Letters to Steve_ Inside the E-Mail Inbox of Apple's Steve Jobs - Mark Milian [27]
With each jump from the rooftops around Foxconn, more people around the world began looking to the manufacturer and its partners, most notably Apple, for answers. Steve Jobs responded to one e-mail inquiry along those lines, as reported by Fortune: “Although every suicide is tragic, Foxconn's suicide rate is well below the China average. We are all over this.” Steve’s pen pal was not ready to let up, asking what he meant by being “all over this” and more broadly questioning Apple’s corporate social responsibility. “You should educate yourself. We do more than any other company on the planet: Apple - Supplier Responsibility,” Steve wrote, linking to a company report. But the writer was still hung up on one thing: “We are all over this?” Steve explained patiently, “It’s an American expression that means this has our full attention.” Playing teacher in this instance, Steve was willing to take on many roles in the confines of his inbox.
The collective conscience of people who follow the machine manufacturing industry sighed heavily as it became obvious that the Western world’s gadget addiction was taking its toll on the people who make the little wonders. A dangerous trade overseen by wealthy warlords stands between the minerals needed for the internal components of these hardware and the companies that put their names on them. Some Western corporations, including Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Nokia and many others, banded together in an effort to boycott so-called conflict minerals and their suppliers.
Conflict minerals consist of gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten mined in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, and to fund their ruthless wars, rebels sell them to partners in East Asia where they are used to manufacture all kinds of electronics. For example, tantalum stores energy in capacitors to power iPods, cell phones and digital cameras. Tungsten is used to manufacture the filaments that allow phones to vibrate. And a tiny bit of gold is used in connectors, relay contacts, soldered joints and connection strips as a corrosion-free conductor in almost every electronic device including the iPad, iPhone and iPod in order to support low voltages and currents.
Wired reader Derick Rhodes questioned Steve Jobs on how Apple sourced the minerals in its products. Steve responded: “We require all of our suppliers to certify in writing that they use conflict few materials. But honestly there is no way for them to be sure. Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem.” Steve seemed frustrated at the idea that that there was a controversial part of his business relations that existed beyond the bounds of his control.
Chapter 7
Customer Service Officer
Among chief executives, Steve Jobs was an outlier. CEOs of public companies are generally eccentrics. They work long hours and carry the weight of thousands of people’s financial security on their shoulders. One stupid comment can sink the value of the stock in minutes. They are the designated leaders, who reflect the company’s ethos, and can drive the direction of products and strategy. Steve was involved in practically every detail, from determining which industries Apple should invade to the material used for the iPhone’s screen. For a CEO to be a micromanager to the degree that Steve was is rare but not unheard of. However, few CEOs are willing to take the abuse involved in customer service, but that was a part of Apple’s business for which Steve exercised a great deal of attention and patience.
By comparison, a representative for AT&T, Apple’s longtime carrier partner for the coveted iPhone, threatened a customer, who had twice e-mailed company