4 ms·

Step 1: design iPhones to be not repairable. Step 2: determine it costs too much to repair "broken" iPhones (see step 1). Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for

Step 1: design iPhones to be not repairable. Step 2: determine it costs too much to repair "broken" iPhones (see step 1). Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals. What an enormous win for the environment and recycling! There are plenty of companies that will already do step 3, but pretty much nobody other than Apple has the opportunity to do something about the vastly more important step 2.

taspeotis 11y ago
> Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals. It seems they have a deft touch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc
- basicplus2 11y ago
  yeah right... a snazzy looking robot my arse.. more like children in China and India sitting in squaller pulling them apart by hand, burning the plastic by hand and sniffing it to determine the plastic type.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_recycling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_recycling "Because the U.S has not ratified the Basel Convention or its Ban Amendment, and has no domestic laws forbidding the export of toxic waste, the Basel Action Network estimates that about 80% of the electronic waste directed to recycling in the U.S. does not get recycled there at all, but is put on container ships and sent to countries such as China.[6][7][8][9] Guiyu in the Shantou region of China, and Delhi and Bangalore in India, have electronic waste processing areas.[6][10][11]" http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electronic-waste-e-waste/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electroni...
  - e12e 11y ago
    Speaking of old articles, I came across this on iPhone (and other electronic) recycling from 2012: http://www.cnet.com/news/the-environmental-pitfalls-at-the-end-of-an-iphones-life/ http://www.cnet.com/news/the-environmental-pitfalls-at-the-e... Would be interesting to see a real follow-up, rather than just some PR-numbers from Apple.
- revelation 11y ago
  So they separate out perfectly fine, working components.. and then burn them down? I'm pretty confident that recovering gold economically involves smelting and other rather destructive processes.
  - astrange 11y ago
    How do you know the devices handed in for recycling haven't had keyloggers installed in all the components?
ericabiz 11y ago
iPhones are VERY repairable. Source: I run a repair shop and iPhones are most of our business. You want to talk about phones that are not repairable? Let's talk about ANY HTC phone. They're total crap to repair. The worst, though, are the cheap MetroPCS and Cricket Android phones--the ones you've probably never heard of but that we get calls about every day, like HTC Desires, Samsung Galaxy Core Primes, and a whole line of tiny LG phones with odd model numbers. THOSE phones are completely unrepairable--not because we can't get the parts, but because the repair, which runs $80 or so to fix a broken screen, is almost twice what it costs to just buy a new phone. These phones are unabashedly sold to poor and even to homeless people, who then get the choice of desperately trying to continue using them when they inevitably break, or ponying up another $50 to buy a new one. It's a way, way worse model than iPhones, and one the HN community probably isn't familiar with (I didn't know anything about this until I started running a repair store.) It's a pretty disgusting market.
- TwoJob 11y ago
  so, make the phones more expensive so it makes financial sense to repair them? rather than making the repair less expensive?
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    You're responding to someone who runs a repair shop... Seriously though it reads as if that shop has fair repair charges, and it's simply easier (thus cheaper) to repair an iPhone than some no-name android. This conforms to my experience with other sorts of equipment. You'll always pay more when the case has panels attached by screws, rather than two plastic shells that can only be mated once.
    - takno 11y ago
      I've only ever broken one screen on a phone, and that is not so broken that it is unusable. I appreciate other people break screens more often, but never breaking the screens is a fairly common situation. Given that old iPhones continue to trade at a multiple of a cheap android, you could probably pay for at least 2 screen repairs with the difference, and you would be paying for those well down the line. The economics for somebody who is not exceptionally clumsy probably still supports buying the cheap android. That probably doesn't help the repair shop guy too much, but making the poor support his dying business model doesn't sound fantastic on the ethical scale either

taspeotis 11y ago

> Step 3: Burn the whole lot down for precious metals. It seems they have a deft touch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYshVbcEmUc

basicplus2 11y ago
yeah right... a snazzy looking robot my arse.. more like children in China and India sitting in squaller pulling them apart by hand, burning the plastic by hand and sniffing it to determine the plastic type.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_recycling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_recycling "Because the U.S has not ratified the Basel Convention or its Ban Amendment, and has no domestic laws forbidding the export of toxic waste, the Basel Action Network estimates that about 80% of the electronic waste directed to recycling in the U.S. does not get recycled there at all, but is put on container ships and sent to countries such as China.[6][7][8][9] Guiyu in the Shantou region of China, and Delhi and Bangalore in India, have electronic waste processing areas.[6][10][11]" http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electronic-waste-e-waste/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/30/world/asia/china-electroni...
- e12e 11y ago
  Speaking of old articles, I came across this on iPhone (and other electronic) recycling from 2012: http://www.cnet.com/news/the-environmental-pitfalls-at-the-end-of-an-iphones-life/ http://www.cnet.com/news/the-environmental-pitfalls-at-the-e... Would be interesting to see a real follow-up, rather than just some PR-numbers from Apple.
revelation 11y ago
So they separate out perfectly fine, working components.. and then burn them down? I'm pretty confident that recovering gold economically involves smelting and other rather destructive processes.
- astrange 11y ago
  How do you know the devices handed in for recycling haven't had keyloggers installed in all the components?

ericabiz 11y ago

iPhones are VERY repairable. Source: I run a repair shop and iPhones are most of our business. You want to talk about phones that are not repairable? Let's talk about ANY HTC phone. They're total crap to repair. The worst, though, are the cheap MetroPCS and Cricket Android phones--the ones you've probably never heard of but that we get calls about every day, like HTC Desires, Samsung Galaxy Core Primes, and a whole line of tiny LG phones with odd model numbers. THOSE phones are completely unrepairable--not because we can't get the parts, but because the repair, which runs $80 or so to fix a broken screen, is almost twice what it costs to just buy a new phone. These phones are unabashedly sold to poor and even to homeless people, who then get the choice of desperately trying to continue using them when they inevitably break, or ponying up another $50 to buy a new one. It's a way, way worse model than iPhones, and one the HN community probably isn't familiar with (I didn't know anything about this until I started running a repair store.) It's a pretty disgusting market.

TwoJob 11y ago
so, make the phones more expensive so it makes financial sense to repair them? rather than making the repair less expensive?
- jessaustin 11y ago
  You're responding to someone who runs a repair shop... Seriously though it reads as if that shop has fair repair charges, and it's simply easier (thus cheaper) to repair an iPhone than some no-name android. This conforms to my experience with other sorts of equipment. You'll always pay more when the case has panels attached by screws, rather than two plastic shells that can only be mated once.
  - takno 11y ago
    I've only ever broken one screen on a phone, and that is not so broken that it is unusable. I appreciate other people break screens more often, but never breaking the screens is a fairly common situation. Given that old iPhones continue to trade at a multiple of a cheap android, you could probably pay for at least 2 screen repairs with the difference, and you would be paying for those well down the line. The economics for somebody who is not exceptionally clumsy probably still supports buying the cheap android. That probably doesn't help the repair shop guy too much, but making the poor support his dying business model doesn't sound fantastic on the ethical scale either