5 ms·

> For all the talk on the part of Apple of being more sustainable and green what ?!!!!??????!!! there is absolutely nothing sustainable or green about apple, i

> For all the talk on the part of Apple of being more sustainable and green what ?!!!!??????!!! there is absolutely nothing sustainable or green about apple, it's products, or its business practices.

internet2000 2y ago
From the featured article: > The MacBook Air is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, a first for the company. This includes 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled tin in the solder and gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards, 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets (which is 99% of the rare earth elements in the device), 100% recycled cobalt in the MagSafe connector’s battery and magnets, 100% recycled copper in the main logic board (also a first), 90% recycled steel in the battery tray, keyboard feature plate, and trackpad beam plate, and 35% or more recycled plastic in other components. > Additionally, over 25 percent of the electricity used to manufacture the device was sourced from supplier clean energy projects. And 100 percent of the wood fiber used in the packaging is recycled, as is 99 percent of the fiber-based plastic.
- pquki4 2y ago
  Don't be fooled, while it is nice they do this, at the end of the day it is just greenwashing. They design their laptops in such way that they are not (easily) repairable, and the failure of one component could mean replacement of the entire logic board. And echoing the parent comment, if you think 8G/256GB is good enough at the time of purchase but find it unusable because of a change in the way you use your computer, the only option is to trade-in/sell it instead of just upgrading them. (The vast majority ofWindows laptops on the market has a replaceable SSD.)
  - flawsofar 2y ago
    what’s wrong with trading or selling?
    - eviks 2y ago
      It just pushes the problem to someone else
      - flawsofar 2y ago
        What problem? Holding onto a device for its lifetime?
        eviks 2y ago
        The problem of using a device and extending its lifetime (remember, this is a variable, not a constant) (and Apple holding onto a device that is traded in doesn't help when the device could be used by the original owner with an upgrade)
  - stephen_g 2y ago
    On the other hand, every Apple device I’ve had has been usable for longer (and mostly with no repair) than the non-Apple laptops or phones I’ve had. For example, my old MacBook Pro was from mid-2015, I only replaced it with a new M2 Pro early last year - it was my primary machine for almost eight years, with just one battery replacement. The current iPhone I’m writing this on is from late 2020 (12 Pro) and still in fine working condition, I can’t see myself having any reason to upgrade this year.
    - dmz73 2y ago
      And I have a HP ZBook G3 purchased in 2016 that I still use and have no need of replacing, it came with 32GB RAM, 512GB nvme SSD, 4k display, 3 year on-site warranty and has been upgraded to 64GB RAM 2TB nvme SSD + 4TB nvme SSD. I have mid 2020 Samsung Galaxy FE20, inherited from my wife when she upgraded on a work plan, still getting regular firmware updates and again I seen no need to upgrade this phone for another few years. Oldest computer I use on regular basis is Samsung ATIV Pro 700T from 2013 with upgraded storage (I would have upgraded the RAM if it was possible). At work I have a 2020 i5 macbook air which is almost useless compared to both of those non-Apple machines and 2022 M2 air which works quite nicely for now but since it is not possible to upgrade it will likely be obsolete in a couple of years (like the 2020 macbook) when Apple decides that you now must have 16GB RAM for Mac OS 14 or 15 or whatever. So Apple hardware is neither special nor unique nor worth the premium.
      - kmlx 2y ago
        > So Apple hardware is neither special nor unique nor worth the premium. i always sell my apple products. i usually get at least 50% back on what i paid.
      - Tagbert 2y ago
        And my niece is still using my 2014 MBP that I gave her a couple of years ago.
  - fastball 2y ago
    This is nice in theory, but to call this greenwashing, you would need to have some idea about how often SSDs in "easily repairable" laptops actually do get replaced. If it is a large percentage, then sure, you're right. But if it is a very small percentage (which I am almost certain it is), then Apple's efforts to use recycled materials / have more power efficient chips / in general make devices that seem to last longer than various competitors is going to have a much larger impact than the repairability.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    You can just buy external drives if you need more storage space. And one of the bonuses of a Mac is that they all come with TB4 so no compromise on performance.
    - Marsymars 2y ago
      Nitpick: Apple has various recent macs with TB3, or as they call it, "Thunderbolt / USB 4". In the case of Apple, the primary (and maybe only?) difference is the number of external displays supported: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh35952/mac https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh35952/mac
      - paulmd 2y ago
        this isn't really an apple thing. thunderbolt requires the ability to use multiple displays, if you don't then you can't advertise thunderbolt. since macbook airs don't have multi-display capability, you can't call it thunderbolt. you can call it usb4, or usb-c 40gbps, or whatever, but it's not technically thunderbolt - thunderbolt is the brand for the full-capability standard. this is not something consumers normally bump up against since x86 laptops generally either have multi-display support or don't exist in a product tier where 40gbps is a thing. Stuff like chromebooks falls into the latter, too cheap to have 40gbps, and the entire x86 space is dominated by literally two companies both of which happen to support multi-display. but you'll probably see this show up more in ARM notebooks once other vendors have a shot at releasing processors besides just those 2. like idk what you expect anyone to say here - usb standards are kind of a shitty free-for-all and always have been. usb gives you the freedom to make a confusing port that doesn't support everything. The simple fact of the matter is the base-tier Mx processors don't support multi-display without a software-driven dongle, that's all you need to know, it's otherwise a full-capability tb3 port, basically usb4 but without the baggage of being unable to connect to certain tb3 devices like usb4 sometimes does. there is absolutely a justification for laptops like air to not have multi-display support. not everybody needs it, and those processors cross-over between the tablet and laptop spaces. it's a fancy tablet apu, regardless of how good it performs. the sin is not offering a M3 Pro variant on the 15" MBA, and I'd say offering the M3 on the MBPs at all. But it totally makes sense for ultramobility laptops to cut power and cost, and you'll almost definitely see ultrabooks start doing that as the wintel monopoly crumbles over the next year or two. That will be branded as USB4 and won't necessarily support all the capabilities of TB3... or be compatible with all legacy TB3 devices. USB standard sucks, or rather: USB Implementers Forum is responsive to their customers, who aren't you (at least not directly).
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Apple hardware lasts much longer than any PC I’ve ever had.
- pooooplaaa 2y ago
  What a joke.
- throwup238 2y ago
  What they don't tell you is that all of those recycled metals are both cheaper and greener than freshly mined and almost always have been. Steel and aluminum take less energy to recycle that to mine and extract.
  - voisin 2y ago
    If there was any truth to what you are saying, then it would be industry standard to manufacture in this manner, which it is decidedly not. Perhaps “less energy” is only one input to cost, which is why the rest of the industry doesn’t have near the level of recycled components.
    - fulafel 2y ago
      There's more demand for metals like aluminium and iron than gets recycled, so only part of the demand gets satisfied this way and there's still demand for metals produced through mining. This is also why the price stays at the level of the mined metals.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwup238 2y ago
      > Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium from the raw ore. In 2022, the United States produced 3.86 metric tons of secondary aluminium for every metric ton of primary aluminium produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling > 42% of crude steel produced is recycled material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_by_material#Iron_and_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_by_material#Iron_and... The only reason it's not industry standard to use 100% recycled metals is that it's pointless greenwashing. Everyone already uses as much recycled metal as they can get their hands on because it's cheaper.
fastball 2y ago
Which computing device manufacturer is more sustainable or green?
jjtheblunt 2y ago
what a grievously incompetent take on a company that publishes clearly for decades the removal of toxic materials long before others, which runs its engineering campus off solar, and so on, long before others did the same, as just two examples.
- jnaina 2y ago
  Par for the course on HN to view anything remotely Apple as negative. It is what it is. Best to glaze over such comments and ignore the urge to rebut/comment/counter/flame. Greatly improves the S/N ratio IMHO.
  - jjtheblunt 2y ago
    Good point. Definitely an interesting emergent bandwagon phenomenon, i find myself thinking. Years ago i didn’t notice such bandwagon attention seeking sorts of derisive nonsense nearly as much if basically ever. Like you said, it’s sort of just a reality nowadays.
  - Tagbert 2y ago
    How is it “par for the course” for disagreeing with since an obviously biased and unsupported post like that? “there is absolutely nothing sustainable or green about apple, it's products, or its business practices.”
    - jnaina 2y ago
      It is HN after all with its notable bias against all things Apple. Never figured out why. My first fews months of my time on HN can be best described by the famous XKCD strip per link below. Foolhardy attempts as I soon realised. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
    - jjtheblunt 2y ago
      I think the par comment is noting anti Apple bandwagons.

> For all the talk on the part of Apple of being more sustainable and green what ?!!!!??????!!! there is absolutely nothing sustainable or green about apple, it's products, or its business practices.

internet2000 2y ago

From the featured article: > The MacBook Air is made with over 50 percent recycled content overall, a first for the company. This includes 100% recycled aluminum in the enclosure, 100% recycled tin in the solder and gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards, 100% recycled rare earth elements in all magnets (which is 99% of the rare earth elements in the device), 100% recycled cobalt in the MagSafe connector’s battery and magnets, 100% recycled copper in the main logic board (also a first), 90% recycled steel in the battery tray, keyboard feature plate, and trackpad beam plate, and 35% or more recycled plastic in other components. > Additionally, over 25 percent of the electricity used to manufacture the device was sourced from supplier clean energy projects. And 100 percent of the wood fiber used in the packaging is recycled, as is 99 percent of the fiber-based plastic.

pquki4 2y ago
Don't be fooled, while it is nice they do this, at the end of the day it is just greenwashing. They design their laptops in such way that they are not (easily) repairable, and the failure of one component could mean replacement of the entire logic board. And echoing the parent comment, if you think 8G/256GB is good enough at the time of purchase but find it unusable because of a change in the way you use your computer, the only option is to trade-in/sell it instead of just upgrading them. (The vast majority ofWindows laptops on the market has a replaceable SSD.)
- flawsofar 2y ago
  what’s wrong with trading or selling?
  - eviks 2y ago
    It just pushes the problem to someone else
    - flawsofar 2y ago
      What problem? Holding onto a device for its lifetime?
      - eviks 2y ago
        The problem of using a device and extending its lifetime (remember, this is a variable, not a constant) (and Apple holding onto a device that is traded in doesn't help when the device could be used by the original owner with an upgrade)
- stephen_g 2y ago
  On the other hand, every Apple device I’ve had has been usable for longer (and mostly with no repair) than the non-Apple laptops or phones I’ve had. For example, my old MacBook Pro was from mid-2015, I only replaced it with a new M2 Pro early last year - it was my primary machine for almost eight years, with just one battery replacement. The current iPhone I’m writing this on is from late 2020 (12 Pro) and still in fine working condition, I can’t see myself having any reason to upgrade this year.
  - dmz73 2y ago
    And I have a HP ZBook G3 purchased in 2016 that I still use and have no need of replacing, it came with 32GB RAM, 512GB nvme SSD, 4k display, 3 year on-site warranty and has been upgraded to 64GB RAM 2TB nvme SSD + 4TB nvme SSD. I have mid 2020 Samsung Galaxy FE20, inherited from my wife when she upgraded on a work plan, still getting regular firmware updates and again I seen no need to upgrade this phone for another few years. Oldest computer I use on regular basis is Samsung ATIV Pro 700T from 2013 with upgraded storage (I would have upgraded the RAM if it was possible). At work I have a 2020 i5 macbook air which is almost useless compared to both of those non-Apple machines and 2022 M2 air which works quite nicely for now but since it is not possible to upgrade it will likely be obsolete in a couple of years (like the 2020 macbook) when Apple decides that you now must have 16GB RAM for Mac OS 14 or 15 or whatever. So Apple hardware is neither special nor unique nor worth the premium.
    - kmlx 2y ago
      > So Apple hardware is neither special nor unique nor worth the premium. i always sell my apple products. i usually get at least 50% back on what i paid.
    - Tagbert 2y ago
      And my niece is still using my 2014 MBP that I gave her a couple of years ago.
- fastball 2y ago
  This is nice in theory, but to call this greenwashing, you would need to have some idea about how often SSDs in "easily repairable" laptops actually do get replaced. If it is a large percentage, then sure, you're right. But if it is a very small percentage (which I am almost certain it is), then Apple's efforts to use recycled materials / have more power efficient chips / in general make devices that seem to last longer than various competitors is going to have a much larger impact than the repairability.
- threeseed 2y ago
  You can just buy external drives if you need more storage space. And one of the bonuses of a Mac is that they all come with TB4 so no compromise on performance.
  - Marsymars 2y ago
    Nitpick: Apple has various recent macs with TB3, or as they call it, "Thunderbolt / USB 4". In the case of Apple, the primary (and maybe only?) difference is the number of external displays supported: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh35952/mac https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/mac-help/mh35952/mac
    - paulmd 2y ago
      this isn't really an apple thing. thunderbolt requires the ability to use multiple displays, if you don't then you can't advertise thunderbolt. since macbook airs don't have multi-display capability, you can't call it thunderbolt. you can call it usb4, or usb-c 40gbps, or whatever, but it's not technically thunderbolt - thunderbolt is the brand for the full-capability standard. this is not something consumers normally bump up against since x86 laptops generally either have multi-display support or don't exist in a product tier where 40gbps is a thing. Stuff like chromebooks falls into the latter, too cheap to have 40gbps, and the entire x86 space is dominated by literally two companies both of which happen to support multi-display. but you'll probably see this show up more in ARM notebooks once other vendors have a shot at releasing processors besides just those 2. like idk what you expect anyone to say here - usb standards are kind of a shitty free-for-all and always have been. usb gives you the freedom to make a confusing port that doesn't support everything. The simple fact of the matter is the base-tier Mx processors don't support multi-display without a software-driven dongle, that's all you need to know, it's otherwise a full-capability tb3 port, basically usb4 but without the baggage of being unable to connect to certain tb3 devices like usb4 sometimes does. there is absolutely a justification for laptops like air to not have multi-display support. not everybody needs it, and those processors cross-over between the tablet and laptop spaces. it's a fancy tablet apu, regardless of how good it performs. the sin is not offering a M3 Pro variant on the 15" MBA, and I'd say offering the M3 on the MBPs at all. But it totally makes sense for ultramobility laptops to cut power and cost, and you'll almost definitely see ultrabooks start doing that as the wintel monopoly crumbles over the next year or two. That will be branded as USB4 and won't necessarily support all the capabilities of TB3... or be compatible with all legacy TB3 devices. USB standard sucks, or rather: USB Implementers Forum is responsive to their customers, who aren't you (at least not directly).
- ein0p 2y ago
  Apple hardware lasts much longer than any PC I’ve ever had.
pooooplaaa 2y ago
What a joke.
throwup238 2y ago
What they don't tell you is that all of those recycled metals are both cheaper and greener than freshly mined and almost always have been. Steel and aluminum take less energy to recycle that to mine and extract.
- voisin 2y ago
  If there was any truth to what you are saying, then it would be industry standard to manufacture in this manner, which it is decidedly not. Perhaps “less energy” is only one input to cost, which is why the rest of the industry doesn’t have near the level of recycled components.
  - fulafel 2y ago
    There's more demand for metals like aluminium and iron than gets recycled, so only part of the demand gets satisfied this way and there's still demand for metals produced through mining. This is also why the price stays at the level of the mined metals.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium from the raw ore. In 2022, the United States produced 3.86 metric tons of secondary aluminium for every metric ton of primary aluminium produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling > 42% of crude steel produced is recycled material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_by_material#Iron_and_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_by_material#Iron_and... The only reason it's not industry standard to use 100% recycled metals is that it's pointless greenwashing. Everyone already uses as much recycled metal as they can get their hands on because it's cheaper.

fastball 2y ago

Which computing device manufacturer is more sustainable or green?

jjtheblunt 2y ago

what a grievously incompetent take on a company that publishes clearly for decades the removal of toxic materials long before others, which runs its engineering campus off solar, and so on, long before others did the same, as just two examples.

jnaina 2y ago
Par for the course on HN to view anything remotely Apple as negative. It is what it is. Best to glaze over such comments and ignore the urge to rebut/comment/counter/flame. Greatly improves the S/N ratio IMHO.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  Good point. Definitely an interesting emergent bandwagon phenomenon, i find myself thinking. Years ago i didn’t notice such bandwagon attention seeking sorts of derisive nonsense nearly as much if basically ever. Like you said, it’s sort of just a reality nowadays.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  How is it “par for the course” for disagreeing with since an obviously biased and unsupported post like that? “there is absolutely nothing sustainable or green about apple, it's products, or its business practices.”
  - jnaina 2y ago
    It is HN after all with its notable bias against all things Apple. Never figured out why. My first fews months of my time on HN can be best described by the famous XKCD strip per link below. Foolhardy attempts as I soon realised. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
  - jjtheblunt 2y ago
    I think the par comment is noting anti Apple bandwagons.