because there's not really a new angle every year, so we were dealing with the embassy and going through this process in a way that a lot of journalists in the uk haven't done before. but it was fairly swift. and once we got out there, the challenge was telling this huge story with 2 million people going through this in a way that no-one had actually seen before, because we were filming on the ground as we were doing it. and when you were filming on the ground, were there restrictions on who you could talk to and where you could go? yes, and no. there were no restrictions because they were put on us by anyone, so we had free rein to do anything. however, there are physical, logistical restrictions because there's 2 million people and it's quite hard to move around. the saudi security teams, who are based there, do a lot of crowd management. so we went and had a look at some of the technologies they use. they have cameras, they have drones. they also have experts in crowd management who use these cameras to determine which roads should be closed and when, to try and keep people safe, to stop there being overcrowding.

that is actually, when you're filming a documentary or filming a news report, quite tough because you'll be in position a, you will see position b 100m down the road where you want to get to film, but all the roads are shut and it's quite difficult, so that's... i can imagine. that is what was logistically quite challenging. i was mentioning that, for example, this year we're expecting 5,000 journalists and tech staff to attend. must they be muslim to get permission to attend? yes. so to do the hajj and to be in the area, you have to be a muslim, which, again, for us was a bit of a challenge because i wasn't going out there on my own. we had a full team with us. we had a camera crew, we had producers, we had translators. so then we then had to find british muslims or muslims who had worked for us in different parts of the world to all come together. because to do the hajj, you do have to be a muslim. so that was a bit of a challenge. but again, itv news - and the same with the bbc, of course - we have journalists all over the world and we have colleagues in fantastic places all over the world, so it wasn't too difficult for us to find people who were willing and able to do what is supposed to be a

once-in-a-lifetime experience. and one final question. when you had completed your reporting - not the live reporting but when you were collecting material - did anyone need to see it before you sent it back to london to be used? no, not at all. so the saudis were very good at just sort of giving us free rein and letting us do whatever we wanted. no-one checked the material afterwards. no-one watched the footage. no-one watched the reports. no-one watched the documentary until they went out on air. we wouldn't have accepted anything otherwise. in the discussions we had before, they didn't even ask because i think they would have been very aware of the fact that if that was even suggested, we would have said no. and because of that, we went out and gave the most honest and truthful report that we could possibly do. and we tried to highlight all the things that we saw, and i went through my own personal experiences. and if you do watch it, you get to watch me shave my head for the only time in my life, which was quite a brutal experience on camera! and we were honest about it. and you were honest about... i was honest about the fact that i was quite nervous about that, and i was honest about

the fact that we'd been waiting in a traffic jam for 3.5 hours, and we hadn't moved because 2 million people were trying to move from point a to point b. so we were honest, and no-one watched any of the footage until it went out on itv. now, as i'm sure you're aware, president trump has been talking about tariffs a lot in recent months. and one tariff he's floated the idea of is a 25% tariff on smartphone manufacturers, including apple if they don't manufacture more in the us. and to understand how apple does manufacture its smartphones, we've been speaking to patrick mcgee, an ft journalist, an expert on apple, and someone who has a book out about apple's investment in china. because to understand how apple makes smartphones, we've got to look at its connection with chinese factories. so i was already the apple reporter for financial times. so sort of apple was chosen, let's say. right? it was already the company i was following. the thing that i began to question was what the achilles heel of

the company was. and it's actually because i had become really bullish on the company. you know, our generation is sort of 50/50 android versus ios. the next generation, at least in america, is actually about 90% ios. and so i just began to think, i mean, generationally, as those college kids or high school kids graduate, they're going to be buying macbooks, they're going to be buying airpods etc. and i wrote a number of stories on that front, but i needed to ask the other question too. i didn't want to just be drinking the kool-aid. i wanted to ask sort of the achilles heel question. and everything leads to china if you start asking those questions. and i really thought we just hadn't covered it. the only real story we've covered about apple in china over the last 20 years is the tedium of assembling an iphone. and honestly, that's about it. and when did this deep investment in china begin? has it been going on throughout apple's existence, or can we pinpoint a moment where it escalated? no. so if you remember in the '80s, you know, apple made its own computers, even down to the circuit board. you know, steve wozniak was someone that really designed the circuit board and made them, and steve jobs'

pregnant sister patty began putting them together, sort of while she was on the telephone to people, you know, back in the late 1970s. so apple then had factories in ireland, singapore and california, and later colorado, and they really built their own computers for a long time. but the problem was that everybody else in the pc industry really began to outsource and then began to offshore. and the result is that apple was the last holdout. everyone had either gone bankrupt or gone offshore. and by late 1996, apple is days away from missing payroll. and so they have to abandon their own manufacturing and adopt outsourcing. then i tell this sort of seven-year narrative where they're experimenting with contract manufacturers in eight or nine countries. you know, places you didn't know that they were building imacs - the czech republic, wales, even fullerton, california. korea was the main place. and china basically wins that battle, let's say, after seven years. the armies of affordable, abundant labour in china, they don't necessarily have the tech competence but they respond to apple's demands and they'll work 12 hours

a day. and it sure is cheap, and they'll build factories at massive scale, at a timescale where, you know, you and i would still be doing the environmental paperwork. and so this move by apple to heavily invest in china was something that was actively pursued by the chinese at huge scale, and they would have seen a big strategic benefit from it happening? yeah. i mean, the epigraph to my book is a made in 2000... sorry, 2015 document from china saying without manufacturing there is no country, there is no nation. right? i mean, china really has this like nietzschean will to power, and it's based on manufacturing more than anything else. i don't know another country that thinks of manufacturing as the way to, you know, be a part of the world the way that china does. and so, by 2003, apple really begins to consolidate everything into china. there's no architect to that decision. i don't believe tim cook, the current ceo, even though he was the operations guy, was the architect. it was suppliers themselves. dozens, hundreds of suppliers were all choosing china. because if you looked at,

you know, how to create a computer on three different continents, china was just winning out every time, and so it just sort of consolidated pretty rapidly. for a while, then, that was presumably working very well for apple and working very well for the chinese. to what degree, though, has apple's degree of investment in china left it exposed to a president who comes in and changes the rules of global trade? so i don't think it's really all that contestable that apple is stuck in china. i mean, there really is no place on earth that offers the same combination of cost, quantity and scale. the nuance to my book is that china didn't offer that scale to, um, or offer that tech competence to apple. apple built it there. and so the sort of missing topography in the study of apple is a part of, um, operations called manufacturing design, or md. and these are people that would fly from california to literally hundreds of factories across china to handhold, teach, audit, supervise

and install millions of dollars' worth of machinery into other people's factories, and later billions of dollars of machinery, to teach them how to use it, to teach them all these skills. and what happens there is china becomes world-leading in manufacturing as a result of these staggeringly large investments. i mean, we're talking $55 billion a year in investments in chinese factories by 2015. and as i'm listening to you, patrick, i'm thinking how - in very different ways - apple is known as being a relatively secretive company, and of course china is known as being a secretive country. so was it difficult to get people to talk? yeah, there's nothing relative about it. i mean, apple is more secretive than the us military, according to people that have worked at both. very difficult to get people to talk. i did speak with more than 200 people. i would say more than the quantity was actually the calibre of the people, and i think that comes through in the texts. some of them off-record, some of them on-record. but it is very difficult to get people to talk. i suppose what worked in my favour

is i was telling a 30-year history. so the more that you could inform some source, let's say in 2005, that you already knew so many details that had never been written about, about 2003, 2004, they would then be willing to sort of tell you a little bit more to sort of help you in the narrative. and then i would just keep doing that until the present. well, your book is called apple in china: the capture of the world's greatest company. we appreciate you coming on to talk about it. there's one other tech story i do want to ask you about before we finish up on the media show today, and it concerns a legend of apple, sir jony ive, who designed the imac, the ipod, the iphone and the ipad. he has just joined openai, which has bought his start-up "io" in a over $6 billion deal. let's just hear a little of the clip of the announcement. the products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they're decades old. yeah. and so it's just common sense to at least think,

"surely there's something beyond these legacy products." what was your reaction to that, patrick? just quickly, if you would. i would love...love to be wrong about this, but i'm pretty pessimistic that there's going to be some screenless device coming out of this studio. and the reason i say it is that we're addicted to screens not because, you know, they're just compelling. i mean, they're just... they work so well for everything. and so are you going to augment this screen and have another cellular connection where there's an expensive device coupled with a monthly price? that seems difficult. are you going to displace the iphone altogether? that's a really tall order. so if they can blow my mind with something new, god knows we're all missing a steve jobs "one more thing" moment, and i would love to see that, but i just don't have the imagination for what this is going to do that you couldn't just do on your iphone. that was patrick mcgee talking about his book, apple in china: the capture of the world's greatest company. and apple has responded. it says it disputes his investigation and says the book is filled with inaccuracies. that's it for this week. thank you very much indeed

for joining us. as ever, we'll see you next week. bye-bye. and if you'd like to hear a longer version of today's show, search "bbc the media show" wherever you get your bbc podcasts.

live from london, this is bbc news. another shooting near us-backed aid distribution centre in southern gaza - the civil defence agency says at least six people have been killed. at least three people have been killed in the ukrainian city of kharkiv as ukraine and russia dispute prisoner swap timings. elon musk deletes social media posts that alleged a link between donald trump and the disgraced financier jeffrey epstein. thousands enjoy a marine themed drone show in nice ahead of the un ocean conference next week.