I like to scan across the Internet and see whats going on now and then. This morning I came upon an article that just made me shake my head. The article was ‘Why I Regret Buying an iPhone’ by Don Tennant. In this article Mr. Tennant goes on a preaching spree about the horrible practices of Apple suppliers in China, strong arming and threatening it’s employees, sometimes to the point of death ([Foxconn employee Sun Danyong] leapt to his death from his 12th-floor apartment window a few days after he told his superiors that one of the 16 iPhone 4G prototypes which had been entrusted to him had gone missing.) and how they are such a security tight group in the states, its likened to a form of business gestapo. (“You may want to know about their Worldwide Loyalty Team,” Tom told me recently in an email. I read what he had to say. It felt like a description of the Gestapo, without the torture and killing part.) The problems with his viewpoint are many, but I’m going to focus on three core ones that bother me the most.

1) Foxconn is a Hardware Manufacturer based in China that supplies components to not only Apple, but to companies like Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Cisco as well. All of these companies are involved in paying a company that treats it’s employees like that. Not just Apple. Mr Tennant would have you feel Apple is more responsible than the others because of the fact that in this incident, a iPhone 4G prototype was involved. I can’t help but feel that opinion is not only ludicrous, but painfully naive as well. China has a culture of oppression that goes back CENTURIES. The mindset of the little guy is expendable can be dated back to the Kahns. Trying to blame modern businesses for a long standing cultural flaw is ultruistic in a stupid direction and painfully obvious that Mr. Tennant hasn’t taken any real time to learn about the people involved in the articles he’s writing.

2) Apple’s ‘Gestapo’ security practices in the US. I’m sorry. Once again I just can’t bring myself to agree with Mr. Tennant’s ‘Go for the little guy’ mindset. The simple fact is if the Apple work environment was so horrible. PEOPLE WOULD QUIT! This isn’t mainland China. Were not in a Country where you get locked into a business and you are stuck there forever. Hell, right now Business loyalty is at an all time low. Company Employees can be likened to Mercs trolling for jobs on the war market. The simple fact is that if people were really having as many problems as were being described by ‘Tom’, an Apple Employee, then people would be leaving and finding new jobs. Instead? They stay and you get people like Tom who come out and complain. Sorry, but it sounds like a need for attention to me.

3) Finally, the biggest hypocrisy to the ENTIRE topic. Not only are there serious holes in the logic that Mr Tennant uses to base his arguments on. But after his outrage and anger to this whole situation, has Mr Tennant stopped using his iPone and various Apple devices? Absolutely not! Not only does he not stop using them, which he absolutely should do if he was doing anything more than trying to create sensationalized trollop, but he spends an entire second article explaining that ‘No, I haven’t stopped using my Apple products. Here’s why that’s OK and I’m not a total douche or hypocrite for calling out that people stop buying apple products while continuing to use them myself.’

In the end, its just one more nail in the media’s coffin. I’ve long ago lost all respect for 90% of the ‘Reporters’ out there. I miss the age of journalists. All we have left are ‘Personalities’. Arrogant and self-absorbed scum that will say anything to rile up the people who watch or read them for the sole purpose of increase their ratings.