Opinion: Stop Apple before they kill again

Added 2010-03-13, 04:47 PM | 72 Replies

It should go without saying that I'm a PC person. I'd never owned anything from Apple in my life, and with good reason. But shortly after this website came online last year, I decided to acquire and start using Apple products. Why? Because I didn't think I could be an effective critic by taking cheap shots from the sidelines. It was a costly decision to make for a non-profit website with then-zero visitors that may not have grown beyond an April Fools' joke.

Fast-forward 11.5 months. The Apple computer is currently exhibiting all sorts of fun problems unheard of on the average PC. At times, the MagSafe power adapter decides not to connect. The keyboard and trackpad only work when they feel like it after being woken from suspend. The wireless adapter disconnects or disappears at random. Sometimes the system turns on and hangs at a grey screen without the Apple logo. As far as the iPod, it was replaced three times after breaking under light to normal use. The dock cable also frayed and the replacement cable just stopped connecting a few days ago.

It's not like I didn't already know this going in, but take it from someone unlucky enough to have used them: Apple computers and devices are disposable trash.

Fortunately, there are viable alternatives for both of these soon-to-be ex-products over in the PC ecosystem. If you're an Apple customer, though, you might not know that. And that's what this website is all about: Tearing down the reality distortion field. Demonstrating that Apple isn't as perfect as it claims to be. But most importantly, acting not so much as a "news" site, but as a historical chronicle for all the negative things about Apple that get forgotten whenever they announce a new iProduct. Why is this important?

Because Apple is a terrible company.

Chinese iPhone engineer Sun Danyong died due to Apple's overbearing culture of secrecy. A reporter for Reuters was assaulted at the hands of an Apple supplier. Apple was recently forced to admit that child laborers were employed to build their products. And a worker died after 49 others were diagnosed with severe toxic poisoning due to a solvent used in the manufacture of iPhones.

These events quickly fell out of the media spotlight after Apple trotted out its standard manufactured PR line about social responsibility and codes of conduct. The media bought it every time. After the deaths, after the assault, after the child labor revelation, after the poisoning. But after finding that even the media is living in fear of Apple, should we be surprised?

Apple is, after all, the company that fought repeatedly in court to hide the facts behind their exploding iPod batteries. Facts that could have informed the parents of the child severely injured when his iPod touch exploded and caught fire in his pocket.

This is a shameful and disgusting record for any company, and it's one that deserves continued exposure. Who will Apple kill next? And why are they allowed to get away with it?

Late last year, we found out completely by accident that Apple was monitoring this site. Thanks to some modifications put in place to combat comment spam, junk submissions, and general misuse by pro-Apple trolls, our abuse system presented several IP addresses in Apple's IP range.

Correlating our abuse report for Apple's IPs in tandem with date/time ranges of what we'll call "significant Steve Jobs-related events" over the past year, we came to the conclusion that one of the Apple IPs visiting the site is either Jobs himself or one of his close entourage. He is of course as welcome here as anyone else, and I only mention this since it makes me more confident that this message will reach its intended target:

Mr. Jobs, there's a time for secrecy. If people are getting assaulted, exploited, poisoned, and killed, that is not the time. I knew full-well that I'd regret purchasing your products, but I didn't know I'd be this sorry. Human life will never be as disposable as your shoddy merchandise.

You run Apple. The buck stops with you. Not with your contractors, not with your suppliers, not with anybody else. It's your paranoid culture of secrecy. It's your exploited child laborers. It's your poisoned and dying factory workers. It's your dead engineer.

I can only hope that, wherever you end up when your time is through, your reality distortion field won't save you from what you deserve. And I sincerely hope that Sun Danyong, the engineer that was driven to his death in fear of you, is there to see it happen.