4 ms·

Isn't reuse the best version of recycling? Who could have thought Apple was so anti-environmental.

by rbecker 6y ago

TallGuyShort 6y ago
Recycling is better for your brand than the environment. Reuse dilutes your brand and reduces sales.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Reuse might dilute some brands, for others it’s a key strength which drives sales. I can’t name a tech company this applies to though, which is a shame.
  - TallGuyShort 6y ago
    That's a good point. I drive high mileage Toyotas because I love their legendary reliability. I've never bought a new car. I suppose the advancement of the technology is a bigger / faster factor in tech.
    - oauea 6y ago
      It's obviously a much better business model to sell you a new car every year by artificially making the old one break.
  - dheera 6y ago
    > I can’t name a tech company this applies to though It definitely applies to professional camera equipment, where the cost of buying all your lenses, filters, flashes, and everything else every couple of years is actually beyond almost everyone's budgets. Professionals and serious hobbyists usually upgrade their camera bodies every 2-5 years but often keep lenses around for at least a decade or two if not more. The entry-level cameras are another story though, and are littered with plastic trash lenses that usually malfunction a month or two before their warranty expires.
- ardit33 6y ago
  Correct.... Not sure why you are being downvoted There is also a desire for apple to quality control, and not have lots of used devices around that will need to be serviced again at some point.
- usr1106 6y ago
  > Reuse dilutes your brand and reduces sales Depends on the customer. I would never buy an Apple device and neither would most of my friends, because they have diluted their brand by their long term unethical practices. Unfortunately they still have too many customers who think differently or not at all. Once California is mostly uninhabitable it will change. But that will not happen the next couple of quarters, so they continue.
- dahart 6y ago
  Does that explain Apple's refurb program? https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
  - TallGuyShort 6y ago
    No, it explains the lawsuit mentioned in the article.
    - dahart 6y ago
      Does it? How so? Can you clarify the connection? Apple does re-use hardware, so isn’t that evidence they don’t agree with you? Doesn’t it mean they believe reuse is good for their brand and not diluting sales? Maybe - since they do both (reuse and recycle) - this has nothing to do with choosing one over the other, and it is more about choosing between recycling vs landfill, ensuring proper managed disposal?
      - TallGuyShort 6y ago
        They're suing for damages (to them, Apple) because of reuse in lieu of recycling. Not including the money they made. Apple believes this act damaged them. The connection is laughably obvious. Unless Apple shipped unsecured private or proprietary information on these devices to the recycling company, I don't know what other possibility you can think of. Your counterargument is a resale market entirely controlled by them wherein they can pick and choose every item.
        dahart 6y ago
        They’re suing for the amount that GEEP made breaking their contract, plus some punitive damages. That seems like it might be par for the course in a contract dispute. Breaking the contract does damage Apple in a number of ways. You seem to be making assumptions about which ones they care about most, without evidence, and in contradiction to what they’ve done and said. You said “Recycling is better for your brand than the environment. Reuse dilutes your brand and reduces sales.” How does Apple’s control of their resale (reuse) market prove your point here? It seems like the point you just brought up contradicts what you said earlier. Control of their resale market is evidence that it’s an important channel, that they care about it, and that they have strong reasons to prefer resale to recycling, no?
dheera 6y ago
Fully agree. Apple has always been anti-environmental in just about every design decision they make. Soldered SSDs? Proprietary connectors that change every couple of years? Lack of ability to take old mobile devices and run recent open-source OSes on them? Non-user-replaceable batteries? Everything about the ecosystem is designed to get people to buy new devices every 2 years. I don't own any Apple devices. I just upgraded my desktop computer's SSD from 2TB to 4TB for a grand total of $400 and nothing more in manufacturing impact than the SSD itself and a cardboard box for shipping. I have a PC case with modern internals but a 10-year-old power supply and a 15-year-old case. How's that for NOT creating unnecessary trash on the planet? With Apple I would have had to trash the PC and buy a new one because they solder the goddamn SSDs to the motherboard.
- wwright 6y ago
  You make a lot of fair points, but I think this is off the mark: > Proprietary connectors that change every couple of years? Is there any connector in particular you are thinking of that has been cycled out in just two years? All the ones I can think of lasted at least most of a decade. Some such as USB and the 30-pin connector lasted much, much longer than that (the 30-pin connector honestly lasted a long time for how crappy it was).
  - oauea 6y ago
    Just look at the dongles almost every mac user religiously carries with them.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      That's just because of USB-C, but USB-C is a standard that other manufacturers use that might have a 10-year lifespan. Why iPhones don't use USB-C is the bigger question.
  - kitsunesoba 6y ago
    There's definitely some hyperbole in that statement. In the past decade, there's been: - iPod 30-pin - Magsafe - Lightning Only one of those (Lightning) is still in use, and it was a replacement for the circa 2001 iPod 30-pin. Magsafe was abandoned in favor of the non-proprietary USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3. Most are predicting that Lightning will go the way of the dodo in favor of Type-C in another generation or two of iPhones. Thunderbolt 2 and Mini DisplayPort sometimes get mistaken as proprietary because they were mostly a Mac thing, but in reality it was an Intel thing. A handful of PCs had Thunderbolt 2, but it never really caught on, likely due to licensing fees. Hilariously enough I've seen a number of non-Apple devices equipped with Mini DisplayPort now that Apple has abandoned it. I guess there's the iPad Smart Connector, which has changed a couple of times in recent memory, but practically nobody but Apple made devices for it anyway. Most third part peripherals connect via Bluetooth, or now with the Pro and Air USB-C.
rossjudson 6y ago
I had this same reaction, but we can argue for the other side of it. It's highly likely that these devices have reliability problems, used-up batteries, etc...but are still being sold as grey market/relatively new devices. That would mean harm to Apple's reputation for quality, I guess.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > It's highly likely that these devices have reliability problems, used-up batteries, etc The problem here are that these parts aren't interchangeable.

Isn't reuse the best version of recycling? Who could have thought Apple was so anti-environmental.

TallGuyShort 6y ago

Recycling is better for your brand than the environment. Reuse dilutes your brand and reduces sales.

lostlogin 6y ago
Reuse might dilute some brands, for others it’s a key strength which drives sales. I can’t name a tech company this applies to though, which is a shame.
- TallGuyShort 6y ago
  That's a good point. I drive high mileage Toyotas because I love their legendary reliability. I've never bought a new car. I suppose the advancement of the technology is a bigger / faster factor in tech.
  - oauea 6y ago
    It's obviously a much better business model to sell you a new car every year by artificially making the old one break.
- dheera 6y ago
  > I can’t name a tech company this applies to though It definitely applies to professional camera equipment, where the cost of buying all your lenses, filters, flashes, and everything else every couple of years is actually beyond almost everyone's budgets. Professionals and serious hobbyists usually upgrade their camera bodies every 2-5 years but often keep lenses around for at least a decade or two if not more. The entry-level cameras are another story though, and are littered with plastic trash lenses that usually malfunction a month or two before their warranty expires.
ardit33 6y ago
Correct.... Not sure why you are being downvoted There is also a desire for apple to quality control, and not have lots of used devices around that will need to be serviced again at some point.
usr1106 6y ago
> Reuse dilutes your brand and reduces sales Depends on the customer. I would never buy an Apple device and neither would most of my friends, because they have diluted their brand by their long term unethical practices. Unfortunately they still have too many customers who think differently or not at all. Once California is mostly uninhabitable it will change. But that will not happen the next couple of quarters, so they continue.
dahart 6y ago
Does that explain Apple's refurb program? https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished https://www.apple.com/shop/refurbished
- TallGuyShort 6y ago
  No, it explains the lawsuit mentioned in the article.
  - dahart 6y ago
    Does it? How so? Can you clarify the connection? Apple does re-use hardware, so isn’t that evidence they don’t agree with you? Doesn’t it mean they believe reuse is good for their brand and not diluting sales? Maybe - since they do both (reuse and recycle) - this has nothing to do with choosing one over the other, and it is more about choosing between recycling vs landfill, ensuring proper managed disposal?
    - TallGuyShort 6y ago
      They're suing for damages (to them, Apple) because of reuse in lieu of recycling. Not including the money they made. Apple believes this act damaged them. The connection is laughably obvious. Unless Apple shipped unsecured private or proprietary information on these devices to the recycling company, I don't know what other possibility you can think of. Your counterargument is a resale market entirely controlled by them wherein they can pick and choose every item.
      - dahart 6y ago
        They’re suing for the amount that GEEP made breaking their contract, plus some punitive damages. That seems like it might be par for the course in a contract dispute. Breaking the contract does damage Apple in a number of ways. You seem to be making assumptions about which ones they care about most, without evidence, and in contradiction to what they’ve done and said. You said “Recycling is better for your brand than the environment. Reuse dilutes your brand and reduces sales.” How does Apple’s control of their resale (reuse) market prove your point here? It seems like the point you just brought up contradicts what you said earlier. Control of their resale market is evidence that it’s an important channel, that they care about it, and that they have strong reasons to prefer resale to recycling, no?

dheera 6y ago

Fully agree. Apple has always been anti-environmental in just about every design decision they make. Soldered SSDs? Proprietary connectors that change every couple of years? Lack of ability to take old mobile devices and run recent open-source OSes on them? Non-user-replaceable batteries? Everything about the ecosystem is designed to get people to buy new devices every 2 years. I don't own any Apple devices. I just upgraded my desktop computer's SSD from 2TB to 4TB for a grand total of $400 and nothing more in manufacturing impact than the SSD itself and a cardboard box for shipping. I have a PC case with modern internals but a 10-year-old power supply and a 15-year-old case. How's that for NOT creating unnecessary trash on the planet? With Apple I would have had to trash the PC and buy a new one because they solder the goddamn SSDs to the motherboard.

wwright 6y ago
You make a lot of fair points, but I think this is off the mark: > Proprietary connectors that change every couple of years? Is there any connector in particular you are thinking of that has been cycled out in just two years? All the ones I can think of lasted at least most of a decade. Some such as USB and the 30-pin connector lasted much, much longer than that (the 30-pin connector honestly lasted a long time for how crappy it was).
- oauea 6y ago
  Just look at the dongles almost every mac user religiously carries with them.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    That's just because of USB-C, but USB-C is a standard that other manufacturers use that might have a 10-year lifespan. Why iPhones don't use USB-C is the bigger question.
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  There's definitely some hyperbole in that statement. In the past decade, there's been: - iPod 30-pin - Magsafe - Lightning Only one of those (Lightning) is still in use, and it was a replacement for the circa 2001 iPod 30-pin. Magsafe was abandoned in favor of the non-proprietary USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 3. Most are predicting that Lightning will go the way of the dodo in favor of Type-C in another generation or two of iPhones. Thunderbolt 2 and Mini DisplayPort sometimes get mistaken as proprietary because they were mostly a Mac thing, but in reality it was an Intel thing. A handful of PCs had Thunderbolt 2, but it never really caught on, likely due to licensing fees. Hilariously enough I've seen a number of non-Apple devices equipped with Mini DisplayPort now that Apple has abandoned it. I guess there's the iPad Smart Connector, which has changed a couple of times in recent memory, but practically nobody but Apple made devices for it anyway. Most third part peripherals connect via Bluetooth, or now with the Pro and Air USB-C.

rossjudson 6y ago

I had this same reaction, but we can argue for the other side of it. It's highly likely that these devices have reliability problems, used-up batteries, etc...but are still being sold as grey market/relatively new devices. That would mean harm to Apple's reputation for quality, I guess.

inetknght 6y ago
> It's highly likely that these devices have reliability problems, used-up batteries, etc The problem here are that these parts aren't interchangeable.