AirPods Pro 2 Teardown Provides Inside Look at Earbuds and Charging Case

[hans1972]

Maybe you watched the video, but I think you also need to listen to it. They explained (if not proved) how the AirPods are essentially impossible to recycle... so, no, you actually can not recycle them when the life of your AirPods are over, unfortunately.

They're not impossible to recycle. If you deliver it to Apple, they'll make sure to recycle at least the battery which is the most important component to recycle.

Also third-party, like The Swap Club, offer you to swap your AirPods with bad battery for refurbished ones with good battery.

 

[Analog Kid]

Apple removed the headphone jack to they can sell you their bluetooth earbuds. They are making more profit from these than selling wired earbuds. Because of the nature of BT earbuds, people want them small, waterproof, and drop resistant and good battery life. So Apple seals them up, and compacts it tightly internally. Unfortunately after a few years they are disposed of. And amazingly, most of the same people who advocated the removal of the headphone jack are buying these things. I guess, environment be damned, they voted with their money.

When the iPhone had a headphone jack, every new phone came with a new set of ear buds with a plastic storage and travel case whether you needed them or not. Apple also advertised and sold a higher end set of wired "in ear headphones" that many people would upgrade to, throwing away the unit in the box. It wasn't until 2016, around the time the iPhone 7 launched, that Apple began deploying robotic disassemblers to take apart and recycle their products rather than simply advocate for recycling through 3rd parties and hope for the best.

I wouldn't necessarily look at the headphone jack era as a less wasteful past.

 

[Analog Kid]

They're not impossible to recycle. If you deliver it to Apple, they'll make sure to recycle at least the battery which is the most important component to recycle.

Also third-party, like The Swap Club, offer you to swap your AirPods with bad battery for refurbished ones with good battery.

And the neodymium, platinum, gold, copper... The audited environmental progress report is pretty clear on this:

"We’re also continuing to develop other tools. Dave, our robot that disassembles Taptic Engines, helps recover valuable
rare earth magnets, tungsten, and steel. And Taz, our latest recycling machine, is designed to recycle modules containing rare earth magnets as an alternative to the conventional shredder many recyclers rely on. While rare earth magnets are typically lost in these conventional shredders, Taz is designed to keep these valuable materials intact to improve our overall recovery rate. We’ve also worked on other manual and semi-automated tools, including 3D printed tools to improve the ergonomics and safety of battery recovery, as well as a custom-designed jig to disassemble AirPods charging cases."

But let's listen to one guy on YouTube with an agenda instead.

 

[bmustaf]

And the neodymium, platinum, gold, copper... The audited environmental progress report is pretty clear on this:

"We’re also continuing to develop other tools. Dave, our robot that disassembles Taptic Engines, helps recover valuable
rare earth magnets, tungsten, and steel. And Taz, our latest recycling machine, is designed to recycle modules containing rare earth magnets as an alternative to the conventional shredder many recyclers rely on. While rare earth magnets are typically lost in these conventional shredders, Taz is designed to keep these valuable materials intact to improve our overall recovery rate. We’ve also worked on other manual and semi-automated tools, including 3D printed tools to improve the ergonomics and safety of battery recovery, as well as a custom-designed jig to disassemble AirPods charging cases."

But let's listen to one guy on YouTube with an agenda instead.

One guy with an enterprise with a vested interest in the perspective they're selling, actually!

The two extremes are represented here, but reality is probably somewhere in the middle...

Apple has every motivation to reduce expense in recovery of materials/recycling and every motivation to greenwash the hell out of everything. They have a vested interest in not having a secondary market for their products after you are done with them and they'd rather be the only ones who can take them back to both drive demand every year for their new releases but also to have their designs are cheap as possible.

iFixIt has every motivation to paint Apple has unfriendly to repair to drum up consumer pitchforks because selling repair parts, guides, and information because that is precisely how they make a living (even if the info part is free, it's about market relevance that drives the aforementioned two). They have a vested interest in having your (or those that purchase their parts/tools) do your repair/recycle/recovery: not Apple.

And, again, reality is probably somewhere between these caricatures.

 

[name99]

I’ll never understand how those of us in the teeny tiny minority that have an interest in the inner workings of electronics and knowledge of industrial design and production life cycles are so threatening to those who see Apple products as precious little jewels.

Tear it all apart. Hack what’s left. Electronics are cool.

Except that these teardowns are NOT anymore about the "the inner workings of electronics".
Where are the PCB layout photos? Where are the chip identities? Where are the attempts to understand and explain each part of the design?

If your agenda is "how can I take this apart and change pieces" sure, you're welcome to that agenda. But don't pretend that you're engaged in understanding and explanation! Some of us GENUINELY care about understanding and explanation, and we are damn irritated by this light-weight crap that clogs up the internet and makes it impossible to find actual technical material.

 

[Analog Kid]

One guy with an enterprise with a vested interest in the perspective they're selling, actually!

The two extremes are represented here, but reality is probably somewhere in the middle...

Apple has every motivation to reduce expense in recovery of materials/recycling and every motivation to greenwash the hell out of everything. They have a vested interest in not having a secondary market for their products after you are done with them and they'd rather be the only ones who can take them back to both drive demand every year for their new releases but also to have their designs are cheap as possible.

iFixIt has every motivation to paint Apple has unfriendly to repair to drum up consumer pitchforks because selling repair parts, guides, and information because that is precisely how they make a living (even if the info part is free, it's about market relevance that drives the aforementioned two). They have a vested interest in having your (or those that purchase their parts/tools) do your repair/recycle/recovery: not Apple.

And, again, reality is probably somewhere between these caricatures.

Of course one of these entities is under significantly more scrutiny than the other. I haven't seen iFixit's audited annual report on their global environmental impact, for example... So I think it's worth resisting the "both sides have an agenda, so let's split the difference" impulse.

My point here is that Apple is actually reasonably transparent in their efforts with some level of oversight from auditors and media. They have a published document explaining that they recycle their batteries, have a specialized jig to disassemble their AirPod case, and a collection of robots dedicated to extracting the neodymium and other energy intensive materials from their products and those efforts are shared for others to learn from. These are efforts that show that Apple is thinking about this from design time, not simply adding slides to their keynotes.

So to ignore all of that and say that "if iFixit can't do it, no one can" and this one 3 minute video explains that recycling is essentially impossible shows someone isn't being critical in their thinking...

 

[bmustaf]

Of course one of these entities is under significantly more scrutiny than the other. I haven't seen iFixit's audited annual report on their global environmental impact, for example... So I think it's worth resisting the "both sides have an agenda, so let's split the difference" impulse.

My point here is that Apple is actually reasonably transparent in their efforts with some level of oversight from auditors and media. They have a published document explaining that they recycle their batteries, have a specialized jig to disassemble their AirPod case, and a collection of robots dedicated to extracting the neodymium and other energy intensive materials from their products and those efforts are shared for others to learn from. These are efforts that show that Apple is thinking about this from design time, not simply adding slides to their keynotes.

So to ignore all of that and say that "if iFixit can't do it, no one can" and this one 3 minute video explains that recycling is essentially impossible shows someone isn't being critical in their thinking...

I wasn't agreeing with "if iFixIt can't do it, no one can" by any means or saying that Apple isn't doing good things, simply that both actors, no matter their scale, have motives at play that push both towards virtue signaling and a selective narrative in their official public statements, and the presence of audited financials doesn't much change that, neither does scale, because, ultimately, human behavior is quite similar here IMO.

 

[Analog Kid]

I wasn't agreeing with "if iFixIt can't do it, no one can" by any means or saying that Apple isn't doing good things, simply that both actors, no matter their scale, have motives at play that push both towards virtue signaling and a selective narrative in their official public statements, and the presence of audited financials doesn't much change that, neither does scale, because, ultimately, human behavior is quite similar here IMO.

Sorry, misunderstood-- you were replying to my comments about what's recyclable and isn't, so took that as context. That has nothing to do with scale or agendas-- it's documented that Apple can open the charge case and has equipment to recycle the parts.

To be clear, I'm not talking about audited financials, but the audited environmental disclosure that Apple publishes annually.

 

[D-a-a-n]

That isn't what he was doing. The design is excellent for the millions and millions of us that buy and use them. He doesn't like is because it doesn't meet his non-functionality demands (green).

He was clear.

Millions and millions of them that will be thrown away in 3-5 years because the battery is dead and can't be replaced.

 

[FreedomPenguin]

Millions and millions of them that will be thrown away in 3-5 years because the battery is dead and can't be replaced.

Again
Who really cares

 

[Analog Kid]

Millions and millions of them that will be thrown away in 3-5 years because the battery is dead and can't be replaced.

Again, that's only one small part of the math here. Millions and millions with replaceable batteries would be thrown away in 3-5 years, plus there are other environmental factors to consider. You have to compare two alternatives to know which is worse, not just one.

The fact that you for some reason "disagree" with me taking a verbatim quote from a cited reference though suggests this is an emotional argument you're making, not a rational one.

 

[name99]

Millions and millions of them that will be thrown away in 3-5 years because the battery is dead and can't be replaced.

By itself, as others have said, SO WHAT?
Life is constant recirculation. What would you prefer? A frozen world of the Lego Movie KRAGLE?

Millions of houses will be torn down over the next 3..5 years. Billions of tons of organic material will be broken down then reconstituted. Literal rivers of fresh water flow into the sea every second, converting all that fresh water to much less usable (by humans) saltiness. Unbelievable quantities of energy will be broadcast by the sun into space to just dissipate into nothingness.

None of these have moral consequences, they just are. If you want to claim moral consequences, you're going to have to draw them out.

 

[Apple Core]

iFixit has become so biased that they are unwatchable thereby undermining their own purpose.

All this "hit piece" tells us is that Apple built the AirPods to the highest degree of performance and reliability they could and THAT is my primary concern.

I can recycle them when the life of the AirPods is over. I don't need condescending BS from them now.

I wasted 2 minutes watching that hot garbage.

PS: He damn near blew his own fingers off. What an idiot.

Agree. Do they look at other competitors products or just Apple?

 

[Starscape]

Those Apple AirPods highlight just how much ‘green’ priorities stack up against profitability. Apple could definitely make these repairable or at the very least engineer them to permit relatively easy battery replacement. But they of course won’t, because selling the customer a $180 set of disposable AirPods every year is most important. And you know, Apple makes a big deal every year with new trademarked names for the little chips in them, making them ‘magical.’ The batteries in AirPods begin to degrade noticeably after two years and where do they end up?

 

[Starscape]

By itself, as others have said, SO WHAT?
Life is constant recirculation. What would you prefer? A frozen world of the Lego Movie KRAGLE?

Millions of houses will be torn down over the next 3..5 years. Billions of tons of organic material will be broken down then reconstituted. Literal rivers of fresh water flow into the sea every second, converting all that fresh water to much less usable (by humans) saltiness. Unbelievable quantities of energy will be broadcast by the sun into space to just dissipate into nothingness.

None of these have moral consequences, they just are. If you want to claim moral consequences, you're going to have to draw them out.

The difference is Apple spends a lot of money marketing themselves as a ‘green’ company.