CEO Tim Cook sweeps Apple's inconvenient truths under a solar panel Apple is making a big deal about its green credentials, including a slick advert voiced by CEO Tim Cook, ahead of the annual eco-friendly love-in Earth Day. On Monday Apple released the advert, dubbed "Better", in which Cook expounds on how Apple is doing its best to make the world's environment a better place by using 100 …
All the while, Apple is seriously looking at increasing the price of its upcoming next generation IPhones' price point by $100.00.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/14/report_apple_seeking_to_raise_iphone_6_price_by_a_hundred_bucks/
Thus, nothing comes without a cost, even the cost of greening up Apples image will ultimately come from it's own fans pockets. Stand in line and fork out even more of your cash.
I find it pretty humorous actually.
Apple is basically;
"Biting the hand that feeds it"
~Best wishes keeping what you earned.
"An easily replaceable battery would be a big step forward."
It's not difficult to change the battery, you just like to think it is. There is a simple link and pricing on the Apple website which explains everything.
"And easy replacement would extend handset life."
No it wouldn't. Handset life has nothing to do with battery life. Handsets are thrown away either at the end of a contract or when they are destroyed as a general rule. I have an iPhone 4s which still lasts 2 days on a charge which was bought on launch day, and my old 3GS was still going a year ago until my little brother smashed it.
The real question being ignored by el Reg is how recyclable is a Samsung handset? We can be certain that all handsets will be discarded at some point, and Apple using highly recyclable components is to be applauded. As has been said many times on these forums, the now common industry practice of gluing together is to allow easy recycling - serviceability works against this unfortunately and ultimately is worse for the environment.
"It's not difficult to change the battery, you just like to think it is. There is a simple link and pricing on the Apple website which explains everything."
An easy battery to change is one where you DON'T have to disassemble the fecking apparatus to do it! Perhaps a battery compartment + cover just isn't cool enough for Apple, but its done sterling service since transistor radios were invented so perhaps they should give it a try.
Transistor radios didn't need the battery to be shaped around the other components in order to make them smaller. I've had various mobile phones since the mid 90s and I've never needed to replace a battery before I replaced the phone. Usually my mobiles stay with me for 2-3 years and then a family member uses them for a year or two. I've no idea what you're doing to your phone to break the battery but in normal use you should get at least 3 years out of it if not more. You're right, it would be slightly simpler to put a flap on the back, but then the iPhone would look just as cheap and plasticky as the competition. A trip to the store to swap out the battery every 4 years or so wouldn't be the end of the world for me even if I ever do need a battery change. Of course, it might just be that Apple uses better batteries in the first place so they are less likely to need replacing, I guess that might be why our experience differs?
I'm curious though Boltar how many times have you personally replaced the battery on your phone? I rather suspect it's none but you'll probably post 5 or 6 on here to try and make your pointless point.
I've had to change the original batteries in an iphone 3G (after 4 yrs work and a nightmare to change), iphone 4 (after 2.5yrs work and relatively easy to change) and an iphone5 after 14 months of work (and a frikken nightmare to change resulting in cutting the volume connector cable trying to pry the battery up from the glue, resulting in an even harder volume connector cable swap).
I don't live anywhere near an Apple store (nearest is 680km away) and the costs in a local store (€100) are too expensive for a good quality battery that costs around €25
So yeah, easy replaceable batteries wouldn't be too hard an issue, especially since all 3 models above have their battery located in a dedicated place.
"I'm curious though Boltar how many times have you personally replaced the battery on your phone? I rather suspect it's none but you'll probably post 5 or 6 on here to try and make your pointless point."
Once in my previous phone. None on my current one but its life isn't good right now so probably in the next 18 months. But guess what - I'm not some sad hipster who has to change his phone every 2 or 3 years to remain "in" with his equally sad hipster friends. To me a phone is a tool , nothing more. I don't give a flying fuck if it can play angry birds in 4K resolution at 100fps. My last phone I used for 8 years until it broke, my current one is 4.5 years old.
"It's not difficult to change the battery, you just like to think it is. There is a simple link and pricing on the Apple website which explains everything."
A simple link which involves sending your phone off for up to a week to have the battery replaced and where you are advised you may not get your own phone back and all your data will be wiped. And all for a price that would buy two batteries if they were sold separately.
It's very curious how Apple, alleged masters of design cannot produce a removable back cover like most other handset makers do and puts people to this inconvenience. Almost as if it were deliberate.
"No it wouldn't. Handset life has nothing to do with battery life. Handsets are thrown away either at the end of a contract or when they are destroyed as a general rule."
As a general rule?
a) not everyone buys a phone under contract and even those that do can obtain an unlock code in most civilized countries,
b) contracts are just as culpable for the disposable culture of phone handsets, not a defence against another leading cause
c) phones last a long time if the person looks after them. Given that the first thing iPhone owners seem to do after admiring their gorgeous sculpted phone is slap it in some ugly case or bumper, one has to assume they at least try to look after them.
"c) phones last a long time if the person looks after them. Given that the first thing iPhone owners seem to do after admiring their gorgeous sculpted phone is slap it in some ugly case or bumper"
...or put a big, impressive crack in the screen. That seems to be a really popular motif. Time was, you'd have to get some "Authentic James Bond Bullet Hole" transfers to get that effect.
And I'm *just* being forced to upgrade my original Desire. Not because of the battery, that was changed...oooo...a year ago, maybe. It's because the obligatory Google apps keep on expanding in size, to the point where it can store very few apps of my own choosing. XP didn't stiff me for having old hardware, I can tell thee that!
iMacs should be using 0W in sleep mode. Every new OS X release needs yet more fiddling to make it hibernate instead of suspend when you put it to sleep but there's no reason why a desktop computer needs to consume power when it's put it to sleep unless the user configures it to with wake-on-lan or similar.
And of course Apple lead the way in making unfixable devices.
If they're so green perhaps they should design their products that way in the first place.
Sleep mode: instantly on again when laptop lid raised/front button pushed on desktop... its instant because memory is still in RAM, which needs constant electricity to keep it there...
Hibernate mode: slow on again, but to where you were working on, because RAM had been dumped to harddrive, and then read back into RAM again when you lifted the laptop lid/pressed the aformentioned button.
Hibernation should be able to use 0 watt (or at least as close to it as possible.. non-mechanical on-buttons need powering to know they have been pressed), Sleep mode won't run on 0 watts until we get RAM that doesn't need a charge to retain the bits in it.
You probably already knew that though.. consider it public service to any commentard that didn't :P
iMacs in sleep mode use about 1W of power, MacBook laptops get down to about 2/3rds of a watt. Even when off/hibernating they consume a small amount of power (about 1/4W). If you think that amount is going to have significant impact in your green footprint then I've got a bridge I can sell you.
Or maybe not working them all into such rapid upgrade cycles...
"Don't worry kids, you won't be out of date this year. No new phone launch until 2016... We'll just release lots of software features you really want onto your 4s... We've kind of run out of gimmicky hardware to add on for the moment anyway..."
I think Jobs was really greener than Cook, he just did things rather than promise things. Unfortunately the Greenpeace rating at the time was about a companies promises for the future, so Apple predictably scored badly, while HP built computers that were harder to recycle, used more power and had more toxic substances scored better because they had a plan on what they could do to improve on this. Of course the plan was voluntary so nobody ever checks compliance either...
When concrete is made, they use tremendous energy to (effectively) drive out the CO2. So the "carbon footprint" at production is huge - a low hanging fruit for carbon capture by the way. There's the CO2 driven out, plus the CO2 from all the energy expended. Double-double.
Once installed, the curing concrete *absorbs* CO2 from the atmosphere over the following decades.
If the concrete industry could implement carbon capture and sequestration at production (conveniently near railway tracks), then the subsequent INGASSING over the following decades once installed might make the concrete industry a net carbon sink. Win-Win.
Emissions from a new building that's made of concrete? Seriously? You do realise that buildings tend to last for quite a while, right? Take a look outside if you live anywhere near the centre of a major city (except Coventry or Dresden) and you'll see very few buildings that don't have a design life of at least 50 years, and typically much more. Apple's new building will also be expected to stand for at least as long. Many buildings have stood for centuries.
Yes, the bulldozers and concrete will have a small effect, but over the entire life of a building like this, it's a rounding error. Especially when you consider the reason why Apple is pushing for this project: their current multi-campus setup means a lot of energy is wasted just getting around 1 Infinite Loop.
Compare with wind farms: I'm pretty sure you need some pretty heavy plant to put those up, and they're not made of fairy dust either. But wind farms aren't just massive structures: they're also massive machines, with very large moving parts. It doesn't get much more environmentally expensive than that. These things currently have a design life cycle of just 20-25 years. (The turbines themselves last even less, according to some reports.)
Some things are genuinely worth worrying about, but the one-off, "environmental capital" expense of a building like Apple's new HQ is not one of them.
... is that you've run out of new products to talk about.
The meetings that end with these sorts of ads being made, start with wondering what the hell the marketing team is going to spend multi-millions of dollars on, when the company has nothing new to say. These are the sorts of people that Steve Jobs asked to kindly leave his meetings.
"I don’t think we need you in this meeting, Lorrie. Thanks"
It's a "brand" advert and it's not even a particularly good one. You run brand ads when your product isn't differentiated on quality and you're trying to persuade people that it is.
A bit of an objection here: the reduction in laptop sleep mode power is almost entirely due to Intel's chip work, combined with Energy Star and European requirement that forced the design of more efficient power supplies. Very little of that should be credited to Apple.
Intel recent efforts to make more efficient parts has been driven in large part by the ARM ecosystem. Previously they only had to be better than AMD.. not especially challenging.
There has been a major change in the computing landscape in the past few years. There was no clear transition so the transition was easy to miss. We've switched from a focus on raw speed and capability, to a focus on power efficiency. Part of what has hidden the change is that there is considerable overlap. Once a chip is limited by thermal and electric power, the way to make it faster is to make it more efficient. So it might look like just another round of speed improvement, using different techniques. But it's actually been a major change of focus.
But back on point: almost none of that was due to Apple.
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