Interestingly enough, I had a conversation about the conditions and the environment in China relating to Apple products on New Year’s Eve with someone I had just met at a party. I wasn’t arguing that Apple products sucked, quite the opposite actually. I was holding my iPhone 4 in my hand at the time. Our argument turned to Steve Jobs and how much I came to dislike the person from reading the book, which this gentleman agreed with. However he had no interest in hearing about the illness, conditions and even death to make these products.

Rather, this person wanted to argue, or at least ignore, my issue with this with a product priced as if it was actually built in the USA. That really pissed me off that this so called IT professional would agree that someone was not a nice person but ignore, well lets’ be honest here, people dying so you can have these products. It turns out that Apple seems to have the exact same attitude. Retail iPhone 4s at this time is around $700 for an item made in China at slave pricing and conditions. Maybe this article from the New York Times will make a difference, but I doubt it.

Apple alone had a record year with $13.06 billion in profits on 46.3 billion in sales. But what does Apple have to say?

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

In other words they will continue because no one cares. What a sad statement.

“In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.“

The article at the New York Times goes further taking a look at other companies including Dell, Hewlett Packard, I.B.M, Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and more. It’s an article any technology enthusiast should read. It is 7 pages long.