What it takes to make an iPhone: By the numbers

Apple's glamorous gadgets are assembled by an army of 1.2 million underpaid, overworked Chinese employees. Here, a glimpse at their grueling factory lives What exactly does it take to get an Apple product into your hands? This week, ABC's Nightline took viewers on an insider tour of China's Foxconn plants, where Apple phones and tablets are made — and where,  says Joshua Topolsky at The Verge, the hours are controversially long, the wages are low, and the work is brutally monotonous. Here, a look inside the world of Apple manufacturing, by the numbers:

141
Steps required to make an iPhone

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24
Hours of labor it takes to manufacture the phone

325
Sets of hands it takes to make a single iPad

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5
Days it takes to make a single iPad

$1.78
Hourly wage of new Foxconn employees, according to ABC's report

$2.18
Hourly wage of 75 percent of Foxconn's workforce

1.2 million
Workers employed by Foxconn

18
Typical age of Foxconn employees

12
The average shift, in hours, for Foxconn workers

7
Seconds it takes to complete a single step in the manufacturing process. "We are extremely tired, with tremendous pressure," one worker said. "We work faster even than the machines."

$17.50
Monthly rent Foxconn employees pay to secure sleeping space in a dorm room. Each room sleeps six to eight people.

$0.70
Price each Foxconn employee pays per meal

$12.50 to $30
Approximate cost of labor for a single iPhone

$199
Starting retail price for the iPhone 4S

$650
Approximate revenue each iPhone generates for Apple, according to Horace Dediu at Asymco

37 million
iPhones sold in the last quarter of 2011

$97.6 billion
Apple's cash on hand

Sources: Apple Insider (2), ASYMCO, New York Times (2), TUAW, The Verge, VentureBeat

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Google spies on iPhone users: Should the feds clamp down?

The search giant deployed a special code to bypass Apple's privacy settings — and track millions of users' surfing habits Apple's Safari browser is designed to shield users from tracking by advertisers. This apparently didn't sit well with Google, which decided to give Safari's privacy settings the runaround, according to The Wall Street Journal. As a result, Safari users were tracked without their permission, on both their mobile devices and desktops. When the news got out, Google quickly shut down the code, and stressed that the tracking software — known as cookies — did not appropriate any personal information. But lawmakers are calling for an investigation into the incident, the latest in a slew of privacy controversies for the company. Should the government get tougher on Google?

Yes. Google broke the law — and it's all because of Facebook: Google "has now started to violate the law, and certainly to undermine the trust that the company depends on," says Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. Why? Because Google is experiencing an "enormous internal urgency" to spread the use of Google Plus, its social-networking component. It bypassed Safari's privacy settings to place a "+1" icon next to ads, just like Facebook's "like" function. It's time for Google quit the invasive tactics and "slow its full-court press" on Google Plus. 
"WSJ: Google caught circumventing iPhone security, tracking users who opted out of third-party cookies"

Google claims it was an accident — but that's what it always says: Google claims that it was merely trying to enhance the experience of Google users on Safari, and that it did not intend to bypass privacy settings, says Ian Paul at PCWorld. But haven't we heard that before? "Every time Google is found to be up to no good, the company uses virtually the same excuse: 'Oops, sorry, that was a mistake, we didn't know we were doing that.'" And if Google simply wanted to improve Safari's "functionality," there was no need to "deploy an invisible method beyond the control of the user."
"Will the FTC investigate Google's Safari gaffe?"

People, relax. You're being tracked whether you like it or not: Did Google "screw up by using underhanded tactics?" asks Jared Newman at TIME. Sure, but as far as privacy violations are concerned, "I rank that pretty low on the list of offenses." The truth is that "data mining is the norm," and the result of Google's behavior — more targeted advertising — "is fairly innocuous." Unless you "take a dozen precautions, odds are that marketing companies already know plenty about you."
"Google's Safari privacy snafu: just not feeling the outrage"

SEE MORE: Coming soon: Google-powered 'Terminator' glasses?

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