A few days ago, the UK newspaper The Mail reported that Apple's iPods were being manufactured in "iPod City" -  a Chinese factory that allegedly treat its employees poorly and unfairly (known as "sweatshops"). Sweatshop controversies are not new. Other famous companies have been involved in similar sticky PR situation including New Balance, Nike, Walmart, Gap Old Navy,  Banana Republic and Kathie Lee Gifford's line of clothes.

Apple came out with a statement reiterating the company's commitment to "ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible." The company also said it would look into the allegations regarding the poor working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China.

While results of the company's investigation is still underway, Gary Bowerman, editor of Shanghai Business Review, defended Apple. Bowmwan said iPod factory workers "do work long hours, they donÂ?t get paid very much, but the factories are state-of-the-art. They really are impressive." Adding that although "itÂ?s monotonous and routine, but the quality of the factories is even better than in Europe. TheyÂ?re clean, hi-tech, even air-conditioned - not sweatshop stuff. TheyÂ?re purpose-built for high-volume production and have to turn out high quantity and high quality.Â?

Unfortunately, Bowerman's statement does not satisfactorily explain the images posted by The Mail on Sunday. The one on the left, according to the UK newspaper shows the crowded domitories where iPod factory workers stay. The one on the right shows factory workers allegedly performing military-style drills before starting their day.

Apple has recently added a brand new section to their site called Pro. Pro, gives us a glimpse on how movers and shakers in the fields of design, photography, music, film, motion and graphics are using Apple products to break away from conventions and ultimately redefine the way that they create.

Featured on the website are three videos from UK-based Universal Everything and Airside with 2x4 in New York. Get to know people who have made it and paved the way for young bloods in the industry of design.

Other articles include tips and tricks on color, using your camera's aperture to the utmost, how to record an electric guitar in your Mac and many others. Check the link below to know more about it.

Alongside the launch of their 1Gb iPod Nano (reported here), today Apple reduced the price of their two iPod Shuffle models. The 1Gb Shuffle is now 99 dollars and the 512Mb Shuffle is now 69 dollars. In the UK Apple dropped their prices to 69 and 49 pounds respectively.

Analysts at the Motley Fool say;

"at 69 dollars, the iPod is now likely to penetrate even further into the mainstream. Granted, that market is less likely than the first wave of iPod adopters to pay for digital downloads or shell out four figures for their next computer, but Apple wouldn't mind more attention from the masses. There's strength in numbers."

Sky TV, the UK's main satellite television provider (more widespread than cable is in the UK), have announced plans to offer their subscribers video content for download in iPod-friendly format. There will be two services: One open to Sky subscibers with a monthly package costing £34 or more with clips of sports, news and entertainment programmes at no cost, and the other which will allow premium Sky subscribers with a monthly package costing £40.50 or more to download full feature films and sports highlights.

The movie offer is the interesting one here. More than 200 films will be made available at launch growing to 1,000 at a "later date". Spider-Man 2 and Dr Strangelove are expected to be highlights of the initial line-up. Sky are estimating that full-length feature films will take around one hour to download over a 2Mb broadband connection (which is rapidly becoming the standard for UK broadband users).

Once downloaded, films and clips can be stored for 30 days before they are automatically deleted. What is not clear is how exactly that DRM system will be implemented.

The delivery of sports clips is expected to be linked in to Sky's existing online betting service.

[Via VNU Net]

The BPI is the British record industry's trade association. Their 2005 sales figures, released today, show a massive increase in the sales of legal music downloads in the UK, as part of what has been one of the British record industry's highest-selling years to date.

The total number of legal music downloads in the UK for 2005 was 26.4 million, an increase of 357.3% from 2004. In the final week of 2005, between Christmas and New Year, music download sales broke the magic million-per-week mark for the first time.

Sales of physical compilation albums are down 15.7% however and the BPI's chairman Peter Jamieson is blaming that squarely on digital music consumers. It seems the mass adoption of CD burners in home computers and the habit of consumers burning their own compilation CDs from their digital music collections is set to be the record industry's new bugbear.

PC Pro is reporting the likelihood of Apple to phase out its current Shuffle lineup to concentrate on its Nano series of portable music players. According to the article, the move can come as soon as next week's MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.

The website bases its speculation on several key factors, including: "The 1GB version of the player is no longer available through the UK version of the online Apple Store and has been out of stock in the US since mid-December. The iPod shuffle was Apple's first flash-based portable music player and immediately became the number one seller. However, it has since been largely eclipsed by the iPod nano."

Strictly speaking, the Shuffle is a product that you either love or hate. With the introduction of the Nano, which has been stealing much of the thunder as far as Apple's MP3 players go, it seems reasonable that the company would want to phase out the lower-end model. Guess we'll have to wait and see if this is true.

[Via, PC Pro UK]

AmphonicDesigns have released a new version of Album Cover Finder for Mac, version 3.3. Album Cover Finder (like the name implies) includes these features:

- Cover Artwork, Album Reviews, and Track Listings for your favorite artists and albums.
- iTunes Integration to see and control what's playing. Listen to entire albums or double click on any track to play.
- Regional Searching for USA, UK, Japan, and Germany helps find more Album Covers.
- Automatically send artwork to iTunes in three different sizes.
- Artwork displays in the Dock for song currently playing in iTunes.

You can get it for Mac in our iPod Download section.

 

Album Cover Finder has been  updated to versions 3.2.1 (Mac) and 3.1.7 (PC).  Enjoy cover art from your favorite artists with Multiple Results and Album Reviews from an Artist's Catalog returned with every search.

iTunes Integration to see and control what's playing. Find more Album Covers with Regional Searching for USA, UK, Japan, and Germany. Automatically send artwork to iTunes in one of three sizes. Listen to entire albums or double click on any track to play. On a Mac the currently playing artwork displays in dock. Plus so much more.

New in this version:

• iTunes Music Library.xml was not being saved in the AlbumCoverFinder Prefs.txt file causing ACF to ask for the file everytime the program was started if the file was not in the default location.
  

You can get it for Mac in our iPod Download section.

You can get it for PC in our iPod Download section.