5 ms·
They'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.
by Tomminn 6y ago
They'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 When that kernel version becomes outdated and the hardware maker doesn't make drivers for any newer one, it prevents newer versions of the OS from being installed on the older hardware.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.