Apple has just had their most profitable quarter ever and the company’s shareholders are celebrating this week. But it appears like some of that profit has come after the suffering of many thousands of people. According to the company’s former executives, Apple is culpable for not addressing poor working conditions at their supplier factories in China.

That’s according to a new comprehensive article on the New York Times. The report quotes Apple’s former executives as saying that the company has ignored “labor abuses” for years.

We know that reports about poor working environments at Apple’s supplier factories have come up earlier. But this is the very first time that the company’s former executives have come forward, although anonymously, against Apple’s policies.

According to one of them, “We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on. Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice”. But Apple won’t tell them as the company always demand perfect products and slim margins. And the company’s notorious secrecy influences everything.

An example which reveals Apple’s culpability is the case of the explosion which took place at a Foxconn factory caused by aluminum dust. If Apple had ordered consistent ventilation standards across all their supplier factories after that incident, the second explosion at a different factory would not have happened.

But Apple has conducted inspections at an increasing rate for the past few years. But it is not known whether they would drop major suppliers, such as Foxconn, if faults were found. As another Apple executive said, “Noncompliance is tolerated, as long as the suppliers promise to try harder next time. If we meant business, core violations would disappear“. And Foxconn has denied the accusations of labor abuses, as expected.

So, what do you think? Is Apple culpable? And what about the consumers, are they blameworthy as well for buying products and not demanding better labor policies from the companies?

Check out the NYT website to take a peek at their full article. It’s definitely worth the read.

The post Apple Ignoring Labor Abuses In Supplier Factories, Says Former Executives appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Yes, we certainly want you to stay tuned to Mobile Magazine for all news related to the world of mobile technology, but we totally understand that you read other publications too. As such, you might be a little miffed by the recent paywall erected at the online New York Times. Why pay for news when it’s free everywhere else, right?

Well, in addition to a variety of hacks that people have already published about how to get around having to pay for your fix of the NYT, there are actually no fewer than three other methods that dummy-proof easy to do. Best of all, these are all perfectly legal and have nothing to do with content piracy.

First, all you have to do is remove the “?gwh=numbers” part from the article URL. This removes the paywall and lets you read the content at your leisure. Yes, it really is that simple. Alternatively, you can clear out your browser cache (or use the Private Browsing or Incognito option in your web browser). Thirdly, just switch browsers. Yes, the paywall is that easy to circumvent. Nothing like the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall of China at all.

This is in addition to the official ways not to pay for NYT content: the 20 free articles a month, 25 free articles per day via search, and the unlimited reads through blogs and social networks. If their plan was to make a bunch of extra money from erecting this paywall (which reportedly cost them $40 million), they probably shouldn’t have made it so easy to skirt around it.

[Mashable]

The post ‘Backdoor’ Found to Easily Circumvent NYT $40M Paywall appeared first on Mobile Magazine.