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Apple Pledges to End Mining and Use 100% Recycled Materials for Products
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@bladerunner2000 posted a video in another thread today that was made by a guy who owns a repair shop. I didn't have time to see all of it, but I saw enough to make me wish Apple WOULD do what it actually safely could do to make their products more repairable at reasonable prices for the consumer. This would be wallet friendly and earth friendly. Apple could even have the repair shops ship them the broken parts for recycling. But Apple doesn't cooperate with the repair shops in this way.
And by the way, I do always give a bit of a skeptical face to wind power. It's not that I think wind turbines don't have their place in our battle for clean energy. It's just that I think we need to expand our definition of "clean".
I have a friend who lives close to a wind farm. Beautiful acres of woods that sheltered all manner of wildlife were cleared to make way for this wind farm. The locals did try to fight it but money was behind this project so residents and animals lost. It's a problem that wind power has political cachet and money right now. I think that causes turbines to be placed irresponsibly. Oh. But that's okay...they're "green."
There is a lot of controversy about wind farms. The problem is, if you try to argue against them, you're often dismissed as not caring about the environment or being pro-coal or some such nonsense.
It's understandable we want to get rid of greenhouse gases, but let's not pretend wind turbines, especially poorly located ones, are not a blight on the landscape, a hazard to birds in some locations, and the vibrations make sensitive people and animals sick. You do not want to live near a wind farm, and in some cases not in the shadow of one or two isolated turbines. It really depends on a combination of factors.
Here is commentary from residents who found all of that out the hard way.
It's fine to have these alternative sources of energy, but I'm sick and tired of the propaganda that maintains the fiction that there is zero environmental cost to some of these alternative sources of energy. Everything has a cost to our environment, because it all is not of nature and therefore has the potential to disrupt nature. Which is why I think companies need to evaluate each location carefully to determine the best way to generate energy. Don't put a wind farm in if you end up destroying an old established woodland and displacing wild animals.
We still don't know enough about the impact of subsonic vibrational noise pollution on land and sea animals. Will too many or poorly located water turbines cause vibrations that result in mass beachings of cetaceans? We need to ensure they don't, or we are hurting our environment in a new and different way.
I have experienced firsthand the effects of subsonic vibration pollution and it was a nightmare of several months. It was not due to wind turbines, but after what I endured, I did take notice of the complaints about wind turbines when researching my own bad reaction to the vibrations. Not everyone seems affected by these vibrations you feel more than hear, but some people are. When turbines are audibly loud, it does effect everyone who has to live under their shadow. Not all turbines are the same and not all installations are the same. There is hope we can improve their design to lessen their impact at some point.
And by the way, I do always give a bit of a skeptical face to wind power. It's not that I think wind turbines don't have their place in our battle for clean energy. It's just that I think we need to expand our definition of "clean".
I have a friend who lives close to a wind farm. Beautiful acres of woods that sheltered all manner of wildlife were cleared to make way for this wind farm. The locals did try to fight it but money was behind this project so residents and animals lost. It's a problem that wind power has political cachet and money right now. I think that causes turbines to be placed irresponsibly. Oh. But that's okay...they're "green."
There is a lot of controversy about wind farms. The problem is, if you try to argue against them, you're often dismissed as not caring about the environment or being pro-coal or some such nonsense.
It's understandable we want to get rid of greenhouse gases, but let's not pretend wind turbines, especially poorly located ones, are not a blight on the landscape, a hazard to birds in some locations, and the vibrations make sensitive people and animals sick. You do not want to live near a wind farm, and in some cases not in the shadow of one or two isolated turbines. It really depends on a combination of factors.
Here is commentary from residents who found all of that out the hard way.
It's fine to have these alternative sources of energy, but I'm sick and tired of the propaganda that maintains the fiction that there is zero environmental cost to some of these alternative sources of energy. Everything has a cost to our environment, because it all is not of nature and therefore has the potential to disrupt nature. Which is why I think companies need to evaluate each location carefully to determine the best way to generate energy. Don't put a wind farm in if you end up destroying an old established woodland and displacing wild animals.
We still don't know enough about the impact of subsonic vibrational noise pollution on land and sea animals. Will too many or poorly located water turbines cause vibrations that result in mass beachings of cetaceans? We need to ensure they don't, or we are hurting our environment in a new and different way.
I have experienced firsthand the effects of subsonic vibration pollution and it was a nightmare of several months. It was not due to wind turbines, but after what I endured, I did take notice of the complaints about wind turbines when researching my own bad reaction to the vibrations. Not everyone seems affected by these vibrations you feel more than hear, but some people are. When turbines are audibly loud, it does effect everyone who has to live under their shadow. Not all turbines are the same and not all installations are the same. There is hope we can improve their design to lessen their impact at some point.
"We're actually doing something we rarely do, which is announce a goal before we've completely figured out how to do it."
No worries, your bosses just did the same when they announced they are working on a new Mac Pro.
No worries, your bosses just did the same when they announced they are working on a new Mac Pro.
This is one of the few things Apple does right and better than anyone else. Glad to hear these news.
So they are going to start buying back old phones as you buy a new one to ensure they have a sustained supply chain of parts to recycle.
Sounds good to me!
Sounds good to me!
Good on you Apple. Now, where possible make your products upgradable. It's one thing to reduce the impact of new products on the environment, now make sure that everything you produce will last as long as possible.
They have been.
https://www.apple.com/iphone/trade-up/
For mail-in trade-in they use Brightstar.
https://reuserecycle.abbti.brightstarcorp.com
Even a 50% decrease would be huge so I'm right behind them on this. We need companies like Apple to have a conscience instead of an all out pursuit of profit at all costs. As much as Tim is mocked on here, he actually seems like a fairly caring guy so I'm confident they'll do what they can.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9136/the-2015-macbook-review/8
Earlier Apple SATA and AHCI PCIe SSDs did use off-the-shelf parts in a proprietary form-factor as you say, but Apple NVMe SSDs since the 2015 MacBook are reported to use custom Apple developed SSD controllers not off-the-shelf ones. A custom SSD controller didn't mean they had to use a proprietary form factor for the SSD of course.
https://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/...-and-bad-in-apples-new-apfs-file-system/3/#h1
It's been reported that Apple engineers at WWDC 2016 say their reasoning for the new APFS not checksumming user data is because they have very stringent vendor qualifications for SSDs and use the best components. APFS being designed for officially supported SSDs in mind which Apple fully controls and understands the quality and characteristics of, means they are going to discourage the use of third-party SSDs which may be one reason for the proprietary form-factors. Although I'm guessing the likelihood of APFS actually not working well with third-party SSDs is pretty slim otherwise that defeats the purpose of developing a new expandable Mac Pro.
How is that even possible? To build hundreds of millions of electronic devices every year with no mining?
Apple can resort to randomly iCloud locking people's device rendering it a brick where it ends up as a trade in. I've seen it happen numerous times to people especially if they didn't keep sales record or got it as a gift. Pretty clever I must say.
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I don't mind this, rather than preach blah, blah, blah and chucking in 'the children, oh please won't someone think of the children' they are just getting on with it, same reason I like Tesla.
The skeptic in me wonders does this mean more alleged 'planned obsolescence'.
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"How is that even possible? To build hundreds of millions of electronic devices every year with no mining?"
Really. You are asserting that Apple randomly bricks customer phones in order to cause customers to trade them in where they are then recycled into new phones? In the hundreds of millions?
That's quite a claim. One where I'm certain you have links documenting this practice. Feel free to post a few.
"How is that even possible? To build hundreds of millions of electronic devices every year with no mining?"
Really. You are asserting that Apple randomly bricks customer phones in order to cause customers to trade them in where they are then recycled into new phones? In the hundreds of millions?
That's quite a claim. One where I'm certain you have links documenting this practice. Feel free to post a few.
Only on MR could users find things to complain about with such a benign subject.
I have a 2015 MacBook Pro (model actually released mid 2015) and it uses the SM951 from Samsung. And I was talking about the older machines not the latest and greatest 2016 MacBook Pro's and not necessarily the Pro's at all, I believe the Mac Pro has the same situation.
Also I do not agree with their APFS reasoning for not having checksumming. All file systems should have it in my opinion (I work in the storage industry producing network attached storage appliances). I also do not believe Apple does use the best SSD's. In the iPhone (which now uses APFS) for example they use TLC NAND. If they were serious they would use MLC NAND on the higher storage tiers.
You only really know if your data's not been altered by anything (including cosmic radiation) if you're checksumming so it's crazy to me they would not do that.
I could be mistaken, but I'm not aware of change happening at anywhere near the same rate as it is now. But I'm not a climate scientist, so I could be wrong.
Climate change is not about today's weather vs. years ago. It's about the rate the earth's NATURAL cycle has changed between ice ages.
I took his post as satire/hyperbole based on the broadly reported incidences of new Apple devices being mysteriously activation locked.
To each his own, but I thought it was at least slightly grin-worthy.
I don't believe in climate change and am dead set against "the liberal agenda". Further, I believe Lisa Jackson behaved abominably while at EPA and it is shameful for Apple to employ her. This is a gimmick, sort of like Apple's 100% renewable energy posture. Still, it is not a harmful gimmick, except perhaps in respect of higher prices. And you are correct that being resourceful is a good thing. For example, one day the plastic detritus floating around the oceans will be recognized as an extractable resource, and there will be drone vehicles skimming up plastic to recycle, like great baleen whales gargling on plankton.
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