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Apple's “Disposable and Unfixable” Airpods [video]
- Tomminn 6y agoThey're tiny, they're valuable, and they last a decent while. Of all the places to point fingers at waste problems, this is a strange one.
- wbkang 6y agoApple probably sold more a hundred million airpods by now. Sure, it's not the biggest problem but it would make a difference. Plus, they have a history of making less repairable products so I think it's stil good to try to convince them to do it better.
- Tomminn 6y agoSo long as you accept that if it's expected that only 1 in 10 people repair their airpods, this only helps if making them repairable results in less than a 10% increase in materials used, while not increasing failure rate at all. I can easily see how having a removable battery might increase failure rate in a product like this
- Someone1234 6y agoThis comments reads like you started out with a conclusion then worked backwards, filling in the holes without basis (e.g. replaceable batteries increase failure rates).
- shajznnckfke 6y agoI’m curious how many Airpods it takes to produce as much waste as a single car.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoYou have to account for the fact that the car is dramatically more likely to be recycled.
- GeekyBear 6y ago> Of all the places to point fingers at waste problems, this is a strange one. Google's refusal to provide Android updates past a meager few years certainly results in a much larger volume of electronic waste in the landfills every year.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoThat isn't Google, it's the phone and chip manufacturers. What really prevents the phones from being updated is that they publish neither open source drivers nor hardware documentation, and then ship blob drivers that only work with a specific kernel version. When that kernel version becomes outdated and the hardware maker doesn't make drivers for any newer one, it prevents newer versions of the OS from being installed on the older hardware. Granted Google could probably lean on them a little harder to stop doing that. Moreover, Apple does the same thing. They might give you longer than HTC, but they still stop issuing updates to perfectly operational devices, and don't publish the documentation necessary for anybody else to make an OS for them. Compare this to PCs where you can still install the latest Windows or Linux on some piece of hardware that originally shipped with a CRT monitor and whose manufacturer went out of business a decade ago.
- selsta 6y agoApple is still providing security updates for the iPhone 5S, that’s an over 7 year old device.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoWhich is to imply they're not still providing security updates for the iPhone 4, which is 7 years newer than the first generation AMD64 machines you can still install the latest version of Windows or Linux on.
- GeekyBear 6y agoMicrosoft provides a version of Windows 10 that works on machines with 512 megabytes of RAM like the iPhone 4 has? Nope. Windows 10 and iOS both require two Gigs of RAM at a minimum, although Microsoft's minimum OS requirements have always been regarded as something of a joke in the industry.
- spodek 6y agoYou're saying what we've been saying about the environment for generations. Plastic replacing elephant tusk for billiard balls and cars replacing horses filling streets with dung made such small impacts and provided such benefit. Who would have imagined we'd fill the oceans with plastic and the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, among other waste problems? Maybe these unintended side effect are worth considering more than we think.
- dubrocks 6y agoIt’s a very small amount of plastic and metal. It really doesn’t matter.
- Eric_WVGG 6y agoI once did some napkin math to figure out how many Teslas worth of lithium ion battery have been made (total). I was expecting dozens, but came up with low thousands. (Gotta factor in the case, after all.) Still insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Worrying about the environmental impact of AirPods is like legislating shower flow while turning a blind eye to the useless millions of acres of lawns and the water they suck up (1.7 trillion gallons vs 234 trillion gallons). Dumb, a bit insulting.
- karakot 6y agoyeah, an ultimate first world problem. A single average Costco trip produces 10 times more plastic waste.
- 14 6y agoFor all the people saying "they are tiny" "it is such a small amount of plastic" yes but that is not the point. The point is about the greater trend to make products less repairable by the end user.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hobby-coder-guy 6y agoNo shit. They are headphones.
- Razengan 6y agoWhat the hell do you even hope to fix in something that small and who else would you trust to repair something that expensive?
- spiffytech 6y agoAirpods are on the cheap end of the spectrum of things people routinely have repaired by 3rd party shops. This is common for phones/computers, appliances, expensive watches, cars, and gas landscaping tools. TVs, hifis, and more were often independently serviced back when they had discrete parts that could be replaced.
- mqus 6y agoThere are people that repair tiny parts in expensive watches for decades now. And they can do that easily because those watches are designed to last and to be repairable. I don't see how either of your arguments are valid. Especially if your thing is expensive you want to repair it instead of replace it. And concerning trust: We repair expensive cars regularly without any trust issues.
- vosper 6y agoAre these expensive watches $200, or $2000(0)? It’s hard for me to imagine it being economically worthwhile to do intricate repairs on $200 watches, or that it would end up costing less than buying a new watch.
- Apocryphon 6y agoDepends on the nature of the repair. Most smartphone fixes don't cost $200.
- AnthonyMouse 6y agoMoreover, products designed to be repairable have low repair costs, and don't require uncommon expertise to repair. You don't need a specialized shop staffed with electrical engineers to replace the batteries in your TV remote.
- dastx 6y agoYes but have you seen how they care about the environment so much that they didn't include a charger and headphones?
- autoexec 6y agoThey still include them in the apple store where they're now individually packaged creating even more waste. They just wanted to create an opportunity to upsell people on higher priced versions of both.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoEco-fascist tears make my dick rock hard. Ironically some big tech company like Apple is going to be the first to produce the sophisticated nanobots capable of sifting through junkyards and recycling everything humanity produces. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Stop with the autistic screeching you fucking drama queens.
- jiggawatts 6y agoPeople like to work themselves up about things like this, but the non-repairability of modern electronics is a simple matter of physics and economics. The physics aspect is that the most straightforward way of assembling such tiny and lightweight devices and have them be at least somewhat waterproof is to glue them together. The economics aspect is more important. I just had my AirPods break last week. I took them to an Apple store and they were replaced under warranty for $0. This still felt expensive, because it took half of my Saturday to drive to an Apple store, sit around while they tested the device, and then drive home. Simply having my free time wasted is -- to me -- a comparable opportunity cost to simply paying for a pair of replacement AirPods. In general, everything breaks, and eventually is simply not worthwhile repairing because replacement with a newer model with more features is a more attractive proposition. Making things repairable is more expensive, so there's a tipping point where it is counterproductive for manufacturers to design their products for longevity. This tipping point changes with the wealth of nations over time. As people's time becomes more and more expensive, bothering to repair cheap gadgets becomes less worthwhile. Paying for someone to repair them becomes increasingly expensive. Repair is a service, electronic gadgets are products. As the cost of services increases relative to manufacturing, the tipping point moves. Of course, there's always going to be the complainers bemoaning the changing times. These complaints are literally stating: "I don't like manufactured products getting so cheap that they can be simply thrown away! I prefer the good old days of relative poverty where people had to resort to expensive services to repair even more expensive products! I miss those times!" Don't listen to the Luddites, embrace the increased wealth of nations made possible through manufacturing automation.
- snazz 6y agoI think it's possible to bemoan the environmental impact without being a Luddite who would prefer "the good old days of relative poverty". Your other points are valid and it's certainly clear why manufactured electronics are the way they are, but it's unclear how the goalposts could be shifted to encourage environmental responsibility.
- jiggawatts 6y agoIn their recent iPhone 12 presentation, Apple made it very clear that they are one of the more environmentally friendly electronics manufacturing companies in the world. They have a net zero carbon footprint, they recycle as much material as it is feasible to do so, and they've even worked hard to source rare earth metals responsibly. Meanwhile people are frothing at the mouth because the tiniest, most compact device they make isn't modular. That's just asinine.
- systemvoltage 6y agoNone of these people have ever worked on a tiny electro-mechanical assembly that needs to happen on a monumental scale. It’s impossible to make this thing repairable without sacrificing size or it’s water resistance and more. I’ve worked in HVM and have a huge respect for people who make this possible. iPhone? Sure they could probably try making it repairable. It’s difficult though. I worked in a company that did competitive analysis of iPhone PCB. It’s insane. WLCSP and various CoWoS packages everywhere. Not a single mm^2 wasted. Apple Watch is the most amazing thing ever - we did cross sections and X-rays of the SoCs, lots of flat flex and hybrid PCB components, glue is king - companies like Nitto specialize in making glue for assembly. I can’t imagine how to make it repairable. It’s hard. I also wish things were repairable but then people will complain its not waterproof or whatever. One of the things that I absolutely despise is the habit people have for consumer entitlement. People are assholes - just ask anyone who has worked in a call center or H&M cash register. General public is thankless and constantly complain about how much everything just sucks. It's almost like a passtime. Unrelated thankless jobs: Imagine you’re an engineer working on Siri and the entire world makes fun of your work constantly. And it’s not your fault that Apple doesn’t collect insane amounts of data like Google does to make AI work. This is debatable. Edit: let’s not talk about Siri. I’m sorry to bring it up, just had the thought come to my mind about it today when I watched Linus Tech Tips’s video about Siri. I was like damn, it must suck to be in that team. They’re just people like you and me.
- nafizh 6y agoWhere’s the reference that Siri’s abysmal performance is from a lack of data? Apple might not have Google scale data but it should have enough to make it work through some sort of self-supervised/semi-supervised learning.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI am not an expert in this area, I’ll trust your word. I edited the comment. My guess was that Google has a knowledge graph thing and it’s been collecting people’s behavior for more than a decade. It's also their core business, for Apple, Siri is not.
- tambourine_man 6y agoApple has a recycling program. You get a few bucks back (in Apple credit) when you send them your old stuff, even from other manufacturers. https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in I’m very sensitive to environmental issues and keep my devices for a really long time, but being battery replaceable is not the panacea it appears to be.
- post_break 6y agoJust to counter, the samsung galaxy buds+ have replaceable coin cell lithium batteries. You can even replace the battery in the case. Assuming you're technical, otherwise a 3rd party repair shop could do it.
- non-cotton 6y agoIs there a set of earphones that's repairable? Not full-size cans, but earphones? Most of the ones I've had have that have failed did so at the cable connection. Without the cable I'd imagine these will last longer than your average pair of earphones, and I don't see them creating much more waste; less if anything.
- autoexec 6y agoThe video says that samsung has their own version of an airpod that has a replaceable battery. Anyone can repair/replace a damaged headphone cable although it's sometimes not very easy. If it breaks at/near the plug it'll be a lot easier.
- mulle_nat 6y agoWith builtin non-removable batteries, companies should be forced to put an expiration date on the package just like on milk. Good for use until 2024.