Microsoft To Kill The Zune

I'm just surprised that it lasted five years.

If You Can't Fix It, You Don't Own It

Electronics self-repair site iFixit has issued a manifesto against Apple and other manufacturers that purposely create products that thwart any repair attempts by their owners. An excerpt:

Manufacturers push new models every year with just enough style tweaks to make our last one feel obsolete. They use legal threats to keep repair manuals away from us and deploy so-called ‘security bits’ in new products to prevent us from opening our own things. They have even gone so far as patenting screw heads to keep us out of our stuff. The manufacturers tout their green credentials by citing take-back programs and recyclable materials, but that’s a a misdirection. Recycling isn’t good enough! Recycling is just efficient urban mining. Recycling destroys the captured energy invested to manufacture things, requiring even more energy to melt it down and make something new. And products made from the resulting material (particularly plastics) are substantially lower quality. We’re much better off using existing things as long as physically possible.

iFixit provides self-repair tips for the iPod, the Xbox, and numerous other digital toys.

CHINA: Suicides Plague Apple Factory

Workers at a massive Apple factory in China are killing themselves at an alarming rate. Eight employees have offed themselves since the beginning of the year. With 400,000 workers, Foxconn makes the iPhone and iPod, as well as devices for other electronics companies.

For those who believe the spate of suicides is statistically in line, given how many people work at Foxconn, consider this: the company says it has prevented a further 30 people from trying to kill themselves in the past three weeks alone. Clearly, something out of the ordinary is going on. What is happening in Shenzhen has the hallmarks of a “suicide cluster”, when the notion of suicide spreads rapidly through a group of people, often teenagers or young adults. Foxconn says it is at its wits’ end as to how to tackle the problem, and has even drafted in a Buddhist monk to try to purge its factories of evil spirits. Others have said the current generation of migrant workers, who have opted to move from other parts of China to seek their fortunes in the country’s coastal factories, are not as tough as their forbears. Usually better educated than their parents, they are prone to existential angst when confronted with seven-day weeks and 15-hour days of repetitive manufacturing. The nine Foxconn workers involved in suicide leaps this year were all aged under 25 and had worked for the company for less than six months.

The factory's workers say they aren't paid enough to purchase any of the items they manufacture.

Where The Fanboys Live

According to a survey of the 206 top metropolitan areas in the U.S., the #1 market for owning any Apple product is, surprise, the Bay Area. Fortune reports:

In a report issued Friday, Experian Simmons surveyed 206 so-called DMAs (designated market areas, or what we used to call "cities") and identified those that have the highest concentration of Apple (AAPL) users. The idea was to anticipate in what parts of the continental U.S. consumers were most likely to line up for the new iPad based on their known propensity to own or use iPods, iPhones or Macs. The result is the color coded map shown above and the list of the top 10 markets pasted below (the numbers and the commentary is Experian Simmons').

1. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA: With Silicon Valley and Apple headquarters located squarely within the market’s boundaries, it’s no surprise that the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose DMA ranks number one in the nation for owning or using one of the core Apple products. Residents here are 49% more likely than the average American to own or use an iPod, iPhone or Mac computer.
2. Boston, MA: Almost one-in-three adults in the Boston DMA (31.3%) own or use an iPod, iPhone or Mac computer making area residents 45% more likely than average to be Mac maniacs. And with 11 Apple stores located within the Boston DMA, residents never have to go far for their Apple fix.
3. San Diego, CA: San Diego-area residents are 42% more likely than the average American to be toting around an iPod, chatting on an iPhone or computing on a Mac. In fact, 31.8% of the San Diego DMA’s 2.2 million adults are admitted Mac users.

See the rest of the top ten here. NYC is #4.