I'm somewhat interested in a curious technical aspect that Daisey put into the story.
He claimed that something to the effect of "nothing there was made by machine, everything tiny little chip is put there by hand" - which I found hard to believe then and even harder now.
Take a bare PCB, screen print it with solder paste (sometimes glue), run it through a pick and place machine (or a series of machines) then put it through a reflow oven. Once it comes out the oven you give it an auto test, and send it to have the rest of the components put on. (Some things will be damaged by heat, or can't be placed by machine. Examples include connectors on the "wrong side", but I guess massive machines have solved this problem.)
Note that in a huge factory you'd need few people for all the steps until the product finishes testing - most of it is automatic.
Even in tiny factory one person can keep a line running producing a lot of product by pushing a few buttons now and then, and moving boards from one machine to the next.
Having said that, a lot of stuff is done by hand; tiny coil winding and placement is one example.
EDIT:
Here's a UK documentary where youth went to a factory in the Philippines. The tech episode is ep5. I don't know if it's available online anywhere.
I don't know how you'd place some of the tiny surface-mount chips by hand, especially if the neighboring chips weren't already soldered down. Check out the new iPad teardown's photo of the logic board.
Small SMD are tricky to solder by hand, especially when nearby component are so close, but it is not impossible.
Now mounting a BGA without a largely automatic machine would be stupid for high volumes (and even for very small one, and maybe even for unitary prototypes), and in this case it would also be stupid to not pick and place all SMD.
Indeed even with very low wages, it would probably be stupid to mount a board manually except for very low volumes and very small boards. Mouting a small SMD can be done quickly with practice, but you are amazed when you count the amount there is (try on an iphone photo or on a random motherboard)
He claimed that something to the effect of "nothing there was made by machine, everything tiny little chip is put there by hand" - which I found hard to believe then and even harder now.
To what extent if any is this true?