10 ms·

Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst "repairability" score: >The MacBook 2015 Repairability Score: 1 out of 10 (10 is easiest to re

Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst "repairability" score: >The MacBook 2015 Repairability Score: 1 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair) There are several reasons why this happens; the optimist says that to save space Apple had to glue and solder so much, the pessimist says it's so that Apple can charge more for repairs/replacements. But I think both can agree that this generates more e-waste than necessary, and I wonder whether this may be an incentive for the EU to step in. They've already standardized mobile chargers - starting 2017, all mobile chargers in the EU have to be of the same standard to reduce electronic waste. I wonder whether a similar law for PC/laptop components could work and how it would look like...

tim333 12y ago
> generates more e-waste than necessary I'm not so sure. Apple have free recycling and even the most repairable equipment will end up being chucked eventually.
- pmjordan 12y ago
  Leaving aside upgrades and repairs, it makes disassembly for recycling purposes overly difficult, i.e. expensive, when everything is glued. This reduces the profitability and therefore likelihood of recycling each individual component to the maximum of its potential.
  - chrisan 12y ago
    > Leaving aside upgrades and repairs, it makes disassembly for recycling purposes overly difficult, i.e. expensive, when everything is glued. A similar thing happened in the auto industry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_recycling#Policies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_recycling#Policies
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    It also makes removing the data storage for secure destruction much more difficult. I'm very happy to recycle old devices rather than contributing to landfill or otherwise being wasteful, but if my HDD/SSD can't go for complete destruction separately then the entire unit is going for complete destruction instead. In this day and age, this is a practical minimum for safely retiring old gear as far as I'm concerned. For my businesses, it is also effectively a legal and/or regulatory requirement in many cases.
    - Silhouette 12y ago
      To the person who downvoted the parent post: Maybe it's different where you are, but here in the UK the recycling centres typically get rights to do just about anything they want with gear you leave there. For things like laptops that are still in working order, they may literally just wipe the disk and sell it on in another part of the world where it would seem like much more advanced technology. Unfortunately there have been numerous reports of that wiping not being done properly, and things like spreadsheets full of bank details and confidential employment records have turned up on computers in Africa. This happens often enough that I've even seen TV documentaries made about it. Data leakage via computer disks is a real and potentially very serious problem. It can happen if you send a failed drive back for replacement. It can happen if you take a computer into a PC store for repair and the guy on the help desk starts browsing through your files. It can happen if you take a retired PC for recycling without proper precautions, which you can't always take if you retired it because something failed. This is not a hypothetical risk: all of these things have happened and been publicly reported plenty of times. If you give someone else your drive after you've stored anything sensitive on it, you're asking for trouble. If you do it as a business that works with sensitive information such as financial or health data, you are almost certainly breaching regulations in a lot of jurisdictions.
chucknelson 12y ago
How is this more e-waste than a typical laptop? Aren't Apple laptops known for being highly recyclable and using less harmful materials overall? If you're saying more easily repairable laptops would stick around longer, I'm not sure that's how most consumers treat computers that break on them, especially laptops. Many times it would be "I need a new computer". I would think all of the produced-as-cheaply-as-possible laptops would be far worse in their environmental impact, but I can't back that up.
- collyw 12y ago
  Apple were the first mainstream manufacturer to introduce laptops without a replaceable battery as far as I can remember.
  - jakobegger 12y ago
    I have one of the early Macbooks with a non-user replaceable battery, and I'm using it today, 6 years after I bought it, and the battery is still fine. Sure, the capacity is a bit lower (maybe 50%), or I could get it replaced for around 150€. Apple introduced non user replaceable batteries because it made sense: capacity and longevity was at a point where the average customer never replaced their battery.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    The batteries are replaceable, but it's not easy (or valid in warranty) for a user to do it. Apple can replace them, however.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
soneil 12y ago
A somewhat ironic question to ask of the first macbook which is using a standard charger, no? (for the rest of the laptop, it's barely repairable because there's barely anything in it. a logic board and a battery.)
- morsch 12y ago
  And a display, a glass panel, speakers, multiple boards for auxilliary logic, a touch pad, a few -- well, two -- outside ports, and a lot of internal connections. All of which can break, but aren't user servicable. Not to mention that it wasn't too long ago -- still isn't, in many devices -- that the "logic board" was not a discrete piece of hardware, but a place where you could plug in discrete components to repair and/or upgrade your computer. Yes, you can hand your device back to Apple to get it repaired. But two or three years down the road, that's gonna be more expensive than just chucking it, at best recycling a few of the materials. If it was more maintainable, your nerdy teenage relative might have a fair chance of recovering the device instead (free laptop!). And yes, there's a tradeoff between repairability and a host of other desired attributes -- cost, compactness, etc. Presumably Apple is judging that the market demands the latter while it doesn't care about the former -- at all. It's that totality that I take issue with. What's more, Apple, more than any other tech company, continuously shapes what the market wants: if they brought out a series a smartphones that are user-servicable (say as a feature of an entry-level Apple Phone for emerging markets), the other manufacturers would fall in line quickly. It's rare that it works the other way round, although they've done it twice now for mobile device size, first for tablets then for phones, sort of a blow to the Apple mystique. And of course only a fool would recognise that the manufacturers interests are not at all aligned with consumer interests regarding maintainability. Planned obsolescense is what makes this market -- a perfect storm of rapid technological progress and lack of repairability. When consumers want ever sleeker and faster devices, that's something Apple engineers can deliver, again and again. But a device that will just last them a decade is a device you only sell once in a decade. Finally, Apple is hardly unique or particularly noteable in any of this. As usual, they're just good at what they're doing. Unless there's a surprising change in market demands, I fully expect most other laptops to look like this in a couple of years, just like most phones now come with glued in batteries and most laptop displays are fused with the front glass, turning a 30 USD repair into a 600 USD one. If anything, the fact that Apple devices are well-built and only start at the middle-end going into high-end means that people will be disinclined to just chuck them and get a new one instead.
masklinn 12y ago
> Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst "repairability" score: Technically, iFixit has given an orange a repairability score of 0 (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Orange+Teardown/13470 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Orange+Teardown/13470) so apple products don't get the worst repairability score.
- taspeotis 12y ago
  > Technically, iFixit has given an orange a repairability score of 0 That's an O, not 0: > Orange Repairability Score: O out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair).
  - 0942v8653 12y ago
    It does register the lowest possible on the meter, though: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/o5IQuxSoKZvwqlbV https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/o5IQuxSoKZvwqlbV
  - masklinn 12y ago
    > That's an O, not 0: It's a 0 on the left-hand side of the meter, the meter is bottomed out whereas it's at the first mark for the 2015 macbook.
    - raverbashing 12y ago
      Yes, but it is a 'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O' on the text
      - masklinn 12y ago
        It's still a score of 0 for the orange's repairability.
        cmyr 12y ago
        might be time to get back to work, guys.
collyw 12y ago
The optimists might do well to remember the pentalobe screws on iPhones. Mainstream enough since then , but at the time?
yitchelle 12y ago
Just want to highlight Apple's recycling program as stated here [1]. They will give you a gift card for Apple computer. If your equipment are not Apple, they will still pick it up for free via Sims Recycling Solutions. [2] [1] - https://www.apple.com/recycling/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/ [2] - http://oem.srsapp.com/applepoweredbysims/ http://oem.srsapp.com/applepoweredbysims/
- dingaling 12y ago
  That doesn't really address recycling, though. They've over-loaded the word to mean trade-in. Technically nothing on that page days they don't just throw all the returned iPods into a lake. Well of course they don't, but neither do we know what they actually do.
  - Udo_Schmitz 12y ago
    > neither do we know what they actually do Actually, if you click through on the GPs link Apple provides information in two links with further links to PDFs and FAQs. https://www.apple.com/recycling/gift-card/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/gift-card/
  - yitchelle 12y ago
    > They've over-loaded the word to mean trade-in. Trade-in would imply that you are also purchasing from Apple as well. I didn't read anything condition requiring any purchases to take part in Apple's recycling program.
ghshephard 12y ago
My understanding is that Apple is one of the leading companies when it comes to eWaste. Also, this is the one of the rare Apple product that that only has industry standard ports/power chargers on it. You can't critique them on building a product that is hard to repair (and wow, this one looks next to impossible for your average non-technician) - but the ewaste/standard charger concerns don't appear to be valid.
- rndn 12y ago
  Perhaps they are in the leading position, but shouldn't we strive for ever better products? I just upgraded a couple of old MacBooks and iMacs from HHD to SSD and all of a sudden they are usable again - and will probably continue to be so for the coming 2-3 years. That basically extended their lifetimes by perhaps 30-40% and the saved waste is presumably closely proportional to that. So, ideally, I think, all manufacturers should provide upgrades for fair prices and encourage their customers to buy them.
  - tobylane 12y ago
    User upgrades don't make much difference to the waste. If anything those types of users are likely to have power heavy desktops using up more energy and precious metals. The average user's waste is reduced because the motherboard is much smaller, as well as Apple's general efforts to stop using some chemicals. My first iMac had a warning about mercury in the screen, the second doesn't.
    - rndn 12y ago
      I'm talking about an ideal, not about the advancements they have made. Maybe it's the Dunning-Kruger effect, but it seems that they could have easily soldered on slots for SSD and RAM and added a little access door with Philips screws even with this smaller board. I could also very well imagine that people would buy upgrades if they were cheap, quick to install and if they knew about them in the first place.
      - 12y ago
audunw 12y ago
Actually, if you think of the whole backplate as a part of the battery, isn't this battery quite easy to change? You could simply sell batteries already glued to the cover, the rest is just screws and connectors. Might be a bit more expensive, but it shouldn't be too hard to do the replacement then.
bluthru 12y ago
>But I think both can agree that this generates more e-waste than necessary How so? https://www.apple.com/recycling/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/ The components are separated for recycling.
- bildung 12y ago
  > The components are separated for recycling. Where is that stated? I read these pages and all I could find was Apple saying that Apple requires its external recycling companies to respect local laws, i.e. they are shipping 20ft containers to East Asia and are done with it.
userbinator 12y ago
the optimist says that to save space Apple had to glue and solder so much, the pessimist says it's so that Apple can charge more for repairs/replacements I think it's a combination of optimising for space and cost - every connector that needs to be aligned and connected, and every screw that needs to be installed, requires time and labour. It's far cheaper and faster to glue and solder everything together. This is known as DFM in the industry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability One of the more obvious examples of this in laptops is the move from keyboards with shaped keys to flat "island-style" ones; the latter are cheaper to produce.
- masklinn 12y ago
  > I think it's a combination of optimising for space and cost - every connector that needs to be aligned and connected, and every screw that needs to be installed, requires time and labour. And yet the keyboard alone uses both glue and about 90 screws (https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/YYpaGaNumhQuR5M6 https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/YYpaGaNumhQuR5M6)
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    Presumably glue is unworkable for some of it. Or it needs to be reparable.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  I took a DFM class in school. I don't think there was a similar class about product life cycle available. (Which doesn't mean that it will be ignored, but I think we are sort of in a place right now where cost control sees too much emphasis while value is overlooked. And I think there are lots of decisions that could be made to favor value without impacting costs, which would be a good reason to include value maximization in design practice.)
petercooper 12y ago
starting 2017, all mobile chargers in the EU have to be of the same standard to reduce electronic waste. I doubt micro USB will cut it in 2017, but I also doubt everyone will be using Lightning. So I wonder if USB Type C will end up being that single standard - it'd explain why Apple's keen to try it out in a new product line already.
cowsandmilk 12y ago
> all mobile chargers in the EU have to be of the same standard to reduce electronic waste. And yet this is the first criticism of the macbook 2015 by iFixit. In their opinion, moving to USB-C is creating waste since you cannot reuse your magsafe adaptor with this new macbook. Then they state moving to USB-C will cause more accidental damage than using magsafe, thus creating more waste.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  I wonder is the new Macbook actually heavy enough for magsafe to work properly. Certainly, with the Air, it's pretty marginal; if the surface isn't very grippy you can pull the laptop with the cable without the magsafe disengaging.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    And with the new MacBook so light, robust and lacking in solid-state components, I wonder if it matters. You can trip over cables, unfortunately, but you probably won't hurt your laptop too badly if it falls off the table (though I wonder if the screen might smash).
kmfrk 12y ago
Yeah, my MacBook Air's battery is dying, and instead of getting a new battery, I have to hand it to a certified shop and fork over $300. It just seems dumb to me not to be cognizant of the fact that batteries tend to kick it after 3-5 years. Same thing happened to my ThinkPad, but the battery was easily replaceable.
rsynnott 12y ago
> Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst "repairability" score: Typical for Apple? The iPhone 6 gets a score of 7; the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 get a score of 3 and 2 respectively. The HTC One M7 got a score of 1 (they considered it impossible to open without damaging the case).
- a_bonobo 12y ago
  You're right, in their mobile phone dept. they've come a long way since the first iPhone which started with a 2 - the iPhone 6+ has a 7 https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability Their tablets are bad, looks like all of them got a 2: https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability There is no simple overview for laptops/PCs so I randomly picked some: >iMac 27" Retina 5K >5/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Display+Teardown/30260 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K... (a slightly different version got the same score: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2639+Teardown/17828 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2639+... ) >MacBook Retina 2015 15" (not OP's 13") >1/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown... >iMac 21.5" EMC 2638 >2/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2638+Teardown/17829 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+263... >MacBook Pro 13" Retina late 2012 >2/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2012+Teardown/11225 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+D... >MacBook Air 13" Mid 2011 >4/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2011+Teardown/6130 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2011... So I change my above statement: Their current mobile phones and their desktop machines are alright to good in repairability scores, tablets and laptops are bad

tim333 12y ago

> generates more e-waste than necessary I'm not so sure. Apple have free recycling and even the most repairable equipment will end up being chucked eventually.

pmjordan 12y ago
Leaving aside upgrades and repairs, it makes disassembly for recycling purposes overly difficult, i.e. expensive, when everything is glued. This reduces the profitability and therefore likelihood of recycling each individual component to the maximum of its potential.
- chrisan 12y ago
  > Leaving aside upgrades and repairs, it makes disassembly for recycling purposes overly difficult, i.e. expensive, when everything is glued. A similar thing happened in the auto industry. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_recycling#Policies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_recycling#Policies
- Silhouette 12y ago
  It also makes removing the data storage for secure destruction much more difficult. I'm very happy to recycle old devices rather than contributing to landfill or otherwise being wasteful, but if my HDD/SSD can't go for complete destruction separately then the entire unit is going for complete destruction instead. In this day and age, this is a practical minimum for safely retiring old gear as far as I'm concerned. For my businesses, it is also effectively a legal and/or regulatory requirement in many cases.
  - Silhouette 12y ago
    To the person who downvoted the parent post: Maybe it's different where you are, but here in the UK the recycling centres typically get rights to do just about anything they want with gear you leave there. For things like laptops that are still in working order, they may literally just wipe the disk and sell it on in another part of the world where it would seem like much more advanced technology. Unfortunately there have been numerous reports of that wiping not being done properly, and things like spreadsheets full of bank details and confidential employment records have turned up on computers in Africa. This happens often enough that I've even seen TV documentaries made about it. Data leakage via computer disks is a real and potentially very serious problem. It can happen if you send a failed drive back for replacement. It can happen if you take a computer into a PC store for repair and the guy on the help desk starts browsing through your files. It can happen if you take a retired PC for recycling without proper precautions, which you can't always take if you retired it because something failed. This is not a hypothetical risk: all of these things have happened and been publicly reported plenty of times. If you give someone else your drive after you've stored anything sensitive on it, you're asking for trouble. If you do it as a business that works with sensitive information such as financial or health data, you are almost certainly breaching regulations in a lot of jurisdictions.

chucknelson 12y ago

How is this more e-waste than a typical laptop? Aren't Apple laptops known for being highly recyclable and using less harmful materials overall? If you're saying more easily repairable laptops would stick around longer, I'm not sure that's how most consumers treat computers that break on them, especially laptops. Many times it would be "I need a new computer". I would think all of the produced-as-cheaply-as-possible laptops would be far worse in their environmental impact, but I can't back that up.

collyw 12y ago
Apple were the first mainstream manufacturer to introduce laptops without a replaceable battery as far as I can remember.
- jakobegger 12y ago
  I have one of the early Macbooks with a non-user replaceable battery, and I'm using it today, 6 years after I bought it, and the battery is still fine. Sure, the capacity is a bit lower (maybe 50%), or I could get it replaced for around 150€. Apple introduced non user replaceable batteries because it made sense: capacity and longevity was at a point where the average customer never replaced their battery.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  The batteries are replaceable, but it's not easy (or valid in warranty) for a user to do it. Apple can replace them, however.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

soneil 12y ago

A somewhat ironic question to ask of the first macbook which is using a standard charger, no? (for the rest of the laptop, it's barely repairable because there's barely anything in it. a logic board and a battery.)

morsch 12y ago
And a display, a glass panel, speakers, multiple boards for auxilliary logic, a touch pad, a few -- well, two -- outside ports, and a lot of internal connections. All of which can break, but aren't user servicable. Not to mention that it wasn't too long ago -- still isn't, in many devices -- that the "logic board" was not a discrete piece of hardware, but a place where you could plug in discrete components to repair and/or upgrade your computer. Yes, you can hand your device back to Apple to get it repaired. But two or three years down the road, that's gonna be more expensive than just chucking it, at best recycling a few of the materials. If it was more maintainable, your nerdy teenage relative might have a fair chance of recovering the device instead (free laptop!). And yes, there's a tradeoff between repairability and a host of other desired attributes -- cost, compactness, etc. Presumably Apple is judging that the market demands the latter while it doesn't care about the former -- at all. It's that totality that I take issue with. What's more, Apple, more than any other tech company, continuously shapes what the market wants: if they brought out a series a smartphones that are user-servicable (say as a feature of an entry-level Apple Phone for emerging markets), the other manufacturers would fall in line quickly. It's rare that it works the other way round, although they've done it twice now for mobile device size, first for tablets then for phones, sort of a blow to the Apple mystique. And of course only a fool would recognise that the manufacturers interests are not at all aligned with consumer interests regarding maintainability. Planned obsolescense is what makes this market -- a perfect storm of rapid technological progress and lack of repairability. When consumers want ever sleeker and faster devices, that's something Apple engineers can deliver, again and again. But a device that will just last them a decade is a device you only sell once in a decade. Finally, Apple is hardly unique or particularly noteable in any of this. As usual, they're just good at what they're doing. Unless there's a surprising change in market demands, I fully expect most other laptops to look like this in a couple of years, just like most phones now come with glued in batteries and most laptop displays are fused with the front glass, turning a 30 USD repair into a 600 USD one. If anything, the fact that Apple devices are well-built and only start at the middle-end going into high-end means that people will be disinclined to just chuck them and get a new one instead.

masklinn 12y ago

> Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst "repairability" score: Technically, iFixit has given an orange a repairability score of 0 (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Orange+Teardown/13470 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Orange+Teardown/13470) so apple products don't get the worst repairability score.

taspeotis 12y ago
> Technically, iFixit has given an orange a repairability score of 0 That's an O, not 0: > Orange Repairability Score: O out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair).
- 0942v8653 12y ago
  It does register the lowest possible on the meter, though: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/o5IQuxSoKZvwqlbV https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/o5IQuxSoKZvwqlbV
- masklinn 12y ago
  > That's an O, not 0: It's a 0 on the left-hand side of the meter, the meter is bottomed out whereas it's at the first mark for the 2015 macbook.
  - raverbashing 12y ago
    Yes, but it is a 'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O' on the text
    - masklinn 12y ago
      It's still a score of 0 for the orange's repairability.
      - cmyr 12y ago
        might be time to get back to work, guys.

collyw 12y ago

The optimists might do well to remember the pentalobe screws on iPhones. Mainstream enough since then , but at the time?

yitchelle 12y ago

Just want to highlight Apple's recycling program as stated here [1]. They will give you a gift card for Apple computer. If your equipment are not Apple, they will still pick it up for free via Sims Recycling Solutions. [2] [1] - https://www.apple.com/recycling/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/ [2] - http://oem.srsapp.com/applepoweredbysims/ http://oem.srsapp.com/applepoweredbysims/

dingaling 12y ago
That doesn't really address recycling, though. They've over-loaded the word to mean trade-in. Technically nothing on that page days they don't just throw all the returned iPods into a lake. Well of course they don't, but neither do we know what they actually do.
- Udo_Schmitz 12y ago
  > neither do we know what they actually do Actually, if you click through on the GPs link Apple provides information in two links with further links to PDFs and FAQs. https://www.apple.com/recycling/gift-card/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/gift-card/
- yitchelle 12y ago
  > They've over-loaded the word to mean trade-in. Trade-in would imply that you are also purchasing from Apple as well. I didn't read anything condition requiring any purchases to take part in Apple's recycling program.

ghshephard 12y ago

My understanding is that Apple is one of the leading companies when it comes to eWaste. Also, this is the one of the rare Apple product that that only has industry standard ports/power chargers on it. You can't critique them on building a product that is hard to repair (and wow, this one looks next to impossible for your average non-technician) - but the ewaste/standard charger concerns don't appear to be valid.

rndn 12y ago
Perhaps they are in the leading position, but shouldn't we strive for ever better products? I just upgraded a couple of old MacBooks and iMacs from HHD to SSD and all of a sudden they are usable again - and will probably continue to be so for the coming 2-3 years. That basically extended their lifetimes by perhaps 30-40% and the saved waste is presumably closely proportional to that. So, ideally, I think, all manufacturers should provide upgrades for fair prices and encourage their customers to buy them.
- tobylane 12y ago
  User upgrades don't make much difference to the waste. If anything those types of users are likely to have power heavy desktops using up more energy and precious metals. The average user's waste is reduced because the motherboard is much smaller, as well as Apple's general efforts to stop using some chemicals. My first iMac had a warning about mercury in the screen, the second doesn't.
  - rndn 12y ago
    I'm talking about an ideal, not about the advancements they have made. Maybe it's the Dunning-Kruger effect, but it seems that they could have easily soldered on slots for SSD and RAM and added a little access door with Philips screws even with this smaller board. I could also very well imagine that people would buy upgrades if they were cheap, quick to install and if they knew about them in the first place.
    - 12y ago

audunw 12y ago

Actually, if you think of the whole backplate as a part of the battery, isn't this battery quite easy to change? You could simply sell batteries already glued to the cover, the rest is just screws and connectors. Might be a bit more expensive, but it shouldn't be too hard to do the replacement then.

bluthru 12y ago

>But I think both can agree that this generates more e-waste than necessary How so? https://www.apple.com/recycling/ https://www.apple.com/recycling/ The components are separated for recycling.

bildung 12y ago
> The components are separated for recycling. Where is that stated? I read these pages and all I could find was Apple saying that Apple requires its external recycling companies to respect local laws, i.e. they are shipping 20ft containers to East Asia and are done with it.

userbinator 12y ago

the optimist says that to save space Apple had to glue and solder so much, the pessimist says it's so that Apple can charge more for repairs/replacements I think it's a combination of optimising for space and cost - every connector that needs to be aligned and connected, and every screw that needs to be installed, requires time and labour. It's far cheaper and faster to glue and solder everything together. This is known as DFM in the industry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_for_manufacturability One of the more obvious examples of this in laptops is the move from keyboards with shaped keys to flat "island-style" ones; the latter are cheaper to produce.

masklinn 12y ago
> I think it's a combination of optimising for space and cost - every connector that needs to be aligned and connected, and every screw that needs to be installed, requires time and labour. And yet the keyboard alone uses both glue and about 90 screws (https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/YYpaGaNumhQuR5M6 https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/YYpaGaNumhQuR5M6)
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  Presumably glue is unworkable for some of it. Or it needs to be reparable.
maxerickson 12y ago
I took a DFM class in school. I don't think there was a similar class about product life cycle available. (Which doesn't mean that it will be ignored, but I think we are sort of in a place right now where cost control sees too much emphasis while value is overlooked. And I think there are lots of decisions that could be made to favor value without impacting costs, which would be a good reason to include value maximization in design practice.)

petercooper 12y ago

starting 2017, all mobile chargers in the EU have to be of the same standard to reduce electronic waste. I doubt micro USB will cut it in 2017, but I also doubt everyone will be using Lightning. So I wonder if USB Type C will end up being that single standard - it'd explain why Apple's keen to try it out in a new product line already.

cowsandmilk 12y ago

> all mobile chargers in the EU have to be of the same standard to reduce electronic waste. And yet this is the first criticism of the macbook 2015 by iFixit. In their opinion, moving to USB-C is creating waste since you cannot reuse your magsafe adaptor with this new macbook. Then they state moving to USB-C will cause more accidental damage than using magsafe, thus creating more waste.

rsynnott 12y ago
I wonder is the new Macbook actually heavy enough for magsafe to work properly. Certainly, with the Air, it's pretty marginal; if the surface isn't very grippy you can pull the laptop with the cable without the magsafe disengaging.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  And with the new MacBook so light, robust and lacking in solid-state components, I wonder if it matters. You can trip over cables, unfortunately, but you probably won't hurt your laptop too badly if it falls off the table (though I wonder if the screen might smash).

kmfrk 12y ago

Yeah, my MacBook Air's battery is dying, and instead of getting a new battery, I have to hand it to a certified shop and fork over $300. It just seems dumb to me not to be cognizant of the fact that batteries tend to kick it after 3-5 years. Same thing happened to my ThinkPad, but the battery was easily replaceable.

rsynnott 12y ago

> Worth noting that this device, typical for Apple, gets the worst "repairability" score: Typical for Apple? The iPhone 6 gets a score of 7; the Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9 get a score of 3 and 2 respectively. The HTC One M7 got a score of 1 (they considered it impossible to open without damaging the case).

a_bonobo 12y ago
You're right, in their mobile phone dept. they've come a long way since the first iPhone which started with a 2 - the iPhone 6+ has a 7 https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability Their tablets are bad, looks like all of them got a 2: https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability There is no simple overview for laptops/PCs so I randomly picked some: >iMac 27" Retina 5K >5/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K+Display+Teardown/30260 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+Retina+5K... (a slightly different version got the same score: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2639+Teardown/17828 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+27-Inch+EMC+2639+... ) >MacBook Retina 2015 15" (not OP's 13") >1/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown... >iMac 21.5" EMC 2638 >2/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+2638+Teardown/17829 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac+Intel+21.5-Inch+EMC+263... >MacBook Pro 13" Retina late 2012 >2/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Late+2012+Teardown/11225 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+D... >MacBook Air 13" Mid 2011 >4/10 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2011+Teardown/6130 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2011... So I change my above statement: Their current mobile phones and their desktop machines are alright to good in repairability scores, tablets and laptops are bad