Apple Environmental Report demystified - what it all means to the consumer

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 42
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member

    zoetmb said:
    It's great what Apple is doing, but IMO, Apple is still completely hypocritical.   If they really care about the environment, they would make devices that lasted longer because the user could easily replace parts.   IMO, it's unforgivable that in a MacBook Pro, one cannot replace/upgrade the battery, storage and memory, all of which used to be easily user replaceable.    It was one of the things I liked the most about my late 2008 MBP:  The little flip control to open the door for the battery, the shock mounted hard disk and the easy access to the memory modules were so well designed.  

    So there's two reasons for this (take your pick):  Apple's obsession with thinness destroys the practicality of making these components user replaceable (although hopefully with Ive gone, that will change) -or- Apple's strategic objective is to do this purposely so that people have to upgrade their machines more often.   
    The problem with your outrage is that Macs and iDevices already last far longer than their counterparts. They last longer than PCs and android knockoffs, not shorter. This is reflected in the much-higher resale value for used Apple equipment. 

    Not a conspiracy. Thin means light which is what I want. Even in desktops -- my new iMac is 10 lbs lighter than my previous one, and it has real world benefits in my use cases.
    lkrupplolliver
  • Reply 22 of 42
    yojimbo007yojimbo007 Posts: 1,165member
    “Smartphones are endemic of a much larger problem.”

    I’ll make a few points.  

    First, thank goodness the smartphone exists.  Consider all the products it replaces.  How much water and natural resources were used in the production of the thousands of different models of clock radios over the years, before the alarm clock function of a smartphone made that product category obsolete.  Clock radios were big and bulky compared to smartphones, requiring even more fuel to deliver them to market and taking up more space in landfills. Okay, you might not have replaced your clock radio every two or three years, but as a kid I recall I owned my own, my two brothers had theirs and my parents had one in their bedroom.  That’s four in my household growing up, and it was a requested Christmas gift to get an updated model.  But maybe we kept them on average four or five years.  But add in portable transitor radios, walkie talkies, albums, then cassettes, then CDs and mini discs, Sony Walkman players, aftermarket car radios (which still exist but are far less commonly swapped out in the age of Bluetooth connection to the music collections on our smartphones).  Add in stand alone cameras, initially with film cartridges, which we burned gas to go buy and to go drop off at the local photomat.  Then digital cameras, and the upgrade treadmill associated with those.  Video recorders, landline phones, then early wireless home phones, then clunky cellular mobile phones.  Most all the above products were more voluminous than a smartphone, and in aggregate were produced in far larger numbers since a lot of people owned many of these products.  So smartphones have been an environmental godsend relative to the world we lived in previously.  

    Second point, thank goodness for Apple, as the company has long resisted simply adding a bigger battery to each iPhone, instead opting to improve the iPhone’s compute efficiency with each new model.  I would love to see Apple come up with a test procedure that shows the compute efficiency of iPhones versus the competition; each phone does the exact same tasks, in the same apps, and compare the overall energy utilized.  My guess is that iPhones would compare favorably, and that means fewer coal-fired power plants constructed because the iPhone exists and few less spent lithium.

    Third, everything mentioned in this article.  It’s just too bad we aren’t more often reminded about the two points above as I think they are the more significant points to be made.  
    Hallelujah... voice of reason!... 
    As for these environmentalist with their  unrealistic/extremist and ecmonomiclly catastrophic view of things;  here is the real key .. the first thing that needs adjustment is human population... that will solve your issues in a heart beat,   
    Try and fix that....  
  • Reply 23 of 42
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,844member
    “Smartphones are endemic of a much larger problem.”

    I’ll make a few points.  

    First, thank goodness the smartphone exists.  Consider all the products it replaces.  How much water and natural resources were used in the production of the thousands of different models of clock radios over the years, before the alarm clock function of a smartphone made that product category obsolete.  Clock radios were big and bulky compared to smartphones, requiring even more fuel to deliver them to market and taking up more space in landfills. Okay, you might not have replaced your clock radio every two or three years, but as a kid I recall I owned my own, my two brothers had theirs and my parents had one in their bedroom.  That’s four in my household growing up, and it was a requested Christmas gift to get an updated model.  But maybe we kept them on average four or five years.  But add in portable transitor radios, walkie talkies, albums, then cassettes, then CDs and mini discs, Sony Walkman players, aftermarket car radios (which still exist but are far less commonly swapped out in the age of Bluetooth connection to the music collections on our smartphones).  Add in stand alone cameras, initially with film cartridges, which we burned gas to go buy and to go drop off at the local photomat.  Then digital cameras, and the upgrade treadmill associated with those.  Video recorders, landline phones, then early wireless home phones, then clunky cellular mobile phones.  Most all the above products were more voluminous than a smartphone, and in aggregate were produced in far larger numbers since a lot of people owned many of these products.  So smartphones have been an environmental godsend relative to the world we lived in previously.  

    Second point, thank goodness for Apple, as the company has long resisted simply adding a bigger battery to each iPhone, instead opting to improve the iPhone’s compute efficiency with each new model.  I would love to see Apple come up with a test procedure that shows the compute efficiency of iPhones versus the competition; each phone does the exact same tasks, in the same apps, and compare the overall energy utilized.  My guess is that iPhones would compare favorably, and that means fewer coal-fired power plants constructed because the iPhone exists and few less spent lithium.

    Third, everything mentioned in this article.  It’s just too bad we aren’t more often reminded about the two points above as I think they are the more significant points to be made.  
    Hallelujah... voice of reason!... 
    As for these environmentalist with their  unrealistic/extremist and ecmonomiclly catastrophic view of things;  here is the real key .. the first thing that needs adjustment is human population... that will solve your issues in a heart beat,   
    Try and fix that....  
    If you're advocating forced birth control as policy, good luck with that (see China).

    Environmentalism is neither unrealistic nor extremist. Nor will adopting sensible environmental policies cause economic collapse. That is hyperbolic nonsense. 
    dewmelolliveranomenadriel
  • Reply 24 of 42
    GG1GG1 Posts: 483member
    tadd said:
    How to reduce waste.  Stop requiring replacements due to electro-mechanical failures.  What about due to need for upgrade?  

    It would be clunky and sort of look like military hardware from the 70s, but I wonder if more than a few would embrace the portable computer for life idea.  Imagine a cellphone built with entirely interchangeable parts with the idea that anything that would be upgraded, could be done without tossing out the other parts.  Some elements, like the CPU itself, are atomic, not separable, but battery, display, keyboard, cameras, radio transceivers, antennas, are certainly separable.  If size are cost were not design goals, but survivability and interchange-able components were, could a POCKET sized computer exist?  It would be handy if we could come up with an open-source chassis for such a system as a start.  You can imagine that this would be much more clunky than an iPhone!  

    At some point the race to make dramatic improvements in the function of some devices stalls.  Is there a serious difference between a 2000 Toyota Corolla and the current model?  There certainly was a difference between a 1970 car and 1990.  Emission control, transmission, anti-lock brakes, seatbelts.  When we passed 16GB and 1TB and dual-core @ 1Ghz, modern computers went beyond where anybody not doing HD content creation or Augmented reality got bored with the race to upgrade.  Maybe video games keep the pressure up.. but I'm old so not really in that space.    What I'm seeing is cute features improvements and improvements to how the computer is built. But how far back do you have to go before a computer gets unusable?  There was a time around yr 2000 where 4 years back was pretty primitive.  HD sizes, network speed, and RAM capacity were barely keeping up with consumer applications.  I'm not saying the need for more isn't there, but compared to the rate of smart-phone improvements, demanded by a decent percentage of the population, computers are getting pretty boring.    My most recent home-computer upgrade was from a 2008 Mac Pro to a 2018 Mac Mini.   My office computer is a 9 year old quad core i7, 1st generation, and running MSWindows 7.   Could we get away with a 9 year old smart phones?   Hmm... iPhone 4.  maybe not.  But have we seen signs of a slowdown in technology growth?  

    Arthur Clark wrote a story, 50 years ago, titled "Imperial Earth", which takes place in the future.  Humans are interplanetary.  In the story, Clark imagines a device called a Minisec.  A Minisec device would be acquired by each person, sometimes as a teenager, to be used indefinitely, and rarely exchanged.  Many have compared the modern smart-phones to that imagined creation.  Is a lifetime device possible?   Could we imagine keeping a smart-phone for 10 years?  Could they be built well enough to survive the pitfalls of being portable?   That would surely reduce waste!  

    See Motorola/Google's defunct Project Ara.
    edited October 2019 FileMakerFellerlolliver
  • Reply 25 of 42
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member

    The practical solution is for consumers to simply purchase phones and computers more infrequently, because reusing the same phone for multiple years greatly reduces environmental impact in a chain of events that leads to the manufacturing company making fewer. From a consumer standpoint, it can be hard to pass on the newest features, especially when carriers let you switch phones as frequently as every two years.
    Bottom line for the environmentalists? Reduce economic activity. They don’t care what happens to society or the economy. It’s all about “saving” the planet. Remember how the environmental politicians assured the coal miners that they would all transition to well paying jobs in the new, green economy. Ask the West Virginia coal miners how that worked out for them.
    cat52
  • Reply 26 of 42
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member

    Rajka said:
    I understand why corporations like a subscription model, dependably predictable income to keep shareholder returns high. Planned obsolescence is but a form of that, the continual buying of a product that has an arbitrarily fixed service life simply to increase sales. That trick is as old as I can recall, though it's really kicked in a big way over the past few decades. How ironic and morally bankrupt that companies would support this model as environmental concerns increase. Shame on Apple for playing a huge role in this. No amount of spin how Apple recycles products can ever make up for the damage it is directly causing to the Earth. There is simply no excuse for why its products cannot be readily repaired, upgraded, and expanded. One cannot even swap out a battery without shipping it to Apple for repair. Utterly ridiculous. For Apple to even suggest it cares about the environment is disingenuous at best; Tim Cook cares only about shareholder returns. Period. The worst part is that Apple's huge success using planned obsolescence has pushed the personal computer industry in that direction so that it has become the new norm. So much in fact that a majority of younger consumers don't even question this. There oughta be a law. I'm going to stop commenting now; expletives are hurling throughout my mind and I don't want them to spill out.
    Delusions also run throughout your mind. If you believe Cook manages to the share price, you haven't been paying attention. They're about as least Wall Street friendly as you can get. They manage for the customer, for delighting the customer. And as customers, we want thin, lightweight devices from Apple. Plenty of alternatives with fat form factors to chose from.

    The idea that Apple leverages "planned obsolescence" as a trick is absurd. Apple's devices have the longest useful lifespans of any in the industry, PC and mobile. I got 8 years on my last iMac. You can readily get 4-5 years on an iPhone if you don't feel the need to upgrade. Of course you will need to get it serviced to change the battery, but that's no different than having your auto serviced. Batteries are consumables and they can be replaced, even if it's too tricky for the average consumer.
    Yep, and it shows you in spades how the loonies around here think... irrationally. 
    cat52
  • Reply 27 of 42
    tht said:
    As far as recycling, Apple’s best option is to take used machines and recycle it themselves. A lot of businesses take your old computer, but it’ll just end up in a landfill in some far away place. Theoretically, Apple could take old machines and recycle as much as possible. It will take some new machines and such.
    Apple already does exactly this, no?
  • Reply 28 of 42
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    tht said:
    As far as recycling, Apple’s best option is to take used machines and recycle it themselves. A lot of businesses take your old computer, but it’ll just end up in a landfill in some far away place. Theoretically, Apple could take old machines and recycle as much as possible. It will take some new machines and such.
    Apple already does exactly this, no?
    iPhones yes. Not so sure about iPads and Macs. Then, if they intend on using 100% recycled materials for their products, they probably have to take non-Apple devices too. They would have to be pretty selective though.
  • Reply 29 of 42
    taddtadd Posts: 136member
    GG1 said:
    tadd said:
    How to reduce waste.  Stop requiring replacements due to electro-mechanical failures.  What about due to need for upgrade?  

    It would be clunky and sort of look like military hardware from the 70s, but I wonder if more than a few would embrace the portable computer for life idea.  Imagine a cellphone built with entirely interchangeable parts with the idea that anything that would be upgraded, could be done without tossing out the other parts.  Some elements, like the CPU itself, are atomic, not separable, but battery, display, keyboard, cameras, radio transceivers, antennas, are certainly separable.  If size are cost were not design goals, but survivability and interchange-able components were, could a POCKET sized computer exist?  It would be handy if we could come up with an open-source chassis for such a system as a start.  You can imagine that this would be much more clunky than an iPhone!  

    See Motorola/Google's defunct Project Ara.
    Thanks for the link.  I had never seen that before.  
    That's excellent except for the answer to the "Where can I get mine?" question.   
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonebloks
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/7469/motorolas-project-ara-phonebloks-from-an-oem
    Ah well..   so close.  
  • Reply 30 of 42
    tht said:
    As a general rule in the United States, household electricity is still primarily coming from coal. While coal use is on the decline, the majority position isn't likely to change any time soon, as it's fairly difficult -- at least in the United States -- to update infrastructure to incorporate things such as solar, wind, or hydroelectric. On top of that, a majority of U.S. citizens still oppose nuclear energy.
    Just delete this from the editorial. Natural gas overtook coal for electricity generation about 2 years ago. Maybe in the 5 years, coal will slide under nuclear.

    As a sign of things to come, renewables+hydro generated more electricity than coal last spring in the USA for the first time. This will become permanent in spring in 2 to 3 years, and will gradually spread to the other months of the year.
    Actually, this statement only needs to reference the World instead of USA to be fairly representative of the existing situation. It’s a valid point. 
  • Reply 31 of 42
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    tht said:
    As a general rule in the United States, household electricity is still primarily coming from coal. While coal use is on the decline, the majority position isn't likely to change any time soon, as it's fairly difficult -- at least in the United States -- to update infrastructure to incorporate things such as solar, wind, or hydroelectric. On top of that, a majority of U.S. citizens still oppose nuclear energy.
    Just delete this from the editorial. Natural gas overtook coal for electricity generation about 2 years ago. Maybe in the 5 years, coal will slide under nuclear.

    As a sign of things to come, renewables+hydro generated more electricity than coal last spring in the USA for the first time. This will become permanent in spring in 2 to 3 years, and will gradually spread to the other months of the year.
    Actually, this statement only needs to reference the World instead of USA to be fairly representative of the existing situation. It’s a valid point. 
    If it is changed to the world, yes, coal generates more electricity, but I wouldn’t couch any time component. It always goes slowly at first, then suddenly. There are going to be a lot of stranded assets in these developing countries. 
  • Reply 32 of 42
    radarthekatradarthekat Posts: 3,842moderator
    “Smartphones are endemic of a much larger problem.”

    I’ll make a few points.  

    First, thank goodness the smartphone exists.  Consider all the products it replaces.  How much water and natural resources were used in the production of the thousands of different models of clock radios over the years, before the alarm clock function of a smartphone made that product category obsolete.  Clock radios were big and bulky compared to smartphones, requiring even more fuel to deliver them to market and taking up more space in landfills. Okay, you might not have replaced your clock radio every two or three years, but as a kid I recall I owned my own, my two brothers had theirs and my parents had one in their bedroom.  That’s four in my household growing up, and it was a requested Christmas gift to get an updated model.  But maybe we kept them on average four or five years.  But add in portable transitor radios, walkie talkies, albums, then cassettes, then CDs and mini discs, Sony Walkman players, aftermarket car radios (which still exist but are far less commonly swapped out in the age of Bluetooth connection to the music collections on our smartphones).  Add in stand alone cameras, initially with film cartridges, which we burned gas to go buy and to go drop off at the local photomat.  Then digital cameras, and the upgrade treadmill associated with those.  Video recorders, landline phones, then early wireless home phones, then clunky cellular mobile phones.  Most all the above products were more voluminous than a smartphone, and in aggregate were produced in far larger numbers since a lot of people owned many of these products.  So smartphones have been an environmental godsend relative to the world we lived in previously.  

    Second point, thank goodness for Apple, as the company has long resisted simply adding a bigger battery to each iPhone, instead opting to improve the iPhone’s compute efficiency with each new model.  I would love to see Apple come up with a test procedure that shows the compute efficiency of iPhones versus the competition; each phone does the exact same tasks, in the same apps, and compare the overall energy utilized.  My guess is that iPhones would compare favorably, and that means fewer coal-fired power plants constructed because the iPhone exists and few less spent lithium.

    Third, everything mentioned in this article.  It’s just too bad we aren’t more often reminded about the two points above as I think they are the more significant points to be made.  
    Your sentiment is admirable, but none of your supporting points stand scrutiny. Volume would be the primary enemy of your argument.  The sheer volume of smartphones vs clock radios (odd choice there) would probably use more resources - and more varied types of resources - than clock radios.   As Amber highlighted, even with all of the environmental efforts related to recycling, more waste is entering landfills and hazardous waste is being generated.  @dewme made a great point that our efforts tend to move the overall problem from one area to another.   

    Your energy consumption to coal-fired plants logic corollary does not compute.  That would be like me saying smartphone manufacturing contributes to coal-fired plant creation because coal-fired plants are being created primarily in areas where smartphones are manufactured.  It's wrong.  Just as wrong as your "...and that means fewer coal-fired power plants constructed because the iPhone exists ..."  https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants Push the slider to future to see where coal-fired plants are planned and/or under construction.

    I know what you're trying to say.  In principle, I can somewhat agree.  But your message is diluted by your supporting points.
    I think you need to calculate again.  Smartphones didn’t replace merely clock radios, but the whole raft of other products I mentioned and many many more I didn’t lists.  Add to the list I already mentioned tape recorders, MP3 players, calculators, personal GPS devices (I used to have one for hiking, no longer necessary), untold tons of printed materials like books and magazines and newspapers.   You cannot be serious to merely make the point about ‘more waste being generated’ you’re comparing today’s production of smartphones to last year and the year before.  I’m clearly comparing today’s world to the world pre-2007, I mere blink in geologic terms. 

    And Apple themselves in years past have made the point about a reduction in need for coal fired power plants in China.  It’s not whether more are being built; it’s relative to how many more would have ben built.  You seem to have completely missed every point I made.  
  • Reply 33 of 42
    “Smartphones are endemic of a much larger problem.”

    I’ll make a few points.  

    First, thank goodness the smartphone exists.  Consider all the products it replaces.  How much water and natural resources were used in the production of the thousands of different models of clock radios over the years, before the alarm clock function of a smartphone made that product category obsolete.  Clock radios were big and bulky compared to smartphones, requiring even more fuel to deliver them to market and taking up more space in landfills. Okay, you might not have replaced your clock radio every two or three years, but as a kid I recall I owned my own, my two brothers had theirs and my parents had one in their bedroom.  That’s four in my household growing up, and it was a requested Christmas gift to get an updated model.  But maybe we kept them on average four or five years.  But add in portable transitor radios, walkie talkies, albums, then cassettes, then CDs and mini discs, Sony Walkman players, aftermarket car radios (which still exist but are far less commonly swapped out in the age of Bluetooth connection to the music collections on our smartphones).  Add in stand alone cameras, initially with film cartridges, which we burned gas to go buy and to go drop off at the local photomat.  Then digital cameras, and the upgrade treadmill associated with those.  Video recorders, landline phones, then early wireless home phones, then clunky cellular mobile phones.  Most all the above products were more voluminous than a smartphone, and in aggregate were produced in far larger numbers since a lot of people owned many of these products.  So smartphones have been an environmental godsend relative to the world we lived in previously.  

    Second point, thank goodness for Apple, as the company has long resisted simply adding a bigger battery to each iPhone, instead opting to improve the iPhone’s compute efficiency with each new model.  I would love to see Apple come up with a test procedure that shows the compute efficiency of iPhones versus the competition; each phone does the exact same tasks, in the same apps, and compare the overall energy utilized.  My guess is that iPhones would compare favorably, and that means fewer coal-fired power plants constructed because the iPhone exists and few less spent lithium.

    Third, everything mentioned in this article.  It’s just too bad we aren’t more often reminded about the two points above as I think they are the more significant points to be made.  
    Your sentiment is admirable, but none of your supporting points stand scrutiny. Volume would be the primary enemy of your argument.  The sheer volume of smartphones vs clock radios (odd choice there) would probably use more resources - and more varied types of resources - than clock radios.   As Amber highlighted, even with all of the environmental efforts related to recycling, more waste is entering landfills and hazardous waste is being generated.  @dewme made a great point that our efforts tend to move the overall problem from one area to another.   

    Your energy consumption to coal-fired plants logic corollary does not compute.  That would be like me saying smartphone manufacturing contributes to coal-fired plant creation because coal-fired plants are being created primarily in areas where smartphones are manufactured.  It's wrong.  Just as wrong as your "...and that means fewer coal-fired power plants constructed because the iPhone exists ..."  https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-coal-power-plants Push the slider to future to see where coal-fired plants are planned and/or under construction.

    I know what you're trying to say.  In principle, I can somewhat agree.  But your message is diluted by your supporting points.
    I think you need to calculate again.  Smartphones didn’t replace merely clock radios, but the whole raft of other products I mentioned and many many more I didn’t lists.  Add to the list I already mentioned tape recorders, MP3 players, calculators, personal GPS devices (I used to have one for hiking, no longer necessary), untold tons of printed materials like books and magazines and newspapers.   You cannot be serious to merely make the point about ‘more waste being generated’ you’re comparing today’s production of smartphones to last year and the year before.  I’m clearly comparing today’s world to the world pre-2007, I mere blink in geologic terms. 

    And Apple themselves in years past have made the point about a reduction in need for coal fired power plants in China.  It’s not whether more are being built; it’s relative to how many more would have been built.  You seem to have completely missed every point I made.  
    I didn't miss any of the points you made.  I clearly stated none of the points that you made are either true or valid.  You made unsubstantiated logical leaps and causation errors.  Again, I understand your sentiment and you can add all the anecdotal "data" in the world, that still doesn't validate your points.  I mean, if you could source any of that, I'd be inclined to give it more credence.  'Til then I view your points as well intended but ultimately incorrect.  Seriously, I've found no data to support your points.  Most data that I found counters it and I didn't even look that hard.
    https://www.thebalancesmb.com/e-waste-recycling-facts-and-figures-2878189
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/499891/projection-ewaste-generation-worldwide/
    https://invrecovery.org/e-waste-state-of-the-union-recycling-facts-figures-and-the-future/

    The long and short of it is we have more people now generating more e-waste than we had in 2007.  No matter the time period, your points just don't work as far as I can see.
    Maybe you'll have better luck finding sources that supporting your point.  


    edited October 2019
  • Reply 34 of 42
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,275member
    jimh2 said:
    The reality is it means nothing to all but a few people.
    It ultimately matters to everyone who intends to continue living on this planet. As another poster pointed out, the reason the iPhone sells hundreds of millions out of the 1.5B smartphones produced every year is because it replaces a plethora of other, mostly plastic, devices. I am reasonably sure that Apple (unlike any other manufacturer of smartphones) has actually reduced its overall "harm" footprint compared to the Plastic Everything Age, which was only 20 years ago, due to greater efficiencies and stepping away from so much plastic, which it turn feeds the largest polluter on earth, the Oil Industry.

    While it is entirely right and proper to analyse and criticise Apple's environmental policies where they could stand improvement, blaming them for being successful is a bit ridiculous, especially in light of the "don't care" attitude of its competitors, which -- in total -- far outsell Apple and are therefore responsible for far more egregious harm.
  • Reply 35 of 42
    DAalsethDAalseth Posts: 2,783member
    I don’t feel guilty at all about looking at replacing our phones with 11s this model year. My wife’s 6 is, I think, something over five years old. It’s also starting to randomly call the last person called. It will be sitting on the table and suddenly we’ll hear it dialling and ringing. It’s time. My SE is going to be close to four years old. I want to update it simply because my use case has changed. I got it to use as a phone, but now I find myself reading on it, using the maps more, etc. I just need a bigger screen, both so things like maps aren’t so cramped, but just to be able to make the font bigger so I can read on it more easily. Both phones have been in use WAY longer than the average, and both phones have a strong functional reason to need upgrading.

    That said the better cameras and other more modern features will be very nice. But that alone wasn't enough to justify an upgrade to an 8 or an X or an XS. Now however it is time.
    edited October 2019
  • Reply 36 of 42
    I think now is a good time for Apple to lean on all of the landlords who own the properties where they build and lease Apple Stores. Not very many of them use solar or even recycle trash. 

    Having those malls even start recycling would remove a lot of recycled materials ending up in landfills and could reduce our carbon footprint.

    Right now, Apple buys carbon credits to offset all of the stores that are in areas that don’t use solar or renewable energy, and that’s a lot. 
  • Reply 37 of 42
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    zoetmb said:
    It's great what Apple is doing, but IMO, Apple is still completely hypocritical.   If they really care about the environment, they would make devices that lasted longer because the user could easily replace parts.   IMO, it's unforgivable that in a MacBook Pro, one cannot replace/upgrade the battery, storage and memory, all of which used to be easily user replaceable.    It was one of the things I liked the most about my late 2008 MBP:  The little flip control to open the door for the battery, the shock mounted hard disk and the easy access to the memory modules were so well designed.  

    So there's two reasons for this (take your pick):  Apple's obsession with thinness destroys the practicality of making these components user replaceable (although hopefully with Ive gone, that will change) -or- Apple's strategic objective is to do this purposely so that people have to upgrade their machines more often.   
    The problem with your outrage is that Macs and iDevices already last far longer than their counterparts. They last longer than PCs and android knockoffs, not shorter. This is reflected in the much-higher resale value for used Apple equipment. 

    Not a conspiracy. Thin means light which is what I want. Even in desktops -- my new iMac is 10 lbs lighter than my previous one, and it has real world benefits in my use cases.
    Not to mention that making every component modular and user-replaceable adds cost, bulk, and additional waste with no path for the average user for upgrading components down the line. I can't imagine my mother would want to take her iPhone apart so she could put in a faster cellular chip module in a few years. That's without even considering the efforts and cost involved in making iOS work for well for a virtually infinite number of device configuring. Even with iOS 13 we've two additional point updates already to fix bugs for devices that weren't caught during the summer. I can't imagine how bad that would be if an iPhone was modular like Google's Project Are or Phonebloks.
  • Reply 38 of 42
    Rajka said:
    I understand why corporations like a subscription model, dependably predictable income to keep shareholder returns high. Planned obsolescence is but a form of that, the continual buying of a product that has an arbitrarily fixed service life simply to increase sales. That trick is as old as I can recall, though it's really kicked in a big way over the past few decades. How ironic and morally bankrupt that companies would support this model as environmental concerns increase. Shame on Apple for playing a huge role in this. No amount of spin how Apple recycles products can ever make up for the damage it is directly causing to the Earth. There is simply no excuse for why its products cannot be readily repaired, upgraded, and expanded. One cannot even swap out a battery without shipping it to Apple for repair. Utterly ridiculous. For Apple to even suggest it cares about the environment is disingenuous at best; Tim Cook cares only about shareholder returns. Period. The worst part is that Apple's huge success using planned obsolescence has pushed the personal computer industry in that direction so that it has become the new norm. So much in fact that a majority of younger consumers don't even question this. There oughta be a law. I'm going to stop commenting now; expletives are hurling throughout my mind and I don't want them to spill out.

    I can understand exactly how you feel. I feel the same way when I read your posts. I'm going to stop commenting now; expletives are hurling throughout my mind and I don't want them to spill out.
    radarthekat
  • Reply 39 of 42
    Soli said:
    zoetmb said:
    It's great what Apple is doing, but IMO, Apple is still completely hypocritical.   If they really care about the environment, they would make devices that lasted longer because the user could easily replace parts.   IMO, it's unforgivable that in a MacBook Pro, one cannot replace/upgrade the battery, storage and memory, all of which used to be easily user replaceable.    It was one of the things I liked the most about my late 2008 MBP:  The little flip control to open the door for the battery, the shock mounted hard disk and the easy access to the memory modules were so well designed.  

    So there's two reasons for this (take your pick):  Apple's obsession with thinness destroys the practicality of making these components user replaceable (although hopefully with Ive gone, that will change) -or- Apple's strategic objective is to do this purposely so that people have to upgrade their machines more often.   
    The problem with your outrage is that Macs and iDevices already last far longer than their counterparts. They last longer than PCs and android knockoffs, not shorter. This is reflected in the much-higher resale value for used Apple equipment. 

    Not a conspiracy. Thin means light which is what I want. Even in desktops -- my new iMac is 10 lbs lighter than my previous one, and it has real world benefits in my use cases.
    Not to mention that making every component modular and user-replaceable adds cost, bulk, and additional waste with no path for the average user for upgrading components down the line. I can't imagine my mother would want to take her iPhone apart so she could put in a faster cellular chip module in a few years. That's without even considering the efforts and cost involved in making iOS work for well for a virtually infinite number of device configuring. Even with iOS 13 we've two additional point updates already to fix bugs for devices that weren't caught during the summer. I can't imagine how bad that would be if an iPhone was modular like Google's Project Are or Phonebloks.

    I agree with you that making many parts as replaceable in a smartphone (iPhones and other android phones) would be counter productive. Just 2 components - Battery and Display - if they can be made "easily" replaceable (not necessarily by end users but by technicians), that would help with the environment by reducing the waste significantly. Right now - Almost all of the OEMs are designing smartphones with an objective to NOT be able to replace battery and display easily even by technicians (Apple has been a leader in this direction) and that is causing a huge amount of electronic waste which could have been avoided/reduced significantly.
  • Reply 40 of 42
    apple ][ said:
    How to reduce waste?

    Ban all Android products that have the lifespan of a house fly.
    All android products have the lifespan of a house fly??? Seriously??? My Moto G5 plus is working fine for 2 years and 9 months WITHOUT any issues so far and i have decided to not replace it until it completely stops working. So there goes your credibility when you make silly generalized statements which deviates so much from real world.
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