"They sleep 100 to a room, toil for 15 hours a day and are paid just $50 month. This is life in iPod City, once the Chinese fishing village of Shenzhen but now home to the factories that churn out millions of Apple's astonishingly popular music players every year."

"The dorms are single-sex, with more than 100 people in a single large room. They're really overcrowded."

"Chinese workers can be forced to work up to 36 hours extra a month without Inspector Knacker of the Peking Yard raising an eyebrow, but Foxconn's 80 hours is well over this maximum," wrote Nick Farrell for a story in the British Web edition of The Inquirer.

Apple responded quickly, from fear of bad-press. Steve Dowling, a spokeswoman for Cupertino, Calif.-based company, said in a statement "Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and Dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible," . "We are currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China." The company added it was "currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China".

Japanese-based giant Foxconn (Apple's partner in China) replied strongly at accusations coming from the press that it uses women in China to produce the famous iPod, treating them like animals.

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