UK Environmental Committee Says Apple Contributing to 'Throwaway Culture' of 'Short-Lived Products'

[mazz0]

What a fantastic way to stifle innovation. Stop making phones that are so good that I need to throw away my old one! Just make one that’s not better so I don’t feel the need to get one every year! Curse you Apple!

For as much as the UK is touting their “engineering” feats, you’d think they would be the ones where Apple was born. Or any of the other tech giants. Oh, wait...

I get the impression it’s the business culture rather than lack of technological innovation that’s the reason Britain doesn’t have a tech giant. Thinks get invented here (eg the computer) but generally aren’t well commercialised (either they’re not commercialised by British companies at all, or they’re bought out by foreign companies). I’m no expert though, and my impression has no doubt been coloured by my British perspective.

I would, though, suggest that you don’t interpret the word of a government agency as the word of an entire country. Some British governmental committee is touting Britain’s engineering feats, the UK isn’t saying anything.

 

[Analog Kid]

Apple still have a way to go though with the likes of Apple Watch, which is a consumable product still (I have an AW4 with a crack on the screen and the only suggestion from Apple is pay for a repair that is the cost of a new AW - the case is perfect BTW)

It's not a surprise that repairing one piece far exceeds the fractional value of that piece in the overall assembly.

They price it the same as a new AW because it costs the same as a new AW. You're comparing the cost of a mechanized manufacturing line in China with labor intensive customer service and custom repair in whatever country you're in. It always costs more per unit to repair one than to make millions. There's the cost of prime real estate in what ever shopping center your Apple store is in, there's the system maintenance and labor costs of making your repair appointment, greeting you, discussing your issue, retaining your device, repairing your device, testing your device and returning it. There's the shipment and stocking costs of maintaining the components. Then there's the recycling and disposal costs for the broken parts.

If you're more concerned about the environmental problems caused by "short lived products" than you are interested in the functionality of the new device then paying the same for the repair is the better deal.

Yes, many of the things Apple does is just "how it has become" with every electronics manufacturer. But Apple takes many specific steps to prevent repairs for absolutely no good reason. For example, using glue to secure the battery to the top case instead of screws or pull-tab adhesive is just wrong. The battery is going to go bad at some point before the rest of the device fails, and you can't replace it unless you bring it to Apple so they can more or less give you a new computer and make you pay for it too.

Oh, and "trade in and recycle" is great but you know what's better? Being able to replace the broken ribbon cable without having to buy a whole new screen and then being able to continue to use the computer for another 3 years. Or being able to swap out the battery yourself. It's REDUCE reuse recycle. Reduce the need to have to buy a new on first, by making it repairable for when it inevitably fails. Remember those horrible butterfly keyboards you paid so much for? Yeah you couldn't even replace a SINGLE KEY on them. And the entire keyboard was riveted in. With hundreds of rivets. I don't think that's okay. I wonder what Apple would have to say about that. Just recycle it! Oh yeah, I bought a computer instead of a new car – but hey, they F key broke! I'll just recycle the whole computer! Environment yay! Money yay!

PS: Oh and one year warranty, Apple. When every other company gives you two years minimum, but usually 3 years if you register on their website. That means all other companies will guarantee that their products will last 3 times longer than Apple's, and if they don't, they'll take responsibility and fix it for free. What will Apple do? Suggest you recycle it.

People don't seem to understand that making things easy to disconnect and replace also makes them more susceptible to failure. The tradeoff is that it makes it harder to update and replace components yourself, but only a small fraction of users actually attempt this in the first place and of those I find most greatly overestimate their ability to make any changes without damaging the system.

I don't have Apple's data on this, obviously, but I'd bet their approach to manufacturing greatly reduces the number of units that get recycled early.

 

[amartinez1660]

I'm not an Apple fanboy by any means, but the biggest reason I still purchase Apple products is because of longevity. Obviously this committee has never owned a Dell or HP product. Talk about throwing away a computer after three years of use. I have a 2009 24" iMac and a 2010 13" MacBook Pro that still work perfectly every day.

Agreed ten-fold. I got an iMac 2013, a MacBook Pro 2014, some family members have macbooks pros bought in 2011 and 2012, that’s quite long if you ask me. Sure, I also got an iMac 27” 2020 this summer and an iPad Pro 2018 last summer, was needed with increasing wfh pressure, but all other older ones still work! I even have an iPad Air, the very very first one from manu years ago... no more OS update change, but it’s still great for watching YouTube videos for example, it does work.

 

[Maximara]

Its capitalism 1 on 1, also known as social obsolescence, no one (or very few) are repairing say, their smartphones themselves, now, Apple devices last the longest, their useful life way longer than its competitors, so in a sense they are the least disposable of the industry... people hanging on to a 5-8 year old Mac or a 3-4 year old iPhone, in comparison a 4 year old Android is completely useless, these Committees should be pushing manufacturers to increase quality and useful life of the products across the board...

These Committees are so Captain Clueless that it is unbelievable. I gave my brother my 2007 iMac and I am typing this on a late 2013 iMac. What short lifespan are these committees talking about?! Or are they yet another example of how dysfunctional the Trump administration has been?

Oh wait a minute, that is UK not US. And there I thought the Brits stopped saying really stupid things with that Chamberlin guy.

 

[chineseguy38]

Agreed ten-fold. I got an iMac 2013, a MacBook Pro 2014, some family members have macbooks pros bought in 2011 and 2012, that’s quite long if you ask me. Sure, I also got an iMac 27” 2020 this summer and an iPad Pro 2018 last summer, was needed with increasing wfh pressure, but all other older ones still work! I even have an iPad Air, the very very first one from manu years ago... no more OS update change, but it’s still great for watching YouTube videos for example, it does work.

Unlike you. Most of the Apple fans will buy the latest products all the time. So what will happen to their old Mac, iPads, iPhones etc?

 

[PickUrPoison]

How dare anyone criticize Apple!!!

How dare anyone criticize the criticizers!!1

 

[BuddyTronic]

Something can be good for jobs and still terrible for the environment, no?

Sure, but I think recent iPhones and other Apple hardware can be recycled very efficiently - by design.

so the iPhone 12 will be obsolete in 4 or 5 years and can be recycled.

 

[ikramerica]

Back in the Mac II days, there was soldered logic board RAM and RAM slots.
The IIsi, for example, had 1MB soldered and the ability to expand to 17MB (later 65MB not officially supported).
The LC line (through the Quadra 605) had 2 or 4MB soldered and one memory slot to expand to 10 and eventually to 132MB on later models.

One wonders if this will be a thing again.

As for hard soldered SSD, it might be for ultimate speed, but honestly I would give up speed to be able to upgrade in the future.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Despite the fact that I agree with a lot of what Rossmann says about some of Apple's 'quality' (a HDD cable that fails? How in the world did they even manage to engineer that? It's the 42nd wonder of the world designing something as foolproof as a HDD cable to actually fail), I've got to agree that overall they do tend to build, at least historically, very long-lived products. I routinely see people with Mac computers as old as 10 or even 12 years still functioning perfectly well (with the obligatory upgrades to ram and swapping out the HDD for an SSD of course). This is essentially unheard of in the Windows, Android or Chromebook world. I generally tell people to expect double the life-span out of an Apple product, and that if they are lucky and get one of the better models that doesn't have a design flaw that they may get much better life-span than that. (Part of my currently deployed fleet in education is Macs 24 x 2009 Mac Pros - not a single one of them has failed to date. Not even a single fan. Those are some good, really, really good, computers.)

But that's the older, upgradable, workhorse Macs. The newer ones? Better make sure you order one that's got everything you ever need. Better hope your needs don't balloon. Better hope it doesn't need repaired. I hope they still prove to be as long-lived, but I won't play fanboy if they don't.

What's amazing is that Apple manages do this despite some obvious corner-cutting and serious wrong-headedness (it was obvious within about 6 months that the butterfly keyboard absolutely had to go, but it took Apple 4 or 5 years to capitulate.) I mean, if they just bothered to do things right in the first place their products could be much better, and they would probably build an even more loyal customer base. As it stands they often shoot themselves in the foot with annoying design flaws that go unaddressed for far too long and cause failures that should never have happened in the first place. Especially mistakes they make over and over (GPU failures. Anyone? Anyone?)

Anyway, I think that everyone except the most catastrophically ignorant have finally wised-up to the plethora of environmental crises threatening the planet, and that we probably can't rely on the 'free market' to fix everything. There are certain aspects of Apple's products that could be addressed that would go a long way towards repairability. Just making the batteries easier to replace (iThings and Laptops) is a great place to start. They KNOW, they absolutely, 100% KNOW that the battery will need to be replaced. Imaging buying a freaking car where the battery is mounted in a way specifically designed to make it hard to replace - and for no good reason. There are perfectly acceptable alternatives (double-backed-tape with pull-tabs). Gosh, maybe they could stop fighting our right to repair as well. They've got all the money in the damn world; how about they spend a little more on each unit, accept that people will own their Apple products a bit longer and maybe repair them a bit more frequently. Just do what's right for a change and settle for making a good profit rather than making a killing.

Repairability might possibly be worse for the environment than forced obsolescence and recycling.

Out with the old, in with the new.

 

[cyb3rdud3]

Oh no, color me surprised. Caroline Lucas is on that committee from the green party. IIRC they stood in 469 seats the last election and only got one representative, her.

And then we have a bunch of old conservative men.

I'm sorry but british engineering / manufacturing effort was indeed ingenious in keep old equipment patched up and running. They were so good at it and spend so much time doing that that they didn't notice that it was dirty, polluting, and the rest of the world moved on to cleaner, newer, more high tech solutions. No, the UK should not pride themselves on that, that is an unworthy pat on the back.

 

[Poisednoise]

Look at the ARM history a bit closer please... don’t forget that guy who was not born over there...

If you’re referring to Hermann Hauser, he had nothing to do with the design, he only held the purse strings. And he was still educated and chose to remain in the UK. Sophie Wilson and Steve Furber, the architects of ARM/RISC, are both UK born. There are also engineers like Dyson. But we’re kinda going off-topic here: I agree that it wasn’t a particularly well-expressed point by the government agency.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Back in the Mac II days, there was soldered logic board RAM and RAM slots.
The IIsi, for example, had 1MB soldered and the ability to expand to 17MB (later 65MB not officially supported).
The LC line (through the Quadra 605) had 2 or 4MB soldered and one memory slot to expand to 10 and eventually to 132MB on later models.

One wonders if this will be a thing again.

As for hard soldered SSD, it might be for ultimate speed, but honestly I would give up speed to be able to upgrade in the future.

I remember those days of upgrading Mac IIci ram and 24 bit colour card and drives. It was fun. But these days I think it’s mostly throwing money away to do such a thing. Newer machine is the best upgrade these days I’d say. Perhaps this is because I don’t do type same things on the computer that I did in 1992, in 2020.

 

[EricNau]

Sure, but I think recent iPhones and other Apple hardware can be recycled very efficiently - by design.

so the iPhone 12 will be obsolete in 4 or 5 years and can be recycled.

I don’t disagree with that per se. But “jobs” (as I understood your original point) isn’t sufficient justification for poor environmental practices. (Maybe that’s not what you meant?) It’s a common argument, and one that’s a false dichotomy. You can have both if both are prioritized.

Repairability might possibly be worse for the environment than forced obsolescence and recycling.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Well, these aren’t gas guzzling cars. They’re PCs and phones: the difference in energy use between old and new is negligible.

It’s “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”—in that order. Recycling is a last resort. You can’t upgrade your iPhone for the environment. The act of discarding an old device—even if highly recyclable—is harmful.

The longer someone keeps a device (and doesn’t buy a new one), the better.

 

[ilikewhey]

finally! someone calling out apple and their half assed environmental conscious policy, how do you claim such consciousness for the environment when you make these disposable airpods that becomes unreliable after a year of use, then there is the the butterfly repair program, by design (or laziness) if a key breaks apple swap the entire top case.

 

[rikscha]

Yes, many of the things Apple does is just "how it has become" with every electronics manufacturer. But Apple takes many specific steps to prevent repairs for absolutely no good reason. For example, using glue to secure the battery to the top case instead of screws or pull-tab adhesive is just wrong. The battery is going to go bad at some point before the rest of the device fails, and you can't replace it unless you bring it to Apple so they can more or less give you a new computer and make you pay for it too.

Oh, and "trade in and recycle" is great but you know what's better? Being able to replace the broken ribbon cable without having to buy a whole new screen and then being able to continue to use the computer for another 3 years. Or being able to swap out the battery yourself. It's REDUCE reuse recycle. Reduce the need to have to buy a new on first, by making it repairable for when it inevitably fails. Remember those horrible butterfly keyboards you paid so much for? Yeah you couldn't even replace a SINGLE KEY on them. And the entire keyboard was riveted in. With hundreds of rivets. I don't think that's okay. I wonder what Apple would have to say about that. Just recycle it! Oh yeah, I bought a computer instead of a new car – but hey, they F key broke! I'll just recycle the whole computer! Environment yay! Money yay!

PS: Oh and one year warranty, Apple. When every other company gives you two years minimum, but usually 3 years if you register on their website. That means all other companies will guarantee that their products will last 3 times longer than Apple's, and if they don't, they'll take responsibility and fix it for free. What will Apple do? Suggest you recycle it.

and then Apple having to deal with additional support requests because customer swapped their batteries and broke their device in the process but are insisting they didn’t do anything wrong which leads to higher support cost and Apple having to further increase their prices.
no thank you - you buy the product, get it serviced properly and pay up. Simple as that. I don’t want to pay more because a fraction of the people wanting to carry out repairs themselves.

 

[peter2]

What for?

Heck, I'm still running Mojave on my main machine and wouldn't upgrade just yet if you paid me.

Soon Mojave will stop receiving security updates. Yet the machine in in the OP would run newer macOS just fine if Apple did not artificially exclude it as not being compatible.

 

[throttlemeister]

Their product last for ages. My 2014 MBP still runs completely fine (besides the depleted battery) and iPhones probably have the longest OS update support in the industry.

What is true that their products are hard to repair, part of it is because of more compact design, tightening tolerances and waterproof-ness. But to my knowledge if you go to an Apple Store and they have to exchange parts / computers, the exchanged product gets recycles.

They could clearly build their products to be more repairable or modular, but then product quality would suffer. It's very clear they are prioritising product quality and do what they can do to mitigate the negative effects of bad repairability.

This is exactly the mindset Apple wants you to have and boy it is pure and utter BS. It does not matter one bit for quality, waterproofness or whatever if a device is screwed together, glued together or soldered together. You can buy a $200 Seiko dive watch that will let take your scuba gear down to 200m and it pulls apart into their individual pieces just fine with screws. But we can't make a splash resistent phone without glueing the thing together so it can never come apart again? Quit drinking the koolaid and sucking the Apple feeder tube.

Apple is actively trying to prevent repairs by trying to make sure devices cannot be taken apart without damage, by not allowing 3rd party repair shops to be able to make repairs, by not allowing the device to work with replacement parts that would work just fine, by pricing their own repairs so it is not economically viable to do them. And that has nothing to do with quality, waterproofness or whatever reason you can think of. It is just about money. About selling new devices. Apple does not want you to do 5 years with your phone. They don't want you to fix it after a year if it accidentally breaks so you can use it for another year. They want to sell you a new $1000+ device each and every year and throw the old one in the garbage. Preferably their garbage, so they can lowball you with a trade-in 'offer' so they can make money of your old phone as well your new one.

Its ok to make a profit. Money is not a dirty word. But not at the expensive of everything else. And that's exactly what Apple is doing.

EDIT: If Apple were a car company, it would be impossible to remove the wheels to replace the tires or change the oil. It would have amazing gas mileage that would let you drive halfway across the globe, but once it was empty, you'd have to buy a new car even if it's perfectly fine and would run for ages if you could just fill it up at the local gas station. But it won't, cause you it doesn't have a gas cap and you'd have to fill it up with Apple gas as it won't start on anything else and Apple gas is so expensive that together with taking it to the Apple store to have it stripped and filled it by them, it is just more economical to just buy a new car.

Oh, and you'd be convinced that in order to get great gas mileage a car shouldn't have a gas cap.

 

[BvizioN]

What a lot of rubbish!! One of the main reason I buy Apple products is because of their longevity. My Mac has lasted longer than my refrigerator, so has the iPad and iPhone. Some people just don't live in the real world.

 

[aleni]

any apple products have a long life except the original airpod that I had to throw away after 2 years. Battery was really bad and the right pod died after 5 minutes of use while the left one still had 50%.

 

[Sander]

Its capitalism 1 on 1 [...]

The expression is "Capitalism 101". This derives from American university course numbering schemes, where "subject + number" denotes the level at which the subject is taught (in theory, this allows you to take follow-up courses even at other universities, and have an expectation of continuity). The "101" denotes the introductory level.

 

[page3]

Look at the ARM history a bit closer please... don’t forget that guy who was not born over there...

You mean Sophie Wilson? Definitely English.

 

[mikethemartian]

Yes, many of the things Apple does is just "how it has become" with every electronics manufacturer. But Apple takes many specific steps to prevent repairs for absolutely no good reason. For example, using glue to secure the battery to the top case instead of screws or pull-tab adhesive is just wrong. The battery is going to go bad at some point before the rest of the device fails, and you can't replace it unless you bring it to Apple so they can more or less give you a new computer and make you pay for it too.

Oh, and "trade in and recycle" is great but you know what's better? Being able to replace the broken ribbon cable without having to buy a whole new screen and then being able to continue to use the computer for another 3 years. Or being able to swap out the battery yourself. It's REDUCE reuse recycle. Reduce the need to have to buy a new on first, by making it repairable for when it inevitably fails. Remember those horrible butterfly keyboards you paid so much for? Yeah you couldn't even replace a SINGLE KEY on them. And the entire keyboard was riveted in. With hundreds of rivets. I don't think that's okay. I wonder what Apple would have to say about that. Just recycle it! Oh yeah, I bought a computer instead of a new car – but hey, they F key broke! I'll just recycle the whole computer! Environment yay! Money yay!

PS: Oh and one year warranty, Apple. When every other company gives you two years minimum, but usually 3 years if you register on their website. That means all other companies will guarantee that their products will last 3 times longer than Apple's, and if they don't, they'll take responsibility and fix it for free. What will Apple do? Suggest you recycle it.

Recyclng helps recover much of the material but it requires energy that uses up other resources.

 

[BvizioN]

That's not what the report is saying

Indeed. And I can confirm, they are absolutely right. I live in the UK and I can confirm that every day bins are filled with non repaired Macbook airs/Macbook Proos, Mac Proos, iPads and iPhones. Yep, people just bin them when they are faulty, littering the entire Great Britain. What?? No, they don't take them to the Apple Store to trade them in or recycle.
On a serious note, there is so much stinking BS on what they say.

 

[mikethemartian]

They forgot the most important thing: obsolescence by OS updates. I would still be using my 1st gen iPhone SE if they didn't make it impossible to stay in old iOS versions. If newer iOS releases where only security-related, it would be fine, but they keep adding more and more features that are very CPU-demanding, and old iPhones tend to get hot and drain battery because of high CPU usage in newer iOS versions.

At least they should provide a way for testing a new iOS version and go back to an older one if it's too demanding for your older device. But they don't allow. Why? You know it: by not being able to go back to older versions, people have no remedy but throwing away their device and buy a new one. And the current Apple business depends on this: frequent purchases. Then they pretend to be "environmental friendly", and they try to make it credible by showing off a leftist-like catalog of phrases and messages.

Any Mac veteran will remember that Apple was not like this in the beginning: You didn't update when your machine worked fine. For that reason, old Macs were very environmental friendly: it was rare that a Mac lasted less than 10 years. Now everything is buy, buy, buy, update, update, update, throw away, throw away, throw away, buy, buy, buy... and that's the trend.... and then they say they use "recycled aluminum"... an old Mac made of more contaminant materials but that lasted for a decade is far more environmental friendly than buying a new device every year no matter if it's recycled aluminum.

My old iPhone 4s worked great with iOS7 and then iOS8 made it almost unusable. Now with my newer iPhone I don’t update the OS to avoid it happening again.

 

[5232152]

Yeah but tbh... how many people know how to self repair..? What if they break it more or can’t fix it?

I guess this also affects retailers that offer repairs, but personally I don’t particularly trust them - i’d rather send my repair to an authorized apple retail store as i’ll be guaranteed genuine hardware and warranty.

Maybe i’m just a bit thick with this issue but meh i’d rather Apple repaired my devices lol

The problem is you are squeezing third parties who could easily fix and repair your device at a fraction of a cost. There is plenty of reports and videos showing Apple representatives saying "I mean, I can fix it - but you might as well buy a new one". Look at any video by Louis Rossmann on Youtube.