New York Times

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

Apple gives the Gray Lady the cold shoulder

A lesson in access journalism in the wake of the New York Times' Foxconn series

"An Apple spokesman said no executives were available to comment."

That sentence, appearing 12 paragraphs into a 14-graph story by Brian X. Chen in Thursday's New York Times, speaks volumes about how Apple (AAPL) deals with press coverage it doesn't like.

For more than a week, the company had been seeding selected media outlets with early access to its next MORE

Apple public relations' new media pecking order

How the news of the Mac's next operating system -- Mountain Lion -- got disseminated

The top tech news story Thursday, apparently, has nothing to do with working conditions in China, or who owns the iPad brand, or even the fact that Motorola (MMI) may have to remove "slide to unlock" from its smartphones.

No, the top 135 stories on Techmeme this afternoon are all about the next version of Apple's (AAPL) MORE

Apple iPad plant is 'way, way above average' says inspector

It's not a pressure-cooker environment that is the problem, but boredom and alienation

"The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm."

That's Auret van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association, speaking to Reuters after an initial visit to the Foxconn factory where Apple's (AAPL) iPads are built.

Apple has been hit with a barrage of criticism over the working conditions in the Chinese factories where its MORE

About those 4,400 MacBooks in Mooresville, N.C.'s schools

For once, an educational success story that's not really about the computers

Kudos to the New York Times' Alan Schwarz for seeing beyond the Apple (AAPL) angle -- those 4,400 MacBooks, the school district's cutesy slogan (iBelieve, iCan, iWill), the fact that the DOE's director of educational technology worked for Apple for eight years -- in his front page story Monday praising the Mooresville (N.C.) Graded School District as a "shining MORE

Conan O'Brien finds humor in suicides at the iPhone factories

Team Coco's video bits can be hit or miss. The one about Apple's iNett was a miss. 

Maybe it was because I just got back from the return engagement of Mike Daisey's The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs at The Public Theater of New York.

Or maybe the details in the New York Times series on working conditions in Shenzhen, China, hit too close to home.

But for me the video sketch about MORE

Tim Cook blasts the New York Times' report on Apple's Chinese iPad factories

Calls the suggestion that his company doesn't care about the health and safety of workers in the supply chain he built "patently false and offensive"

Here's one thing that's changed since Steve Jobs died.

When Tim Cook, Apple's (AAPL) new CEO, thinks his company has been wronged by the media, he doesn't shrink from hitting back -- swiftly and in a way that he knows will quickly become public.

This report that got MORE

Apple in China: The New York Times goes for the Pulitzer

Its investigative series about how our electronic gadgets are made could be a contender

When monologist Mike Daisey flew to China to find out why the workers who assemble electronic devices for Apple (AAPL)  -- and every other major U.S. manufacturer -- were jumping from the roofs of their factory-city dormitories, he was shocked to discover that most of the American reporters writing about the suicides had never visited the plants MORE

Samsung's snarky TV ads have harshed the iPhone's vibe

Samsung's "buzz score" has overtaken Apple's in a key demographic, says YouGov

The chart at right says it all.

Starting around Nov. 28 -- six days after Samsung began airing its Galaxy Nexus ads mocking Apple's (AAPL) customer base (see here) -- the Korean conglomerate's "buzz" started rising and the iPhone's drifting down.

And on Wednesday, according to a press release issued by YouGov, something unthinkable happened:

"Samsung has just edged past the iPhone MORE

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

A sister's eulogy to Steve Jobs

When I read Mona Simpson's, A Regular Guy, I was left with the impression that she didn't much like her brother.

I was wrong.

If you haven't seen it yet, set aside a few minutes this evening to read her eulogy to Steve Jobs, delivered at his memorial service and published Sunday by the New York Times.

And if you cared at all about the man who co-founded Apple (AAPL), bring a MORE