Apple is under fire again, this time at the hands of the NY Times who published their second report on work conditions in Apple’s China factories. Read the piece for the entire breakdown of FoxConn’s conditions, sloganeering like “”Work hard on the job today or work hard to find a job tomorrow,” and Apple’s attempts to make things right.

For me, as someone now eligible for an iPhone upgrade on Verizon, these raise serious questions, particularly as I love games on iOS devices:

“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,” said a current Apple executive.

“And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.”

You can read the first NYT piece on how the U.S. missed out on being Apple’s middleman and another from This American Life on an Apple evangelist who travels to China to find the life behind his iPhone.

-Jamin Warren

[via Longreads]