We, the people who buy and love gadgets, who write about them, who obsess over their design and minutiae, must think about what this means. We should go into our purchases knowingly – the way most of us think with more knowledge than our ancestors about what we put in our mouths and how we clothe ourselves. Would I prefer that Apple assembled my iPhone in the US of A? Yes: there’s greater oversight and better working conditions here. Would that mean I would have to pay more? Yes, exponentially. Companies like Apple know that their images matter. It’s why they’re all scrambling to “green themselves up” and prove that their products don’t end up contributing to the toxic garbage dump that we call Earth. We shouldn’t accept companies’ meaningless “we’re looking into it” press releases, because at the end of the day, we should come to terms with the fact that they don’t actually care about the workers at Foxconn, not really – as long as the factories keep churning out the goods.
