The biggest problem I see with this process is the cost. It might cost a manufacture $5 for a plastic laptop housing. I can't imagine the new Aluminum laptop housing costing less than $75 out the door. There is a fudge factor there as I'm not sure how much the slaves are being paid. It is never cheap to machine such parts. It would be very interesting to know how fast they can get one of these housings through the production process. I find it difficult to imagine less than an hour to a finished shell. This does not compare very well to injection molding where your cycle times might be under 30 seconds and a large machine might be making more than one case at a time.
Apple does not want a plastic case, plain and simple. Engineering polymers are not recyclable so it doesn't fit with Apple's stated "green" philosophy. They're also not very stiff. Look inside even the polycarbonate MBs and you'll find a machined aluminum frame providing the mounting structure for all the compononets. The only difference with the unibody machines is that the frame and housing are no longer separate. If you're going to machine the frame anyway, why not do the shell at the same time and let the shell help form a stronger, stiffer semi-monocoque structure? I doubt the basic machining operations to turn billet into case take an hour. More like five minutes. You can see some proof of that in the Macbook video that Apple provides. The mill takes less than 5 seconds to create each hole in the keyboard. Modern CNC machines with carbide or diamond bits can cut a soft metal like aluminum very quickly. No mass-production CNC shop is going to have just one mill, either. Subsequent finishing operations would be identical for both cast and milled parts, so there would be no savings for casting.
Quote:
Oh if you are thinking about asking, no I don't see the expense of the process being offset by the need for other components on a shell produced by other means. The stampings or moldings are cheap.
Stamped parts may be cheap, but tool steel forming dies are not. Previous aluminum MBP cases already were stamped.
Quote:
As a side note here I've watched die cast machines produce carburator bodies at an impressive rate. In this case there is certainly a lot of secondary work on the body. While large carburators have gone the way of the Dino, I don't think any reasonable person would suggest machining the from a block of zinc for each unit. The expense would be huge. I'm not so closed minded however not to see some value in Apples processes for this shell. The problem is the expense, it is likely an order of magnitude more expensive if not worst.
Whatever the process, a metal part will go through a lot of finishing operations, so much of the process remains identical. The MB case is a thin part and not a lot of material needs to be removed, so it's well-suited for CNC machining. If you think CNC isn't suitable for large parts, you should have seen F-15 bulkheads the size of a car being machined even back in the '70s. It lost over 90% (about 1000 pounds) of titanium between forged blank and finished part. CNC services just aren't that expensive anymore. That's why you can see lots of smaller companies using it rather than investing in multimillion dollar tooling. For instance, Xootr has all their scooter decks milled. Those parts are about the same size and complexity as an MB case. If they cost $75, the complete scooters couldn't possibly cost $200.
Honestly I never liked those interesting but impractical backpack-drawstring bags. They were kind of hard to carry in your hand. But I have a few and now they are collector's items!
I'd like to see them go to old school paper shopping bags, like Macy's gives out. Those are not throw-aways, those are keepers, and therefore not as bad landfill-wise. Nice, practical, paper, would look good with an Apple logo on them.
and the plastic bags aren't keepers?
I have so many plastic bags I have saved from stres. they are great for easy and cheap transporting of my lunch, dirty clothes, poor mans luggage, etc... They even make storage units for the plastic bags. This move is stupid.
I'm all for helping the environment, but I think the problem with this bag-free policy is that Apple is saying that they care more about making a statement than the convenience of their customers.
Seriously, the least of their worries should be plastic bags and CDs. What about all the energy used to light up their stores to be brighter than the sun, or the fact that they discourage upgradeable machines in favor of totally replacing them when it's time to upgrade.
Nowadays everyone will buy into any company that claims to be green. What these companies won't tell you is that the only things they do to be green are visible to the customer, i.e. what's going on behind the scenes is probably business as usual for these companies that are suddenly enlightened by responsibility to appease the general public.
It's like how my company has reserved parking spaces for Hybrid cars. Please. You are damaging the environment by driving a car that requires so much more energy and material shipping to be produced. Half of the people parked there drive Escape hybrids, which get worse mileage than 99% of cars that an average European would drive around.
And why can't Apple use bags made of recycled paper?
RIGHT ON. As you said, there are many energy sucking bulbs thru out the store, yet they put LEDs in the iMacs! LEDs as store lighting would brighten up displays and save millions of dollars and stop the common burning of tons of carbon soot and mercury laden 'clean' coal.
1. Without bags, Apple must make somehow still create an image noise to cover the loss of advertising that the bags provided. You'll notice that all the slave labor created 'fabric' bags from Trader Joes and Whole Foods, for example, are unique in color. Also the store name or logo is easier to distinguish on a unique, square surface.
(This is a smooth trick of using modern American sub culture industries. If you think for one minute the money leaders who are behind retail truly care about paper or plastic, think again. The Rockafellers want a much smaller world population and a return to futalism. Thus crack cocaine, vaccines, homosexual promotion, gun rights, and abortion. But they purposely mislabel their profitable poisoning and destruction of the environment to promote better ways of advertising their products-like these easier to read big, unique bags. Yet for the lack of an immediate profitable solution to replace their very unique and much liked ad/logo bags, Steve Jobs and Apple are most likely a poor victims of this illuminated world mentality, rather than a contributor. Truly it is the very promotion of the web and the computer that has lead to the loss of the local newspaper reporters who uncover the plots to destroy our way of life and freedoms by the clever and disguised closing of such newspapers that have a reputation for great investigative probing. The owners say this is done because of the 'economy' and to help preserve Americas trees, even though the 'economy' has been undermined by the Fed, and the forests were replaced decades ago by Agrabiz tree farms harvested by two mexican 'imported' workers using big foreign made harvesting machines. The multinational media companies already own most of the local news anyway. It was always their purpose to stop these reporters-buying up the papers allowed this to happen! Buy the media, run ads to elect the narcissistic, corrupt officials, control the government, change the law, have your way! Close the local papers, shut down all the low power broadcasters this June, homogenize all the news. Sounds like "1984"-the year of my first Mac! Rocky wins again.)
2. Now, without bags to help, Apple employees at retail stores are going to have to be trained even better to watch for "slippage". In all reality, the reason you have always found a store full of sale people at Apple, was in a great part to prevent shop lifting. After all, dual purpose, enthusiastic sales people are far cheaper and far less threatening to customers than security guards.
9. When do The Beatles get to show up in iTunes? Apple on Apple![/QUOTE]
Not only is that worded very poorly, it's silly. You're suggesting that the prominent logos on Apple's product boxes aren't enough advertising?
THE POINT IS THAT A GENERIC PRODUCT FROM THE APPLE STORE, WITHOUT AN APPLE BAG, COULD HAVE COME FROM THE SONY STORE!!!
Thats what bags are really for-it is all about 'image'.( I am afraid you are more worried about the 'correctness' of the grammar than the details of the content. Oh yah 'C' over an 'A', like in lit class! Where were you when they started inverting "You and I" to "You and Me", or "There are" to "there's"?)
What I meant by image noise, was to do something loudly in the media which will say that Apple has greened up the plastic bags problem, but say it in a way that makes enough positive noise to overcome the lack of noise that the Apple bags had by crying out to passer-bys in the mall. That noise emanated from the large logo on the unique bags-which will be missed.( I guess I assumed that most concerned bloggers were aware of how they are manipulated by the fake green promoters who are really just interested in the green that comes from the US mint!)
I was at the Toronto Eaton Centre Apple Store and the customer ahead of me was not given an Apple bag to place his purchase in. There were "no bags left in the store."
Pandaemonium and raised high-pitched voices ensued.
Eventually a bag was located.
I think a staffer had to give up his lunch bag as this creased, crumpled bag was offered up to the customer.
As soon as he saw the Apple logo on the bag he was placated.
Normalcy returned to the store.
The importance of rewarding customers with proof of their branding choices in such obvious ways as retail bags cannot be underestimated!
the Irish government brought in a plastic bag tax in 2002 and it was a huge success. Usage was brought down by 90%. I'd like to say it was successful becasue it was the right thing to do, envrironemtaly but alas it was a tax, and who volunteers to pay a tax. In fairness the retailers did get onboard , saving themselves money as well. Having said that , very rapidly it felt weird and wasteful to be get your goods in a plastic bag.
Visiting the Apple store NYC & London, it did feel out of place for Apple of all people be issuing plastic bags and elaborate ones at that. The Apple Retail store bags were incongruent with the rest of the Apple design philosophy. So will it be paper, cotton or stick on handles?
Come on Apple, be congruent with the rest of the philosophy but don't get carried away...
THE POINT IS THAT A GENERIC PRODUCT FROM THE APPLE STORE, WITHOUT AN APPLE BAG, COULD HAVE COME FROM THE SONY STORE!!!
Not quite likely when most of the items that Apple sells are Apple branded.
Quote:
( I am afraid you are more worried about the 'correctness' of the grammar than the details of the content. Oh yah 'C' over an 'A', like in lit class! Where were you when they started inverting "You and I" to "You and Me", or "There are" to "there's"?)
No, I'm not, but when poor grammar gets in the way of actual communication, such as your rambling first post, it's a problem.
[QUOTE=JeffDM;1386611]Not quite likely when most of the items that Apple sells are Apple branded.
Yes, everything in the Apple store that is from Apple has an Apple logo. When you see a person leaving the Apple store with a MacBook, the logo on the box is obvious. But when they also buy an ipod case or a Bose headphone, the Apple bag places the Apple logo on those 'un-Apple' items as well, which is one of the main purposes of the bag, I contend.
(As far as my rampages, which is the most fun part of blogs, I put them in parens!)
((Just to ad more problematic rambling, I forgot that I had "Elements of Style" on my Newton 100. Since the batteries are dead, I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone just a minute ago, so I can brush up on my proper grammar for these important blogs, where major intellects spend much of their valuable time moderating trouble causers such as mwah!.))
Apple store visitors who make more than handful of purchases in the store are offered assistance to their car or the option of leaving their items at the store while they continue shopping, in the case of retail outlets located in a mall.
Oh, how green. So, while I'd normally go by train to my nearest Apple store, I now need to go by car?
(Well, I'll probably bring my own bags. But if I hadn't heard about this policy and not come prepared, I'd be a bit stuck. I just thought it was ironic that, in a move to promote being green, they seem to expect people to use a car!)
Sure there is a lot of waste. However, as you point out the waste is largely recyclable. More importantly, there is plenty of waste in creating a plastic case as well. That waste is largely not recyclable. Further, when an aluminum Mac finally goes to the junk yard the aluminum will be recycled. The plastic in the old cases will not be.
Apple's old plastic case design had problems with the case flexing, thereby causing the graphic processor to eventually tear away from the board. I'd guess Apple had to replace hundreds of thousands of those (it replaced three on just one of mine alone). Those old logic boards hit the trash. The new cases will definitely prevent the same type of case flexing thereby increasing the chances of less stress on the internal components (as Apple itself points out).
Are there better ways to achieve the same results? Maybe, but you said the Macbook cases were the least energy inefficient without explaining what you mean. The least energy efficient because of cost to produce, or from actually usage of the machine? It seems you mean because of manufacturing costs. However, when Apple introduced these machines it claimed it was using a new process. So your comments are assuming a lot that can't be verified unless you have an inside source. Whatever the case may be, I doubt Apple's process is the least energy efficient. Further, as you probably know, engineering is always about striking a balance.
Apple is not a pioneer of process. What is new to them (or even PC manufacture) is not actually "new". One of the earlier posters referred to the production of F-15 bulkheads. The manufacture of a titanium bulkhead using present manufacturing processes is a far cry from the techniques pioneered with the SR-71 where the processes were invented. There literally had been none before.
As an aside, there are PC laptops which have their outer skin fabricated from carbon fiber. It is "new" to PCs, but is a well known process.
Back to Apple's process. I think that you intuitively understand that the process that Apple has chosen is not especially energy efficient. By the way, many plastics used in commercial processes are manufactured using recycled materials. Only a comparatively few companies publicize this. The common "fleece" jackets that everyone wears are almost all made from recycled materials.
In any event, Apple have, in my opinion, chosen a process which does not add to the functionality of the product. Does that mean it is "wrong"? Certainly not any more than the PC laptops made of carbon fiber.
I don't see how this would work in London. Most people use public transport and I doubt the staff would be willing to carry your purchases all the way home for you.
The last time I was at the Apple store in Boston was in late November/ early December, and they kept their giant doors open despite the freezing cold wind blowing in from the street. This makes me question the depth of Apple's commitment to the environment.
Besides, the greenest computer is the one that doesn't end up in a landfill because you just bought yourself a new macbook.
This is good because not using a plastic bag will help put food on the table of those less fortunate to not even be able to afford an Apple computer. This green movement is killing our culture. Meanwhile, I'd bet it's the same customer that carries a "green" bag that also totes around with a freakin' plastic bottle of water. Hypocrisy. Let's help our neighbor with what really matters.
((Just to ad more problematic rambling, I forgot that I had "Elements of Style" on my Newton 100. Since the batteries are dead, I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone just a minute ago, so I can brush up on my proper grammar for these important blogs, where major intellects spend much of their valuable time moderating trouble causers such as mwah!.))
"Howz dem apples?"
"trouble causers" should have a hyphen: trouble-causers.
Hey, when I buy a 30" Cinema Display or a Mac Pro, I expect a plastic bag to carry it home in!
I had to laugh. the two issues are really not related. they don't have bags big enough to hold anything larger than a 13 inch laptop and a lot of the stores have stopped grabbing a bag when you buy one thing unless you ask. it saves them money as well as being greener.
This is good because not using a plastic bag will help put food on the table of those less fortunate to not even be able to afford an Apple computer. This green movement is killing our culture. Meanwhile, I'd bet it's the same customer that carries a "green" bag that also totes around with a freakin' plastic bottle of water. Hypocrisy. Let's help our neighbor with what really matters.
First we have to talk to our neighbors!
(What is in that leaching plastic bottle besides boiled water? What's killing our culture is greed! . In fact ADM could stop world hunger and obesity. Pfizer and Wyeth could prevent most diseases. GE could put Solar panels on every rooftop, truck and train car, ending the burning of poisonous fuels. The 17" MacBook battery design could power all homes cars, trucks and trains!!! Single payer insurance could end health care issues. A real leader could make sure America actually prospers and throw the rascals out!. Cheney, Geithner, and Paulson would be in jail. The multitrillionaires could easily insist upon solving all our problems. The whole nation could watch Democracy Now on iTunes. But I can dream...)
This is good because not using a plastic bag will help put food on the table of those less fortunate to not even be able to afford an Apple computer. This green movement is killing our culture. Meanwhile, I'd bet it's the same customer that carries a "green" bag that also totes around with a freakin' plastic bottle of water. Hypocrisy. Let's help our neighbor with what really matters.
You mean sort of like the plastic water bottles Steve Jobs always drinks from during his keynotes?
Comments
The biggest problem I see with this process is the cost. It might cost a manufacture $5 for a plastic laptop housing. I can't imagine the new Aluminum laptop housing costing less than $75 out the door. There is a fudge factor there as I'm not sure how much the slaves are being paid. It is never cheap to machine such parts. It would be very interesting to know how fast they can get one of these housings through the production process. I find it difficult to imagine less than an hour to a finished shell. This does not compare very well to injection molding where your cycle times might be under 30 seconds and a large machine might be making more than one case at a time.
Apple does not want a plastic case, plain and simple. Engineering polymers are not recyclable so it doesn't fit with Apple's stated "green" philosophy. They're also not very stiff. Look inside even the polycarbonate MBs and you'll find a machined aluminum frame providing the mounting structure for all the compononets. The only difference with the unibody machines is that the frame and housing are no longer separate. If you're going to machine the frame anyway, why not do the shell at the same time and let the shell help form a stronger, stiffer semi-monocoque structure? I doubt the basic machining operations to turn billet into case take an hour. More like five minutes. You can see some proof of that in the Macbook video that Apple provides. The mill takes less than 5 seconds to create each hole in the keyboard. Modern CNC machines with carbide or diamond bits can cut a soft metal like aluminum very quickly. No mass-production CNC shop is going to have just one mill, either. Subsequent finishing operations would be identical for both cast and milled parts, so there would be no savings for casting.
Oh if you are thinking about asking, no I don't see the expense of the process being offset by the need for other components on a shell produced by other means. The stampings or moldings are cheap.
Stamped parts may be cheap, but tool steel forming dies are not. Previous aluminum MBP cases already were stamped.
As a side note here I've watched die cast machines produce carburator bodies at an impressive rate. In this case there is certainly a lot of secondary work on the body. While large carburators have gone the way of the Dino, I don't think any reasonable person would suggest machining the from a block of zinc for each unit. The expense would be huge. I'm not so closed minded however not to see some value in Apples processes for this shell. The problem is the expense, it is likely an order of magnitude more expensive if not worst.
Whatever the process, a metal part will go through a lot of finishing operations, so much of the process remains identical. The MB case is a thin part and not a lot of material needs to be removed, so it's well-suited for CNC machining. If you think CNC isn't suitable for large parts, you should have seen F-15 bulkheads the size of a car being machined even back in the '70s. It lost over 90% (about 1000 pounds) of titanium between forged blank and finished part. CNC services just aren't that expensive anymore. That's why you can see lots of smaller companies using it rather than investing in multimillion dollar tooling. For instance, Xootr has all their scooter decks milled. Those parts are about the same size and complexity as an MB case. If they cost $75, the complete scooters couldn't possibly cost $200.
Honestly I never liked those interesting but impractical backpack-drawstring bags. They were kind of hard to carry in your hand. But I have a few and now they are collector's items!
I'd like to see them go to old school paper shopping bags, like Macy's gives out. Those are not throw-aways, those are keepers, and therefore not as bad landfill-wise. Nice, practical, paper, would look good with an Apple logo on them.
and the plastic bags aren't keepers?
I have so many plastic bags I have saved from stres. they are great for easy and cheap transporting of my lunch, dirty clothes, poor mans luggage, etc... They even make storage units for the plastic bags. This move is stupid.
I'm all for helping the environment, but I think the problem with this bag-free policy is that Apple is saying that they care more about making a statement than the convenience of their customers.
Seriously, the least of their worries should be plastic bags and CDs. What about all the energy used to light up their stores to be brighter than the sun, or the fact that they discourage upgradeable machines in favor of totally replacing them when it's time to upgrade.
Nowadays everyone will buy into any company that claims to be green. What these companies won't tell you is that the only things they do to be green are visible to the customer, i.e. what's going on behind the scenes is probably business as usual for these companies that are suddenly enlightened by responsibility to appease the general public.
It's like how my company has reserved parking spaces for Hybrid cars. Please. You are damaging the environment by driving a car that requires so much more energy and material shipping to be produced. Half of the people parked there drive Escape hybrids, which get worse mileage than 99% of cars that an average European would drive around.
And why can't Apple use bags made of recycled paper?
RIGHT ON. As you said, there are many energy sucking bulbs thru out the store, yet they put LEDs in the iMacs! LEDs as store lighting would brighten up displays and save millions of dollars and stop the common burning of tons of carbon soot and mercury laden 'clean' coal.
<<<<How about just asking if we want a bag.>>>>
BAGS and packaging SERVE SEVERAL ACTUAL PURPOSES:
1. Advertising
2. Theft prevention
9. Customer service
1. Without bags, Apple must make somehow still create an image noise to cover the loss of advertising that the bags provided. You'll notice that all the slave labor created 'fabric' bags from Trader Joes and Whole Foods, for example, are unique in color. Also the store name or logo is easier to distinguish on a unique, square surface.
(This is a smooth trick of using modern American sub culture industries. If you think for one minute the money leaders who are behind retail truly care about paper or plastic, think again. The Rockafellers want a much smaller world population and a return to futalism. Thus crack cocaine, vaccines, homosexual promotion, gun rights, and abortion. But they purposely mislabel their profitable poisoning and destruction of the environment to promote better ways of advertising their products-like these easier to read big, unique bags. Yet for the lack of an immediate profitable solution to replace their very unique and much liked ad/logo bags, Steve Jobs and Apple are most likely a poor victims of this illuminated world mentality, rather than a contributor. Truly it is the very promotion of the web and the computer that has lead to the loss of the local newspaper reporters who uncover the plots to destroy our way of life and freedoms by the clever and disguised closing of such newspapers that have a reputation for great investigative probing. The owners say this is done because of the 'economy' and to help preserve Americas trees, even though the 'economy' has been undermined by the Fed, and the forests were replaced decades ago by Agrabiz tree farms harvested by two mexican 'imported' workers using big foreign made harvesting machines. The multinational media companies already own most of the local news anyway. It was always their purpose to stop these reporters-buying up the papers allowed this to happen! Buy the media, run ads to elect the narcissistic, corrupt officials, control the government, change the law, have your way! Close the local papers, shut down all the low power broadcasters this June, homogenize all the news. Sounds like "1984"-the year of my first Mac! Rocky wins again.)
2. Now, without bags to help, Apple employees at retail stores are going to have to be trained even better to watch for "slippage". In all reality, the reason you have always found a store full of sale people at Apple, was in a great part to prevent shop lifting. After all, dual purpose, enthusiastic sales people are far cheaper and far less threatening to customers than security guards.
9. When do The Beatles get to show up in iTunes? Apple on Apple![/QUOTE]
Is that you, Unabomber?
Is that you, Unabomber?
Got a bag over your head, Mr. Solipist?
BAGS and packaging SERVE SEVERAL ACTUAL PURPOSES:
1. Advertising
1. Without bags, Apple must make somehow still create an image noise to cover the loss of advertising that the bags provided.
Not only is that worded very poorly, it's silly. You're suggesting that the prominent logos on Apple's product boxes aren't enough advertising?
Not only is that worded very poorly, it's silly. You're suggesting that the prominent logos on Apple's product boxes aren't enough advertising?
THE POINT IS THAT A GENERIC PRODUCT FROM THE APPLE STORE, WITHOUT AN APPLE BAG, COULD HAVE COME FROM THE SONY STORE!!!
Thats what bags are really for-it is all about 'image'.( I am afraid you are more worried about the 'correctness' of the grammar than the details of the content. Oh yah 'C' over an 'A', like in lit class! Where were you when they started inverting "You and I" to "You and Me", or "There are" to "there's"?)
What I meant by image noise, was to do something loudly in the media which will say that Apple has greened up the plastic bags problem, but say it in a way that makes enough positive noise to overcome the lack of noise that the Apple bags had by crying out to passer-bys in the mall. That noise emanated from the large logo on the unique bags-which will be missed.( I guess I assumed that most concerned bloggers were aware of how they are manipulated by the fake green promoters who are really just interested in the green that comes from the US mint!)
Pandaemonium and raised high-pitched voices ensued.
Eventually a bag was located.
I think a staffer had to give up his lunch bag as this creased, crumpled bag was offered up to the customer.
As soon as he saw the Apple logo on the bag he was placated.
Normalcy returned to the store.
The importance of rewarding customers with proof of their branding choices in such obvious ways as retail bags cannot be underestimated!
the Irish government brought in a plastic bag tax in 2002 and it was a huge success. Usage was brought down by 90%. I'd like to say it was successful becasue it was the right thing to do, envrironemtaly but alas it was a tax, and who volunteers to pay a tax. In fairness the retailers did get onboard , saving themselves money as well. Having said that , very rapidly it felt weird and wasteful to be get your goods in a plastic bag.
Visiting the Apple store NYC & London, it did feel out of place for Apple of all people be issuing plastic bags and elaborate ones at that. The Apple Retail store bags were incongruent with the rest of the Apple design philosophy. So will it be paper, cotton or stick on handles?
Come on Apple, be congruent with the rest of the philosophy but don't get carried away...
Michael,
Ireland
THE POINT IS THAT A GENERIC PRODUCT FROM THE APPLE STORE, WITHOUT AN APPLE BAG, COULD HAVE COME FROM THE SONY STORE!!!
Not quite likely when most of the items that Apple sells are Apple branded.
( I am afraid you are more worried about the 'correctness' of the grammar than the details of the content. Oh yah 'C' over an 'A', like in lit class! Where were you when they started inverting "You and I" to "You and Me", or "There are" to "there's"?)
No, I'm not, but when poor grammar gets in the way of actual communication, such as your rambling first post, it's a problem.
Yes, everything in the Apple store that is from Apple has an Apple logo. When you see a person leaving the Apple store with a MacBook, the logo on the box is obvious. But when they also buy an ipod case or a Bose headphone, the Apple bag places the Apple logo on those 'un-Apple' items as well, which is one of the main purposes of the bag, I contend.
(As far as my rampages, which is the most fun part of blogs, I put them in parens!)
((Just to ad more problematic rambling, I forgot that I had "Elements of Style" on my Newton 100. Since the batteries are dead, I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone just a minute ago, so I can brush up on my proper grammar for these important blogs, where major intellects spend much of their valuable time moderating trouble causers such as mwah!.))
"Howz dem apples?"
Apple store visitors who make more than handful of purchases in the store are offered assistance to their car or the option of leaving their items at the store while they continue shopping, in the case of retail outlets located in a mall.
Oh, how green. So, while I'd normally go by train to my nearest Apple store, I now need to go by car?
(Well, I'll probably bring my own bags. But if I hadn't heard about this policy and not come prepared, I'd be a bit stuck. I just thought it was ironic that, in a move to promote being green, they seem to expect people to use a car!)
Amorya
Sure there is a lot of waste. However, as you point out the waste is largely recyclable. More importantly, there is plenty of waste in creating a plastic case as well. That waste is largely not recyclable. Further, when an aluminum Mac finally goes to the junk yard the aluminum will be recycled. The plastic in the old cases will not be.
Apple's old plastic case design had problems with the case flexing, thereby causing the graphic processor to eventually tear away from the board. I'd guess Apple had to replace hundreds of thousands of those (it replaced three on just one of mine alone). Those old logic boards hit the trash. The new cases will definitely prevent the same type of case flexing thereby increasing the chances of less stress on the internal components (as Apple itself points out).
Are there better ways to achieve the same results? Maybe, but you said the Macbook cases were the least energy inefficient without explaining what you mean. The least energy efficient because of cost to produce, or from actually usage of the machine? It seems you mean because of manufacturing costs. However, when Apple introduced these machines it claimed it was using a new process. So your comments are assuming a lot that can't be verified unless you have an inside source. Whatever the case may be, I doubt Apple's process is the least energy efficient. Further, as you probably know, engineering is always about striking a balance.
Apple is not a pioneer of process. What is new to them (or even PC manufacture) is not actually "new". One of the earlier posters referred to the production of F-15 bulkheads. The manufacture of a titanium bulkhead using present manufacturing processes is a far cry from the techniques pioneered with the SR-71 where the processes were invented. There literally had been none before.
As an aside, there are PC laptops which have their outer skin fabricated from carbon fiber. It is "new" to PCs, but is a well known process.
Back to Apple's process. I think that you intuitively understand that the process that Apple has chosen is not especially energy efficient. By the way, many plastics used in commercial processes are manufactured using recycled materials. Only a comparatively few companies publicize this. The common "fleece" jackets that everyone wears are almost all made from recycled materials.
In any event, Apple have, in my opinion, chosen a process which does not add to the functionality of the product. Does that mean it is "wrong"? Certainly not any more than the PC laptops made of carbon fiber.
Cheers
Besides, the greenest computer is the one that doesn't end up in a landfill because you just bought yourself a new macbook.
((Just to ad more problematic rambling, I forgot that I had "Elements of Style" on my Newton 100. Since the batteries are dead, I bought the Kindle version for my iPhone just a minute ago, so I can brush up on my proper grammar for these important blogs, where major intellects spend much of their valuable time moderating trouble causers such as mwah!.))
"Howz dem apples?"
"trouble causers" should have a hyphen: trouble-causers.
Hey, when I buy a 30" Cinema Display or a Mac Pro, I expect a plastic bag to carry it home in!
I had to laugh. the two issues are really not related. they don't have bags big enough to hold anything larger than a 13 inch laptop and a lot of the stores have stopped grabbing a bag when you buy one thing unless you ask. it saves them money as well as being greener.
This is good because not using a plastic bag will help put food on the table of those less fortunate to not even be able to afford an Apple computer. This green movement is killing our culture. Meanwhile, I'd bet it's the same customer that carries a "green" bag that also totes around with a freakin' plastic bottle of water. Hypocrisy. Let's help our neighbor with what really matters.
First we have to talk to our neighbors!
(What is in that leaching plastic bottle besides boiled water? What's killing our culture is greed! . In fact ADM could stop world hunger and obesity. Pfizer and Wyeth could prevent most diseases. GE could put Solar panels on every rooftop, truck and train car, ending the burning of poisonous fuels. The 17" MacBook battery design could power all homes cars, trucks and trains!!! Single payer insurance could end health care issues. A real leader could make sure America actually prospers and throw the rascals out!. Cheney, Geithner, and Paulson would be in jail. The multitrillionaires could easily insist upon solving all our problems. The whole nation could watch Democracy Now on iTunes. But I can dream...)
This is good because not using a plastic bag will help put food on the table of those less fortunate to not even be able to afford an Apple computer. This green movement is killing our culture. Meanwhile, I'd bet it's the same customer that carries a "green" bag that also totes around with a freakin' plastic bottle of water. Hypocrisy. Let's help our neighbor with what really matters.
You mean sort of like the plastic water bottles Steve Jobs always drinks from during his keynotes?