Activists agitate for 'iPhone infinity' with AI-generated Tim Cook, promise protests
Some green activists have turned to an AI-generated Tim Cook video to try to convince Apple to do more to save the environment with a modular iPhone -- and plan to protest the point at Apple Stores this week.
Green activists from Extinction Rebellion and "culture jamming" activists The Yes Men have teamed up to produce what they call a "psychomagic act: a therapeutic visualization tactic to show the public what true corporate social responsibility could look like."
The website, ActDifferent.net, contains a video with Fake Tim Cook delivering an equally phony product announcement: the iPhone Infinity. The device is envisioned as a modular, upgradeable, and repairable iPhone - "the last iPhone we will ever make, and the last iPhone you will ever buy," said the not-real Tim Cook, voiced either by a very unconvincing, foreign-accented actor. Or perhaps a wretched AI.
The site is the work of more than 50 artists and activists from around the world, according to a press release. It calls for Apple to create "a working group and network to steer the company towards greater accountability to its users, workers, suppliers, and the planet." They invited Tim Cook - the real one, mind - along with Apple's board of directors to join.
Their timing couldn't be worse. Apple bloviated at somewhat excruciating length during the Wonderlust event about its commitment to environmental issues. A six-minute comedy skit plunked into the middle of the event featured Oscar winner Octavia Spencer as a dubious Mother Nature incarnate, reviewing Apple's environment efforts.
Tim Cook and company cited Apple's extensive use of recycled materials, its reduction of water use and elimination of greenhouse emissions from its corporate facilities and retail stores, and its efforts to replant forests and grasslands.
The theme was revisited a few times during the Wonderlust presentation as Apple highlighted the recycled materials used in its new devices, its first carbon-neutral products, and its commitment from suppliers to use clean energy. Apple hopes to make all its products carbon-neutral by 2030.
As far as the phone goes, ActDifferent.net envisages a modular "iPhone Infinity" that users can disassemble themselves and rebuild using upgraded components if they wish.
The group seems to be borrowing a page from Fairphone, a ten-year-old Dutch effort to build a modular phone that users can fix and upgrade themselves. But despite the concept, the Fairphone hasn't turned out to be "the last phone you will ever buy." To date, the company has produced five models of Fairphone, each with better CPUs and more capabilities.
Another such effort was the shelved Project Ara - begun by Motorola Mobility in 2012, which was acquired by Google and unceremoniously killed in 2016. Project Ara was an effort nominally aimed at consumers that hoped to break the relatively small hegemony of Android phone manufacturers wide open by introducing a common platform of modular phone parts that could be purchased at a low price, then upgraded by users over time.
Part of the problem with this idea is that it's not nearly as simple as some clever 3D renderings and animation like those depicted on the ActDifferent website would have you believe. Despite relatively few changes on the outside of an iPhone, Apple often completely redesigns the insides from model to model, and even makes in-line changes to specific models over time to improve manufacturing efficiency and correct reliability issues.
From generation to generation, the internal construction of an iPhone can vary wildly; it's not a simple task to say "this is where the battery will go, this is where the CPU will go."
In other words, these internal components are not modular: they're very tightly integrated, and subject to change. Modularity, while a noble goal, intrinsically introduces complexity into design and leads to inefficiency as well.
Even the ActDifferent folks admit their timing is a bit off - they note that Apple recently changed position on a "Right to Repair" bill in California. Apple has historically been opposed to such legislation, but it said in a letter to California legislators that the current proposal, SB 244, helps to maintain user privacy and security, ensures official part use and requires disclosure when non-genuine parts are used, and doesn't compromise consumer safety or repair reliability - all issues it's raised in its past opposition.
In some ways, this effort echoes a similar effort launched by environmental activist group Greenpeace almost two decades ago to draw attention to environmental issues around Apple's manufacturing efforts. Then, as now, activists were targeting the wrong business: Greenpeace chose Apple precisely because the company was vocal -and relatively transparent, compared to almost every other tech firm -about its environmental efforts.
The past two decades have seen the target on Apple's back grow ever larger. Now, as the biggest tech company in the world, it's inevitable that Apple will end up in the crosshairs of others who see the company as an easy target, thanks to its dominance. No matter how off-base their demands may be.
Apple Stores around the world should be on alert this Friday. The ActDifferent group said it will stage a "a series of nonviolent direct actions will be held at Apple stores worldwide."
If it's anything like what happened at the U.S. Open recently, expect some protestors to glue themselves to things or otherwise call attention to their cause in ways that -- while non-violent -- will probably be annoying and disruptive to everyone else just trying to go about their day.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
Modularity doesn't reduce or reuse anything. It's just wasting resources and increasing the carbon footprint of the product. Instead of a bunch of old phones in a drawer, people would just have a bunch of parts of old phones in a drawer. It may end up being more total parts.
Require the OEM to take back their products and require that they recycle them.
This nonsense is just people who don’t know what they’re talking about or asking for.
time for a spot of Kipling:
Without nitpicking too much, when people say they want modularity I believe what they are actually asking for is modular replaceability and modular repairability. The iPhone is already modular since it is built from components and subsystems around an architecture that Apple has designed. Apple is able to assemble all of the required components into a complete product, and technically speaking, is able replace individual components and subsystems using the tools at their disposal. They can and do make some of those tools available for DIY repair as well. If the iPhone were a non-modular or monolithic design this would not be possible.
To achieve modular replaceability and modular repairability as those calling for "modularity" are seeking, Apple would have to design an architecture with very clearly defined and strictly managed physical, electrical, and logical interfaces that can basically be frozen for some very long (how long?) period of time. If the designers of these interfaces could predict the future, or were remarkably lucky, or didn't have to compete in the marketplace, they may be able to push the effective lifetime of the modular product out a bit, but how far is anyone's guess.
Unfortunately, without the ability to predict the future there are so many ways this approach can fail. Once you start modifying the "frozen" and well defined interfaces the scope of modular replacement starts to erode. No problem, bring on the dongles, shims, and adapters. Who doesn't like those? With a frozen architecture you would place serious constraints on the design team's ability to update the product to take advantage of new innovations, new technology, and better ways of solving the same problem. This would seriously inhibit product innovation and competitiveness. Don't believe me? How many current automobiles still use the standard sized round (and later rectangular) headlamps that were required at one time. Imagine what a current car with a sharp or sloping nose would look like with big round headlights sticking up out of the hood. (Or just find a 1975 AMC Matador to see what an atrocity it would be.)
There are some functional elements or subsystems that could potentially be "locked down" for a certain period of time, say the battery compartment, but other areas have dependencies on the granularity of the underlying components and the partitioning of functionality that were established when the architecture was locked down. The granularity of functionality has changed dramatically over the past few years alone. Think about SoC and Apple Silicon.
Designing software architectures that support modular replaceability over a long period of time is very difficult. But at least software can be changed to a moderate degree after it's incorporated into an integrated solution. Doing the same thing in a competitive commercial product environment with hardware is practically impossible unless you and your competitors are willing to live with many negative consequences and limitations. The military has tried to build such systems and they end up being ridiculously expensive and quickly become obsolete because the competition isn't going to freeze its progress to delay your system's obsolescence.
Achieving modular replaceability can theoretically be achieved, but only if you agree to freeze progress for some period of time. So be careful what you ask for, which brings is back to the recycling argument. With recycling the unit of modular replacement and repairability becomes the entire device. That level of modularity can actually work without requiring architectural perfection, which is inherently unachievable.
But seriously, Apple's products are at a much higher standard when it comes to recycled components compared to every other phone on the market.
1. Cheap
2. Compact
3. Complex (which when done right means performance and functionality, but I chose C to have a catchy "3 Cs of mobile device design".)
The thing about Cheap, Compact, and Complex is that you have to pick two. The design engineers and naturally you, the customer, can't have all three.
A complex and compact device isn't cheap. If you want cheap and compact, say sayonara to complex. If you want cheap and complex... Two out of three is the best one can hope for. That's an economic and technological fact.
The thing about a modular phone is you can get only one. (And even that one aspect will probably be bested by an integrated phone.) The engineering design problem for modularity is more complicated and expensive than a straight up integrated phone. The design parameters are way stricter: Compatibility with past and future modules, module accessibility, secure attachment and connections, etc. Then, compared to integrated phones, you're wasting space with the case that modules come in and the macro connections and attachments between modules. On top of all that, designing for compatibility between modules of different vintage takes a severe toll on performance and functionality. Your data transfer rates, for example, would be constrained by the slowest, oldest module that you choose to maintain compatibility with.
That is why modular mobile devices never succeeded and will never succeed in the market. It's a product which you pay more for less. The proponents/advocates of modular mobile devices don't have even the slightest grasp of this. Which is incredible given that the trend in electronics design has always been toward smaller, denser, and more integrated components. Google wasted a lot of money finding this out when I could have told them for a small consulting fee.
But Apple, producing small and largely recyclable electronics, with the most environmentally considered approach of any firm, is not the problem. What about cars, that use several hundred times more material and energy? Or governments allowing companies to continue to make money from turning fossil fuels into cash?
Defiantly better places protestors can invest their energies.
There's no reason to push Apple on global warming, environment and sustainability. They are all in with Apple 2030 initiative of having the product line be carbon neutral. They have goals of having a closed-loop supply chain (mostly means they won't mine for materials), but no stated timeframe for this just yet. There is no reason to force them to do anything as they are all in and already doing it. Like, they are pushing users down to single WH levels with the clean charging settings.
So, it looks like clickbait more than anything else. We already have a 40 year history of "modular" computers. And a 30 year history of "integrated" computers, such as laptops or game consoles. Someone can go prove that modular computers emit less carbon per person per mass of product because the data is there.
They will probably find out that <5% of modular computer owners don't actually change anything with their modular computer, and in effect, there is no such as thing as a "modular" computer in mass market usage. And of the users who actually update that modular computers, you really have to wonder if their ships of Theseus actually is less wasteful.
What they are showing seems like it would be replaced by an infinity+one device once someone worked out the internal plastic blades setting module sizes was a bad starting.