Bill Weir
The best video yet from inside a Chinese iPad factory
April 12, 2012: 6:13 AM ETRadio reporter Rob Schmitz took a microphone AND a camera to the assembly line
Click on the image to watch the video
It's not as slick as ABC's, and you don't get to see the reporter riding in a van, donning a bunny suit, or chatting up the workers. But Rob Schmitz' simple, hand-held video tour of Foxconn's Shenzhen iPad factory -- posted Wednesday on American Public Media's Marketplace website -- gives you a better feel for what goes on there.
Bill Weir's 5:32 report on ABC Nightline gave us our first glimpse of the sheer numbers involved -- those rows after rows of young workers. See here.
Schmitz' 2:36 video shows us their faces -- marching to work in the morning, getting their daily assembly line assignments, dozing off while standing in line.
He also shows us more machinery than we expected to see -- a recently installed pick-and-place robot, a device for pressing the batteries into place, a box that tests the iPad's gyroscope by spinning it this way and that.
The tour of Foxconn's factory was Schmitz' reward from Apple (AAPL) public relations for having exposed the lies in Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs."
It turned out to be our reward too.
Schmitz is a full-service reporter. In addition to shooting this video, he's been tweeting, blogging and doing radio interviews all week. You can catch up to it all at Marketplace's Apple Economy special report.
Below the fold: The ABC and Marketplace videos, via YouTube
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Video: Nightline's report on life inside an iPad factory
Bill Weir dons a bunny suit and takes a camera into Foxconn's Shenzhen facilities
With Apple's (AAPL) permission, Foxconn for the first time allowed a reporter and his camera crew into its famous Shenzhen, China, factory complex. The 17-minute report aired Tuesday night.
Apart from some details about the production processes (it takes 141 steps, mostly done by hand, to assemble an iPhone) there's little news here that wasn't in the reporter's MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 22, 2012 7:42 AM ET -
Video: ABC takes a camera crew inside an iPad factory
Nightline to air its special after the kids are asleep Tuesday at 11:35 p.m. ET and PT
Four years ago, when I first starting writing about Foxconn, it was almost impossible to get a photo of the factory workers who assemble 40% of the world's electronic devices.
Now, 18 suicides, two fatal explosions, an off-Broadway show and a New York Times exposé later, Foxconn has opened the factory where Apple's (AAPL) iPads MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 20, 2012 12:01 PM ET
