, coherent technical asides that he isn't putting on airs (or Airs). His heartfelt memories of his family's first computer (an Apple IIc, considered so pricey that it merited its own "computer room") will resonate for plenty of TUAW readers of a certain age. I may have been the only audience member who involuntarily nodded and muttered "yes, of course" when Daisey shared his favorite Mac of all time, but that was only because his choice, the compact yet powerful (for its day) SE/30, was so obviously right.

It's Daisey's love for all things Apple that makes his perception of the company's fall from grace all the more stinging. Starting with the inadvertent leak of several testing photos taken on the iPhone assembly line, Daisey's curiosity about the process and the people behind Apple's products drove him to research the circumstances of where all our stuff comes from.

In 2010, Daisey traveled to southern China and literally drove up to the gates of the massive Foxconn plant in an effort to talk to production line workers; he was in country shortly after the cluster of Foxconn employee suicides and during the incident when a Foxconn employee died of exhaustion after a multi-day workshift. He posed as an American industrialist to gain access to other companies facilities (including dormitories with beds crammed to the ceiling), and also met with labor rights activists and workers who, despite enormous legal and personal risks, have tried to form labor unions in Chinese factories.

Daisey's recounting of his conversations with these workers is sometimes poignant and often shocking. He met laborers exposed to the neurotoxic solvent n-hexane (now banned from Apple's supply chain, but originally used as an iPhone screen cleaner) who now shake so badly they cannot hold a teacup. He spoke with underage workers outside the plant gates, although follow-up investigations by This American Life indicated that the hiring of minors is far less prevalent than it once was and that Foxconn is relatively well-positioned on that score (some independent organizations dispute this, noting that audits are easy to deceive). Daisey's own translator wonders if all these people can possibly have been through what they say, expressing shock that so many tell the same stories of mistreatment, forced/unpaid overtime and bad working conditions.

As Daisey has performed this piece around the country over the past two years, he might have been considered a lonely voice in the wilderness. (TUAW interviewed Daisey at Macworld Expo 2011, while he was performing the show in Berkeley, CA.) Circumstances have changed quite a bit since he began, however. The radio broadcast was a turning point in the show's reception, according to a flyer handed out by ushers after the performance; it was the most downloaded episode in TAL's history and, Daisey's flyer claims, was heard by many Apple employees and their families. This created what Daisey's sources call "a morale situation" within the company, and he asserts that this internal circumstance was a factor in Apple's subsequent decision to join the FLA and open its supply chain to additional scrutiny.

It may not be as simple as Daisey wishes for Apple to effectively address the condition of a massive Chinese labor force that, in the final analysis, does not actually work for the Cupertino company. His suggestion of a 'dividend for change,' where Apple would directly invest five billion dollars of its cash reserves into the supply chain, would certainly be worthy of a company founded by a Zen-loving college dropout who urged customers to think different -- but it's surpassingly unlikely. Still, public awareness and action on the question of humane labor overseas (whether contracted by Apple, HP, Asus, Sony or any other company) will make a difference in the months and years to come. As Daisey says in his online response to Apple's recent moves toward further supply chain glasnost:

If Apple would spend less energy finessing its public image, and instead apply its efforts to real transparency and accountability, it could be a true leader for the electronics industry. Apple today is still saying what it said yesterday: trust us, we know best, there's nothing to worry about. They have not earned the trust they are asking for."

Mike Daisey's monologue The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs continues through March 4, 2012 at New York City's Public Theater. The show runs approximately two hours and is performed without an intermission. Tickets and information: http://www.publictheater.org

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" is funny, forceful agitprop originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I first saw Monster Wars a little while ago at Macworld as Liv Games was just publishing it, but the title has been out for a little while now and I've had a little longer to play with it. Monster Wars is not only another huge content pack for Legendary Wars, with tons of new stages, modes and units to play with, but it is a nice iteration on the series as a whole, with a lot of subtle but solid improvements to the gameplay.

Unit animations are generally better across the board, and the controls work basically the same. I still sometimes have trouble keeping track of which heroes I'm controlling and which lanes they are supposed to be in. The UI is much improved. The pacing of the game shows that Liv Games has learned quite a bit about how to move players from level to level. The new modes add quite a bit to the game, which was likely a tough task considering how much variety was already there.

If you loved Legendary Wars, you've probably already grabbed this one. But even if you've never heard of Legendary Wars, Monster Wars is a steal at 99 cents. New players might be slightly overwhelmed by what's going on in the new title, but Liv Games has made two really spectacular titles here.They really shouldn't be missed, especially on the iPad.

Daily iPad App: Monster Wars is a great addition to Legendary Wars series originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Anime News Network did an in-depth comparison of reading manga on an iPad vs. a Nook Color today, after Viz Media sent them both devices so they could do a hands-on look at making the digital jump. After taking a hit from the closing of Borders, Viz decided to turn its popular Shonen Jump publication into a digital-only product. Launched in January, Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha is $25.99 for an annual subscription, with three of its flagship series -- One Piece, Bleach and Naruto -- now running almost concurrent with the Japanese release. Individual issues can be rented for 99 cents for a 4-week period.

The results aren't surprising. By holding up a volume of manga next to an iPad, it shows that the iPad is right about the same size as a manga volume and the experience is just as good as reading a print book. What the article does highlight is the problems that the Nook Color has with Viz's products, especially when it comes to things such as double-page spreads. It doesn't touch on the Kindle Fire, however, since Viz hasn't ported its app out to it yet. As expected, the big drawback to the iPad is the price. While manga sold via Viz's iPad app is cheaper than the print volumes, the price of an iPad would be the barrier preventing teens from completely making that digital jump Viz wants them to make.

We originally looked at the Viz app in 2010, and we were pretty pleased with its offerings then. If you haven't considered a digital transition of your manga and comics yet, the ANN article is a good way to see if you'd want to do so. While I still prefer buying print graphic novels, my comic-buying habits are a mix of supporting my favorite local comic shop and buying digital manga through Comixology and Viz -- the latter being excellent for long series that take up a ton of shelf space.

The pros and cons of making a digital jump with comics originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Stick with us on this one -- it seems unlikely, but this case could have some wider consequences. Last year, Apple filed a lawsuit against a company named Proview Technology Shenzen in China. It was pretty common by Apple's standards: The company was using the name iPad, and Apple was trying to keep them from doing so.

While this was all going on, Proview Taiwan (only loosely affiliated with the Shenzen division) sold the trademark to "iPad" in China to a UK-based company named Application Development, which then sold it right back to Apple. All of this would normally be fine and dandy except for one thing: Apple lost the original lawsuit that was supposed to prevent Proview Shenzen from using the name.

As a result, Proview Shenzen is arguing that it still retains the rights to the "iPad" name on the Chinese mainland, and Apple may be fined as much as 2.4 billion yuan ($380 million US). Obviously, this is a tangled legal issue, and I'm sure Apple still has options in the fight before they need to cough up the fine. But there's obviously something here that needs to be worked out, and if it isn't in time, Apple could be prohibited from selling or marketing its tablet under the name "iPad" in China.

[via Gizmodo]

Apple could be forced to stop selling "iPads" in China originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've talked quite a bit before about the growing "second screen" phenomenon, where iPads and other mobile devices are used as a second screen while either working on another computer or watching television. And with the biggest event on television yesterday, there was likely a lot of "second screen" viewing going around. ZDNet's James Kendrick says his was one of three iPads around the coffee table at his Super Bowl party, and with tens of thousands of tweets per second going out during the most interesting parts of the game, Kendrick's experience was undoubtedly not unique.

Car maker Chevrolet actually participated in the event with the Chevy Game Time app, which not only posted ads available on the iPad the second they went live on the TV, but also offered up contests and more interactivity during the show. And the NFL and NBC famously streamed the whole event live on the Internet for the first time this year -- while I didn't get a chance to pull the game up myself yesterday, I heard a few people say that it was in fact available to stream on the iPad. The commercials weren't available on the stream, though, so it'll probably be a few years before people learn the stream is out there, and before it becomes a better substitute for the TV experience.

Still, the Super Bowl certainly showed off a few major trends that we're seeing in entertainment consumption lately. Apple's devices especially are providing ways for both consumers and brands to interact and extend the "watching" experience, even outside of a standard TV broadcast.

iPads invade Super Bowl parties originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

RIM's star just sank a bit closer to the horizon. Halliburton, a household name in the energy industry and once a BlackBerry bastion, is dumping RIM's platform and switching to iOS. The company once relied heavily on RIM's platform, but after evaluating RIM, Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, Halliburton has settled on switching to Apple's platform.

"Over the next year, we will begin expanding the use of our mobile technology by transitioning from the BlackBerry (RIM) platform that we currently use to smartphone technology via the iPhone," the company said. Halliburton representatives confirmed to AppleInsider that only 4500 of the company's 70,000 employees still use BlackBerry devices, so the transition probably won't take as long as it might have a few years ago.

According to AppleInsider's sources, Halliburton actively engaged with Apple in its transition. Halliburton is far from the first company to do so; Clorox ditched the BlackBerry last year, and 92 percent of its employees replaced it with an iPhone.

RIM's platform was once synonymous with business communications, but that status has slowly eroded since the iPhone's introduction. While corporate IT spent the first few years after the iPhone's introduction scoffing at the device, quarterly reports from analysis firms like Good Technology show that iOS has penetrated enterprise markets in a way that even the stodgiest of companies can no longer afford to ignore.

Halliburton dumping BlackBerry, switching to iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Siri has been in widespread use for four months, but so far Apple's "personal assistant" is still only available on one device, the iPhone 4S. We speculated that there weren't any technical reasons Siri couldn't work on some of Apple's other devices, and the jailbreak community later proved us right by porting Siri to the iPhone 4.

AppleInsider did some digging and discovered there may be a technological reason Apple's kept Siri an iPhone 4S-only feature: noise reduction. The iPhone 4 incorporates noise reduction circuitry from a third-party vendor called Audience, and that circuitry lies separate from the A4 chip on the iPhone's logic board. The newer processor in the iPhone 4S (and possibly the iPad 2) incorporates a newer version of this noise-reduction circuitry within the A5 chip itself, reducing overall cost.

Audience's noise reduction chip works similarly to how the human brain processes audio. By sampling audio from multiple sources (the iPhone's main microphone and the noise-cancelling mic), the Audience chip is able to filter out background noise and deliver only the user's voice, just like how your brain filters out noise in a crowded room to focus on a person talking to you.

The newer noise reduction circuitry in the A5 chip is better at "far-field" noise reduction than the circuits in the iPhone 4. Essentially, the iPhone 4S can achieve the same or better noise reduction when held at arm's length that the iPhone 4 gets when held directly in front of a user's mouth.

The implications for Siri use are obvious -- because of its less advanced noise reduction circuitry, Siri wouldn't function nearly as well on an iPhone 4 in an even moderately noisy environment unless you held it up to your ear and talked directly into the microphone. Despite having an A5 processor (and possibly including the newer noise reduction circuitry), Siri might not function well on an iPad 2 either, since the iPad 2 doesn't have a noise-cancelling microphone.

Apple's product perfectionism often leads to scenarios where features that might technically work on a product wind up excluded because they don't work perfectly. I've run into this a few times with older gear; my old PowerBook G3 had no technical barriers to running OS X Panther or Tiger, for instance, but because it didn't run anything newer than OS X Jaguar well, Apple artificially restricted the device to Jaguar. Similarly, jailbreakers discovered ways to get video capture working on the iPhone 3G, but the results were rather lackluster compared to the officially-supported video recording on the iPhone 3GS and above.

Even if Siri technically works on Apple's older iOS devices, if its performance doesn't work to Apple's satisfaction, we may never see Siri ported to the iPhone 4 or current iPads after all.

Siri may be iPhone 4S-only because of noise reduction tech originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When it comes to forecasting the next big thing, we turn to our secret weapon: the TUAW braintrust. We put the question to you and let you have your go at it. Today's topic is the iPad 3.

It's been a long, cold winter for TUAW. As days lengthen and Spring becomes less of a dream and more imminent, our thoughts turn to new technology. What do we expect to see in the next generation iPad and when do we expect to see it? Preorders in March, pickup in April?

You tell us. Place your vote in this poll and then join in the comments with all your predictions.

View Poll

You're the Pundit: iPad 3 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I love Siri. I'm surprised at how much I actually use it beyond the gimmicky stuff. Texting while driving (through my car's Uconnect system) is so handy.

One thing I've noticed is that when I dictate a message, add a smiley face and have her read it back to me, she says, "Have a nice day colon comma." The odd part is that she has written :-), which is colon hyphen right bracket. Is this a glitch or does a hyphen and right bracket together equal a comma? I was never good at grammatical math.

Your doting nephew,

Damien

Dear Damien,

Ah, bless Siri. She's such a changeable creature. Auntie used to love when Siri would read out "Brr, it's cold" as "Bee. Arr. Arr. It's Cold". Thanks to Apple's live data center updates, Siri now responds "Burr" instead of "Bee. Arr. Arr."

The smiley-face being read back as a colon is similar. It's simply a text-to-speech glitch that Apple may eventually improve. You can report any bugs to Apple directly using their Bug Reporter online website.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Why does Siri read smilies as colons? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

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Daily Update for February 6, 2012 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.