Apple : Foxconn denies strike at iPhone 5 manufacturing plant

Foxconn denies strike at iPhone 5 manufacturing plant
Apple Maps update returns missing Statue of Liberty to New York City
Opinion: Why new SSDs aren't just super fast, but super cheap
Thousands of Foxconn employees go on strike
Users reporting new iPod touch shipment confirmation

Foxconn denies strike at iPhone 5 manufacturing plant

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Foxconn has moved to deny reports that an employee strike at one of its plants has halted production of the Apple iPhone 5.

On Friday is was alleged that 3,000 to 4,000 workers left their posts at the Zhengzhou factory in central China, due to the imposition of stricter quality controls, reportedly requested by Apple.

However, Foxconn has played down the reports and said only two minor disputes had taken place earlier in the week, which had resulted in no delays to the production schedule.

In a statement emailed to Reuters, the company said: "Any reports that there has been an employee strike are inaccurate. There has been no workplace stoppage in that facility or any other Foxconn facility and production has continued on schedule."

Foxconn added that the small scale disruptions on October 1-2 were "immediately addressed and measures taken, including providing additional staff for the lines in question."

Too much pressure

Apple's reported desire for stricter quality controls is said to be the result of widespread user complaints of out-of-the-box aesthetic flaws on the new iPhone 5 handset.

China Labor Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, claimed on Friday: "This strike is a result of the fact that these workers just have too much pressure."

Reuters also reports: "China's official Xinhua news agency quoted a government spokesman in Zhengzhou as saying some 100 quality inspectors at Foxconn refused to work for an hour on Friday after one was allegedly beaten by workers irate over the inspection demands."

While the full picture of the reported industrial action is yet to emerge, it is clear that all is not well at the plant, which employs 130,000 people and assembles an estimated 70 per cent of iPhone 5 devices.

Last month, there were also widespread reports of rioting at the Foxconn facility in Taiyuan in north China, which required 5,000 police offers to calm the situation.

Both Apple and Foxconn have come under fire in recent years over the alleged poor working conditions for assembly workers.

Apple Maps update returns missing Statue of Liberty to New York City

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Apple has started to roll out the first updates to its Maps application, starting with the restoration of some major New York City landmarks.

The missing Statue of Liberty, which presumably was visiting friends and family back in France, is now safely back on American soil according to Apple Maps' updated 3D satellite imagery.

Also, the once hopelessly-distorted Brooklyn Bridge now appears in all its majestic glory, in the ongoing, but unannounced updates.

The 3D Flyover feature for Apple Maps was touted as one of the headline features of the new offering but has been subject to ridicule since the app's launch within iOS 6 in mid-September.

Glaring omissions

It is, of course, wise for Apple to tackle the most glaring omissions to the Maps app first as they have been subject to the greatest level of mickey-taking.

However, there remains huge amount of work to be done before the product meets the expectations of Apple fans and the company itself.

Last week Apple CEO Tim Cook made an unprecedented apology in which he admitted the company "fell short" on its commitment to deliver the best experiences for its users.

Now New York is on the way to being fixed, perhaps Apple could work on removing the omnipresent cloud cover, currently enshrouding the whole of England?

Opinion: Why new SSDs aren't just super fast, but super cheap

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The problem to date with SSDs has been a combination of measly capacity and patchy performance.

With conventional magnetic drives now measured in terabytes and available for apparent pennies, putting up with limited capacity on SSDs is hard to take.

The same goes for the performance and reliability problems that occasionally hit SSDs. Given the solid-state sales pitch, the tendency is to assume they're just going to work. And work really fast. Like plain old PC memory, otherwise known as RAM.

On the capacity issue, earlier this year we saw a major price drop in most SSDs, with the 120 to 128GB species falling to around £70 or so. That was welcome, but it's still not good enough. Not when 500GB is probably the minimum you want if you have a big games library and a load of other apps.

A little TLC

The big news here is the new Samsung 840 drive and its TLC memory. TLC, of course, stands for Triple-level cell. That's the next step on from today's multi-level cell or MLC memory. It boils dwon to the difference between storing three or just two bits of data per memory cell.

In very simple terms, that means 50 per cent more capacity in the same amount of silicon. What's more, this new TLC memory has also been shrunk down to 21nm in terms of process technology. That's a serious double whammy in terms of data density.

If there's some bad news, it's that I'm not expecting the new 840 to be crazy cheap at launch. It's probably mirror the £70-ish where mainstream SSDs have settled. But that's a launch price for a hot new drive. And it's only going to go in one direction.

Pro drive

As for the performance half of the equation, it very much looks like Samsung has just raised the bar there, too, with the new Samsung 840 Pro. Out goes the TLC memory, though we're still talking fancy new 21nm flash memory but of the MLC variety.

In comes huge IOPS performance of up to 100,000 operations per second. Now, it's often the peak read and write numbers that grab the headlines. The problem with that is twofold.

For starters, the SATA interface, even in 6Gbps trim, is increasingly putting the kybosh on peak performance. Which is why you see a lot of drives topping out at a little over 500MB/s in benchmarks.

Random access

Even more important is the fact that it's the IOPS performance that determines how quick drives are in messier, random access workloads rather than nice, sequential reads and writes. In other words, IOPS makes at least as much if not more difference to the feel of you PC or laptop – or tablet for that matter.

We're currently having a play with our Samsung 840 and 840 Pro samples and will have first impressions soon. But I've an inkling each will end up being a game changer in its own right. Of course, what I really want is the best bits of both drives. But that's still a little ways off.

Thousands of Foxconn employees go on strike

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Unrest has returned to Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory as thousands of workers went on strike Friday.

About 3,000 to 4,000 employees began the strike at 1 p.m.(UTC), paralyzing production of iPhones for much of the day and night shifts, according to non-profit China Labor Watch (CLW).

The factory in the capital of the Henan Province reportedly employs 130,000 workers who assemble an estimated 70 percent of all iPhones.

CLW said it blames overly strict quality control demands, lack of necessary training and denied vacation time as contributing factors to the strike.

Over worked and under paid

Work conditions in Foxconn factories are notoriously bad, as workers have often complained about poor working conditions and extremely long hours.

Experts say the main culprit is added pressure put on workers by Apple's iPhone 5. With such great demand for the new iPhone, workers were pushed to work longer hours and forgo holiday leave.

However, assembly line workers weren't given the proper training to create the complex devices, contributing to quality control problems.

After complaints from consumers about out-of-the-box iPhone 5 scratches, Apple and factory management increased quality demands on employees, according to CLW.

Without the proper training, fabricators couldn't produce iPhones that met quality standards. This pressure lead to physical fights between on-site quality control inspectors and factory workers.

These altercations damaged several QC inspection rooms, injured employees and landed some in the hospital.

Managers ignored the violence, even after QC inspectors complained to factory bosses. This prompted inspectors to strike, leading to work stoppages on production lines.

"This strike is a result of the fact that these workers just have too much pressure," Li Qiang, executive director of CLW, said in a press release.

Boiling over

It's hard to tell how this will affect production of the iPhone 5 in the near future.

QC inspectors make up a majority of striking workers. The number of striking workers is only a fraction of the people employed by the factory, but it was still enough to stop much of the day's production.

Riots temporarily stopped work in late September due to clashes between assembly line workers and security guards.

Experts warned at the time that if the underlying problems, such as overextending the work force, weren't resolved it would cause more problems.

Friday, those problems have bubbled to the surface once again.

Apple has yet to respond to TechRadar's request for comment.

Users reporting new iPod touch shipment confirmation

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Customers who pre-ordered the 5th generation iPod touch are beginning to see signs that their devices might ship soon, according to reports.

A number of users on the MacRumor forums noted that they received notifications that their order is "preparing for shipment."

Another user claimed that their credit card has been charged for the pre-order payment, a step which only happens once an item is ready to ship.

Apple's listing for the new iPod touch in the U.S. still offers the nebulous "October" shipping date for the device.

Meanwhile, Australia has seen some movement with the Apple online store shipping date changed to read "three weeks."

Japan may see the new iPod touch first though, as the Macotakara blog is reporting a concrete release date of Oct. 9.

A slim harvest

While Apple announced the new iPod touch, along with a redesigned iPod nano, on the same day as the iPhone 5, tracking down an arrival date for the music players proved more than difficult for customers.

Even with the iPhone 5 official launched Sept 21., many users are still experiencing delays as shipments slipped by three to four weeks.

That trend is not expected to let up anytime soon with Apple's newest devices. Suppliers are reportedly already frustrated with the much-rumored iPad Mini's low yield, which will lead to even more retail shortages and shipment delays.

However, some customers are being rewarded for their patience, as they are finally receiving shipment notifications from Apple.

That brief solace doesn't make the extra three week wait any shorter, though.

Yahuui Blog

Saturday, October 6, 2012