October 25, 2015
The Panoroma Investigation and Apple's Lame Response
(Originally posted on 2014-12-21)
The Panorama program is available here:
[BBC Panorama Apple's Broken Promises BBC Documentary 2014 Workers Life in china Making iphone 6
This is what we learned from the Panorama program:
- Apple’s supplier Foxconn had to put nets around the buildings to stop the workers from committing suicide.
- The workers at the Pegatron plant are working insane hours 12, 14, 16 hour days are not uncommon.
- The workers are sleeping on the job. They are exhausted.
- The paper trail doesn’t mean anything. The reality and the paper trail are not the same. So when you audit the books, you are auditing a mirage which has nothing to do with reality.
- The sleeping quarters are not compliant with the company regulations.
- When Apple buys tin from Indonesian smelters, you have no idea of the origin of the tin. They might be coming from illegal mining operations which hire child labor.
I thought these were the salient portions of the program.
This is the letter from Apple senior vice president of operations Jeff Williams to the UK employees of Apple, it was posted at Read: Apple's letter to UK staff over Chinese factory conditions - Telegraph:
UK Team, As you know, Apple is dedicated to the advancement of human rights and equality around the world. We are honest about the challenges we face and we work hard to make sure that people who make our products are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. Last night, the BBC’s Panorama program called those values into question. Like many of you, Tim and I were deeply offended by the suggestion that Apple would break a promise to the workers in our supply chain or mislead our customers in any way. I’d like to give you facts and perspective, all of which we shared with the BBC in advance, but were clearly missing from their program. Panorama showed some of the shocking conditions around tin mining in Indonesia. Apple has publicly stated that tin from Indonesia ends up in our products, and some of that tin likely comes from illegal mines. Here are the facts: Tens of thousands of artisanal miners are selling tin through many middlemen to the smelters who supply to component suppliers who sell to the world. The government is not addressing the issue, and there is widespread corruption in the undeveloped supply chain. Our team visited the same parts of Indonesia visited by the BBC, and of course we are appalled by what’s going on there. Apple has two choices: We could make sure all of our suppliers buy tin from smelters outside of Indonesia, which would probably be the easiest thing for us to do and would certainly shield us from criticism. But it would be the lazy and cowardly path, because it would do nothing to improve the situation for Indonesian workers or the environment since Apple consumes a tiny fraction of the tin mined there. We chose the second path, which is to stay engaged and try to drive a collective solution. We spearheaded the creation of an Indonesian Tin Working Group with other technology companies. Apple is pushing to find and implement a system that holds smelters accountable so we can influence artisanal mining in Indonesia. It could be an approach such as “bagging and tagging” legally mined material, which has been successful over time in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We are looking to drive similar results in Indonesia, which is the right thing to do. Panorama also made claims about our commitment to working conditions in our factories. We know of no other company doing as much as Apple does to ensure fair and safe working conditions, to discover and investigate problems, to fix and follow through when issues arise, and to provide transparency into the operations of our suppliers. I want you to know that more than 1400 of your Apple coworkers are stationed in China to manage our manufacturing operations. They are in the factories constantly — talented engineers and managers who are also compassionate people, trained to speak up when they see safety risks or mistreatment. We also have a team of experts dedicated solely to driving compliance with our Supplier Code of Conduct across our vast supply chain. In 2014 alone, our Supplier Responsibility team completed 630 comprehensive, in-person audits deep into our supply chain. These audits include face-to-face interviews with workers, away from their managers, in their native language. Sometimes critics point to the discovery of problems as evidence that the process isn’t working. The reality is that we find violations in every audit we have ever performed, no matter how sophisticated the company we're auditing. We find problems, we drive improvement, and then we raise the bar. Panorama’s report implied that Apple isn’t improving working conditions. Let me tell you, nothing could be further from the truth. Here are just a few examples: Several years ago, the vast majority of workers in our supply chain worked in excess of 60 hours, and 70+ hour workweeks were typical. After years of slow progress and industry excuses, Apple decided to attack the problem by tracking the weekly hours of over one million workers, driving corrective actions with our suppliers and publishing the results on our website monthly — something no other company had ever done. It takes substantial effort, and we have to weed out false reporting, but it's working. This year, our suppliers have achieved an average of 93% compliance with our 60-hour limit. We can still do better. And we will. Our auditors were the first to identify and crack down on a ring of unscrupulous labor brokers who were holding workers’ passports and forcing them to pay exorbitant fees. To date, we have helped workers recoup $20 million in excessive payments like these. We’ve gone far beyond auditing and corrective actions by creating educational programs for workers in the same facilities where they make our products. More than 750,000 people have taken advantage of these college-level courses and enrichment programs, and the feedback we get from students is inspiring. I will not dive into every issue raised by Panorama in this note, but you can rest assured that we take all allegations seriously, and we investigate every claim. We know there are a lot of issues out there, and our work is never done. We will not rest until every person in our supply chain is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve. If you’d like to learn more about our Supplier Responsibility program, I encourage you and our customers to visit our website at apple.com/supplierresponsibility. Thanks for your time and your support. Jeff
This letter made me gag. What a bunch of poppycock.
Firstly, what the hell is Williams and Cook offended about? Does Apple have material objections to the findings of the program? They explicitly admit the situation in Indonesia. They do not challenge the assertions about the working conditions or hours in the factories in China. Apple points to their audit of the documentation and the program explicitly shows the documentation to be meaningless and not representative of what exactly is happening. What are they offended about? And more importantly, who gives a shit about whether they are offended or not? Apple increasingly talks about the values that guide their organization and everything Apple does and stands for. Set a bar. You have to meet it. When someone points out that you are falling short, you are offended? Give me a break. Get off that self-pity horse and fix the problems. Don’t whine. Fix the problems.
Apple’s get out of jail free card is based on the notion that they are the only company who tries? Apple is one of the largest companies in the world. Its claim is that there are deep underlying values guiding every decision it makes. That is what gives them the ability to charge the premium prices they demand in the marketplace. Their products are not just electronic gizmos. They are electronic gizmos which were produced within a value system. Apple’s value system includes this one “…that people who make our products are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.” Really? Remember that this one has taken a few hits in the last few years. Remember this executive team was also in charge when Steve Jobs made a deal with Google, Intel, Adobe and other silicon valley companies to stop poaching engineers from each other. That was a collusion amongst employers to keep employee wages down. That is the effect of discouraging poaching. Keep a lid on engineer wages. That was treating people with respect and dignity? That is Apple’s history. So now when they tell me that they are offended by the suggestion that workers at one of their suppliers are being made to work overtime without their consent, I have to ask them, how gullible do you think I am?
You are telling me that you try. I accept that. You are trying. The situation is still not perfect, so try harder. This is important.
Your products are imbued with a value system. That is what makes your brand special. It is not Dell, or HP, or Samsung, or Walmart. All of the earnest pronouncements you make about your value system guiding your decisions is the added aura around your products. That is the added advantage you have in the marketplace. That is the source of your margins, that is the source of your brand loyalty, that is the source of your consumers’ obsession with your products. Don’t screw that up. If you screw that up, you will have the moral standing of Walmart or a Shell.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
BBC
Apple
Values
October 25, 2015
(Originally posted on 2015-01-04)
In the world of text editors this is a strange beast. The closest product that this is analogous to is Drafts on iOS.
Conceptually it is one sheet of paper. You type on it. You fill it with content that you are working on, and then you send it somewhere. You can save it to a file, prepend or append it to an existing file, or you can use a bundled action/write an action yourself to do with the content what you wish.
Does that sound confusing enough? It does because it is not what we usually do with a text editor. We edit text, we save it to a file, and then we move on. We might occasionally take the content and put it into an email message or a tweet and use some other dedicated program to send it along, but in Textwell it is all done within it. The program ships with a slew of actions which let you do a whole bunch of things with the content you create. When you are done, you clear the one sheet of paper you have, and start with a new blank sheet of paper. Efficient and a little different from the norm.
It has a companion iOS version. With iCloud Drive support, you can work on the same piece of paper on all your devices.
The Mac version of Textwell
This is a well designed piece of software. Don't get me wrong. This is not competing with BBEdit or SublimeText. It is not feature comparable with a text editor. It is as the developers describe it, a "modeless textbox.” A window where you input text. Then you perform some actions on the text.
For instance, I wrote the following tweet: Trying out the Mac version of #Textwell, the modeless textbox for iOS and Mac OS devices. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/textwell/id905944937?mt=12&uo=4&at=10lrLv.
I selected the text of the tweet and hit ⌥⌘T, which is the keystroke I assigned to the Tweet action, and it posted the tweet through the Twitter app. Done. I cleared the textbox and it was now empty and waiting for the next thing I wanted to do with it.
The interface of Textwell is simple. It is a textbox.
You can extend the window to the right and the left. The left extension is a panel which shows different versions of documents you have been working on. I think this is the version control provided by iCloud Drive. But they are a listing of the different iterations of the content of the page you are working on. On the right is the actions panel. This contains all the actions available to you. You can arrange these in folders and that helps you locate the particular action you are interested in. The actions are Javascript programs which run in the built-in web view. They are very well documented here.
The application ships with a bunch of these actions and you can easily write more if you need them. I have just started learning Javascript, so it will be a while before I write my own actions.
Textwell is customizable to a certain extent. You can use any font you like, and design your own theme to a point. I came up with a version of Solarized Dark. I wish the cursor was a little thicker. I changed the cursor color to Red to help it stick out a little more. Textwell lets you set the maximum text width and that defines the width of the text in your input window.
Interestingly, Textwell doesn't provide a keyboard command for full screen view, but if you click on the green doohickey on the top left of the window, it will switch to full screen view. It is a usable full screen view, and that is the mode I am in when I am in Textwell. The absence of a keyboard command for that is a little weird.
One suggestion to improve the product for me would be to add a typewriter scrolling mode. It is something I have gotten used to and miss when it is not available.
When I started this review, I was planning a comparison between Drafts and Textwell. The more I use Textwell, the more I realize that the two products are essentially build around the same idea. Write something, move it on to other uses.
The comparison with Drafts on iOS
There are a few differences between the two programs which make a direct comparison between the two somewhat problematic:
- Drafts does not have a Mac version.
- Textwell is at version 1.3.4 while Drafts is at version 4.0
- Textwell on iOS costs $2.99 while Drafts costs $9.99
- Drafts is markdown friendly. Textwell just does text.
On iOS, Drafts is much better designed. It is not even remotely close. Textwell is functional, but Drafts is heavenly. I have been using Drafts since the day it was released, and I think that it is one of the best designed apps for the iOS. Textwell has a long way to go to catch up.
So where does that leave us?
Do you need a textbox? I am a SublimeText user and initially looked on the whole textbox idea as a bit of a gimmick. The more I gave it time, the more I realized that there is something to be said for the modeless textbox that Textwell provides. I like having a dedicated program where I write something, do something to the text and then move on the next task. It focusses you on the task and then lets you clear the page and move on to next task. It deserves a place in the workflow and it is adding value to my routines.
The Mac version is well designed. It is a worthy addition to any text file users arsenal. My hope is that the iOS version matures and becomes as useful on the iOS devices.
Recommendation
If the idea of a textbox on the Mac intrigues you. Get the Mac version and the iOS version of Textwell. You are going to find a lot of ways you will use this neat little program. If you spend more time on the iOS devices than the Mac, get Drafts.
You can buy Textwell Mac version here. $9.99.
You can buy Textwell iOS version here. $2.99.
You can buy Drafts 4.0 for iOS here. $9.99.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
Textwell
text
Drafts
October 25, 2015
Ulysses for iPad - The complete writing solution
(Originally posted on 2015-03-13)
What am I looking for in an iPad writing app?
- For the last year and a half, I have been looking for Ulysses for iPad. The same experience and environment provided by the Mac app on the iPad. That has been my ideal of the perfect writing app for the iPad.
- There is no number 2.
Why? Because Ulysses provides a complete environment for your writing. It is a product which encourages you to write and lets your writing live and grow in it. It is the best designed piece of writing software that I have seen. I love working in it. So, I want the experience replicated on the iPad. I had been using Editorial on the iPad. I like it. It is in my mind, the best text editor on the iPad, but it is not Ulysses. So, I have been pining for Ulysses for iPad.
Finally. Ulysses for iPad is here.
If you are familiar with the Mac version of this application, you are going to be very comfortable with the iPad version. The developers have replicated most of the functionality of the Mac version in the iPad version and the experience is almost seamless.
External keyboard
You can use Ulysses on the iPad by typing on the onscreen keyboard. I am not very fond of that experience. I can use it in a pinch, but most of the time I like having an external keyboard attached to the iPad. If I am in the middle of serious writing, the external keyboard is something that I rely on. You can get one of a whole slew of external keyboards for the iPad. They connect to the iPad through Bluetooth, and they provide you with a full size real keyboard. Makes the process of entering text much more comfortable than the onscreen keyboard. I have used the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K760 for Mac/iPad/iPhone, the Logitech Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard K480 for Computers, Tablets and Smartphones, Black and the Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch K811 Keyboard for Mac, iPad, iPhone - Silver/Black. All three of these keyboards are multi-device keyboards, in that you can use them with your computer, your iPad and your iPhone. They work very well and they are well made keyboards which feel good to use. I recommend them heartily.
You do have similar benefits from any bluetooth enabled keyboard you want to use. Get one. Makes writing on the iPad a much more elegant experience. In addition, it lets you use keyboard commands. The keyboard bar provided by Ulysses for the iPad is useful but I find keyboard commands more efficient. Also, there are keyboard commands which do not have any equivalents in the onscreen keyboard or the keyboard bar. For instance, ⌃E gets you to the end of the line, and ⌃A gets you to the start of the line that your cursor is on. I find myself using the ⌃E command a lot. On the Mac version, ⌃E gets you to the end of the paragraph you are on, and ⌃A gets you to the start of the paragraph you are on. Very useful, and it works in all your text editors on the Mac.
iCloud Drive
I like Dropbox. I am not very fond of iCloud. At least, I wasn’t very impressed with iCloud till I started beta testing Ulysses for iPad. Now called, iCloud Drive, it works. Yes, surprised the hell out of me, but it works, like it should. In fact, I am writing this document on the iPad and the iMac. The changes I make get reflected in the other device in a few seconds and I can write on the same document on both devices without any glitches. Initially, I thought that the Soulmen folks have done some voodoo on their own to make this work so well, but I am coming around to the realization that iCloud Drive has really improved and the promise of instant syncing is being delivered. Yeah, I am as surprised as you are.
I can start a document in the inbox of iCloud, on either the iPad or the Mac. It appears very soon in the other device. I can edit and work on it, as I feel like, on either device. When I am done, I move it to a folder on the Mac. It is a no friction way of editing and working on a document, irrespective of the device. I find myself utilizing the special talents of both devices. This probably needs an explanation. The experience of using the iPad and the Mac are intrinsically different. On the iPad, I have no distractions, you are effectively on full-screen mode and just writing. It is very good at providing an environment where you write. Just write. I find it easier to edit on the Mac. So after I have the outline and the writing done on the iPad, I edit on the Mac. I also find it easier to add the markdown components to the document on the Mac. Things like links and images are better done on the Mac. You can do them on the iPad, I just find it easier on the Mac, and that is what I find myself doing. The whole process is fluid and I must say that it is very pleasureable. I find myself writing a lot more and hopefully, writing better with this combination.
Keyboard row
Markdown requires you to type a bunch of symbols. Ulysses for the iPad makes it easy for you to type these symbols by providing an extra keyboard row. It contains all the markup you are going to use to write markdown. Press on them and you get a popup list of markup. They are categorized in some way which doesn't seem intuitive to me. I don't really know where is which little code, so when I am using the keyboard row to find something, it is pretty much a hunt and peck search. I know the syntax of markdown enough that I don't find myself going through this exercise often enough to be a pain. If you are starting with markdown, at least on the iPad, you would probably be better off with a cheatsheet than searching for what exactly you are looking for. On the other hand, the markup is there, you just have to find it. Throughout this article I have screenshots of the various pop ups to help you along.
Here comes the first one:
This is the Header pop up. Pretty simple.
Themes and Markup
Ulysses for the iPad like on the Mac, supports a markup called Markdown XL, in addition to regular Markdown. Markdown XL is a variant of markdown which lets Ulysses support annotations, footnotes and attachments. It is the default markup and it is fully supported by the iPad version. You have the choice to use either of Markdown, Markdown XL, Textile’d, a new variant called Minimark, or your own custom markup. I write in Markdown XL or Markdown for the most part. When you start a new document, you are given the choice of specifying the markup you would like in the document, like this,
Since we are showing an image, we might as well do another one:
This is the second pop up from the keyboard bar. I understand the icon and it makes me think of lists. I guess I can elaborate that understanding to include indents, outdents and block quotes. It is a stretch, but kind of intuitive.
Ulysses for Mac has lovely themes in-built and there is a whole host of user-contributed themes which are available in the Styles Exchange portion of its website. All the themes which you have installed on the Mac are available to you on the iPad through the magic of iCloud. If you want you can make your own themes through the Mac app. The iPad app doesn’t let you make themes. If you do make your own theme on the Mac, it can be used on the iPad too. You can learn how to make your own themes here.
Adding fonts to Ulysses for iPad
The application lets you access the system fonts in iOS. You also have the ability to add any font you want. I use Nitti. So, on the Mac, I took the whole folder of Nitti and compressed them. I send my email account, the compressed file. On the iPad, in Mail, I just tap and hold on the archived attachment, out pops a window which gives me the options showing what I wanted to do with the attachment, I chose Open in Ulysses. Ulysses on the iPad launches and the active font is Nitti. That is it. That is all I have to do to add fonts to the application.
I can have the same result by archiving a font in Dropbox. In Dropbox, I select the file, I tap the share icon, I tap the Open in… icon, I tap Open in Ulysses, and I now get to use the font in Ulysses for the iPad.
This is the second step:
Since we are doing images, might as well add the third one from the keyboard bar.
This is where the intuition takes a break. I don’t really know how this collection is intuitive. But it does contain Markdown syntax which are very useful to me. I call it the Misc icon.
A trip through the preferences
Ulysses for the iPad doesn’t have very complicated preferences. They are accessed by clicking on the gear icon at the top of the window.
You can do the following things here:
- Set the default font for the document.
- You can choose to restrict the number of characters per line, the space between the lines, the paragraph spacing and the first line indent (if you want any)
- You can choose the theme you want to use. I find myself using a tweaked copy of Solarized XL all the time.
- You can choose to be in dark mode. One of the advantages of themes for Ulysses is that almost all of them have a dark mode. On the iPad, I spent a lot of time in dark mode, it is a nice way of working.
In text editing options, you have a whole plethora of choices, which are pretty self-evident. The one thing I want to add is the recommendation to use TextExpander 3 + Custom Keyboard. I use it on both the Mac and the iOS devices. It makes writing easier and efficient. I don’t want to write without it.
The Sheet preview options define how you want the sheets to be displayed in the sidebar.
That is pretty much it for preferences. So, I am going to do show another icon from the keyboard bar.
This is the A icon:
Gives you the ability to mark something, or to turn something into bold(strong) or italic(Emphasis). I use the keyboard commands for this, ⌘b for bold and ⌘i for italic.
A collection of observations
- Ulysses for iPad has complete output options. You get to define the styles of the document type you are outputting to, and it does its thing. You can output plain text, html, ePub, PDF, or RTF. RTF is useful if you use Microsoft Word. So you can write on the iPad and treat the iPad as a complete solution for your output needs too. I write in markdown and tend to output to PDF if I have to share the document with other people. Most of the time, the output stays in markdown, so this output function is nice to have but not intrinsically important to me.
- I have been writing this document for the last three days and of course after I praised iCloud Drive, the whole setup took a major dive. Apple’s Internet offerings were offline for a while. I notice that the reliability of syncing is a little touch and go. I was a part of the beta for this product and most of the discussions online seemed to deal with problems regarding syncing. I haven’t run into them myself but that is a concern for the product. I would prefer it if the developers implemented Dropbox syncing. You have the ability to export your document to a whole host of cloud services like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Box and even Dropbox. So you are covered in case of emergencies. I have been relying on the Mac version for the last year and a half, and have been in the beta program for the iPad version, and have never lost a document.
- There are people who are very comfortable writing in anything they have in front of them. I read that George R. R. Martin writes in Wordstar. He is quite productive and creative. There are also people who obsess about their writing instruments and find themselves writing less and obsessing more as a result. So, my advice is the following, I love writing in Ulysses for the iPad and Ulysses for the Mac. If you are looking for a tool, you can adopt these and they are going to provide you a gorgeous environment to write in. If you are happy with your tool of choice, why are you reading this review? Get back to writing.
I am going to explain another of the icons in the keyboard bar here:
I call this the B icon. It has nothing to do with the markup. Raw Source and Code would probably have been better depicted with the letter C. But Comment and Delete? I don’t know.
I am going to complete the remaining two icons on the keyboard bar here:
I call this the media icon, and then the markups make sense. You can add a footnote, video, image, Annotation or a link through this icon.
The last one now:
I have no idea what to call this icon. It is in my mind the oops icon. You can Clear Markup and Undo.
I like the fact that the markdown syntax is available in the keyboard bar, however unintuitive it might be. I tried to come up with a better classification scheme or a better notification scheme and I came up empty. So, I am not going to beat up on the Soulmen for this one. I am glad they are available. Thank you.
Recommendations
If you write and are looking for a home for your writing, you cannot go wrong with Ulysses for the iPad and Ulysses for the Mac. They have made my writing life incredibly pleasureable and efficient. I live in these two programs nowadays, and I am ecstatic about it.
I have written about Ulysses for the Mac before, here.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
Some other takes on Ulysses for iPad
Ulysses for iPad — The Brooks Review
Ulysses - Do You Write?
Ulysses gets even better… and an iPad app too | David Hewson
Quick Thoughts on Ulysses for iPad - The Newsprint
Ulysses for iPad: The go-to text editor for long form writing | iMore
Six Colors: Review: Ulysses for iPad and Mac
Ulysses
iPad
iOS
Writing
Bicycle For Your Mind