It goes something like this: iPhone fourth generation goes missing. Employee is investigated. Employee then commits suicide. There are allegations of physical abuse, and illegal searching of his apartment. VentureBeat has translated all the gritty notes, that you can read here. In the meantime, let’s figure out what this means. Apple, known around the technology community for being wildly secretive about its products, has manged to translate that pressure across the world to its supply chain.
But in other parts of the world, rules are different. What may work in the states might not work in China. In cases like this it is easy to wonder if in fact Apple put undue pressure on the company that convinced it of a need to do unethical things, in attempts to get the missing prototype back. Obviously the employee felt extreme pressure: he felt that the solution was to jump out a window and kill himself.
Over a damn phone. All of this over a cellphone. I understand that we all love gadgets, but when people are dying over a piece of wizardry we need to look at ourselves and wonder if we need to rethink our priorities. Everything is fun and games until someone kills themselves, then its the cellphone espionage wars. Worst case scenario, someone else stole the phone, the wrong employees house was illegally searched, then he was beaten, then he killed himself. It’s a phone everyone, not Jesus.
