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Comment by traveler01 | Hacker News Reader

I love how hypocritical these companies are. Environment friendly they say: - Force people to buy a part separately that could easily be included in the box (wasting less packaging in the process). - Force people to replace unnecessary parts when repairing their products (my gfs MacBook broke the screen internally, without applying much strenght to it, and Apple repair solution is to replace the entire top end of the laptop for 600€) - Make stupid expensive for people to repair their products, and almost impossible for third party shops to repair them.

And this isn't just Apple, most brands are going the same route. Meanwhile world its sinking in garbage, but shareholders are happy I guess.

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> Force people to buy a part separately that could easily be included in the box (wasting less packaging in the process).

A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?

I mean I get the whole "non repairable is bad" argument but Apple stuff has great lifespan and good resale value, thereby being reused instead of junked when upgrading. And they accept devices for recycling, don't they?

Of course it could be better, but there are legitimate ways of looking at these things that aren't as unambiguously "Hypocritical" as you are asserting.

Gluing or soldering what should be user-upgradeable, commodity components in laptops still really bothers me.

Commoditization is almost always a big compromise to form factor, which, given that laptops are by their very nature a compromise of power for form factor, isn't exactly desirable by everyone. Stacking PCBs, which is exactly what you're doing when you're adding slots and sockets to your motherboard is absolutely a compromise on form factor.

If you don't like glued on or soldered on parts, then don't buy a computer that has them. There's still a ton of options that have the features that you want. Why be bothered when manufacturers are making things that other people want?

When I bought my 2012 macbook pro 15 retina, the retina screen's high dpr was non-negotiable, and there were no other comparable options without glue + solder.

That means that you made a choice of what matters most to you. In any buying decision unless you're manufacturing it exactly to your specifications (and even then), you're probably going to be compromising on something. In this case you prioritized the screen over anything else, which is perfectly valid.

It's also perfectly valid to pine for a macbook pro with a socketed CPU, dimm slots, and a standard nvme drive. That doesn't mean that things should be that way just because you want them to be, though, which is the point that you made.

My 2013 MBP was the same, and eventually crapped out (power/charging circuit on main board. I couldn't upgrade to one with more RAM, due to some Apple like-for-like policy.

So I did vote with my wallet, and got a beefy ThinkPad running Linux. I wasn't that wedded to the Mac ecosystem, and this thing is a tank. If it needs upgrades or repairs, I can do them myself. So there are choices out there, if you're looking.

Are you sure they could? I can't imagine how could you possibly fit a connector within my great (and its thinness is a principal component of that greatness) Macbook, and having multiple ways of doing one thing doesn't seem like good business or good for the nature - especially if phones and tablets are the major product of the company.

Yes, they could. Look at Dell XPS 13 9310. It has the battery that's not glued in (using screws) which you can get a replacement for 70-150 bucks and change youself. It has trackpad and keyboard that are replaceable separately. And the SSD is slotted so you can upgrade the drive or recover data when stuff happens and your motherboard dies. Meanwhile, it has great screen, is very light (1.1kg) and thin. The battery life is on par with Intel macs as well.

In 15" laptops you additionally now get a slot for a second hard drive and upgradeable RAM without sacrificing much in terms of thickness (look at XPS 15 9500).

I had XPS 15 before I had the current M1 Macbook, and before that I had the previous gen XPS13 for a very short while - I had to return that, I couldn't work on it at all due to overheating/thermal throttling. XPS laptops are incomparably worse machines and opting for that instead of a Macbook was my greatest mistake that I'll never repeat (I also really tried to like Lenovo machines, but that ship has sailed too - I'm going Apple only since this Dell experiment).

I never lose any stuff on my Mac thanks to the seamless integration of iCloud. And the motherboard fire that happened to my XPS15 destroyed the SSD anyways...

About the screen... Don't even talk about that. I was so angry when I first saw it - I paid big bucks for the best screen Dell offers and yet it's so much worse than the screen on cheapest Macbooks (I moved to the XPS from Macbook 2015 - even that old machine has a much better screen). It was flickering when I enabled dark mode in my editor (not a faulty machine, I tried to return it and they have shown me that every machine does it)!!!

And no, the battery life is nowhere near the 2015 Macbook Pro, and absolutely nowhere near the M1 Macbook. The ads say so, but it's totally not true - my MBP2015 still can sustain 6 hours of work with the original battery, while the XPS was dead after 6 hours of not doing anything.

And to top it all off, the whole XPS was creaking even if I just put my hand on it, and raising it into the air made sounds so terrible people around me were having amused looks! None of my Macbooks ever made any sound like that - or any other unpleasant sound whatsoever.

All good points, thank you!

Yeah, I kind of tuned the issues out because for me the XPS is the only machine that combines slickness with repairability and that's what I value. I have the skill to resolve some of the issues (I always do a wipe and a fresh install) and the rest I learn to walk around through time.

I agree that the XPS is a terrible computer for a person who just wants stuff to work, but my point was that nothing prevents Apple from following the same repairability practices that Dell has while having a better QA. Having removable SSD or the battery that's not glued-in doesn't automatically make your laptop as bad as a Dell or as thick as a brick. If tomorrow these practices are written into the law, Apple will still be producing very good machines which will also be more maintainable.

Especially those components which are likely to wear out and need replacing long before the lifetime of the rest of the product is up.

> A part that 90% of people probably already own 10 of? Sounds like 10% more packaging and 90% less e-waste?

No, not everyone has those parts since they purposedly changed the way the part works. I mean, look at Apple, chargers used to be USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.

Move also made no sense since these chargers usually may not even outlast the person's device. In the end of the day you're causing more waste.

And yes, they do accept devices for recycling, what they do with them its unknown.

> USB Type-A -> Lightning and they the included cable from USB Type-C -> Lightning.

If you have a bunch of old USB A charger chances are you also have a suitable cable. Really it makes less sense giving people yet another USB A cable, considering the Mac lineup is now all USB C and so you don’t have to buy a cable to charge from/connect to your Mac.

Well since Apple cables don't last very long you probably don't have a good one either...

What part are you both talking about? Surely you're talking past each other to some degree.

Charger

charger

Sure, the resale value of broken apple equipment is through the roof.

I and everyone I know already has plenty of USB-A and USB-C bricks laying around. The things last forever and build up. So its more like every other company gives you a bit of junk you will not use.

Do apple or any other company offer you a discount for not including cables and chargers with the phones you buy?

Apple lowered the price on the new 20W charger to $19 instead of $29 as for the old 18W charger, not a huge amount. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/10/13/apple-selling-20w-usb-c...

Yes, they ask you if you need one at the time of purchase and if you don't ask for one you don't pay the $19 for one.

Trying to account for what the original BoM would have been with one in the box is an impossible effort and not very useful. At the end of the day all you need to do is decide if the value provided by the product matches the price the company sells it at. If not, don't buy it. For me the brick adds no extra value so I don't have to account for it.

If I needed the brick and the extra $19 pushed me over the edge to not worth it then I would consider another phone.

Fairphone is the answer here.

I really wish they had US support. They'll work if you can get one, but they don't ship to the US so you have to use a third party re-shipper (both for the phone and for replacement parts). Even then their frequency bands aren't optimized for the US so you're likely to have reception issues.

Have a look at Librem 5 as an alternative.

Haven't heard about them - good to know!

I could tell it was bullshit by the sheer length of this page:

https://www.apple.com/environment/

"Hypocritical" seems like the wrong word to describe caring about multiple things that are sometimes incompatible.

I don't think they care about the environment at all. It's plain marketing as all others LGBT things they "support". It goes well with the consumer so obviously they act as they supported those causes. Only thing companies want it's profit. It's wrong? No. But don't think they care about anything else.

At least rest of us can be less hypocritical, If we have decided to call out companies for their lackluster climate action then contributing to the e-waste disaster by selling blackboxes should be on the list.

It's a bit disingenuous to lay blame on companies for hypocrisy, when they have to play by the system set up by politicians.

Capitalism doesn't give you any extra points for being sustainable. If anything, it can interfere or be in direct opposition to making profits. You win at capitalism by making profits. A non-sustainable competitor will eat you, if you start worrying about the environment too much. So greenwashing is the way to go for most companies, in order to avoid boycotts, and people are ready to believe it because these problems are complex and people don't want to think that the stuff they buy are hurting the environment. This is a very foreseeable result, given the incentives.

Don't hate the player, hate the game. Demand change from the politicians.

You mean the politicians, that get sponsored by the companies? Those, who get influenced by professional lobbyists?

Yes.

The efficacy of different kinds of action is highly dependent on the existing structures, of course. That's not to say that nothing can be done, it's just a matter of choosing the right tool for the job and gathering up people to join the cause.

You can vote, run for office, participate in demonstrations, strikes or any kind of direct action. The possibilities are endless. No single method guarantees success for a movement and nobody knows what will happen in advance, but in general the bigger the mass of people participating, the higher the likelihood of success. But sitting on your ass and blaming companies is guaranteed to fail, if meaningful change to the system is what you want.

>>Don't hate the player, hate the game.

No, that is a stupid saying and people need to stop using. Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.

>> Demand change from the politicians.

No again, the solution to this problem is not some authoritarian government response, or even (which is implied by your indirect blame of capitalism for all the problems in the world) socialist economic model

>Capitalism doesn't give you any extra points for being sustainable.

Capitalism does not care about about sustainability or non-sustainable , non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism.

In reality is current government regulations like provide non-sustainable companies with that advantage in the form of liability shields, and various other government programs written by big business for big business to ensure the status quo

You appeal to government authority is as misplaced as your blame of capitalism for all the problems

> Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.

Yeah, but nobody cares what you think is unethical. If the game allows unethical moves to be made, they will be made, because people play to win. And you can cry and complain all you want, but people strive to play optimally, and unless you change the rules of the game, people will continue to play in ways that upset you if it suits them to.

> non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism.

Yes they are. Or rather, companies that care one way or another are at a disadvantage relative to companies who will make the optimal choice independent of whether or not it is sustainable. If we want to encourage sustainability, we have to use legislation to re-align incentives such that sustainability is the optimal choice. Otherwise, corporations will continue to be unsustainable whenever it suits them.

> government programs written by big business for big business to ensure the status quo

Dominant corporations don't need the government to help them stay on top. All they need is for the government to get out of the way. When you have money, you can use it to influence the market to make more money. That's how advertising works. That's how vertical integration and walled gardens like Apple's app store work. That's how mergers and corporate consolidation work. Money is power, and market share is power. The state is the only thing powerful enough to compete with corporations, which is why corporations spend so much money lobbying the government to de-regulate and back down.

>Unethical actions are unethical even if the "game" allows for it.

Nobody says what Apple is doing is ethical, at least I sure didn't. The point is, the problem runs deeper than one company. The system has an incentive structure where companies benefit by doing as Apple does. It's like blaming a ball for rolling down a hill. If you don't want the ball to roll, go play on a level field.

>You appeal to government authority

You make this sound like I'm for some kind of dictatorship.

I firmly believe in a government democratically elected by the people. Even if the system is capitalist in nature, it should always be subservient to the will of the people. The governments should be tied to the will and interest of the people. Especially in the US it seems that the government acts for the corporate special interests. In that case, the solution is more democracy, not less.

>non-sustainable companies are NOT givin a "competitive advantage" by capitalism

So why are all the big companies ruining our climate then? What's the explanation? Random chance?

Democracy is 2 wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for dinner.

I firmly believe in individualism and individual rights, governments are insulted by people to guard individuals rights nothing more. Governments just power and authority comes from that defense of rights, not from majority rule

If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right, but in your worldview that democratic government would be "tied to the will of the people"

No, government like fire is a useful tool but a dangerous leader and should never be left whims of the "majority"

>If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right, but in your worldview that democratic government would be "tied to the will of the people"

Of course democracy requires a constitution and a stable society to work. If there is no constitution that protects human rights and a majority thinks enslavement is okay, democracy isn't the right tool anymore. That's a description of a failed society at war against each other. I'm not suggesting that all problems can be solved by vote, just that it's much better to solve problems by vote than by bloodshed or by who has the most money, if you have that option. In a failed society, such option does not exist. That doesn't mean that democracy doesn't work. It clearly does in several countries.

Anything else is one wolf deciding to eat two lambs. Also, if you enslave almost half the population you definitely don't have a democracy anymore -- unless your slaves are allowed and able to vote and participate in public discourse like anyone else, which likely would not quite be slavery anymore.

What a perfect analogy — wolves and lambs voting on what to have for dinner. In the absence of democratic governance, the wolves will just eat the lambs because nobody's stopping them.

The wolf here is Apple. I can't make my own phone. Neither can you. And most users are substantially less tech-savvy from us, to the point where all they can really do is configure the settings on the factory-installed OS. The technology we use is overwhelmingly under the control of tech giants; there is no viable phone OS other than iOS (Apple-controlled) and Android + Play store (Google-controlled).

What do we do? Let ourselves get eaten? Or do we, the lambs (who are the overwhelmingly in the majority in our society) exert democratic power to counterbalance the capitalist power which controls the tech in our lives?

> If 51% agree that the other 49% should be enslaved does not make it ethical or right

Right, which is why the constitution exists: to protect certain individual rights from state overreach. But it absolutely does not follow that, since it is desirable that the government be constrained in some ways, it is always better for the government to do less.

Tim is a bean counter at heart and everything Apple has been marketing spin for decades.

> everything Apple has been marketing spin for decades.

After using Android since around 2010 getting a midrange iPhone around 18 or so months ago was almost a revelation for me, so no, it is clearly not all marketing spin.

(Why? Even on a Note II or S7 Edge something as trivial as opening the camera would have me waiting. On my iPhone XR pressing the camera button brings up the camera more or less instantaneously. And there are also a number of small conveniences that are hard to really pinpoint like actually understanding when it is in my pocket and then not turn on and burn out my battery.)

On my ancient and overloaded S8, the camera loads in under a second after double tapping power.

Battery lasts all day (and it's 4 years old). Doesn't turn on when it's in my pocket.

These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.

That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.

I do support on iPhones (not an Apple employee) and I've never experienced the the vaunted "this is so much better" moment.

> On my ancient and overloaded S8, the camera loads in under a second after double tapping power.

Lucky you.

> These anecdotal "I switched to x and its waaay better" things always reek of bias.

Well, here I am. I don't think I touched an apple product from 2012 to summer 2018 because I disliked OS X so intensely. So not exactly the biggest Apple fan.

> That a 2017 phone is slower than a 2018 phone is obvious - plus you'd need to reset the s7 to factory defaults for fair(er) comparison.

I talk about normal steady state usage after a month or two. My iPhone is still smooth. My Androids were hardly ever smooth even shortly after installation. YMMW. If it works for you, more power to you.

Edit: I know Android devices can be good. My Samsung S II was amazing for its time.

your phone is the exception, not the norm. Apple are well known for choosing hardware that delivers a great user experience. Their choices may not cater to your specific requirements but their sales figures strongly indicate that the majority of people disagree with you.

If you want to see how much value there is in Apple's phones, look at the used phone market. The competition isn't even close and iphones hold their value much better than the vast majority of android phones.

Are you sure its really the exception? I had an S6 that still functions really well with minimal battery degredation. I used it really heavily until I upgraded to an S9+, which is still going strong with pretty heavy use.

I've used apple products too, but it sounds to me like the differences in quality are deeply exaggerated. I happen to like android mostly because I have access to the filesystem and like to tinker with settings (and I like using my headphone jack).

As far as aftermarket value, I'm not convinced the used marked is completely rational... Or rather, there are plenty of confounding factors that make that a poor argument for which phone is built better.

yes, your phone is the exception. There are numerically more exceptions because of the sheer number of android models out there but phones lasting longer than two or three years is the exception. You can see this on the estimated OS charts if you combine it with the knowledge that most android phones don't receive more than one OS update. I've had several android phones over the years and know several others who owned them as well. Both in developed and developing markets. Android phones are cheap and will suffer on two counts - software and hardware longevity.

The used market may not be totally rational but there's a good case to be made for why apple devices tend to hold their value better - they are often built better. You cannot simply dismiss the higher price of used apple hardware as the market being irrational.

Even my coworker had been using an S6 until a couple months ago when he jumped to a pixel. I've known multiple people who were using S5s until at least last year.

So my personal experience makes me doubt that my phones are some kind of exception. These things seem to be plenty durable enough to last several years. I think there's not as much difference in hardware and software as you'd like to think.

If you want to make definitive statements, then I have to ask for your data.

Some basic searching I've done unearthed a paper[1] in the Journal of Industrial Ecology[2] that concludes that economic lifespan (how long a phone is actually used and thus depreciation rates) is only marginally effected by the functional durability (including hardware and software quality). Instead, they suggest that lifespan is more effected by brand equity and related intangibles. People choose to use certain products longer regardless of whether other products have similar functional qualities.

Thinking further on what could cause intangible factors to have such a large impact on the secondary market and depreciation, I can't help but wonder if each brand is attracting different kinds of people with commensurately different attitudes towards their smartphones. That certainly could drive a difference in behavior, and could even be a self-reinforcing trend where the users more likely to retain their products longer are drawn to the brand with the users who are more likely to retain their products longer.

This would mean that the S5's and S6's I've been talking about aren't the exception to the trend. Their users are the exception. That's something I'd be happy to accept. There definitely is a difference in behavior between iphone and android users.

P.S. it's worth noting that the paper itself was seeking to determine if repairability would significantly increase the economic lifespan of smartphones. That's why they were looking at what factors caused people to use their phones for longer or shorter periods of time.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jiec.12806

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Industrial_Ecology

This is the now-dated article i used for my comment: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/7/30/android-re...

You can supplement this with the OS share stats of android phone and combine it with the safe assumption that the majority of android phones are lucky to see one OS update. Consumentenbond in the netherlands estimated an average life of around 2.5 years. This is their source Android: beperkt houdbaar. Digitaal Gids

Add to this the resale value number.

I think you're making this more complicated that it needs to be. Android phones don't retain value as well because support is poor. There are few Samsung shops you can walk into to get OEM support and samsung is king of the android hill. Same with google and their name is behind the OS. Apple meanwhile, support six year old phones with software updates and even replace batteries inexpensively.

The point i was aiming for was that android phones aren't any less durable than apple's phones. They aren't used as long and this establishes a feedback loop where android OEMs must cut corners to maintain margins on devices simply because there isn't a revenue stream once sold.

End of the day, your old android phone working well is the exception. Apple know that what sells is the appearance of speed. That is a major reason why their phones sell, not because of GHz or GB or Megapixels.

> your old android phone working well is the exception

[citation needed]

This isn't supported at all by the article you linked. It's your own hypothesis, and I simply can't find any basis for it.

The peer reviewed article I linked explicitly shows that behavior (like how long a phone gets used for) is being driven by primarily nontangibles like brand equity rather than hardware and software durability.

The fact that you're ignoring that and still pushing your hypothesis makes it feel like you're clinging to Apple for some reason. I've never understood this kind of brand loyalty. I've stated a couple reasons for my decision to use android, but I'm not attached to Samsung, and I'm even thinking of picking up one of Sony's new phones. Hell, I've used Apple phones in the past, and even tried a Windows phone for a while (that tile interface they had was excellent BTW)

Android hardware isn't at fault. It's the bloated software stack written by Google devs only working on flagship phones.

It’s been a minute since I used Android, but I definitely felt the same when I switched to the iPhone. I found it a much more refined experience over all.

That said, if there was a decent Linux phone, I’d hop on it, warts and all. Pinephone or Librem are getting close.

I wonder if you got a garbage Android. Samsung is the Apple of Android. Big marketing budget, medium quality.

The Note II was released in 2012, and the S7 was released in 2016.

To be fair, transitioning from any phone around the S7 era to an iPhone XR bought in 2020 would probably give you the same feeling of revelation.

The longest I've held on to a phone was the iPhone 7 Plus for ~4 years, but even after 2 and a 1/2 years it was starting to show it's age. By the time I got rid of it, a charge would last me a little over half a day from moderate use.

Apple has a camera button?

(asking for an Xperia owner)

Sorry, soft buttons. One on the lock screen and one in the home screen.

And yes, as far as I remember Xperia was good, it just failed physically (later realized it was my fault as I used it as alarm clock and ended up applying force to the charging cable each morning.) Also they lost me as a customer when they included Amazon ads in a OS upgrade.

You can set it up in the Control Center. That's how I access my camera.

I went the other way. I got an iPhone in 2016 and was shocked at how poor the quality of hardware, os, and software was. Admittedly opening the box and giving Apple my personal information was fun.

Maybe it was a bad time for Apple, but it was almost traumatic for me. They really did just use marketing to sell phones.

Which iPhone was 2016 and what was the quality issue of the hardware, os and software?

Consistently Apple have been the leaders in all of the above. Even now, superior chip, camera, battery life, pixel density... it's hard to find better.

I've used Pixels since they became a thing and Apple iPhones. Other than quirky App Store bugs the quality issues almost always occur on the Pixel phones. ("Ok google" just stopping, gestures just stopping, ringing phone not responding to touch etc).

Hardware might be related to software. The swiping from screen to screen was slow. I posted about this and people said to turn off animations. Annoyingly this was not straightforward and it didn't solve the problem. Not to mention having a unique charger meant an extra device to pack on trips.

The os annoyance was the relentless "type in your apple id password", and multiple times per week updates. A few users have spun the narrative that updates are good, but these were annoying and didn't have any front facing benefits. No widgets really sucked, it was regressive not to have my next alarm time on my home screen.

Finally Apple maps sucked, the podcast app was buggy, I'd hit play and nothing would happen. I'd then hit play a few times and nothing would happen. Then finally something would happen. I can't remember other software bugs, it's been years.

Sure these might be fixed today, but I wonder what other things are bad today. I have ad blocking and a few other non play store apps on my phone, given the App Store, I'm not sure Apple would let such apps through.

At least Apple actually makes stuff, so many companies really are just marketing companies, 'their products' being complete commodity items.

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