An Apple store on Manhattan's Upper West Side. (Photo by Kimberly Drelich/CNS)

Michael Colucci, a business school student at Virginia Tech, never thought much about how his iPad was made.  He asked for an iPad as a Christmas gift from his parents and uses it to check the Internet instead of lugging a laptop around campus.  But after negative reports recently surfaced suggesting problems in foreign factories making Apple products, he said he would consider alternative options if he wanted a new tablet in the future.

“I was just sold on Apple itself, so I didn’t do any research,” he said, “but next time I would definitely do some research and see what kind of alternatives there are that are better and better for society too.”

Colucci, 22, discussed in his Marketing, Social and Public Interest class whether students would have bought the products, if they had known how they were made. Most students said they would not have bought them.

Colucci is just one of Apple’s many consumers now navigating new relationships to their iPads in the wake of the media maelstrom. Consumers may adore the iPad for its convenience, design, and workplace applications.  But as the spotlight shifts from admiration of Apple’s innovation toward criticism of the company’s means of production, some feel anger, regret or ambivalence.  How do they reconcile the device providing access to the Internet books, and games at the tap of their fingers with its real, but distant problems?

Media investigations of Apple included an explosive  Jan. 25 New York Times front-page article, “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad,” by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza.  It said: “Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.  However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves.”  The Times also reported Apple CEO Timothy Cook’s defense: “We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us.”

Negative reports may cause some consumers discomfort, but Apple is unlikely to encounter a widespread problem, said Renée Gosline, assistant marketing professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.  Apple has developed a brand that consumers may want to be associated with, and competitors may want to emulate.  “That connection that it has with people is really outside of the realm of the philosophy of human experience during production,” said Gosline, and centers on a fanaticism and culture of innovation.

Gosline also said consumers may find that many electronic companies and other industries manufacture products abroad under conditions that are either unclear or no better than Apple’s.  “The distance between where your product is made and where it is consumed is vast, and it’s only getting larger,” said Gosline.

She said these reports could  “open the lines of dialogue” between Apple and its consumers and allow consumers to ask about their products’ origins. Apple could take leadership in changing conditions, she said, and tell customers: “We want you to feel good when you use Apple, and here’s what we’re going to do about it.”

This week, Mashable.com reported that petitions containing 250,000 signatures complaining about working conditions at Apple — collected by Change.org and SumOfUs.org — were  delivered to Apple stores.

Daniel Shargel and his iPad. (Photo by Kimberly Drelich/CNS)

Some consumers have replaced Apple love with ambivalence. Daniel Shargel said the reports make him feel conflicted. The philosophy doctoral candidate at the City University of New York bought his iPad not only for its aesthetic appeal, but also so he could read without carrying around bundles of academic papers.  He said he felt angry and guilty about the news, but — while he did not excuse what happened — he has heard arguments that industrialization can help countries progress.

Shargel, 30, said that if a company treated its workers better, he would feel obligated to purchase its products.  “As things stand, I don’t know who the good guy is supposed to be as an alternative,” he said. “It’s also not clear how much Apple is already doing to improve things.”

Consumers in a global marketplace may be too time-pressed and overloaded with information to consider where products are made, said Lars Perner, assistant clinical marketing professor at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.  But consumers might hold Apple to a higher standard, especially since they pay a high price.

Perner said if a company ignores adverse working conditions, consumers could feel angry or guilty.  But consumers could feel guilty about many other things, such as driving a car individually, instead of carpooling.

Environmental concerns have also recently emerged.   A recent New York Times blog post quoted Apple’s Supplier Responsibility 2012 Progress Report that the company was forcing facilities that improperly disposed of chemicals to comply. Producing electronics involves chemicals, Perner said, but electronic use is a given. Consumers may not spend hours searching for the most ecologically correct product, unless a report said one product is superior, he said.  “I don’t think people would sacrifice having a tablet computer, even if there were some serious environmental consequences,” he said.  But he added that tablets might substitute for a computer.

Could electronic devices also cause concerns as they potentially replace browsing in bookstores or sending mail?  While some people could have “philosophical tensions” about preserving bookstores, Perner said one consumer’s behavior would have a “minuscule impact” on the industry.  He also added that sending mail electronically benefits the environment.

Daniel Harris, 28, a CUNY philosophy Ph.D. student, acknowledged the tablet’s potential environmental and electricity costs, but said his device has prevented him from printing “thousands of pages of articles.”  Having his library on his tablet is an “enormously good thing” for him. A change does not appear to be in the offing.

In the period after these interviews were conducted, The New York Times wrote that “responding to a growing outcry over conditions at its overseas factories, Apple said Monday that an outside organization had begun to audit working conditions at the plants where the bulk of iPhones, iPads and other Apple products are built, and that the group would make its finding public.”

Email: kad2162@columbia.edu