6 ms·

Stop shipping hardware products that are only “beautifully designed”

29 points by brendanlim 14y ago

mirashii 14y ago
As is true with most things, this is a case of where consumers need to vote with their wallets. While it would be great if the world ran on great intentions and thinking for the future, the reality is that money talks today, and today is the most important of all days, because nobody knows if they'll be around tomorrow.
NonEUCitizen 14y ago
"PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) are guilty too – recyclability is incredibly low (and very expensive) and they do not decompose. Why can’t use a biodegradable material instead of silicon?" PCBs are NOT made of silicon. Integrated circuits are (but not their packages). PCBs are usually FR-4 material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board
- wells-riley 14y ago
  Thanks for enlightening me... updated my post accordingly.
dgreensp 14y ago
I don't see how "built to last" means "built out of cardboard." I can't find the original Rob Walker piece, but it sounds like it's talking about timeless quality vs. empty fashion, not about the environment. An iPhone lasts a long time, and the author should be comforted that not everyone can afford to buy a new one every time Apple bumps the version, naturally limiting Apple's ability to fill landfills with barely-used iPhones by launching new product features. The net footprint of a big company like Apple is surely complicated, as there are many ways to offset one's impact. I'm no expert, but Apple has a whole website on their strategy (http://www.apple.com/environment/ http://www.apple.com/environment/) that shows they are making an effort, perhaps a large one.
- wmf 14y ago
  No, he's saying that products that are destined to be obsoleted quickly should not be built to last. If something is disposable, make it look disposable. Of course, that's not going to happen.
  - dgreensp 14y ago
    Even if all our electronics were redesigned to biodegrade overnight if left outside in heavy rain, what's the point in making them look disposable?
    - wmf 14y ago
      It's more "honest". (Note that I'm not saying I agree with this argument.)
mindslight 14y ago
tldr - Admirer of gadget fashion design ponders wastefulness of consumer culture. Wants for token "recycling" to soothe his conscience. Looks at conceptual art projects as if they're close to practical technology. Finishes up penance and walks away thinking that he has earnestly evaluated his own wastefulness.
herval 14y ago
More like "please stop copying Apple's advertisement style". This is getting so out of hand that in Nexus Q case, for instance, you get this beautiful "ad-documentary" with a lot of people saying hyperbolic catch-phrases and not a single clue on what's the product all about...
- rimantas 14y ago
  Apple's advertising style is showing how device works—at least in case of iPhone and iPad.
  - herval 14y ago
    I mean the visual style - the cameras, use of background music, people reciting "beautiful", "astonishing", "marvelous" things staring at some point right/left of the camera, etc. As I said, they missed the most important aspect here: showing what the product actually does...
    - sp332 14y ago
      Here are the ads Apple ran for the new iPhone. All of them show the device being used. https://www.apple.com/iphone/videos/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/videos/
antidoh 14y ago
"why not embrace the throwaway culture and just make everything easy and practical to throw away?" Because enough people say the following: "I, for one, love my shiny new iPhone each year. No amount of (my own) preaching is going to get me to keep my iPhone 4S when Apple announces the iPhone 5 this year."
- gnaffle 14y ago
  I don't think most people say that. Tech geeks certainly do, but they're a minority. And in any case, most people don't have the money to buy a new smartphone every year. If Apple had an opt-in program where you could upgrade the screen, battery and logic board of your phone for $100, most people would opt for that.
astrodust 14y ago
The problem with products is not that they're made from materials like aluminum or silicon or glass but that these materials are combined in ways that make it very difficult to extract them from the finish product when recycling. Apple has gone a long way to making parts that are more "pure", where, for instance, the chassis of new computers is milled from a solid piece of metal that, once removed, can be shredded and reformed with no more difficulty than a drink can. The same goes, in principle, for the glass. The plastics in most computers are made from an exotic blend of materials and are not easily reprocessed. What we need more than cardboard computers is standards on how to manufacture products so they can be unmanufactured in the end and rebuilt into other things. The goal here is for 0% loss in the recovery cycle. Anything below 100% is not, by definition, sustainable. If that sounds impossible, consider that the natural ecosystem in which we all live tends towards a 100% recycling rate. There are very few natural byproducts that do not have a recovery path. For instance, most trees produce enormous amounts of "garbage" in the form of leaves but these are almost immediately recycled. Given that the natural world has been doing this for literally billions of years, there is much to be learned. A great book on this subject is Cradle to Cradle (http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm) which proposes radically re-thinking our industrial cycle.
- eswangren 14y ago
  Interesting that you bring up Apple here considering the fact that it's latest products cannot be recycled due to design decisions (I.e., melding the glass display onto the frame)
  - bcherry 14y ago
    Current recycling techniques cannot (supposedly) deal with this, but it's likely that new methods could be developed which could. Ideally, Apple's designers would actually work directly with recycling centers to develop a strategy for efficient recycling of their product. This could even be done later on, when the existing product is replaced with a new version.
  - astrodust 14y ago
drone 14y ago
To be clear: yes, you can make circuits out of all sorts of cool stuff. But, you can't make the high-speed, high-performance, ultra-compact circuits required to meet the demands of the products out of just anything. I'd love to see one doing layout for a big fat BGA device oscillating at 1.5GHz on a lasagna noodle, much less getting down to sub-6-mil traces, or 4+ layers. Pray tell though, what affordable semi-conductor material is there out there to replace silicon, that is readily recyclable and achieves the same target? I fear, too many people want their cake and to eat it too - you want the latest and greatest capabilities (want, not need), but you want them to make it in a way which it will not function, so that you can feel good about it. ("You," being the standard consumer, not any one person in particular.)
dougabug 14y ago
"They’re all designed and engineered in-house [...]" Isn't the Nexus 7 hardware designed by Asus?
jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago
If we charged for inputs and wastes properly, that would pressure economic chains from both ends to minimize environmental impact. We don't. For inputs we generally charge the cost of digging something up out of the dirt, and for outputs we charge the cost of burying something under the dirt. We shouldn't be surprised our economies have become a wasteful race of pleasurable consumption. We're forcing our descendants to subsidize our lifestyle.
gnaffle 14y ago
Please, don't conclude that Apple (and now Google) products aren't recyclable because of a quote from Wired citing some "friends from the recycling industry". One thing I do know is that iPhones and other Apple products have high resale value, that there's an industry thriving on selling replacement screens, batteries etc. This wouldn't be the case if most people considered these devices crap and obsolete the day a new product was introduced. From my experience, people keep their Apple products for many years, often giving them to other family members when they upgrade themselves. If they weren't built to last, this would be impossible to do. The real landfill fillers are the crappy plastic phones that get scratced and damaged.
- gms7777 14y ago
  Don't confuse recyclable with reusable. I think your mental timescale here is a bit too small. "Built to last" means what? 10 years, optimistically. That means that in 10 years, those products will still be sitting in a landfill...for hundreds of millions of years. There are choices that hardware designers can make that will help mitigate this at least to some extent, but unfortunately, it appears as if we are moving further and further away from this (the glass glued to the display being one example).
  - tbrownaw 14y ago
    That means that in 10 years, those products will still be sitting in a landfill...for hundreds of millions of years. Not true. Worst case, they end up in a museum when an archaeologist finds them in a couple thousand (not million) years.
  - grecy 14y ago
    > Don't confuse recyclable with reusable. Remember, of the three things we're all supposed to be doing, recycling is the absolute worst. Followed by reuse, then reduce. It could be argued that making a device reusable is actually better than making it recyclable. The consumers of this world seem to be caught up in this "recycle it" craze. Somehow it's fine to churn through 30 plastic water bottles a week, because they are going in the recycling. In reality, the water bottles should be gone entirely.
X-Istence 14y ago
I honestly think that in due time (1+ years from now) someone will have figured out a way to recycle those new Apple tech toys. Glue melts, glass and aluminum has different melting points... I honestly think that people are making a bigger deal out of it than it is. Also, the better something is designed the longer I will personally want to use it. Make stuff out of cardboard, but if it starts falling apart it will end up being thrown out sooner rather than later. My family still uses and owns the iBook G4 I purchased in 2004...

29 points by brendanlim 14y ago

As is true with most things, this is a case of where consumers need to vote with their wallets. While it would be great if the world ran on great intentions and thinking for the future, the reality is that money talks today, and today is the most important of all days, because nobody knows if they'll be around tomorrow.

NonEUCitizen 14y ago

"PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards) are guilty too – recyclability is incredibly low (and very expensive) and they do not decompose. Why can’t use a biodegradable material instead of silicon?" PCBs are NOT made of silicon. Integrated circuits are (but not their packages). PCBs are usually FR-4 material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board

wells-riley 14y ago
Thanks for enlightening me... updated my post accordingly.

dgreensp 14y ago

I don't see how "built to last" means "built out of cardboard." I can't find the original Rob Walker piece, but it sounds like it's talking about timeless quality vs. empty fashion, not about the environment. An iPhone lasts a long time, and the author should be comforted that not everyone can afford to buy a new one every time Apple bumps the version, naturally limiting Apple's ability to fill landfills with barely-used iPhones by launching new product features. The net footprint of a big company like Apple is surely complicated, as there are many ways to offset one's impact. I'm no expert, but Apple has a whole website on their strategy (http://www.apple.com/environment/ http://www.apple.com/environment/) that shows they are making an effort, perhaps a large one.

wmf 14y ago
No, he's saying that products that are destined to be obsoleted quickly should not be built to last. If something is disposable, make it look disposable. Of course, that's not going to happen.
- dgreensp 14y ago
  Even if all our electronics were redesigned to biodegrade overnight if left outside in heavy rain, what's the point in making them look disposable?
  - wmf 14y ago
    It's more "honest". (Note that I'm not saying I agree with this argument.)

mindslight 14y ago

tldr - Admirer of gadget fashion design ponders wastefulness of consumer culture. Wants for token "recycling" to soothe his conscience. Looks at conceptual art projects as if they're close to practical technology. Finishes up penance and walks away thinking that he has earnestly evaluated his own wastefulness.

herval 14y ago

More like "please stop copying Apple's advertisement style". This is getting so out of hand that in Nexus Q case, for instance, you get this beautiful "ad-documentary" with a lot of people saying hyperbolic catch-phrases and not a single clue on what's the product all about...

rimantas 14y ago
Apple's advertising style is showing how device works—at least in case of iPhone and iPad.
- herval 14y ago
  I mean the visual style - the cameras, use of background music, people reciting "beautiful", "astonishing", "marvelous" things staring at some point right/left of the camera, etc. As I said, they missed the most important aspect here: showing what the product actually does...
  - sp332 14y ago
    Here are the ads Apple ran for the new iPhone. All of them show the device being used. https://www.apple.com/iphone/videos/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/videos/

antidoh 14y ago

"why not embrace the throwaway culture and just make everything easy and practical to throw away?" Because enough people say the following: "I, for one, love my shiny new iPhone each year. No amount of (my own) preaching is going to get me to keep my iPhone 4S when Apple announces the iPhone 5 this year."

gnaffle 14y ago
I don't think most people say that. Tech geeks certainly do, but they're a minority. And in any case, most people don't have the money to buy a new smartphone every year. If Apple had an opt-in program where you could upgrade the screen, battery and logic board of your phone for $100, most people would opt for that.

astrodust 14y ago

The problem with products is not that they're made from materials like aluminum or silicon or glass but that these materials are combined in ways that make it very difficult to extract them from the finish product when recycling. Apple has gone a long way to making parts that are more "pure", where, for instance, the chassis of new computers is milled from a solid piece of metal that, once removed, can be shredded and reformed with no more difficulty than a drink can. The same goes, in principle, for the glass. The plastics in most computers are made from an exotic blend of materials and are not easily reprocessed. What we need more than cardboard computers is standards on how to manufacture products so they can be unmanufactured in the end and rebuilt into other things. The goal here is for 0% loss in the recovery cycle. Anything below 100% is not, by definition, sustainable. If that sounds impossible, consider that the natural ecosystem in which we all live tends towards a 100% recycling rate. There are very few natural byproducts that do not have a recovery path. For instance, most trees produce enormous amounts of "garbage" in the form of leaves but these are almost immediately recycled. Given that the natural world has been doing this for literally billions of years, there is much to be learned. A great book on this subject is Cradle to Cradle (http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm http://www.mcdonough.com/cradle_to_cradle.htm) which proposes radically re-thinking our industrial cycle.

eswangren 14y ago
Interesting that you bring up Apple here considering the fact that it's latest products cannot be recycled due to design decisions (I.e., melding the glass display onto the frame)
- bcherry 14y ago
  Current recycling techniques cannot (supposedly) deal with this, but it's likely that new methods could be developed which could. Ideally, Apple's designers would actually work directly with recycling centers to develop a strategy for efficient recycling of their product. This could even be done later on, when the existing product is replaced with a new version.
- astrodust 14y ago

drone 14y ago

To be clear: yes, you can make circuits out of all sorts of cool stuff. But, you can't make the high-speed, high-performance, ultra-compact circuits required to meet the demands of the products out of just anything. I'd love to see one doing layout for a big fat BGA device oscillating at 1.5GHz on a lasagna noodle, much less getting down to sub-6-mil traces, or 4+ layers. Pray tell though, what affordable semi-conductor material is there out there to replace silicon, that is readily recyclable and achieves the same target? I fear, too many people want their cake and to eat it too - you want the latest and greatest capabilities (want, not need), but you want them to make it in a way which it will not function, so that you can feel good about it. ("You," being the standard consumer, not any one person in particular.)

dougabug 14y ago

"They’re all designed and engineered in-house [...]" Isn't the Nexus 7 hardware designed by Asus?

jasonwatkinspdx 14y ago

If we charged for inputs and wastes properly, that would pressure economic chains from both ends to minimize environmental impact. We don't. For inputs we generally charge the cost of digging something up out of the dirt, and for outputs we charge the cost of burying something under the dirt. We shouldn't be surprised our economies have become a wasteful race of pleasurable consumption. We're forcing our descendants to subsidize our lifestyle.

gnaffle 14y ago

Please, don't conclude that Apple (and now Google) products aren't recyclable because of a quote from Wired citing some "friends from the recycling industry". One thing I do know is that iPhones and other Apple products have high resale value, that there's an industry thriving on selling replacement screens, batteries etc. This wouldn't be the case if most people considered these devices crap and obsolete the day a new product was introduced. From my experience, people keep their Apple products for many years, often giving them to other family members when they upgrade themselves. If they weren't built to last, this would be impossible to do. The real landfill fillers are the crappy plastic phones that get scratced and damaged.

gms7777 14y ago
Don't confuse recyclable with reusable. I think your mental timescale here is a bit too small. "Built to last" means what? 10 years, optimistically. That means that in 10 years, those products will still be sitting in a landfill...for hundreds of millions of years. There are choices that hardware designers can make that will help mitigate this at least to some extent, but unfortunately, it appears as if we are moving further and further away from this (the glass glued to the display being one example).
- tbrownaw 14y ago
  That means that in 10 years, those products will still be sitting in a landfill...for hundreds of millions of years. Not true. Worst case, they end up in a museum when an archaeologist finds them in a couple thousand (not million) years.
- grecy 14y ago
  > Don't confuse recyclable with reusable. Remember, of the three things we're all supposed to be doing, recycling is the absolute worst. Followed by reuse, then reduce. It could be argued that making a device reusable is actually better than making it recyclable. The consumers of this world seem to be caught up in this "recycle it" craze. Somehow it's fine to churn through 30 plastic water bottles a week, because they are going in the recycling. In reality, the water bottles should be gone entirely.

X-Istence 14y ago

I honestly think that in due time (1+ years from now) someone will have figured out a way to recycle those new Apple tech toys. Glue melts, glass and aluminum has different melting points... I honestly think that people are making a bigger deal out of it than it is. Also, the better something is designed the longer I will personally want to use it. Make stuff out of cardboard, but if it starts falling apart it will end up being thrown out sooner rather than later. My family still uses and owns the iBook G4 I purchased in 2004...