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Comment by tgma | Hacker News Reader

Apple cut the phone charger for environmental reasons too.

It always has to be the end user who sacrifices for the environment.

They could make the theme for bing and other microsoft websites dark instead of white, literally just a change of color, if they wanted to reduce screen power usage globally - so many "no impact" changes with software that this has to be a fake justification.

How would that help in the slightest though? Majority of monitors worldwide are just normal TN/IPS/VA panels, for them the colour of the pixels makes absolutely no difference in power consumption. While OLED monitors exist, they are pretty much a niche within a niche.

Lots of monitors (probably most at this point?) have multiple backlighting zones in order to cheat at contrast ratio measurements.

FALD? It's so rare it's practically unheard of, some very high end HDR-compatible monitors have it, but I wouldn't describe it even remotely as "most". In fact I'll eat my hat if 99.99999% of monitors out there use anything other than edge-lit panels that don't change brighthness no matter what you display.

It's weird MS isn't doing that yet given their own OS and its apps already support dark mode, and websites can detect this setting as well.

Sacrifices? Who wanted a different charger that only works on their phone?

I like having one connector for everything.

I don't see how that's related at all. Apple chargers were always just dumb USB-A bricks, they didn't care what device you were charging with them or what kind of port it had. I don't remember when was the last time any phone came with a charger with an integrated cable instead of just USB-A/C output.

Honestly I don't feel the sacrifice. My house is flooded with old chargers. They're in a bin like old legos.

The e-waste related to including chargers in the box is a real thing. That change also allowed them to halve the size of the boxes, effectively doubling the shipping yield. On a billion-device level that's a non-trivial change.

And yes, it's good for their bottom line. And yes, it effectively increased the price by $30. Sucks for me, yes. So what?

If that was the genuine intent, they would have deducted the price to buy one from the device, but that never happens, so allow me to be skeptical of the reason.

I totally get the sentiment of your comment. They have pricing power, and they flex it. It doesn't feel great, I agree, especially when it comes from the largest company in the world.

Perhaps I was being too flippant in my original comment because I really miss the apple that cared a lot less about profitability and would give you a free new model year macbook when your old one broke (probably a lot worse for the environment too lol)

The two things can go hand in hand.

> Honestly I don't feel the sacrifice. My house is flooded with old chargers. They're in a bin like old legos.

If only any USB-C cable was compatible with iPhone or Pixel it would be fine, but I have 4 USB-C cables that don't work with them.

That's a valid criticism. The only thing that usb-c got right as a standard was the symmetrical shape.

Just like mobile phones had in '90s.

Oh my god, not from sony, at least!

That company had tremendous hardware but the serious affliction of being grotesquely obsessed with proprietary everything. I have nightmares trying to sort through my old boxes of cables.

Outside of barrel plugs, I don’t remember any 90s phone having a symmetrical connector of any sort.

I think for "power users" or people who buy/receive devices often, it's easy to have way too many chargers. A lot of other people buy a new phone every 3-5 years, and by that point, your cables are probably worn out and your charger might even be broken and some of them lost. Older chargers also operate at a much lower wattage, and with batteries getting bigger, charging time will be dramatically longer for people still using old ones (assuming they're even compatible, since not everything used USB3 a few years ago).

>> and by that point, your cables are probably worn out

Apple(and everyone else, as far as I know) includes the cable though. And it's hard to wear out a power brick that just sits plugged into a socket all day.

>>assuming they're even compatible, since not everything used USB3 a few years ago

Apple chargers were always just AC to USB-A though, so all you need to change is the cable. Which....comes included with the device. It's a bit more of an issue if it's now a USB-C to USB-C cable, but a USB-A to USB-C cable is not exactly expensive.

Apple now ships a USB C cable. They shipped 1 year of iPhone with a USB C brick, so I doubt most iPhone users had one except maybe for their MacBook.

Hm, you got me thinking about my parents, who still use the cube chargers for their newer iphones. So you do make a good point there.

For me, gallium nitride have changed the charger game for me and I refuse to use stock apple chargers on account of their ungainly largeness.

Charging a macbook with a tiny charger is so satisfying.

> Sucks for me, yes. So what?

Keep living with attitude like that, eventually you’ll realize.

Honestly I've lived in countries (Korea) that have recycling programs that are a kafkaesque nightmare where you literally have to peel the plastic off a tissue box to recycle both the plastic and the paper, and if you don't, you have neighbors who dig through your trash to snitch on you, pushing a fat fine down your throat. That, I cannot tolerate.

I'm a big fan of tackling the low hanging fruit of recycling and waste reduction, and not including a charger is definitely up there.

Yeah. There is a reason why “recycle” comes third after “reduce” (which this does) and “reuse” (which this promotes).

I think the real e-waste is buying a new phone so often that your house is flooded with old chargers.

Android update support is still just around 2-4 years and countless other devices come with their own charger as well, while chargers last much longer and usually just become obsolete (no fast charging etc)

Exactly. It is in companies' best interest to keep the device support as short as possible as a way of planned obsolescence, so they can somehow convince consumers (especially the rich western ones) they need a new phone every year (or two). In truth, for the majority of the users, a flagship should last for at least 5. It's not like what we do on phones get computationally more expensive, except the bloat and lack of optimization (both the OS and apps, due to unnecessarily fast processors).

They cut chargers so they wouldn’t have to change them for the EU. The environment, as usual, is for greenwashing the move.

Eh? That makes zero sense. The EU mandates the type of port on your device, not the type of charger bundled or not bundled with it. It makes even less sense given that the Apple chargers were always just dumb USB-A chargers with a separate cable - and apple still bundles the cable. So the actual charger part wouldn't have changed no matter what EU decided on this matter.

Perhaps referring to having to stock different SKUs of iPhone for each different plug type.

Now the phones only need to be unique to radio requirements.

They clearly would rather do wireless charging than change the port right now.

In what way? They did change the port, instead of throwing their hands in the air and going wireless charging only.

Ever heard of "you will own nothing and you will be happy"?

> user who sacrifices for the environment.

It is saying like why should IC engine performance always suffer because for fuel efficiency.

Ultimately the supposed and alleged environmental harm *always* in every single case is a result of human consumption so some human has to suffer for these allegedly environmental moves if not the person buying iPhone then the Apple employee or Apple Shareholder or average tax payer.

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