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> Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. This shif

> Well guess what, that's a design decision and we live in a free market - so if you don't like it you're welcome to buy a different laptop or phone. This shifts blame off suppliers and on to consumers. Suppliers can do whatever they want: it's the responsibility of consumers to choose what is best for society. In my opinion this is not an effective approach for society, for example because of unbalanced information. I think the responsibility needs to be shared. > The fact that these design decisions have been integral to making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world probably indicates they were good design decisions. I don't think the author is disputing that the designs were good decisions, when the goal is profit. They are complaining that sustainability was not taking into account.

merpnderp 7y ago
Suppliers can’t do whatever they want, as they will quickly go broke when people vote with their wallets. You and I might disagree strongly with disposable electronics, but people are happily handing over their money for this stuff. And it makes sense when you see polls that say people aren’t even willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change.
- wincy 7y ago
  I for one am excited about how my home value will go up once the coasts flood and I have beach front property here in Kansas. Less land = more expensive land, I can’t lose!
  - magduf 7y ago
    Climate change will probably mean more tornadoes for Kansas.
- Vraxx 7y ago
  part of this is because of an ongoing disinformation campaign by the companies and individuals who benefit the most from not addressing the climate crisis. People aren't willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change because from all the information they've been fed, it's not a big deal. There's very good reason to believe that if people understood the current and future effects better there would be a much more drastic response. Just look at similar failures in the past where corporate interest spread disinformation to continue making money (cigarettes, lead in gasoline, health insurance companies today, sugar industry, etc.). When people learn the actual facts the prevailing opinion tends to change pretty heavily. Sure suppliers must cater to demand, but that ignores the fact that often suppliers play a large role in cultivating that demand regardless of the moral value of that demand.
balabaster 7y ago
But equally, the consumer buys what the consumer wants. All Apple is guilty of is making decisions that feed the consumer's wants. Apple's income is proof positive that the consumer is willing to pay as much as they are, and quite probably more, to get their hands on what Apple have designed and for all the bad there is in the phone's design, there's enough good that enough people are willing to part with high amounts of money to get their products.
- pjmorris 7y ago
  > But equally, the consumer buys what the consumer wants. I don't believe in this equality. The consumer is limited to buying what is available in the market, which may not be what the consumer wants. For example, if I had the option to buy a current Macbook Pro without a touchbar, and with the circa-2015 keyboard, I'd do so.
  - magduf 7y ago
    There's never going to be an infinite array of choices in a free market; there's only so many people and companies, and they can only make so many different things efficiently and sell them. Apple made the decision to sell the Macbook with the touchbar, and you're free to either buy it or not. Personally, I don't like Macs or Apple, so I don't buy them at all, and I advise my friends and family to avoid them too. Most of them don't listen to me, and insist they "need" Apple products and pay top dollar for them, even though many of them are struggling financially. I try showing them my nice Android phone with removable batteries and dual cameras that I got for $140 on Ebay and that has MVNO service that costs a fraction of what they pay monthly to the big carriers, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Then they wonder why they're always broke and why I seem to be loaded.... Anyway, if you don't like the current Macs, don't buy them. It's really as simple as that. I have a Dell Latitude laptop that's (I think) 4 years old and easily repairable which I also bought used (ex-corporate lease), so I'm keeping it. And I have a phone that's 2-3 years old and has replaceable batteries, an SDcard slot with a 128GB card in it, and that cost me relatively little, and I'm keeping that for the time being too. Maybe if I see something better that I get excited by, I'll buy it, but I'm not dumb enough to buy something just because that's what some company wants me to buy.
wincy 7y ago
This isn’t how markets work. Suppliers can’t just “do whatever they want”. If there’s no demand for a project you’ll very quickly go out of business that way. It is up to the consumers, and people chose iPhones over chunky android phones with hot swappable batteries and the like. You can’t really be a “sustainable” company (or anything, really) when you’re out of business.
- pier25 7y ago
  It's not like there are any alternatives for running macos...
- damnyou 7y ago
  No, it's up to regulators to fix market failures like this one.
- ljw1001 7y ago
  people chose iphones when they were far superior to everything else and have been (largely) locked-in by switching costs ever since.
everdev 7y ago
> This shifts blame off suppliers and on to consumers. Suppliers can do whatever they want: it's the responsibility of consumers to choose what is best for society. Wether you agree with it or not, this is how capitalism and a free market works. It's a feature, not a bug.
- damnyou 7y ago
  Yes, it is well known that unrestrained capitalism is bad. Next?
philwelch 7y ago
If I decide which product to buy based on whether I want to be able to repair it myself, I’m making a decision for myself, not for society.
- chaboud 7y ago
  I think the argument is that a product that is hard to repair is less likely to be repaired, and, thus, more likely to become waste and be more quickly replaced with an altogether new product when confronted with a minor, and otherwise repairable, fault. For an individual user who may be disinclined to repair a machine, it may make no material difference. For society as a whole, it has an impact. Of course, if the overwhelming behavior is disposal, repairability may have negative environmental impacts (extra material use for modularity, etc). A similar example would be people discarding reusable plastic bags after one or two uses, resulting in more plastic waste than with bags intended for single use. It takes time for markets and users to adjust, and we may find that Apple was well-positioned to take advantage of market trends in processor and efficiency improvements at the right time for portable device markets like phones and laptops. Maybe we'll swing back to longer lifetimes and more modularity at some point...

merpnderp 7y ago

Suppliers can’t do whatever they want, as they will quickly go broke when people vote with their wallets. You and I might disagree strongly with disposable electronics, but people are happily handing over their money for this stuff. And it makes sense when you see polls that say people aren’t even willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change.

wincy 7y ago
I for one am excited about how my home value will go up once the coasts flood and I have beach front property here in Kansas. Less land = more expensive land, I can’t lose!
- magduf 7y ago
  Climate change will probably mean more tornadoes for Kansas.
Vraxx 7y ago
part of this is because of an ongoing disinformation campaign by the companies and individuals who benefit the most from not addressing the climate crisis. People aren't willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change because from all the information they've been fed, it's not a big deal. There's very good reason to believe that if people understood the current and future effects better there would be a much more drastic response. Just look at similar failures in the past where corporate interest spread disinformation to continue making money (cigarettes, lead in gasoline, health insurance companies today, sugar industry, etc.). When people learn the actual facts the prevailing opinion tends to change pretty heavily. Sure suppliers must cater to demand, but that ignores the fact that often suppliers play a large role in cultivating that demand regardless of the moral value of that demand.

balabaster 7y ago

But equally, the consumer buys what the consumer wants. All Apple is guilty of is making decisions that feed the consumer's wants. Apple's income is proof positive that the consumer is willing to pay as much as they are, and quite probably more, to get their hands on what Apple have designed and for all the bad there is in the phone's design, there's enough good that enough people are willing to part with high amounts of money to get their products.

pjmorris 7y ago
> But equally, the consumer buys what the consumer wants. I don't believe in this equality. The consumer is limited to buying what is available in the market, which may not be what the consumer wants. For example, if I had the option to buy a current Macbook Pro without a touchbar, and with the circa-2015 keyboard, I'd do so.
- magduf 7y ago
  There's never going to be an infinite array of choices in a free market; there's only so many people and companies, and they can only make so many different things efficiently and sell them. Apple made the decision to sell the Macbook with the touchbar, and you're free to either buy it or not. Personally, I don't like Macs or Apple, so I don't buy them at all, and I advise my friends and family to avoid them too. Most of them don't listen to me, and insist they "need" Apple products and pay top dollar for them, even though many of them are struggling financially. I try showing them my nice Android phone with removable batteries and dual cameras that I got for $140 on Ebay and that has MVNO service that costs a fraction of what they pay monthly to the big carriers, but it goes in one ear and out the other. Then they wonder why they're always broke and why I seem to be loaded.... Anyway, if you don't like the current Macs, don't buy them. It's really as simple as that. I have a Dell Latitude laptop that's (I think) 4 years old and easily repairable which I also bought used (ex-corporate lease), so I'm keeping it. And I have a phone that's 2-3 years old and has replaceable batteries, an SDcard slot with a 128GB card in it, and that cost me relatively little, and I'm keeping that for the time being too. Maybe if I see something better that I get excited by, I'll buy it, but I'm not dumb enough to buy something just because that's what some company wants me to buy.

wincy 7y ago

This isn’t how markets work. Suppliers can’t just “do whatever they want”. If there’s no demand for a project you’ll very quickly go out of business that way. It is up to the consumers, and people chose iPhones over chunky android phones with hot swappable batteries and the like. You can’t really be a “sustainable” company (or anything, really) when you’re out of business.

pier25 7y ago
It's not like there are any alternatives for running macos...
damnyou 7y ago
No, it's up to regulators to fix market failures like this one.
ljw1001 7y ago
people chose iphones when they were far superior to everything else and have been (largely) locked-in by switching costs ever since.

everdev 7y ago

> This shifts blame off suppliers and on to consumers. Suppliers can do whatever they want: it's the responsibility of consumers to choose what is best for society. Wether you agree with it or not, this is how capitalism and a free market works. It's a feature, not a bug.

damnyou 7y ago
Yes, it is well known that unrestrained capitalism is bad. Next?

philwelch 7y ago

If I decide which product to buy based on whether I want to be able to repair it myself, I’m making a decision for myself, not for society.

chaboud 7y ago
I think the argument is that a product that is hard to repair is less likely to be repaired, and, thus, more likely to become waste and be more quickly replaced with an altogether new product when confronted with a minor, and otherwise repairable, fault. For an individual user who may be disinclined to repair a machine, it may make no material difference. For society as a whole, it has an impact. Of course, if the overwhelming behavior is disposal, repairability may have negative environmental impacts (extra material use for modularity, etc). A similar example would be people discarding reusable plastic bags after one or two uses, resulting in more plastic waste than with bags intended for single use. It takes time for markets and users to adjust, and we may find that Apple was well-positioned to take advantage of market trends in processor and efficiency improvements at the right time for portable device markets like phones and laptops. Maybe we'll swing back to longer lifetimes and more modularity at some point...