Archive for February 15th, 2012

Reuters reports on Fair Labor Association’s initial impressions as it conducts its independent audit of working conditions at Foxconn's manufacturing facilities at Apple’s request.

According to the Auret van Heerden, the president of Fair Labor Association, Foxconn’s manufacturing facilities seems to be "first-class" compared to the garment factories which are typically monitored by the association. He also suggests that boredom and monotony connected with repetitive assembly tasks might be among the main threats to employees’ health at the facilities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Watchful iPhone 4S users noticed on Tuesday that Siri is now claiming to speak Japanese. Apple's Siri virtual assistant for the iPhone 4S claims it can already speak Japanese, despite the fact that the language is not yet enabled in the feature's settings.

When asked what languages it can speak, Siri responds, "I speak Japanese, English, German and French. I'm studying some new languages, too."

It then adds, "You can change the language I'm using…just go to Siri settings." However, the settings pane for the feature shows only English (with separate selections for Australia, United Kingdom and United States), French and German, with no way to select Japanese.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not all TV manufacturers seem to be afraid of Apple’s rumored television. For example, Samsung is confident that its massive investment in picture quality improvements will trump anything Apple might be able to put together in other areas.

"We've not seen what they've done but what we can say is that they don't have 10,000 people in R&D in the vision category," [Samsung product manager Chris Moseley] said.

"They don't have the best scaling engine in the world and they don't have world renowned picture quality that has been awarded more than anyone else."

Read the rest of this entry »