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Then let the science speak for itself. What annoys me most is the integration of greenwashing into advertising, and people _eat this up up like hotcakes_. For

Then let the science speak for itself. What annoys me most is the integration of greenwashing into advertising, and people _eat this up up like hotcakes_. For example, Apple is not a green company by any objective measure. Their manufacturing process is absurdly water and energy intensive, and is based in countries that have some of the highest co2 emissions. They intentionally slow down and disable perfectly fine devices that have a lot of life left in them, encouraging rampart consumerism and ‘electronics as fashion wear’. They intentionally prevent people from repairing perfectly fine devices. Yet in their advertising and corporate culture, they plaster how ‘green’ they are but it reality one of the worst companies for the planet.

cagenut 4y ago
The "science" says being fixated on ad-campaigns is inane and a poor exercise in prioritization/judgement. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect... The anti-pattern here is making this about your personal relationship to media and brands instead of being about the physics of fossil fuels.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Pretty difficult to draw that conclusion from your source. It only tells us the consumption, not the ease of reducing it or subsequent effects.
quonn 4y ago
My iPhone is almost five years old and my mom uses my previous one. It‘s still going fast. Certainly the support is far longer than for Android devices.
- fsflover 4y ago
  It's easy to compare with crappy Androids. Try to compare with my 12+-year-old laptop running latest Debian and not showing any sign of stopped updates. Same I expect from GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone).
  - dagmx 4y ago
    Do GNU/Linux phones have open source drivers for the hardware components?
    - fsflover 4y ago
      Yes, they do. The first one even runs an FSF-endorsed OS (PureOS).
      - dagmx 4y ago
        What SoC are they running that provides OSS drivers though?
        fsflover 4y ago
        https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827 https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...
        dagmx 4y ago
        Thanks for the link. I’m not sure I’d personally make the hardware trade off by using those SoCs but power to anyone who stands by their FOSS convictions by doing so
        fsflover 4y ago
        Unless you do really heavy stuff with your phone (which?), these smartphones are sufficiently powerful for most applications. NoScript in Firefox helps. Sent from my Pinephone.
        dagmx 4y ago
        That’s a fallacy unfortunately that I wish people wouldn’t further because it only views performance in a single dimension. Better performance helps with everything from snappiness to battery life , image processing and a ton of other things that I benefit from daily. None of that is heavy for my current generation SoC but would be for those in your list
- josephcsible 4y ago
  My Pixel 6 will get five years of official security updates, and if past phones are any indication, it'll get several more years of unofficial ones via custom ROMs like LineageOS after that. Once Apple decides your iPhone is no longer worthy of getting security updates, you're just out of luck, and your choices are add it to our growing e-waste problem or accept a bunch of security vulnerabilities that nobody will ever fix.
sokoloff 4y ago
My family has five phones, one 13 mini, and the other four were all Sept 2018 releases (iPhone X variants). They all work fine and I’ve been able to easily replace batteries on the four-year old phones, a side button (drop damage) and a screen (drop damage). None of those repairs were difficult nor expensive (the side button was fiddly to get to, but still easy, just tedious). I expect we’ll get close to 6 years from the iPhone X’s. That feels like it will be more than competitive with the typical Android phone.
- mindslight 4y ago
  That you're talking about 4 and 6 years as a long time demonstrates just how normalized the horribly wasteful consumer electronics market has become. The receiver I'm listening to music with is three decades old. Car is over a decade, and I don't consider it old. Washer and dryer 10-20? Yes there is progress in technology that makes new things more efficient (a class D amp would be more efficient than AB, heat pumps better than resistive, etc), but the mobile phone market is certainly not the PC market we experienced from 8088->x86_64 either. Most of the "innovation" driving incompatibilities and obsolescence has been basic software churn.
  - exabrial 4y ago
    This is precisely what I’m talking about. I don’t replace my hvac every 5 years because Lennox came out with a new heat pump.
uxp100 4y ago
> They intentionally slow down and disable perfectly fine devices that have a lot of life left in them I’m not sure what you’re referring to by disable, but wasn’t the slowing down an effort to make devices continue to behave predictably with degraded batteries? Isn’t this a “green” feature? (I’m not sure I actually believe this, but I do kinda feel like your list was just a laundry list of stock anti Apple complaints twisted to somehow relate to “green” issues)
- ericd 4y ago
  Yes, it’s a green feature that’s meant to help the UX, because the alternative is worse, people read way too much into that.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dane-pgp 4y ago
> For example, Apple is not a green company by any objective measure. To provide some additional context, Apple's aim[0] is to be carbon neutral (across its supply chain and products) by 2030. That puts it ahead of about 99% of regions in the world[1]. I don't know how "absurdly water ... intensive" the company is, though, or what environmental damage it might be responsible for in that regard. [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/apple-charges-forward-to-2030-carbon-neutral-goal-adding-9-gigawatts-of-clean-power-and-doubling-supplier-commitments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/apple-charges-forward... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality#Countries_and_nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality#Countries_an...
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  That doesn't mean anything, except that appearing green is expected to lead to more sales than the amount of money they'll pay in carbon credits. If you're polluting and then pay a tax, you don't automatically become non polluting.
  - scaredginger 4y ago
    100% agreed, let's not forget how dodgy carbon credits can be too
- evandale 4y ago
  > That puts it ahead of about 99% of regions in the world I'm sorry, but "aiming" to do something doesn't put you ahead of anyone. Words will never speak louder than actions.
  - dane-pgp 4y ago
    To be fair, the countries I was comparing Apple to are also only "aiming" to do something about their carbon emissions.
- danhor 4y ago
  Apple plans to reduce emissions by 75% till 2030 and fill the gap with carbon offsets, which unfortunately all-too-often don't mean anything. Reducing their emissions by 75% is an admirable goal, filling the gap with carbon offsets and advertising with them not so much.

cagenut 4y ago

The "science" says being fixated on ad-campaigns is inane and a poor exercise in prioritization/judgement. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect... The anti-pattern here is making this about your personal relationship to media and brands instead of being about the physics of fossil fuels.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Pretty difficult to draw that conclusion from your source. It only tells us the consumption, not the ease of reducing it or subsequent effects.

quonn 4y ago

My iPhone is almost five years old and my mom uses my previous one. It‘s still going fast. Certainly the support is far longer than for Android devices.

fsflover 4y ago
It's easy to compare with crappy Androids. Try to compare with my 12+-year-old laptop running latest Debian and not showing any sign of stopped updates. Same I expect from GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone).
- dagmx 4y ago
  Do GNU/Linux phones have open source drivers for the hardware components?
  - fsflover 4y ago
    Yes, they do. The first one even runs an FSF-endorsed OS (PureOS).
    - dagmx 4y ago
      What SoC are they running that provides OSS drivers though?
      - fsflover 4y ago
        https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-phones/6827 https://forums.puri.sm/t/comparing-specs-of-upcoming-linux-p...
        dagmx 4y ago
        Thanks for the link. I’m not sure I’d personally make the hardware trade off by using those SoCs but power to anyone who stands by their FOSS convictions by doing so
        fsflover 4y ago
        Unless you do really heavy stuff with your phone (which?), these smartphones are sufficiently powerful for most applications. NoScript in Firefox helps. Sent from my Pinephone.
        dagmx 4y ago
        That’s a fallacy unfortunately that I wish people wouldn’t further because it only views performance in a single dimension. Better performance helps with everything from snappiness to battery life , image processing and a ton of other things that I benefit from daily. None of that is heavy for my current generation SoC but would be for those in your list
josephcsible 4y ago
My Pixel 6 will get five years of official security updates, and if past phones are any indication, it'll get several more years of unofficial ones via custom ROMs like LineageOS after that. Once Apple decides your iPhone is no longer worthy of getting security updates, you're just out of luck, and your choices are add it to our growing e-waste problem or accept a bunch of security vulnerabilities that nobody will ever fix.

sokoloff 4y ago

My family has five phones, one 13 mini, and the other four were all Sept 2018 releases (iPhone X variants). They all work fine and I’ve been able to easily replace batteries on the four-year old phones, a side button (drop damage) and a screen (drop damage). None of those repairs were difficult nor expensive (the side button was fiddly to get to, but still easy, just tedious). I expect we’ll get close to 6 years from the iPhone X’s. That feels like it will be more than competitive with the typical Android phone.

mindslight 4y ago
That you're talking about 4 and 6 years as a long time demonstrates just how normalized the horribly wasteful consumer electronics market has become. The receiver I'm listening to music with is three decades old. Car is over a decade, and I don't consider it old. Washer and dryer 10-20? Yes there is progress in technology that makes new things more efficient (a class D amp would be more efficient than AB, heat pumps better than resistive, etc), but the mobile phone market is certainly not the PC market we experienced from 8088->x86_64 either. Most of the "innovation" driving incompatibilities and obsolescence has been basic software churn.
- exabrial 4y ago
  This is precisely what I’m talking about. I don’t replace my hvac every 5 years because Lennox came out with a new heat pump.

uxp100 4y ago

> They intentionally slow down and disable perfectly fine devices that have a lot of life left in them I’m not sure what you’re referring to by disable, but wasn’t the slowing down an effort to make devices continue to behave predictably with degraded batteries? Isn’t this a “green” feature? (I’m not sure I actually believe this, but I do kinda feel like your list was just a laundry list of stock anti Apple complaints twisted to somehow relate to “green” issues)

ericd 4y ago
Yes, it’s a green feature that’s meant to help the UX, because the alternative is worse, people read way too much into that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dane-pgp 4y ago

> For example, Apple is not a green company by any objective measure. To provide some additional context, Apple's aim[0] is to be carbon neutral (across its supply chain and products) by 2030. That puts it ahead of about 99% of regions in the world[1]. I don't know how "absurdly water ... intensive" the company is, though, or what environmental damage it might be responsible for in that regard. [0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/apple-charges-forward-to-2030-carbon-neutral-goal-adding-9-gigawatts-of-clean-power-and-doubling-supplier-commitments/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/10/apple-charges-forward... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality#Countries_and_nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_neutrality#Countries_an...

jokethrowaway 4y ago
That doesn't mean anything, except that appearing green is expected to lead to more sales than the amount of money they'll pay in carbon credits. If you're polluting and then pay a tax, you don't automatically become non polluting.
- scaredginger 4y ago
  100% agreed, let's not forget how dodgy carbon credits can be too
evandale 4y ago
> That puts it ahead of about 99% of regions in the world I'm sorry, but "aiming" to do something doesn't put you ahead of anyone. Words will never speak louder than actions.
- dane-pgp 4y ago
  To be fair, the countries I was comparing Apple to are also only "aiming" to do something about their carbon emissions.
danhor 4y ago
Apple plans to reduce emissions by 75% till 2030 and fill the gap with carbon offsets, which unfortunately all-too-often don't mean anything. Reducing their emissions by 75% is an admirable goal, filling the gap with carbon offsets and advertising with them not so much.