You mean like designing a product that is not immediately obsolete the next or following year by continuing to support them and building them without removable batteries that had for decades been a point of failure in cell phones creating other problems? How about reducing the size of the devices and banning environmentally harmful chemicals? These are all things that Apple has consistently done, but none of thier competitors, even those who sell far more devices than Apple even attempts to do. It makes me question the motives of a person of organization who would publicly disparage Apple on the significant efforts while remaining silent on the do nothings
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Greenpeace Criticizes Apple's 'Daisy' Recycling Robot, Says Focus Should be on 'Repairable and Upgradeable Product Design'
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I would say I agree about ”mind your own business”, but only to a certain point. I still think it's good to try to ”think outside our heads” and understand that our actions (to various degrees depending on what the action is) will affect other people and the planet we live on – especially in the long run.
And I know the planet will ”survive” but we're talking about humanity having good possibilities to live a good and healthy life here in the future.
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My problem with GreenPeace (in this instance) is that I am an Apple customer and I don't recall asking GreenPeace to speak on my behalf. According to Gary Cook at GreenPeace, "customers clearly want to keep their devices longer" based on the wait times to get a battery replaced on an old phone. I have NEVER had a battery replaced on an iPhone because I (like millions of other Apple customers) upgrade my phone every year. Is there a market segment within Apple's customer base that want to hang onto a phone for 5+ years? I am sure there is but don't try to sound like you are speaking for all Apple customers as MANY of us upgrade as soon as a new model comes out.
I guess it depends on what you consider "last". If a software update cripples your iPhone, and you cannot go back to the previous iOS, then technically, the iPhone lasts for a long time. It doesn't mean that it is usable.
I really doubt that Apple had a design criteria of, "can only be disassembled by a robot". When designing electronic devices (which I did for over a decade straight out of college) there are numerous design considerations. "Design for Assembly" is a common one as you want your product to be able to be built on a high quality, high speed assembly line. Depending on the product, this may mean using glue or "snaps" so you can push two pieces of a housing together and interlocking tabs click into place to hold the housing together. Another design criteria is "Design for Service" where you prioritize making the device easy to open so parts can be replaced for repair or upgrade. There is also "Design for Reliability" where you do everything possible to seal your product to keep dirt and water out of it.
My point is that Apple did not set out to create a product that can only be disassembled by a robot, that is simply the result of Apple's other design decisions / priorities such as making the phone aesthetically pleasing, easy to assemble and resistant to dust & water intrusion. Apple's new disassembly robot demonstrates their commitment to recycling aging products to keep materials out of land fills. I am happy with their design decisions.
Well, there’s also the recycling program where you get money for the device in many cases. I feel like most people don’t know about it though.
I can speak for my personal experience, my wife's mother still uses the 5S and it's working perfectly fine for her. And I know another person who uses the 4S.
That's more than 5 years of usable life, even without a battery change.
I don't know what your use case is, if it's not a node on a supercomputer to run climate simulation models, then iPhones do last.
That's true, but everything is relative...comparing a thumb drive to a computer is a little overly generalizing the argument you want to make, imo. Certain things like cars or houses or even lawnmowers we expect to be more durable/repairable (to an extent). I've never been able to repair a thumb drive, however I have been able to repair computers and laptops...There are good reasons to be able to do that.
Well, yes and no.
I agree that people should learn to live with their products longer then then 12 months cycle companies like Apple want to promote. Your 1 year old iPhone is not obsolete a year later regardless of Apple's aggressive marketing rhetoric. If companies were to adopt a 2 year cycle, it would have a significant impact on reducing greenhouse emissions as you are not having to produce phones every year to upgrade a large percentage of their consumer base.
However, making a phone modular and upgradable will be a horrible product. It would be much thicker then what we have today, be full of screw holes and panels, and then you would have to get the whole industry to agree to some kind of standards so that battery, RAM, storage, camera or CPU components or even screens would be swapped out and replaced. Otherwise you create a market of tones of proprietary after market parts, the sum of manufacturing ALL these parts does not mean a total reduction of greenhouse emissions.
Greenpeace should push for longer cycles between new product releases to reduce manufacturing impact, period. But creating a product that can be full of Frankenstein parts and a whole new industry of aftermarket manufactured components is not idea for anybody. Ultimately it comes to reducing manufacturing, period, but reducing phone manufacturing in place of numerous after market parts manufacturing is a placebo for what impact it will have aon reducing greenhouse emissions.
In the meantime, companies like Apple that take responsibility to accept their old products, and reclaim and recycle components, at least mitigates some emissions caused by making a new generation of product.
I agree that people should learn to live with their products longer then then 12 months cycle companies like Apple want to promote. Your 1 year old iPhone is not obsolete a year later regardless of Apple's aggressive marketing rhetoric. If companies were to adopt a 2 year cycle, it would have a significant impact on reducing greenhouse emissions as you are not having to produce phones every year to upgrade a large percentage of their consumer base.
However, making a phone modular and upgradable will be a horrible product. It would be much thicker then what we have today, be full of screw holes and panels, and then you would have to get the whole industry to agree to some kind of standards so that battery, RAM, storage, camera or CPU components or even screens would be swapped out and replaced. Otherwise you create a market of tones of proprietary after market parts, the sum of manufacturing ALL these parts does not mean a total reduction of greenhouse emissions.
Greenpeace should push for longer cycles between new product releases to reduce manufacturing impact, period. But creating a product that can be full of Frankenstein parts and a whole new industry of aftermarket manufactured components is not idea for anybody. Ultimately it comes to reducing manufacturing, period, but reducing phone manufacturing in place of numerous after market parts manufacturing is a placebo for what impact it will have aon reducing greenhouse emissions.
In the meantime, companies like Apple that take responsibility to accept their old products, and reclaim and recycle components, at least mitigates some emissions caused by making a new generation of product.
In the past, I had similar situations with iPhones, and iOS devices. I have the original iPhone and the original iPad, both devices still run well today. I went from the original iPhone to the 4s to the 5s without issues.
But the past few years, I have had updates that made good iOS devices unusable.
No, its really not. If it was then Apple and other companies would be selling phones that are easily user upgradable. Do you know why they don't? Because making a device like an iPhone user upgradeable/repairable means making it bulkier and less durable. Because engineering requires tradeoffs. Because you can't have everything.
I do wish Apple would just make their products a tiny bit repairable. I mean like replacing the battery on an iPhone or a MacBook Pro. You should be able to do those things at home.
Guess what, both Apple and 3rd party repair stores refuse to replace the battery in my MacBook Pro because it's "not profitable" for them, since their batteries are so poor quality (as admitted by the Genius at the Apple store) that they are likely to fail again and again so it's no use replacing them. 3rd parties simply say that it's dangerous and they don't take responsibility for anything that happens once they replace the battery.
So Apple products are literally disposable, meant to be thrown away as soon as anything goes wrong, because they cannot be repaired. But woohoo it's so nice that I can't see any screws on them, it's so sleek! And that half a millimeter in thickness really makes it worth it! Good thing they cost so much too, that way you will pay more, and more often too!
Guess what, both Apple and 3rd party repair stores refuse to replace the battery in my MacBook Pro because it's "not profitable" for them, since their batteries are so poor quality (as admitted by the Genius at the Apple store) that they are likely to fail again and again so it's no use replacing them. 3rd parties simply say that it's dangerous and they don't take responsibility for anything that happens once they replace the battery.
So Apple products are literally disposable, meant to be thrown away as soon as anything goes wrong, because they cannot be repaired. But woohoo it's so nice that I can't see any screws on them, it's so sleek! And that half a millimeter in thickness really makes it worth it! Good thing they cost so much too, that way you will pay more, and more often too!
Hilarious. Love the responses here too.
Apple has made its fortunes on annual iPhone upgrades. I have trouble making my phones last two years, luckily the really bad ones tend to break while under the one-year warranty which gets me to the two-year mark. The ones that make it past a year get claimed on insurance.
Apple has made its fortunes on annual iPhone upgrades. I have trouble making my phones last two years, luckily the really bad ones tend to break while under the one-year warranty which gets me to the two-year mark. The ones that make it past a year get claimed on insurance.
They'd get along quite well with many of the Macrumos members who do the same.
First of all, there is such a push for new designs and form factors, I don't know how Apple could be expected to stick with ONE design for more than one year. Maybe some internal swaps, but, I can't see how it would work.
Secondly, with a name as LONG as Greenpeace, do you know how much WASTE it is to have a name THAT long. Every promotional piece they put out has 10 letters! All the extra waste in ink to print all those letters. If they have promo products, wow, all that ink, and production plates to just create their name and logo with all those letters!
Also, that GREEN color that is used for their logo...in MOST print shops, that green is a premium color to get it that bright. Do you know how much EXTRA that costs in ink mixing time, ink viscosity and just the up charge for a custom color like that? That bright green in their logo is causing millions of dollars each year in environmental waste.
Secondly, with a name as LONG as Greenpeace, do you know how much WASTE it is to have a name THAT long. Every promotional piece they put out has 10 letters! All the extra waste in ink to print all those letters. If they have promo products, wow, all that ink, and production plates to just create their name and logo with all those letters!
Also, that GREEN color that is used for their logo...in MOST print shops, that green is a premium color to get it that bright. Do you know how much EXTRA that costs in ink mixing time, ink viscosity and just the up charge for a custom color like that? That bright green in their logo is causing millions of dollars each year in environmental waste.
User repairability of high tech devices like cell phones as an environmental issue is a fraud. There never has been, nor will there be, more than a infinitesimally small percentage of the hundreds of millions of purchasers of smart phones who have any interest or desire "to repair" their phone. "My phone has an issue. I think I will disassemlbe it and figure out what's wrong. If it's that accelerometer. I think I will rebuild it, or maybe install one from one of my old phones" LOL. No, the reality is that most issues are discovered during the warranty period, and other issues like screen replacement or battery replacement have always been available from Apple or 3rd parties.
Greenpeace is also ignoring the fact that most phones are used for multiple years because they are durable and they are handed down, traded in, or sold. When you trade that phone in, it's refurbished and resold. There's a huge demand worldwide for refurbished phones, a thriving market for selling them outright, and of course, family members and friends, will take a hand me down.
Criticizing a company for taking in any of their products for FREE recycling and developing machines to make recycling even more efficient is the height of stupidity and undermines Greenpeace's credibility.
Wait... Is the assumption, then, that the old/outdated/broken/underpowered part just vanishes? Surely it goes somewhere. Where it should go is back to the manufacturer, for recycling. Apple has been trying to incentivize returning/upgrading your iPhone, so that they can reclaim those materials (and obviously the robots are a significant part of this process). How likely do you think it is that some random person replacing a dead battery or screen, or upgrading a flash drive, in the privacy of their own home is going to throw the old one into the trash? (Answer: Very likely.) So, unless those old parts really do vanish into thin air, then I'd guess a lot more of them will wind up in the landfill as a result of user-replacement than via Apple's disassembly process.
Also, when people make this argument about old phones going into the landfill, why do they ignore the undeniable fact that someone is responsible for actually throwing them in the trash? I'm smart enough to realize that if I throw away a plastic bottle, them I'm the douchebag for not disposing of it correctly. We should have the same expectations for electronics. If you throw away electronics, you're a douchebag. Simple. Apple's strategy is to try to maximize the usefulness of the materials they've used during production. That makes sense.
Finally, if you go to the website of any major electronics retailer—particularly those that sell third-party components like motherboards, processors, video cards, etc.—you'll be looking at horrific offenders of generating electronics landfill. The majority of parts are ridiculously cheap, with new versions coming out every few months, that are absolutely designed and manufactured with planned obsolescence in mind. Further, since the profit margins for hawking these parts are so small, companies have to rely on selling massive volume in order to make any money. So, the notion that upgradeable computers are somehow "green" is complete madness.
The irony here is that the real benefit of upgradeable parts is to allow for a cheaper upgrade path for the end user. So people are bitching about Apple wanting to make money, while their prime motivation for upgradeability is really just to save money. I don't blame them for that—generally I feel the same way—but you can't deny that it simply comes down to each party wanting more money at the end of the day...
Good one , I like sarcasm .
Just in case someone didn't get it - it's obviously Apple who is being desperate to stay relevant, by constantly buffing up the same old product and discouraging repairs or parts replacement .
Thanks for sharing. So this will be your last post on MR since you're moving on from Apple to Android right?
True on both counts! I had to do a double take when I read the thread title. I thought greenpeace went out of business years ago. LOL. So, they suddenly have something to say, eh? Great. It’s good to see that they are back at their usual mode of strangling businesses, forcing draconian job killing ideas on people and just being a general obnoxious entity.
Hey, at least the spotted tree cows will be happy.....
Actually quite a few folks give their devices to Apple because Apple gives them store credit for it.
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Not true. I’ve seen phones, iPads, computers all less than 3 years old taken totally apart by humans.