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REMOVED LYRICS:
I'm Siri, your virtual assistant. I'm here to tell you about Mat Ward's album, Inside My iPad. Are you ready? Then let's go. One, two, three...
Actor Stephen Fry, who was at Apple's iPad launch, spoke effusively about the iPad.
He said: "It's just beautiful. You want to fondle it and lick it."
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/computers/apple-unveils-the-ipad-20100127-mz84.html
LINER NOTES
I was a bit surprised that a lefty luvvie like Stephen Fry said this back in 2010 and wondered at the time if he knew what went into making Apple's products. It wasn't until I started making music on the iPad - becoming engrossed in its screen and feel - that I realised where he was coming from.
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Employees who open the Apple store use an app as a level to tilt all the screens to exactly the same angle.
It encourages customers to adjust the screen to their viewing angle — in other words, to touch the computer.
Apple beats its rivals by making it fun for people to connect with its products using all their senses.
The more you engage your customers’ senses, the more likely they will engage with your product emotionally.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/06/14/why-the-new-macbook-pro-is-tilted-70-degrees-in-an-apple-store/#7d8dae675a98
LINER NOTES:
Making customers touch your product to make them literally feel a connection with it is a well-known marketing trick. I found out about it only when I came across it in Robert Cialdini's book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which was recommended to me by my Apple fanatic friend. Making music on an iPad is so much more engaging than dragging a plastic mouse across a mouse mat while looking at a pixelated screen. Being able to "touch the music" directly on that jewel-like display is an incredibly intimate experience. I was looking for something that might say Apple deliberately did this in developing the iPad, when I came across the article above, telling how it goes one step further in getting customers to touch its computers.
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This Silicon Valley tech titan has never been one to rest on its laurels.
In just one year, Apple's profits rose by 35%.
Its share of the smartphone industry’s profits has soared to 92%.
Here are the world's most profitable companies as ranked by Forbes:
No.4, Agricultural Bank of China, 28.8 billion dollars profit.
No.3, China Construction Bank, 36.4 billion dollars profit.
No.2, ICBC, 44.2 billion dollars profit.
No.1, Apple, 53.7 billion dollars profit.
http://fortune.com/2016/06/08/fortune-500-most-profitable-companies-2016/
http://www.forbes.com/global2000/list/#header:profits_sortreverse:true
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-share-of-smartphone-industrys-profits-soars-to-92-1436727458
LINER NOTES:
I've always thought Apple's products ridiculously expensive, apart from its third-party music apps, but this is why shareholders love it. Unfortunately, all that profit must come from somewhere. Richness is a relationship between two people.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook is not mincing words when it comes to his thoughts on the tax battle facing his company.
"It is total political crap," said Mr Cook in an interview with The Irish Independent newspaper.
He was discussing the European Union's ruling that Apple must pay $14.5 billion in what it says are unpaid back taxes.
According to the European Union, Apple paid just 0.005% on European profits in 2014.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2016/09/01/tim-cook-eu-tax-total-political-crap/89709368/
LINER NOTES:
I thought this was so funny when I read it. The full interview shows he's entirely serious. When you're running a multinational, tax minimisation is so normal that it seems outrageous anyone could question it. For the little people who pay tax, it seems outrageous anyone could get away with it.
There's a nice parody here:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/apple-was-not-toothless-crofter-living-alone-in-peat-burning-cottage-eu-rules-20160830113057
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"Apple has great design" is the biggest myth in technology today, writes Ian Bogost from The Atlantic.
In truth, Apple’s products hide a shambles of bad design under the perfection of sleek exteriors.
Apple’s products are beautiful, but beautiful objects whose operation never matched their appearance.
Apple never cared what its customers thought, or wanted. It told them what to like, and how to like it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/the-myth-of-apples-great-design/516093/
LINER NOTES:
I'd spent a lifetime avoiding Apple because its proprietorial, monopolistic practices irritated me. ("What? You have to use an Apple product to listen to an album you've bought from iTunes?!" This was in the days before every phone played m4a.) But I relented when I saw how easy it was for my five-year-old to make music on Garageband using my wife's iPad. So I was pretty surprised, after years of using products that just worked, to find that Apple's so often didn't. The makers of the iPad Digital Audio Workstation I use, Auria Pro, recommend you don't use iTunes in conjunction with their product because the user experience is so bad. Instead they recommend using a third-party app, iFunBox, that could be used to pirate their own product. That speaks volumes.
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Users say Apple's latest update has rendered their iPhones and iPads completely useless, reports Gizmodo.
They have been forced to open iTunes on a computer, connect their bricked device, and restore from there.
Apple was expected to seize the moment after its rival Samsung was forced to issue a recall of Note 7 phones.
Now, Apple has its own controversy to deal with. But hey, at least the iPhones aren’t exploding.
http://gizmodo.com/beware-apples-ios-10-update-bricks-some-iphones-and-ip-1786583202
LINER NOTES:
It was only when I was half way through making this album that I finally got around to backing up all my songs and updating to iOS 10. I'd read so many horror stories on Auria's forum about users losing all their songs through the update that I'd put it off for ages, until I was sure the issues had been resolved. The album's sound then took a completely different direction, when I discovered the Alchemy synth in Garageband's update, which you can hear as the lead on this track and many others. This album was going to be 16 tracks, but my iPad turned into a "bricked device" when one of the songs that was almost ready corrupted. I couldn't rescue it, and had to remove it - using a PC and iFunBox - to get the iPad working again.
Its lyrics are here:
Creative In Its Tax Structure
Apple, famous for its innovative products, has proved to be equally creative in its tax structure.
An unusual feature of its tax structure is its relative simplicity, says tax law professor Antony Ting.
It does not rely on the Double Irish Dutch Sandwich structure that has been commonly used by others.
But from 2009 to 2012, it successfully sheltered 44 billion US dollars from taxation anywhere in the world.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2411297
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In the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, child labour has intensified in the past decade due to increased demand for minerals like cobalt, copper, and coltan.
The UN’s International Labour Organisation called mining one of the worst forms of child labour due to the numerous health risks inherent in the industry.
http://usuncut.com/world/12-horrifying-photos-of-the-tech-industry-apple-never-wants-you-never-see/
Human rights organisation Amnesty has accused Apple, among others, of failing to do basic checks to ensure minerals used in its products are not mined by children.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35311456
It is difficult to track exactly how much of the tantalum purchased by Apple funds the war and turmoil that plagues the Congo today.
But it is widely agreed that many of Apple's purchases from the Democratic Republic of Congo have indeed contributed to the current unstable climate.
http://applecongo.weebly.com/
In response to the report, Apple said: "Underage labour is never tolerated in our supply chain and we are proud to have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards."
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35311456
LINER NOTES:
Whenever anyone complains about conditions at my work, I always think of the Vice documentary "Blood Coltan" that tells how workers in the Congo mines are hacked to death with machetes for complaining. Then I wonder how bad we really have it. The counter-argument to that is that it keeps me from complaining and makes conditions worse overall.
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Apple's labour force, the size of a national army, relies heavily on the generosity of the Zhengzhou government.
A hidden bounty of perks, tax breaks and subsidies in China supports the... factory, according to confidential government records...
As part of its deal with Foxconn, the state recruits, trains and houses employees... officials call... villages to ask for help finding... workers.
"Every city's department of labour and ministry of human resources is involved," said Liu Miao, who runs a private recruiting centre.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/technology/apple-iphone-china-foxconn.html
LINER NOTES:
This is why it'll be almost impossible for Donald Trump to get Apple to "make its damn iPhones" in the US rather than China. But it seems Trump is now on-side with Apple, as he recently switched from Android to using an iPhone, according to the digital imprint of his tweets.
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When the fallout of the 2010 suicides left Foxconn with a labour shortage, Henan's provincial government assisted.
The province directed 100,000 vocational students to staff Shenzhen's assembly lines as "interns" or "trainees".
With nine days' notice, students were told that those who failed to comply would not be allowed to graduate.
Teachers have been stationed in the factory to monitor attendance and some interns have been as young as 14.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/chinese-workers-foxconned
LINER NOTES:
China is known for its mass mobilisation of workers. This, as a solution to worker suicides, takes that one step further. There's no denying it's an education - of sorts.
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Being paid $1 to $2 an hour, Foxconn workers typically cannot afford the iPads and iPhones they assemble.
The workers are at the bottom of what Taiwanese tech entrepreneur Stan Shih calls "the smiling curve".
The upturned edges of the smile are brand and design on one side, and marketing and sales on the other.
That ensures big profit margins, meaning Apple is able to capture 58.5 percent of the value of the iPhone.
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/chinese-workers-foxconned
LINER NOTES:
With enough free time to make albums and afford the gadget to make them on, I'm about half way up the smiling curve. Privilege. Luxury. Irony. The smiling face of capitalism.
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Forty-nine workers were poisoned at the Lianjian Technology factory by the toxic chemical n-hexane, used to wipe clean iPad screens.
The chemical was being used in place of alcohol because it evaporates faster, helping speed up production for the iPad.
To save money, the factory did not provide proper ventilation, resulting in workers fainting and developing neurological problems.
Some workers were eventually bought off with a payment of up to 9000 yuan or $1400, after agreeing not to bring claims against Apple.
http://saq.dukejournals.org/content/112/1/172
LINER NOTES:
Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly hands out copies of "Competing Against Time", a book with heavy emphasis on working efficiently, to colleagues and new employees. Since the poisonings, Apple has stopped using n-hexane, but it would most likely have been used on the iPad that made Stephen Fry want to lick the screen.
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Apple’s largest manufacturer, Foxconn, has installed nets to prevent workers from committing suicide.
A rash of suicides in 2010 at Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant in China resulted in 14 worker deaths.
Workers at Foxconn's Chengdu plant were forced to sign a contract forbidding them from committing suicide.
But workers are still killing themselves. One jumped to his death as recently as August 2015.
http://usuncut.com/world/12-horrifying-photos-of-the-tech-industry-apple-never-wants-you-never-see/
LINER NOTES:
This is probably the best-known horror story about Apple and there have been quite a few songs named after it. Apple's counter-argument is that the factory is so huge, its suicide rate is lower than that of society at large.
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An explosion in May 2011 at a Foxconn iPad factory in Chengdu killed four people and injured 18.
The explosion was caused by aluminum dust created during the polishing of thousands of iPad cases.
Seven months later, another iPad factory exploded in Shanghai, injuring 59 workers, with 23 hospitalised.
Once again, aluminum dust was the cause, according to interviews and Apple’s supplier responsibility report.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/business/ieconomy-apples-ipad-and-the-human-costs-for-workers-in-china.html
LINER NOTES:
So those iPads you and I caress have deaths behind them. It's surprising - or is it? - that the practice wasn't stamped out after the fatal explosion.
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Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was moved to tears by a play about the conditions in Apple’s factories in China.
Mike Daisey's controversial show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” is based on Daisey’s trip to Shenzhen.
The monologue describes suicides at Foxconn’s plant where employees put in long hours of repetitive work.
Wozniak said: “Mike was living the pain of what he was describing. I'll never be the same after seeing that show.”
http://www.cultofmac.com/83634/woz-cried-at-mike-daiseys-play-about-apple/
LINER NOTES:
After Wozniak cried over this show, Daisey was revealed to have exaggerated some parts of it, which is why I added the word "controversial". Daisey put on a revised version of the show and Wozniak stood by him, agreeing to appear on stage for a discussion after a performance of the revised version.
https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/26/theater-talkback-the-agony-and-the-ecstasy-of-steve-jobs-take-2/
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In no way is Apple the only tech firm to use sweatshop labour throughout its supply chain, reports Socialist Worker.
A closer look at the technology industry quickly tarnishes the progressive image that it likes to cultivate.
Do not be surprised that US president Donald Trump and tech are meeting and willing to work together.
Justified by liberal rhetoric or not, technology capital is going to act as capital always does.
https://socialistworker.org/2017/01/05/where-trump-and-tech-see-eye-to-eye
LINER NOTES:
This album is as much a piss-take of myself as it is of Apple. I wanted to show that even the non-corporate media admit that Apple, which they generally hate, is not alone in acting the way it does. The album closes with a jungle beat as a throwback to my previous album and the genre I'm most comfortable with. The whole album was made at 87 beats per minute so that I could double to jungle's speed of 174 beats per minute at any point. I managed to refrain from that for all but the last eight bars.
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On June 29, 2017 - the 10th anniversary of Apple's most profitable product, the iPhone - Mat Ward released his album, Inside My...
The ambient / chill trap album, made entirely on Apple's iPad, describes Apple.
"I thought it was ironic that I'd been making a lot of political music on a device made in a sweatshop," he says. "So I decided to make an album about my iPad, entirely on my iPad. It would keep the music within its four walls and delve right into its parts, from the slick marketing to the kids in the Congo mines.
"This album is dedicated to all the factory workers who assemble Apple's products."
The album was originally called Inside My iPad and was voiced by Apple's virtual assistant, Siri. However, the distributor refused to release it because Apple's copyright does not allow the word "iPad" - or anything similar-sounding - to be used in an album's title without its authorisation. It also does not allow the voice of Siri to be used in anything shared publicly, even if it is non-profit.
The album was therefore released with with word "iPad" and Siri's voice both removed - a shame, because Siri's voice was an integral part of the rhythm of the album. It is noticeably absent in a few places, where there is a second or two of silence. The written lyrics and liner notes are still included in the album download from Bandcamp.
"It would have made for the perfect score to a documentary focusing on the same subject matter." - AltMedia
