How Apple's Moral Compass Works
fastcompany.com
fastcompany.com
As far as I can surmise, an app would be banned if:
* it would offend a large potential group of customers
* it offends even a moderate but vocal set of existing customers
* it spews and/or supports the spewing of FUD
* it makes the iPhone or Apple look bad
All in all, these are pretty easy to guess guidelines. They're also very geared towards keeping and attracting customers, and thus, the bottom line.
I own Apple products, I love my Apple products, I love Steve Jobs' talent for creating them. But let's hold off on beautifying the man shall we?
That example kind of casts doubt on the others, which I hadn't heard of before (but wouldn't be surprised by, either).
As far as Foxconn the company is huge but 30 suicide attempts in 3 weeks is not normal (http://gizmodo.com/#!5540045/foxconn-suicide-cluster-claims-...). China only has a .02% suicide rate and most are in the rural areas (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/11/content_609571...). That's 1 (Edit: I meant 1,000 here) in every 5 million people killing themselves. Foxconn has 950,000 employees (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn) and 30 suicide attempts in 3 weeks!
> China only has a .02% suicide rate and most are in the rural areas (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/11/content_609571...). That's 1 in every 5 million people killing themselves.
While you're suggesting people use Google, you should acquaint yourself with the calculator function. That's 1,000 in every 5 million people killing themselves. http://www.google.com/search?q=0.02%25+*+5000000
10 suicide attempts a week in a company the size of San Jose, California isn't particularly high.
(Also note instead of improving the conditions they put out Suicide nets which is bound to bring their numbers down)
Why not?
I'm not familiar with Chinese culture -- can you explain why working at a factory should drop a person's odds of suicide to an arbitrary number less than 50% of the national average?
This would be like a cluster of Facebook or Google employees committing suicide in the U.S.
However, it's also worth considering that good mental health isn't likely to lead to suicide even in difficult working conditions; that depression, the number one cause of suicide [1], is a mental health problem whose treatment might or might not be within the realm of a company's ability to handle; and that even Disneyland in Paris has trouble with employee suicides. [2] Although, again, to be fair to you, that article leads right away by saying that the employees there have been complaining about poor working conditions.
Finally, there are cultural considerations. What are considered terrible work conditions by American standards might not be so horrible when viewed by Chinese standards, just as American work ethics are seen as 20th century by other countries.
[1]: http://www.suicide.org/depression-and-suicide.html
[2]: http://thedisneyblog.com/2011/02/04/fourth-disneyland-paris-...
Nope. Is that a new startup? YCS11?
Population of China (2007): 1,321,851,888 (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004391.html)
Suicide rate determined in 2007: "more than 287,000 people end their own lives every year" (http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/11/content_609571...)
Suicide rate per 100,000 per year: 21.7
Statistically expected suicides at Foxconn per year: 206
Actual suicides in 2010: 14 (http://topics.scmp.com/news/china-news-watch/article/Struggl...) with at least 30 attempts (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/100039883/wha...) (the articles contradict themselves in the number of attempts)
You are assuming the suicide cluster is a continuing trend rather than a short-term incident. Statistics does not work that way, things are not neat and orderly and you can't extrapolate like that. Besides, suicide clusters are a known phenomenon (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7205141.stm).
Also bear in mind that other sources place China's suicide rate much lower by a factor of as much as 4 (but Foxconn's suicide rate would still be lower than the average).
Is it something to be concerned about? Of course. But it's not at the dark-forces-at-work stage. All you are witnessing is how sausages (or cheap Chinese-manufactured goods) are made; witnessing it is uncomfortable but how often does it turn someone vegetarian?
However, I would add that attempts are a poor indicator because there is a wide range of methods with poor success rates. EX: An increasing in attempts can relate to people choosing low success rate methods and failing.
Also younger people are far more likely to commit suicide than the elderly or vary young. However, generally employed people tend to have lower suicide rates. There is also a significant gender bias in suicide attempts and different bias in rates of suicide. Men are more likely to die on their first attempt in large part due to their chosen methods etc.
Also, suicides rates tend to cluster more than expected, both in the short and long term.
Foxconn had 920,000 employees in 2010, according to Wikipedia. China's suicide rate per 100,000 people is 6.6. If there've been 3 suicides thus far, they're tremendously below average.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...
Young people make mistakes. Young suddenly-rich successful people will often make bad decisions.
Hating on Steve Jobs for something he has done previously when he was young and stupid makes as much sense as hating on Mark Zuckerburg as a 19-year-old calling Facebook users "dumb fucks".
But no. You're right. I'm sure the CEOs who have no vision or rigid beliefs are better. I'm sure that those that will change absolutely anything - selling PCs with not enough memory to handle an Operating System or putting Flash onto products that simply can't support them and crash - to simply sell more products are better.
We're not beautifying the man. We're simply giving him his deserved compliments in an industry where he's still a moral rarity.
Second there is a big difference between calling people "dumb f*cks" and forcing your child and her mother into poverty because you refuse to pay (even though you easily could because you're rich).
This sentence
> Apple has complete control over the kind of information you can get on your phone, and it exercises that right seemingly capriciously.
is just blatantly wrong, of course. It only has (near) complete control over the native apps you can get on your phone. There are several other obvious channels of information that it does not control.
VoxelBoy, I noticed your username. I'm a graphics programmer --- I'd love to read about the type of stuff you've done, or simply chat. Have you looked into Sparse Voxel Octrees? Toss me an email (it's in my profile).
With that in mind Apple is really closer to being Nintendo than anything else — so if you think in those terms they're in fact very open with what they allow into their store. Also I've never known Apple to tout the idea that "we're open" or even that "we do no evil". So I think in that way they're a bit more honest.
If the decision to allow something will get us on Fox News, don't do it.
The media and political class are only allowed two positions on anything. Completely against or completely encouraging. Drugs. Infanticide etc. If you fail to condemn or block it, you're encouraging it. If you fail to encourage it, you're blocking it. Of course, when you spend less than any other industrialised country on education, you get a populous for whom everything is black and white.
That isn't without it's politics, but at least it gives a flavor how to deal with publication of different categories of material.
* Posted from my iPad...
"And ultimately, Apple just wants people to keep calling, even if tumors are growing in their heads."